This exciting scholarly work examines Dutch maritime violence in the seventeenth-century. With its flourishing maritime trade and lucrative colonial possessions, the young Dutch Republic enjoyed a cultural and economic pre-eminence, becoming the leading commercial power in the world. Dutch seamen plied the world's waters, trading,exploring, and colonizing. Many also took up pillaging, terrorizing their victims on the high seas and on European waterways. Surprisingly, this story of Dutch freebooters and their depredations remains almost entirely untold until now. Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands presents new data and understandings of early modern piracy generally, and also sheds important new light on Dutch and European history as well, such as the history of national identity and state formation, and the history of crime and criminality.

Autorentext
VIRGINIA LUNSFORD-POE is an Assistant Professor of History at the United States Naval Academy, USA. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland.

Inhalt
Introduction PART I: THE DUTCH SEA ROBBER DEFINED Kapers and Commissievaarders: The Dutch Privateer A 'Malicious Business': Piracy in the Dutch Republic PART II: CULTURAL UNDERPINNINGS Collective Identity, Nationalism, and the Golden Age Netherlands Piracy, the Dutch and the Seventeenth-Century Seas PART III: CONCLUSIONS Prizes and 'Excesses': The Golden Age Pirate The Dutch Freebooter in the Golden Age