How was the Dutch Slave Trade different from the rest of European nations slave trade?

by Fiatach
R1DER_of_R0HAN

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this (e.g. was it more/less brutal, did they acquire slaves in a certain way, etc), but I can talk a bit about the Dutch entry into the slave trade and their religious attitudes towards those they enslaved.

A unique factor of the Dutch slave trade, and of Dutch colonialism in the Americas in general, was that it was rather late. The Spanish and Portuguese had already established colonies there by the time the Dutch got involved around the 1590s. Their emergence was largely motivated by the Dutch Revolt against Spain (1568-1648, with a truce from 1609-1621). Dutch merchants couldn't trade in Iberian ports (Spain controlled Portugal at this time), so the Dutch had to look elsewhere for goods such as sugar (shipped to Iberia from the Portuguese settlements in Brazil). They founded the West India Company to further Dutch economic interests and harass enemy ships and ports wherever they could. They managed to occupy several Spanish Caribbean colonies as well as Brazil in 1624, which was a top priority for its supply of sugar. However, they found that actually producing anything with Brazilian plantations required slaves. This led them to take Portuguese colonies such as Sao Tome and Angola, giving them direct access to slave markets.

Another unique factor was that the Dutch generally did not try very hard to convert those they enslaved to their faith. This set them apart from the Spanish and Portuguese (many of the slaves in Dutch colonies initially came from Portuguese-settled areas and were already Catholic - the Dutch generally did not push them towards the Protestant Dutch Reformed faith). There was a debate among Dutch colonists over whether it was appropriate to enslave fellow Christians, especially members of one's own tradition. Eventually they decided that those who were baptized into the Dutch Reformed faith would be freed; however, this brought prospective converts' motivations into question, and the standards for doctrinal knowledge required to receive baptism were set significantly higher for slaves. Thus, the Dutch Reformed faith never really gained much of a following among those enslaved by the Dutch.

Source:

Krabbendam, Hans, Cornelis A. van Minnen, and Giles Scott-Smith, eds. Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations 1609-2009. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Boom, 2009.

Specifically two articles from that book,

  • “The Dutch in the Atlantic” by Wim Klooster

  • “The Dutch and their Religion” by Fred van Lieburg