[3] In 1445, Prince Henry the Navigator set up a trading post on the island, which acquired gum arabic and enslaved people for Portugal.

[4] On 5 February 1633, a Dutch expeditionary force of forty soldiers under the command of Laurens Cameels took possession of Fort Arguin.

[5] They did this under the orders of the Zeeland chamber of the Dutch West India Company, which had awarded a patroonship over the island to Abraham van Peere, who also possessed the colony of Berbice in South America.

[7] Daniel van Peere was taken hostage and eventually murdered by local peoples after setting out on a trading mission to Porto d'Arco in July 1633.

[9] The island remained under the authority of the Zeeland chamber of the Dutch West India Company until 1678, with a brief interruption by English rule in 1665.

[1] In 1685, Captain Cornelius Reers of the frigate Rother Löwe [de] occupied the old Portuguese fort on the island.