Indigenous Histories in the Rijksmuseum:

Material Culture and the Seventeenth-Century Fur Trade

Abstract

At first glance, the Rijksmuseum collection seems to lack materials relating to seventeenth-century Indigenous and Dutch colonial history in ‘New Netherland’ (encompassing parts of present-day Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut). In 1614, the governing body of the Dutch Republic, the States General, claimed exclusive rights to trade in these Indigenous homelands. Dutch colonists, including the Dutch West India Company (formed 1621), were primarily interested in the fur trade. North American beaver pelts were a lucrative material transformed into a ubiquitous seventeenth-century status symbol: broad-brimmed hats. The colonial fur trade, shaped by and dependent upon Indigenous knowledge, was marked by the complexities of intercultural diplomacy and the disorientation and violence of settler colonialism. By combining prints and paintings, mostly held in the Rijksmuseum, with archival records, this article traces a global history of the New Netherland fur trade, contributing to new insights into Indigenous political economies, Dutch artisan and consumer cultures, and colonialism and its legacies.