Netherlands Overseas Trust is founded

The British chronology of the war records under 23 November 1914 the founding of the Netherlands Overseas Trust (Nederlandsche Overzee Trustmaatschappij, NOT for short). Dutch sources give 24 November as the date of the company’s foundation. It was a private firm which throughout the war acted as an intermediary for the overseas imports of neutral Netherlands and gave Britain guarantees that the imported goods would not be resold to Germany.

Guarantees without the government

From the beginning of the war the Royal Navy had been stopping ships bound for Dutch ports if it suspected that their cargo would end up in Germany. London wanted the government in The Hague to ban the transit of contraband, but the Dutch could not agree to this without breaching the convention on navigation on the Rhine and risking a conflict with Germany. Meanwhile overseas imports had almost dried up, and the country was beginning to run short of grain. The British order of 29 October tightened controls still further, and on 13 November the Netherlands protested against the changes to the Declaration of London.

A solution had been in preparation for several weeks. In September the then Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, Marie Willem Frederik Treub, set up a committee of five influential businessmen. Its members included the president of the Netherlands Trading Society, Cornelis van Aalst, Anton Kröller and Joost van Vollenhoven. The British commercial attaché in The Hague, Sir Francis Oppenheimer, suggested to his government that guarantees which a neutral government could not give might be given by a private organisation. This was accepted by Treub, Minister of Finance from the autumn, and by the Foreign Minister, John Loudon, on condition that the government’s involvement remained secret. The founders of the trust also stipulated that it would not be legally tied to the state, so that its actions could not be attributed to the Dutch government. The company was formally founded and financed by a group of Dutch banks and shipping companies, and van Aalst became its chairman.

How the trust worked

Anyone who wanted to import goods from overseas had to sign an agreement with the NOT not to export them to Germany and pay a high deposit, close to the value of the cargo. If the agreement was broken, the deposit was forfeited. The trust carried out inspections, and the Allies let cargoes consigned to it through the blockade. In time the NOT controlled a large part of Dutch overseas trade. At its peak, in 1917, it employed about a thousand people, far more than the Dutch foreign ministry.

The system was not watertight. Smuggling still flowed across the border into Germany, and Dutch agricultural produce, not covered by the agreements with the trust, was sold to the Germans at a large profit. Even so, the NOT allowed the Netherlands to remain neutral and at the same time keep up its supplies. Similar organisations were set up on its model in other neutral countries, including Switzerland. The trust operated until 1919.