West-Indisch Pakhuis: The Atlantic Company's Warehouse
Why is it significant?
Face the broad warehouse at the corner of the harbour, with its rows of small shuttered windows and its hoisting beam under the roof. It looks solid, practical, almost dull... the kind of building you would walk past without a glance.
Key Facts
| Place | West-Indisch Pakhuis: The Atlantic Company's Warehouse |
|---|---|
| Address | 's-Gravenhekje 1, 1011 TG Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.37220, 4.90800 |
| Part of Walk | Spice, Ships and Shadows: Amsterdam's Golden Age Harbour and the Dutch East India Company |
| Generated | Generated |
Face the broad warehouse at the corner of the harbour, with its rows of small shuttered windows and its hoisting beam under the roof. It looks solid, practical, almost dull... the kind of building you would walk past without a glance.
This is the West-Indisch Pakhuis, a warehouse built in the 1640s for the Dutch West India Company, the WIC. The VOC had Asia; the WIC, founded in 1621, was given the Atlantic: West Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas. It traded in sugar, gold, ivory, tobacco and furs, it fought Spain and Portugal at sea, and it founded New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan.
And from the 1630s onwards it traded in human beings. The WIC became one of the largest slave traders of its age, shipping enslaved Africans from forts on the Gold Coast to the plantations of Brazil, Suriname and the Caribbean, and through Curaçao to the colonies of other nations. Over two centuries, Dutch ships carried more than half a million enslaved people across the Atlantic, and many thousands died on the way.
The profits came home to quays like this one. Sugar refineries, tobacco works and banks in Amsterdam grew on that trade, and the city government itself was a co-owner of the colony of Suriname. Slavery in Suriname and the Caribbean colonies was abolished only in 1863, and many of the enslaved were forced to keep working on the plantations for ten more years.
For a long time, Amsterdam told its Golden Age story without this chapter. That has changed. In 2021 the mayor of Amsterdam formally apologised for the city's role in slavery, followed by the Dutch prime minister in 2022 and King Willem-Alexander in 2023. Every 1 July, on Keti Koti, the end of slavery is commemorated and celebrated across the country. Now cross the water towards the gates of the old navy yard, a few minutes to the east.