The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope) and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and ended east of the Maluku Islands, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas.

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.

When the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was founded in 1602,[3] some traders in Amsterdam did not agree with its monopolistic policies.

With help from Petrus Plancius, a Dutch-Flemish astronomer, cartographer, and clergyman, they sought for a northeastern or northwestern access to Asia to circumvent the VOC monopoly.

Consequently, in 1615, Isaac Le Maire and Samuel Blommaert, assisted by others, focused on finding a south-westerly route around South America's Tierra del Fuego archipelago in order to circumvent the monopoly of the VOC.

It was Blommaert, however, who stated that, in 1600, eight companies sailed on the coast of Africa, competing with each other for the supply of copper, from the Kingdom of Loango.

Grand Pensionary Johan van Oldenbarnevelt offered to suspend trade with the West Indies in exchange for the Twelve Years' Truce.

In 1619, his opponent Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was beheaded, and when in April 1621 the truce expired, the West Indian Company could be established.

The West India Company received its charter from the States-General in June 1621, granting it a 24-year monopoly on trade and colonization that included the American coast between Newfoundland and the Straits of Magellan.

A translation of the original 1621 charter appeared in English, Orders and Articles granted by the High and Mightie Lords the States General of the United Provinces concerning the erecting of a West-Indies Companie, Anno Dom.

A Groot Desseyn ("grand design") was devised to seize the Portuguese colonies in Africa and the Americas, so as to dominate the sugar and slave trade.

The company was initially a dismal failure, in terms of its expensive early projects, and its directors shifted emphasis from conquest of territory to pursue plunder of shipping.

[19] Despite Heyn's success at plunder, the company's directors realized that it was not a basis to build long-term profit, leading them to renew their attempts to seize Iberian territory in the Americas.

Non-maritime cities, including Haarlem, Leiden, and Gouda, along with Enkhuizen and Hoorn were enthusiastic about seizing territory.

[21] Company ships continued privateering in the Caribbean, as well seizing vital land resources, particularly salt pans.

[22] The company's general lack of success saw their shares plummet and the Dutch and The Spanish renewed truce talks in 1633.

[23] In 1629, the GWC gave permission to a number of investors in New Netherlands to found patroonships, enabled by the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions which was ratified by the Dutch States General on 7 June 1629.

[11][24] Patroon investors could expand the size of their land grants as large as 4 miles, "along the shore or along one bank of a navigable river..." Rensselaerswyck was the most successful Dutch West India Company patroonship.

This indifferent attitude of Amsterdam was the main cause of the slow, half-hearted policy, which would eventually lead to losing the colony.

In 1649, a competing Swedish Africa Company was founded; the GWC obtained a monopoly on gold and enslaved Africans with the kingdom of Accra (present-day Ghana).

In 1662, the GWC obtained several asiento subcontracts with the Spanish Crown, under which the Dutch were allowed to deliver 24,000 enslaved Africans.

[33] The influence of the GWC in Africa was threatened during the Second and Third Anglo–Dutch Wars, but English efforts to displace the Dutch from the region ultimately proved unsuccessful.

Sint Eustatius (Dutch Caribbean) became the most profitable asset of the GWC and a transit point for enslaved Africans in the transatlantic slave trade.

[41][42] In 1750 Thomas Hope was elected in the board of the company, but preferred the Heren XVII after two years; he was succeeded by Nicolaas Geelvinck in 1764.

After the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, it became apparent that the GWC was no longer capable of defending its own colonies, as Sint Eustatius, Berbice, Essequibo, Demerara, and some forts on the Dutch Gold Coast were rapidly taken by the British.