I remember reading somewhere that around 1700, pink boats sailed between England and the Netherlands, ferrying the latest information back and forth about speculative ventures.
At the time, I didn’t give it much thought—I was searching for something else. But days later, this detail resurfaced… Pink boats? Really? Did I read that right? Pink boats? Why pink?
I tried to retrace my steps, but the source was nowhere to be found. The boats weren’t really pink, of course—but why had the color been mentioned? As I searched and searched, I couldn’t help but imagine actual pink boats crisscrossing the sea, forming an information network long before fibre-optics.
Merchants and investors in Amsterdam, London, and Paris relied on ship-borne correspondence to track prices, assess risks, and gauge the stability of trading companies. The pamphlets and letters in the cargo of these boats, carried not just figures but influence. Influence that shaped economies and fuelled violent colonial expansion.
A single letter or pamphlet could send the value of a stock soaring or crashing. As capital accumulation became increasingly tied to the movement of information, speculation took on an almost spectral quality—profits conjured not from goods, but from news, rumours, and their unpredictable circulation.
It was in this context that windhandel—literally “wind trade”—became a common term for financial speculation in the Dutch Republic. It captured both the immaterial nature of finance and the wind that carried ships to distant territories, making the colonial project possible. Information, capital, colonial violence and empire had become intricately linked.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) embodied this entanglement. It acquired quasi-governmental powers: the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, mint its own currency, and establish colonies.
Today, this all sounds eerily familiar—perhaps even reminiscent of a certain person camping outside the White House. Capital no longer moves by wind but at the speed of light, carried not by sails but by signals. And perhaps these pink boats—real or not—were an early version of what McKenzie Wark calls the vectoralist class: those who control not the means of production, but the flow of data, intellectual property, and network infrastructures. The medium has changed, but the logic remains the same—power belongs to those who control the movement of information.
Oh, and about the pink boats—I did find the answer in the end. I’ll post it on my Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Bluesky. :)
