Willem Usselincx (1567 – c. 1647) was a Flemish Dutch merchant, investor and diplomat who was instrumental in drawing both Dutch and Swedish attention to the importance of the New World. Usselincx was the founding father of the Dutch West India Company.
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👉 Willem Usselincx in the context of Dutch West India Company
The Dutch West India Company (Dutch: Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie) was a Dutch chartered company that was founded in 1621 and went defunct in 1792. Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647), and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America.
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.
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Willem Usselincx in the context of Swedish South Company
The Swedish South Company, also known as the Company of New Sweden (Swedish, Söderkompaniet, Nya Sverige-kompaniet), was a trading company from Sweden founded in 1626, that supported the trade between Sweden and its colony New Sweden, in North America. The colony was envisioned by its founding father Willem Usselincx; it was to become the first Swedish transoceanic trading project.
In 1649, it lost its monopoly on tobacco granted by the queen of Sweden in 1641. In 1655, New Sweden was annexed by New Netherland, this brought an end to the activities of the Swedish South Company, it was dissolved in 1680.