Global Capitalism, Dutch Imperial Oil. The Dordtsche Petroleum Maatschappij and the national prestige of developing a Netherlands-Indies oil industry, 1877-1911- (original) (raw)

Empire of Riches: Visions of Dutch Commercial Imperialism, c. 1600-1750

In: René Koekkoek, Anne-Isabelle Richard and Arthur Weststeijn (eds.), The Dutch Empire between Ideas and Practice, 1600-2000 (Palgrave, 2019), 37-65

This article uncovers the intellectual roots of the exceptionalist narrative of the Dutch empire as a trading empire. It shows how this narrative originated in the humanist culture of the Dutch Republic around 1600 and became ingrained in elite and popular culture in the following decades. Analysing texts, imagery and urban architecture, Weststeijn argues that the idea of a non-territorial commercial empire gained weight because of its dominant manifestations in the Dutch public sphere around 1650 and in the visual culture of the European Enlightenment, which celebrated Dutch commercial imperialism as a Company-Republic. The dominance of this representation of empire in terms of a corporate instead of a national entity explains why the concept of a ‘Dutch empire’ never became an ideological construct.

The VOC as a Company-State: Debating Seventeenth-Century Dutch Colonial Expansion

Itinerario. International Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global Interaction, 2014

What was seventeenth-century Dutch expansion in Southeast Asia all about? In the traditional historiography, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was predominantly presented as a multinational corporation and non-state colonial actor. Recent research, however, has significantly challenged this view, stressing instead the imperial aspects of VOC rule. This article aims to break new ground by analysing the vocabularies used in seventeenth-century reasoning about Dutch expansion overseas. Focusing on three critics of the VOC from the 1660s and 1670s, Pieter van Dam, Pieter de la Court, and Pieter van Hoorn, the article shows how voices within and outside of the ranks of the Company tried to make sense of the many-faced VOC as a commercial company that was also, in different ways, a state. In an on-going debate that centred on the issues of colonisation, conquest, free trade, and monopoly, the VOC was characterised as a distinctive political body that operated as an overseas extension of the state (Van Dam), as a competitor of the state (De la Court), or as a state as such (Van Hoorn). Following Philip J. Stern's recent analysis of the English East India Company, the VOC should therefore be considered to be a particular political institution in its own terms, which challenged its critics to think about it as a body politic that was neither corporation nor empire, but rather a Company-State.

Visions of Dutch Empire: Towards a Long-Term Global Perspective

BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review , 2017

What were the major developments in thinking about Dutch empire from the early modern period to the twenty-first century? What moral, political, legal and economic arguments have been put forth to justify, criticize or reform empire? How and under what circumstances did these visions and arguments change or remain the same? This article outlines a research agenda that addresses these questions. It argues for an approach that includes a long-term perspective from the early modern period to the postcolonial situation, which sees ‘Dutch’ history broadly, moving beyond national borders, and instead explicitly informed by influences and actors from across the globe. This implies a transnational and transimperial approach that can highlight these global connections as well as tensions; and finally, an approach that understands intellectual history as going beyond the big names of systemic thinkers, and includes visions of empire as negotiated in (day-to-day) practice.

COLONIAL POLICY OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC

Iura & Legal Systems, 2015

SUMMARY: 1.- Introduction; 2.- New Age; 3.- Hugo de Groot; 4.- The Catherine 1; 5.- The Dutch revolt; 6.- The Catherine 2; 7.- Commercial success of the Dutch; 8.- The Catherine 3; 9.- The difference between piracy and privateering 10.- Cape of Good Hope; 11.- Conclusion.

(2019) The Dutch East Indies and Europe, ca. 1800-1930. An Empire of Demands and Opportunities

BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review, 2019

Empires constantly depended on extra-imperial resources, labour, and expertise. This opened up and sustained opportunities for a broad range of European individuals and institutions to engage in ‘foreign empires’. Conversely, individuals and institutions within empires also benefitted from growing extra-imperial demands for colonial objects, expertise, and commodities. This introductory article to this special issue on the interactions between the Dutch East Indies and diverse European nations further elaborates these conceptual considerations. It then introduces five case studies that open up new avenues to empirically examine empires outside the analytical framework of national empires. They show how the Dutch colonial ‘state of violence’ in Southeast Asia enabled and necessitated various forms of European collaboration and integration, as well as interactions with Southeast Asian societies in the fields of science, travel, museum collections, agriculture, colonial warfare and photography.