The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope) and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and ended east of the Maluku Islands, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. On 3 June 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647) and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). The Dutch West India Company or WIC ( Dutch: Westindische Compagnie) Dutch pronunciation: was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors, formally known as GWC (English: Chartered West India Company). Shipping slaves, administrators, farmers and soldiers, and returning with salt, beaver skin, silver, sugar, tobacco, coffee, cochineal, campeche- and letterwood
