“The Dutch in the Americas”
Dr Stephanie Porras

With footholds in North America, the Caribbean, South America, and along the west coast of Africa, the Dutch played a vital, yet understudied role in the early modern Americas. Via the West India Company’s transatlantic traffic in raw materials (beaver pelts, pearls, sugar, gold), refined artistic products, and people (both willing settlers and enslaved laborers), the Dutch not only extracted desirable goods and materials, but imported and contributed to varied visual and material cultures of mapping and navigation, enslavement, plantation economies, architecture and city planning across North and South America, from what is now New York to North East Brazil. The ‘Dutch’ in the Americas were not a uniform population but included French Huguenots, Swedes, Sephardic Jews, allied Indigenous groups and enslaved Africans. Outlining how the Dutch colonial project in the Americas both diverged and overlapped with their competitors, this talk considers the central role these ‘Dutch’ artists, artworks and material goods played in the Americas, presenting an alternate view of the colonial Americas.