arrivals to the Spanish Americas declined precipitously. On 12 July 1641 Portugal and the Dutch Republic signed a 'Treaty of Offensive and Defensive Alliance', otherwise known as the Treaty of The Hague. Dutch ships were allowed in any Portuguese port for ten years. Dutch merchant Jan Valckenburgh saw an opportunity but was expelled from Loango-Angola in 1648. Dutch private entrepreneurs were responsible for almost half of the total investment in slave trade against a smaller share held by the WIC. The Invasion of Jamaica was the casus belli that resulted in the actual Anglo-Spanish War (1654-1660). In March 1659 the Danish Africa Company was started by the Finnish Hendrik Carloff and two Dutchmen. Their mandate included trade with the Danish Gold Coast. Their goal was to compete with the Dutch, the Swedish Africa Company and the Portuguese. The Dutch competed with the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa founded in 1660. Both of these slaving powers had a strong presence on the Gold Coast and the Bight of Benin; many slaves came from Cross River (Nigeria), Calabar in the Bight of Biafra and West Central Africa. The Dutch and Portuguese signed a new Treaty of The Hague (1661). Matthias Beck, who had left Dutch Brazil in 1654, was appointed by the WIC as governor of Curaçao, that, from 1662 to 1728 and intermittently thereafter, functioned as an entrepôt through which captives on Dutch transatlantic ships reached Spanish colonies. A second branch of the intra-American slave traffic originated in Barbados and the Colony of Jamaica. Genoese: 1662–1671 In 1658 Ambrogio Lomellini and Domingo Grillo were appointed as Treasurers of the Holy Crusade, waging war against "infidels". This fact allowed them to have access to a part of the treasures that came from America. (From the late 1640s Grillo and his business partner Lomellini lived in Madrid.) In 1662 and 1666 Spain (or the royal finances) were bankrupt. Slave-contracts of the WIC with Grillo and Lomellini of Madrid, 1662 and 1667, who were permitted to sub-contract to any nation friendly to Spain. July 5, 1662 – 1669: Grillo and Lomellini promised to ship 24,000 slaves in seven years, assisted by the Dutch West India Company and the English Royal Adventurers from Jamaica to Cartagena, Colombia, Veracruz in Mexico and Portobello in Panama. In 1664, the political situation in Europe and the Caribbean was volatile, leading to Second Anglo-Dutch War. Robert Holmes