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Realm between Empires: The Second Dutch Atlantic, 1680-1815
Wim Klooster and Gert Oostindie present a fresh look at the Dutch Atlantic in the period following the imperial moment of the seventeenth century. This epoch (1680–1815), the authors argue, marked a distinct and significant era in which Dutch military power declined and Dutch colonies began to chart a more autonomous path.
The loss of Brazil and New Netherland were twin blows to Dutch imperial pretensions. Yet the Dutch Atlantic hardly faded into insignificance. Instead, the influence of the Dutch remained, as they were increasingly drawn into the imperial systems of Britain, Spain, and France. In their synthetic and comparative history, Klooster and Oostindie reveal the fragmented identity and interconnectedness of the Dutch in three Atlantic West Africa, Guiana, and the insular Caribbean. They show that the colonies and trading posts were heterogeneous in their governance, religious profiles, and ethnic compositions and were marked by creolization. Even as colonial control weakened, the imprint of Dutch political, economic, and cultural authority would mark territories around the Atlantic for decades to come.
Realm between Empires is a powerful revisionist history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and provides a much-needed counterpoint to the more widely known British and French Atlantic histories.
The loss of Brazil and New Netherland were twin blows to Dutch imperial pretensions. Yet the Dutch Atlantic hardly faded into insignificance. Instead, the influence of the Dutch remained, as they were increasingly drawn into the imperial systems of Britain, Spain, and France. In their synthetic and comparative history, Klooster and Oostindie reveal the fragmented identity and interconnectedness of the Dutch in three Atlantic West Africa, Guiana, and the insular Caribbean. They show that the colonies and trading posts were heterogeneous in their governance, religious profiles, and ethnic compositions and were marked by creolization. Even as colonial control weakened, the imprint of Dutch political, economic, and cultural authority would mark territories around the Atlantic for decades to come.
Realm between Empires is a powerful revisionist history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and provides a much-needed counterpoint to the more widely known British and French Atlantic histories.
348 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 15, 2018
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January 21, 2024
As I am writing this, the citizens of Bonaire have sued the Dutch government for its alleged negligence in climate action, which they as inhabitants of fragile Caribbean islands will suffer earlier from then those other Dutch citizens in Europe. It is with cases like this that one is reminded that the Dutch had a Caribbean imperial realm and secondly that they still have a sphere of influence there in the ABC and SSS islands as well as lingering connections in the Suriname. Wim Kloosters and Gert Oostindie (which is a deliciously poignant name to have for this subject) set out to tell the anglophone world all about this other Dutch colonial enterprise ever overshadowed by the Dutch colonialism in Indonesia as well as the trade set up including but not limited to slave trade from Dutch forts in West African 'slave' coast.
In short, if your into the subject, go read it. It is not a daring book, but feels and reads as a standard work for economic, institutional, intellectual, political ans socio cultural studies. In particular this last topic was a fascinating read with the angle of creolisation as focus, the process in which immigrants, both free and unfree, become integrated in their new society and given that the vast majority of these that stuck around (either living long enough or not migrating further or back) where either unfree or colored, the book spends quite a lot of time on what we would now dub afro Caribbean cultures as developed and grew in the Dutch colonial context. The development of creol languages, religion and communities, most diversely in Suriname with its large maroon communities and the way these interacted with and were impacted by colonial rule is recommendable to all.
One thing that I feel the book does let down a bit, is that it does assume the reader to know quite a lot and this comes to the fore when talking about slavery. I know that it would perhaps be a bit unfair but I think they should have explained a bit more in detail what sugar plantations were and what the social and human costs of the process where, the amount of maiming and mutilation from work accidents alone caused. Especially when they address the issue of whether Dutch slavery was worse or not then their French and English counterparts. Talking about the innovation of using dikes in Suriname while commenting how arduous it was for slaves is good, but unintentionally that almost gives the message that that was the worst work aspect of the plantation and when talking about sugar plantations, that is really not the case.
Finally their overall point that the Dutch were an alternative atlantic story of proto modern commercial openness as opposed to the more strict mercantilist colonies of the French and English, something applauded by Adam Smith himself in the day, to be a refreshing angle. If one indeed takes the English and French as a standard, the Dutch atlantic was a failure but taken on its own and to what role it served as a re exporter, entrepot and broker of (il)legal trade and transactions to make the Atlantic economies function then it becomes a far more complex story worthy of our attention when thinking about the economies of smaller states and societies.
In short, if your into the subject, go read it. It is not a daring book, but feels and reads as a standard work for economic, institutional, intellectual, political ans socio cultural studies. In particular this last topic was a fascinating read with the angle of creolisation as focus, the process in which immigrants, both free and unfree, become integrated in their new society and given that the vast majority of these that stuck around (either living long enough or not migrating further or back) where either unfree or colored, the book spends quite a lot of time on what we would now dub afro Caribbean cultures as developed and grew in the Dutch colonial context. The development of creol languages, religion and communities, most diversely in Suriname with its large maroon communities and the way these interacted with and were impacted by colonial rule is recommendable to all.
One thing that I feel the book does let down a bit, is that it does assume the reader to know quite a lot and this comes to the fore when talking about slavery. I know that it would perhaps be a bit unfair but I think they should have explained a bit more in detail what sugar plantations were and what the social and human costs of the process where, the amount of maiming and mutilation from work accidents alone caused. Especially when they address the issue of whether Dutch slavery was worse or not then their French and English counterparts. Talking about the innovation of using dikes in Suriname while commenting how arduous it was for slaves is good, but unintentionally that almost gives the message that that was the worst work aspect of the plantation and when talking about sugar plantations, that is really not the case.
Finally their overall point that the Dutch were an alternative atlantic story of proto modern commercial openness as opposed to the more strict mercantilist colonies of the French and English, something applauded by Adam Smith himself in the day, to be a refreshing angle. If one indeed takes the English and French as a standard, the Dutch atlantic was a failure but taken on its own and to what role it served as a re exporter, entrepot and broker of (il)legal trade and transactions to make the Atlantic economies function then it becomes a far more complex story worthy of our attention when thinking about the economies of smaller states and societies.
Displaying 1 of 1 review