Et audietur altera pars—hear the other side also—is a Roman adage which Celestino Andrés Arauz Monfante should have heeded when he wrote his extensive two-volume study of the Dutch contraband trade in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Citing an impressive amount of research in the Spanish archives (Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Archivo General de Simancas, the Archivo Histórico Nacional, the Biblioteca Nacional, and the Biblioteca de la Real Academia), the author inexplicably failed to consult the ARA (Algemeen Rijksarchief) in The Hague, the Netherlands. To have done so would undoubtedly have resulted in a less one-sided evaluation of this controversial topic.
A similar observation applies to the bibliography, which contains more than 220 titles, listing, however, only three Dutch historians: myself (with the title of my work sometimes misspelled: The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580-1680 is referred to in I, 27 as The Dutch in the Caribean and on the wild coast 1580-1680); J. H. J. Hamelberg—consistently quoted as Jacobus Hamilberg—whose De Nederlanders op de West-Indische eilanden is given as The Neederlander of the Indische Eilander—and Emmanuel—misspelled throughout as Enmanuel—whose History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles appears as History of the Jews of the Netherlan Antilles. A fourth Dutchman, the author of The Buccaneers of America—a title also misspelled—has his name mangled from Exquemeling to Exqueming.
The enormous amount of errors, not only in Dutch names and titles but in English and French words as well, leads one to the assumption that the author has no knowledge whatever, speaking or reading, of Dutch or any other foreign language. It casts doubt on whether he has any first-hand knowledge of the few foreign sources he mentions as having been consulted. Moreover, the abundance of misspellings is obstructive to the reading of this study. Some research in ARA and/or Curaçao would have avoided this. By blindly copying the Spanish documents, the author invariably repeats the same gaffes which would have been obvious to him if he had consulted a Dutch source. Jeresum, a Jewish merchant from Curaçao, for instance, is Jesurun or Jesurum (I, 53). Juan Banbollen Hoven is really Jan van Vollenhoven (I, 298), and so forth. Another result of Arauz Monfante’s casual approach toward the Dutch language can be found by consulting the index, which, in every sense, is an exercise in futility. Governor van Collen of Curaçao, for instance, is listed under Gollen; Jan Noach Du Fay can only be found under his middle name Noach. Similar examples are plentiful.
Clearly evident also is the author’s bias in favor of the Spanish position. He writes about “el cinismo de Noach du Fay” (II, 19), “el característico cinismo de las autoridades neerlandesas” (II, 108), “la obstinada actitud de Isaac Faesch” (II, 109), “falsas las declaraciones de los gobernadores I. Faesch y Juan Phils” (II, 247), the “suma desfachatez de los gobernantes de Curazao” (II, 36), and so on. (Juan Phils mentioned as governor of St. Eustatius must be John Philips of St. Maarten.)
Many subjects would have received a more balanced treatment had the author consulted the Dutch archives, a few printed sources in the Dutch language, and the articles in the Dutch West Indische Gids. He also should have read my article on “Curaçao as a Slave Trading Center During the War of the Spanish Succession,” and relevant articles in other non-Spanish reviews.
The study has some positive aspects, of course. It is a serious attempt to measure something that is perhaps unmeasurable: the size of illicit trafficking, in this case the activity in the Caribbean of the Dutch lorredraaiers or interlopers participating in the kleine vaart which the Dutch practiced in the eighteenth century. The research the author has conducted has been extensive—albeit one-sided. However, in my opinion, the neglect and/or carelessness of checking foreign sources makes the usefulness of this work extremely doubtful. Why Arauz Monfante ever chose the topic of the Dutch contraband trade while lacking the ability or refusing to study the other side of the coin is beyond comprehension.
