Introduction: Calvinism in the Dutch Empire

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the mutual exchanges and influences that resulted from Dutch participation in the global orbit of goods, peoples, and texts in the early modern period. It describes personnel employed by the trading companies and a number of settlers who interacted directly with a wide range of peoples in Asia, Africa, and America in many different ways. These interactions not only left cultural footprints in colonial societies, but they also left their imprint on Dutch intellectual and religious currents in the early eighteenth century. The chapter explores reciprocities by examining the intersection of religion and empire in the early modern period. For the Dutch, this inquiry means attending to the overlooked place of Calvinism in a paramount age of empire building, long-distance trade, migration, and proselytization.