This new book explains how Amsterdam entrepreneurs, specifically the Coymans family, built profitable businesses within a system that officially excluded them.

Abstract

The book follows networks that linked Europe, the Caribbean, and the Spanish Americas, and examines how trade operated amid war, embargoes, and changing laws. Methodologically, it combines notarial records, ego documents, judicial records, and state papers from archival materials from the Netherlands, Spain, the Caribbean, and the Spanish Americas with newly compiled datasets. It reconstructs tools of risk and finance such as bottomry loans, partnerships, agency chains, and the management of trust and reputation, and clarifies the legal gray zones that enabled trade. The central case is the Coymans Asiento and its collapse, which connects discussions of ports, networks of agents, and the flow of silver to Amsterdam, offering fresh perspectives on early modern silver flows.

Author

Ramona Negrón

Publisher

Routledge

Open access

This is an open access publication.

26-10-2026

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