This book is the English translation, and slightly updated version, of Rijk aan de Rand van de Wereld (Amsterdam, 2012), the greatest accomplishment of which is its integrated treatment of the Dutch activities in the Americas, Africa, and Asia; the last monograph that presented a global overview of the Dutch overseas was Charles Boxer’s The Dutch Seaborne Empire (New York, 1965). Several studies of the Dutch activity in either the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean, and of the organizational and maritime aspects of individual Dutch state-chartered companies, have appeared since Boxer’s book, but no global overview.
The book’s approach “highlights comparison with other European empires as well as the interaction between the Dutch Republic and its overseas territories in both the metropolis and the different contact zones” (5). It is comprised of three parts. The first focuses mainly on the cultural, economic, religious, social, scientific, and artistic exchanges between the...