Wars Overseas

Abstract

'Wars Overseas' focuses on Dutch military actions outside Europe in the early-modern period. Those actions were rooted in the long war between Habsburg Spain and the northern Netherlands from which the Dutch Republic emerged. The fledgling State aimed to challenge the Portuguese and Spanish in Asia and the Americas but lacked the resources, depending instead on two monopolistic trading companies, the Dutch East India Company or VOC and the Dutch West India Company or WIC. In Asia the VOC employed an adroit policy of war and diplomacy to build a powerful trade-based empire that endured for almost two centuries. The WIC, while less long-lived, operated in Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas. In the conflicts overseas, empire builders like Jan Pietersz Coen and Johan Maurits of Nassau played crucial roles. What resources did they have? How were they used? And how did the military revolution in Europe impact the process of Dutch expansion overseas? 'Wars Overseas', the first comprehensive survey of Dutch military action in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, examines these and many other questions in detail, while thematic chapters focus on the deployment of men and ships, on weapons and fortification-building, and on the confrontation with non-European allies and adversaries.