At the beginning of the seventeenth century no European country seemed in a better position to play a major role in establishing and profiting from the Atlantic slave economy than the Netherlands. Within a few years they were battling for control of Europe's largest source of sugar, and threatening to displace the largest national transatlantic slave trader. Yet a mere seventy-five years later the Dutch had lost their pre-eminence in the Caribbean and the North Atlantic to the British. Of all the American sugar-producing regions, they held only an enclave on the South American mainland. Why did the trajectory change? What went wrong? Had the Dutch chosen the wrong model for exploiting the Atlantic slave economy? Had they invested in those areas of the Atlantic with less favorable factor endowments? Had they brought institutions to the Atlantic that inhibited rather than stimulated economic expansion? Finally, were the consequences of this relative failure of significance for the economic development of the Americas?

It is difficult at first sight to give an affirmative answer to any of these questions. On the first, the Dutch had clearly avoided the Spanish emphasis on settlement, large-scale investment in the tropical Americas and exploitation of Indian labor and deposits of precious metals – an approach that was appearing increasingly unpromising by the late seventeenth century.