DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY
The Governor had banished John Bowne, the Quaker from the colony. In general, he was opposed to Quakers, Jews and other “non-Christians.”
A boatload of 23 Jews had arrived in New Amsterdam in 1654 from a failed colony in Brazil. Governor Peter Stuyvesant, an anti-Semite, wanted to deport them and asked for permission from his superiors at the Dutch West India Company. The Directors of the company wanted good citizens in their colony, and the Jews had been very productive citizens in Amsterdam. The Governor was distressed and took this as a rebuke which it was. Stuyvesant was not a very good governor eaith from the point of view of the colomists or the company.
The Dutch West India Company (Dutch: Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie, or GWC; Dutch pronunciation: [ɣəʔɔktroːˈjeːrdə ʋɛstˈɪndisə kɔmpɑˈɲi]; English: Chartered West India Company) was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx (1567–1647) and Jessé de Forest and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and the eastern part of New Guinea. The intended purpose of the charter was to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, between the various trading posts established by the merchants. The company became instrumental in the largely ephemeral Dutch colonization of the Americas (including New Netherland) in the seventeenth century. From 1624 to 1654, in the context of the Dutch-Portuguese War, the GWC held Portuguese territory in northeast Brazil, but they were ousted from Dutch Brazil following fierce resistance.
