Studies in American History 
25 
delphia, and tobacco came from New York in small quan- 
tities.®® Since the cargoes which were passed upon by the 
bureau of insurance were only a small part of the total num- 
ber of cargoes coming in from America, they give little clue as 
to the total quantity and value of imports from America into 
the Netherlands. 
The Nieuwe N ederlandsche Jaarboeken kept records of the 
number of ships entering from America but not of their car- 
goes. The shipping will be dealt with in a later chapter. A 
contemporaneous writer upon commercial affairs, C. Van der 
Oudermeulen, states that in 1785 the cargoes of the 52 ships 
from America to Amsterdam and the 13 ships to Rotterdam 
were valued at 2,225,000 Dutch florins, or a trifle less than 
$1,000,000. Of this, he estimated, that four-fifths or 1,800,- 
000 florins was the value of the cargoes entered at Amster- 
dam, and 450,000 florins, the value of the cargoes at Rotter- 
dam. The cargoes at Amsterdam consisted of 5,000 casks of 
tobacco, 12,000 casks of rice, besides staves, wood, turpentine, 
and linseed. The 5,000 casks of tobacco sold at 100 florins 
per cask and the 12,000 casks of rice at 50 florins per cask. 
Thus the tobacco would account for 500,000 florins and the 
rice for 600,000 florins or a total of 1,100,000 florins out of 
1,800,000 florins, the total value of the imports at Amsterdam 
from America. This would leave 700,000 as the value of the 
staves, wood, turpentine, linseed, and other commodities. In 
other words, tobacco made up one-third the total value of im- 
ports of the Netherlands from the United States; rice another 
third of the value; while the other third was distributed 
among a number of commodities such as wood, naval-stores, 
fur, hides, etc. 
Oudermeulen does not bring his statistics beyond 1785, but 
from other evidence cited above, one would infer that this 
same proportion between tobacco, rice, and other commodi- 
ties was maintained in the years following. The total ship- 
ping from America to the Netherlands had, however, grad- 
ually risen by 1788 to five times the amount of shipping in 
1785. If one assumes that the quantity and value of cargoes 
imported from America to the Netherlands was five times 
as much in 1788 as in 1785, one must conclude that the total 
value of annual imports toward the end of this period had 
risen to more than 11,000,000 florins or about $4,500,000. 
Amsterdam Archives, No. 96. 
