Location
The conference will take place in the centre of Amsterdam in the West Indisch Huys.
This beautifully restored 17th century building reverberates with the atmosphere and style of what was, viewed from a Dutch perspective of world history, the Golden Century. It was here that the ‘Heeren Negentien’, the masters of the Dutch West India Trading Company, planned events that were to have lasting effects in what were then far-flung corners of the earth.
The West Indisch Huys was built by the Amsterdam City Council in 1617 as meat-market, with rooms above for the city militia. Just four years later, the West India Company was formed and, after two years in other offices, moved to the building that bears its name to this day. In fact, from the courtyard, the building looks very much the same as it did in 1623: only the windows have changed, which happened in the 18th century.
The company occupied the building until 1647 when, at the end of the Eighty Years War with the Spain, it suffered serious financial problems and was forced to move to its warehouse. But in those short 24 years a great deal of history had been written by the Heeren Negentien in the rooms of the West Indisch Huys.
Ostensibly established as a trading company, the West India Company did, in fact, trade – in South America, in North America, in the Caribbean and on the west coast of Africa. Its main operations, however, were directed at stemming the flow of wealth from America that Spain needed to finance her war against the Dutch. In a period of just 15 years, the West India Company was responsible for the capture or destruction of almost 550 Spanish ships. Some of the loot was stored in the vaulted cellars under the very room in which the Heeren Negentien gathered.
In 1621, the Company had taken over control of the Hudson Valley, in North America, discovered by the Englishman Henry Hudson under commission to the earlier Dutch East India Company. In the boardroom of the West Indisch Huys on April 25, 1625, two directors of the West India Company took a decision that was to result in the birth of New York: they commissioned William Van Hulst and Crijn Frederikszoon to build Fort Amsterdam to defend the settlement of New Amsterdam. The site of the fort? Manhattan Island.
The West Indisch Huys has gone through a variety of fortunes and misfortunes since 1647. For almost 200 years it was Amsterdam’s official guest-house for visiting dignitaries, before becoming an orphanage and retirement home and later the base for a textile firm. A fire in 1975 ended that firm’s occupancy, and from 1977 to 1981 the building was transformed to its original character. Today, the West Indisch Huys is a vibrant reminder of the “golden days” of Dutch influence more than three centuries ago.
To plan your route to the conference venue please click here.
