Exploring the Dutch Empire

Catia Antunes is Associate Professor of Early Modern Economic and Social History at Leiden University, the Netherlands. She is the author of Globalization in the Early Modern Period (2004).Jos Gommans in Professor of Colonial and Global History at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He is author of The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, 1710-1780 (1999) and Mughal Warfare (2002).

• PrefaceCatia Antunes and Jos GommansIntroductionCatia Antunes PART I: AGENTS1. South Asian Cosmopolitanism and the Dutch Microcosms in Seventeenth-Century Cochin (Kerala)Jos Gommans2. Negotiating Foreignness in the Ottoman Empire: The Legal Complications of Cosmopolitanism in the Eighteenth CenturyMaurits van den Boogert3. Pioneering in Southeast Asia in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century Anita van Dissel4. Nodal NdolaRobert Ross and Anne-Lot HoekPART II: NETWORKS5. The Networks of Dutch Brazil: Rise, Entanglement and Gall of a Colonial DreamCatia Antunes, Erik Odegard and Joris van den Tol6. Networks of Information: The Dutch East IndiesCharles Jeurgens7. Paramaribo: Myriad Connections, Multiple IdentificationsPeter Meel8. The Global Dutchman in Indonesian WatersJ. Thomas LindbladPART III: INSTITUTIONS9. ‘Not out of Love, but for Money and Profit’: The Dutch-Japanese Trade from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth CenturiesWim Boot10. Institutional Interaction on the Gold Coast: African and Dutch Institutional Cooperation in Elmina, 1600-1800Henk den Heijer11. Conflict Resolution, Social Control and Law-Making in Eighteenth-Century Dutch Sri LankaAlicia Schrikker12. Curaçao: Insular Nationalism vis-à-vis Dutch (Post-)ColonialismGert OostindieConclusion: Globalizing Empire: The Dutch CaseJos GommansFurther ReadingIndex

The individual essays are uniformly very good — they are exceptionally readable for this sort of genre, and they are likewise enjoyable and informative — and they collectively immerse the reader in a wide swath of the Netherlands’ overseas colonies and engagements.