Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-5wl6q Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-10T18:37:47.842Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

from Part I - The Grumbling Hive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2020

Pieter C. Emmer
Affiliation:
Universiteit Leiden
Jos J.L. Gommans
Affiliation:
Universiteit Leiden
Get access

Summary

Dutch overseas expansion in the seventeenth century is a difficult phenomenon for a modern political scientist to explain. In terms of their administrative structure, the long string of Dutch settlements along the coasts of Asia, Africa and America was something between a trading diaspora and an empire. Certainly, Dutch contemporaries themselves neither regarded it as an empire, nor did they feel any sympathies for the very idea of empire. Had they not succeeded in repelling such an empire in a tremendously bloody uprising lasting a staggering eighty years? Their rebellion had been against an imperial tyrant who rode roughshod over their traditional privileges and freedoms. Or, as the present-day Dutch national anthem has it: the Spanish-Habsburg Empire was a ‘tyranny that had to be driven out’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Introduction
  • Pieter C. Emmer, Universiteit Leiden, Jos J.L. Gommans, Universiteit Leiden
  • Book: The Dutch Overseas Empire, 1600–1800
  • Online publication: 29 September 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108647403.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Introduction
  • Pieter C. Emmer, Universiteit Leiden, Jos J.L. Gommans, Universiteit Leiden
  • Book: The Dutch Overseas Empire, 1600–1800
  • Online publication: 29 September 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108647403.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Pieter C. Emmer, Universiteit Leiden, Jos J.L. Gommans, Universiteit Leiden
  • Book: The Dutch Overseas Empire, 1600–1800
  • Online publication: 29 September 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108647403.006
Available formats
×