Hendricksen returned quickly to Manhattan and sailed for Holland. There, he laid before his employers a report of his discoveries “between the thirty-eighth and fortieth degrees of latitude,” together with a map of New Netherland embracing the lower reaches of the Delaware River as well as the hinterland discoveries of the three traders he had ransomed. Excitedly, the merchants went before the States General of the United Netherlands and prayed not only for an extension of their special charter which was soon to expire but for an extension of the geographical limits of New Netherland.
In the original charter, New Netherland had been described as “situated in America, between New France and Virginia, the seacoasts of which lie between the 40th and 45th degrees of latitude.” The Dutch claim was thus neatly set down as the exact territory of the overlapping claims of France and England on the Elizabethan theory that it was the possession of neither of those countries as it was not occupied by either of them.
Now the merchants wanted the limits extended by two degrees in the south—to include the Delaware valley. Their arguments were impressive. The Delaware had not been occupied by the English, or even explored by them. What if Captain Samuel Argall had looked in on the bay and named it for his English governor of Virginia? That was a year after Henry Hudson had discovered it for the Dutch.
The States General demurred however, postponing any decision. There were problems at home and abroad that took precedence, and within the framework of a grand solution of those problems was a plan to create a great western trading company similar to the Dutch East India Company.
Ever since the defeat of the Armada there had been those in the United Netherlands who had urged striking at Spain’s sources of revenue in the East and West Indies as the surest way to hasten that nation’s decline. The Dutch East India Company, a military trading organization, had been chartered with this in mind. That was before Spain virtually acknowledged the independence of the Dutch Netherlands in 1609 by agreeing to a truce. After that, however, the Peace Party in the Dutch Netherlands had been strong enough to resist demands that a similar company be organized to exploit America and harass the Spanish there. It was considered dangerous to Holland’s newly gained peace and independence to goad the Spaniards in that quarter—or to offend the English, or the French either for that matter.
But the War Party led by Prince Maurice of Orange and the Calvinist clergy, and backed by such important Flemish emigres as Amsterdam’s great merchant, William Usselinx, wanted to resume the war with Spain in order to gain complete independence for all the Netherlands. Usselinx particularly urged the necessity of challenging Spanish hegemony in America. He wanted a government-sponsored Dutch West India Company to prosecute the pursuit of gold and silver, the conduct of the fur trade with the Indians and the destruction of the Spanish commercial monopoly in the New World.
It was the probability of being forced into forming this company, a company which would incidentally assume control over New Netherland, that kept the States General from renewing the New Netherland Company’s charter. Certainly, concern over possible friction with the English or the French prevented any territorial broadening of the charter or of the individual trading licenses which were issued after the charter’s expiration.
By the New Netherland Company’s charter the States General had in effect defined and acknowledged the borders of New France in the north and Virginia in the south. They recognized that it would be bad enough in the interior when the French realized that New Netherland traders were aligning themselves with the Iroquois enemies of New France. But it would be much worse to tangle with the English on the coasts—the Virginians in the south, and now those other Englishmen preparing to stake out “New England” in the north.
The Peace Party in the Netherlands didn’t want any trouble and they wished the Orangers who had gone out to America would stay in the valley of Hudson’s River, where no Englishmen had ever attempted to trade for furs. However, that was not to be. The fur traders would push on; the War Party would have its way.