Abraham van Peere was a Dutch

merchant A merchant is a person who trades in goods produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Merchants have been known for as long as humans have engaged in trade and commerce. Merchants and merchant networks operated i ...

from

Vlissingen Vlissingen (; ) is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on the island of Walcheren. With its strategic location between the Scheldt river and the North Sea, Vlissingen has been an importan ...

in the

County of Zeeland The County of Zeeland () was a county of the Holy Roman Empire in the Low Countries and it later became one of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic. It covered an area in the Scheldt and Meuse (river), Meuse delta roughly corresponding to t ...

. In 1602, a charter was given by the States General of the

Dutch Republic The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...

to his father Jan van Peere to found a colony on the

Berbice River The Berbice River , located in eastern Guyana, is one of the country's major rivers. It rises in the highlands of the Rupununi region and flows northward for through dense forests to the coastal plain. The river's tidal limit is between from the ...

on the coast of Guyana. Abraham van Peere eventually founded the colony of Berbice in 1627. He was also made patroon of

Arguin Arguin ( : ''Arghīn''; ) is an island off the western coast of Mauritania in the Bay of Arguin. It is approximately in size, with extensive and dangerous reefs around it. The island is now part of the Banc d'Arguin National Park. History Th ...

in 1633. Apparently some disputes arose between the Van Peere family and the Second

Dutch West India Company The Dutch West India Company () was a Dutch chartered company that was founded in 1621 and went defunct in 1792. Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647), and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was gra ...

, which was founded to succeed the First Dutch West India Company that went bankrupt in 1674. The Dutch West India Company was given the monopoly on trade with the West Indies, which conflicted with Van Peere's charter. This was resolved when on 14 September 1678 a charter was signed which established Berbice as a hereditary

fief A fief (; ) was a central element in medieval contracts based on feudal law. It consisted of a form of property holding or other rights granted by an overlord to a vassal, who held it in fealty or "in fee" in return for a form of feudal alle ...

of the Dutch West India Company, in the possession of the Van Peere family. In November 1712, Berbice was briefly occupied by the French under

Jacques Cassard Jacques Cassard (30 September 1679 – 1740) was a French naval officer and privateer. Biography Born on 30 September 1679 to a family of merchants of Nantes, Cassard began a career as a sailor at age 14 on the merchantmen owned by his f ...

, as part of the

War of the Spanish Succession The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict fought between 1701 and 1714. The immediate cause was the death of the childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700, which led to a struggle for control of the Spanish E ...

. Since the Van Peere family did not want to pay a ransom to the French to free the colony, the colony reverted to French rule, who subsequently sold it to the brothers Nicolaas and Hendrik van Hoorn, Arnold Dix, Pieter Schuurmans, and Cornelis van Peere, on 24 October 1714.

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References

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Peere, Abraham van 17th-century Dutch explorers Dutch merchants Dutch West India Company people Explorers of South America People from Vlissingen Berbice