Theophile Cazenove

Born in Amsterdam in 1740, Theophile Cazenove was a Dutch financier and one of the agents of the Holland Land Company.

The first 25 years of his career, Theopile run a brokerage and commercial business in Amsterdam, which ended with his bankruptcy in 1788. Around that time he was employed as a purchase agent and travelled to America in 1790 to look for good investments on behalf of numerous Amsterdam firms. He settled at Philadelphia, which was a seat of the federal government, and began to make its way into society by organizing dinners for the most important American businessman and politicians.

Although he started with investing in American government bonds and canals, soon he expanded in land purchases and he bought large tracts of land on behalf of Amsterdam financiers. In period between 1792 and 1794 they bought a total of 5 million acres in New York and the northern and western part of Pennsylvania which was more than half the size of Holland.

When the special company, named the Holland Land Company, was established in 1795 by the Amsterdam bankers for the land that had been bought, Cazenove became its most important agent. He decided to return to Amsterdam in 1799 and remained in the company’s service for the next three. Afterwards he moved to Paris where he died in 1811.

The time has shown that investments in New York land proved to be moderately successful, while that in Pennsylvania led to heavy losses.