Accounting in the Dutch Transatlantic
Slave Trade: 18 th Century Bookkeeping by
the Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie1
Koen van der Blij
This paper investigates the early modern accounting practices of the Mid
delburgse Commercie Compagnie (MCC), through a case study of the
company's bookkeeping in 1752, the year with the largest reported annual
loss. The MCC, the biggest Dutch slave trading company in the 18th century, exist
ed for over a century with seemingly low profits. However, a careful examination
of the preindustrial MCC bookkeeping shows that the main purpose of the book
keeping was to carefully account for its transactions, and not to present highly ac
curate annual reports on profits and losses. In addition, the bookkeeping reveals
an economic network serving the interests of certain directors and shareholders,
not necessarily through dividends, but through other channels such as the privi
lege to supply goods to the MCC.
Introduction
The profitability and economic impact of the Dutch Transatlantic slave trade has
been a subject of debate among historians in recent decades. Karwan Fatah-Black
and Matthias Van Rossum provide an estimated total gross margin of the Dutch
slave trade of 63-79 million guilders in the 17th and 18th century, rejecting the ear
lier claims by historians such as Piet Emmer that the slave trade was an insignif-
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1 This paper is an edited version of a Senior Project, a two-semester research project of the
Bachelor program at University College Roosevelt, supervised by Prof. Dr. van Dixhoorn and
Prof. Dr. Mosselmans and concluded in May 2019.
