Dutch West India Company

The Dutch West India Company was chartered on 3 June 1621 by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, granting it a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies and jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade and Dutch colonial ventures in Brazil, the Caribbean and North America, including the founding of New Amsterdam, later New York. Modeled on the earlier Dutch East India Company, it never matched that company's profitability, was reorganized as a second West India Company after a mid-seventeenth century collapse, and was finally wound up in 1791 when its patent was not renewed.