Ill 
KINDS OF GOODS EXPORTED EROM THE UNITED 
STATES TO THE NETHERLANDS— AND QUALITY 
OF THE SAME 
The character and kind of goods sent from America to the 
Netherlands have been ascertained from an examination of 
lists furnished by Mr. H. T. Colenbrander, director of the 
Bureau of Historical Publications at the Hague. These lists 
were copied from written court records preserved in the Am- 
sterdam Archives. Unfortunately these lists do not contain 
an inventory of the cargoes of all the ships that went from 
the United States to the Netherlands. The cargoes of only 
those ships are listed that were wrecked or damaged at a 
certain point at the entrance to the harbor where navigation 
was then hazardous. The owners of such ships and cargoes 
applied for insurance or damage to the insurance companies, 
and the cases were investigated by the municipal bureau of 
naval insurance of the city of Amsterdam. In such investiga- 
tions complete lists of the different kinds of goods in each 
cargo were made out. It is these semiofficial lists that have 
been preserved in the Amsterdam Archives. These records 
show that in 1786 the cargoes of eight large ships from Amer- 
ica for Amsterdam were the subject of adjustment. Of these 
eight ships, three came from Charleston, three from Phila- 
delphia, and two from New York. The bulk of these cargoes 
consisted of tobacco and rice. Besides these there were con- 
siderable quantities of furs, hides, and turpentine and smaller 
quantities of potash, indigo, cotton, linen, iron, copper, rye, 
wax, sassafras, colors, and merchandise. There were also 
some small quantities of goods of foreign production re- 
exported from America such as cocoa, ginger, mahogany, 
guiacum, campechie wood, redwood, and brazil wood.®® This 
list agrees entirely with the list of exports from the United 
States to the Netherlands as given by Timothy Pitkin.®^ All 
of the vessels from Charleston, of course, brought rice, while 
all of those from Philadelphia brought tobacco as the bulk 
of their cargoes. But rice also came in the ships from Phila- 
Amsterdam Archives, No. 96 (Transcript, 16). 
Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States, 204. 
(24) 
