Pieter C. Emmer and Jos J. L. Gommans. The Dutch Overseas Empire, 1600–1800.

Abstract

In the first lines of The Dutch Overseas Empire, the authors Pieter C. Emmer and Jos J. L. Gommans immediately set the tone of the book by boldly stating that the Dutch overseas empire was “very much a peripheral phenomenon” from a global perspective, while the Dutch Republic itself is called “a rather marginal maritime European phenomenon” (1). This probably will not be in line with the reader’s expectations of this topic, but the study succeeds in bringing to life the “rather fluid conglomerate of overseas activities” that constituted this empire (3). The book is a “substantially expanded and adapted translation” (XII) of the earlier Dutch work Rijk aan de rand van de wereld: De geschiedenis van Nederland Overzee, 1600–1800 (2012). Its key contribution is that it brings the complex history of the Dutch overseas empire within reach of an international audience. The book encompasses the whole trading world and all the colonial endeavors of the two major Dutch companies, the West India Company (WIC) and the East India Company (VOC). These companies had been set up by the Dutch States-General in order to monopolize Dutch trade with the Americas and Asia, as well as to act militarily on their own initiative, both in self-defense or aggressively against any foe. In contrast to previous studies of the VOC and WIC focusing on “organizational and maritime aspects of these trading concerns,” the authors want to highlight comparisons with other European empires and the connections between the Dutch Republic and its empire (5). By moving between areas across the globe, the authors skillfully piece together an “immense empire that stretched like a string of pearls along the edges of the continents of Europe, Asia, America and Africa” (1).