COLONIAL EMPIRES COMPARED
COLONIAL EMPIRES COMPARED
During the seventeenth century, the Dutch and English emerged as the worlds leading trading nations, building their prosperity largely upon their maritime successes. During this period both nations strongly contested for maritime supremacy and colonial dominance, yet by the nineteenth century, it was Britain who had undoubtedly come out on top of this struggle, with a navy that dominated the seas and an empire of unparalleled size. This volume examines the colonial development of these two nations at a crucial period in which the foundations for the modern nineteenth and twentieth century imperial state were laid.
The volume consists of ten essays (five by British and five by Dutch scholars) based on papers originally delivered to the Fourteenth Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference, 2000. The essays are arranged into five themes which take a strongly comparative approach to explore the development of the British and Dutch colonial empires in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These themes examine the nature of Anglo-Dutch relations, the culture of imperialism and perceptions of the overseas world, the role of sea power in imperial expansion, the economics of colonial expansion and the extension of the metropolitan state to the colonies. Taken together, these essays form an important collection which will greatly add to the understanding of the British and Dutch colonial empires, and their relative successes and failures.
Colonial Empires Compared
Britain and the Netherlands, 17501850
Papers delivered to the Fourteenth Anglo-Dutch Historical Conference, 2000
Edited by
BOB MOORE
University of Sheffield
and
HENK VAN NIEROP
University of Amsterdam
First published 2003 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Colonial empires compared : Britain and the Netherlands,
17501850
1.Great Britain - Colonies - History - Congresses
2.Netherlands - Colonies - History - Congresses 3.Great
Britain - History - 18th century - Congresses 4. Great
Britain - History - 19th century - Congresses 5. Netherlands
- History - 18th century - Congresses 6.Netherlands
History - 19th century - Congresses
I. Moore, Bob 1954 - II. Nierop, Henk F. K. van
325 .3'41'09033
Library of Congress Control Number: 2001099669
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0492-1 (hbk)
Contents
Stephen Conway
H.M. Scott
Niek van Sas
Glynis Ridley
Angelie Sens
N.A.M. Rodger
Jaap R. Bruijn
H.V. Bowen
Edwin Horlings
P.J. Marshall
Jur van Goor
H.V. Bowen is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester. He is the author of Revenue and Reform: The Indian Problem in British Politics 17571773 (1991), Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the British Overseas Empire, 16881775 (1996), and War and British Society 16881815 (1998). He is currently writing a history of the East India Company in Britain between 1740 and 1834.
Jaap R. Bruijn is Professor of Maritime History at the University of Leiden. He has published on the history of the Dutch navy, the East India Company, early and modern whaling and on seamen. He was one of the chief editors of the four-volume Maritieme Geschiedenis der Nederlanden (197678). He also published, together with F.S. Gaastra and I. Schffer, Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th Centuries (197987) in three volumes and wrote The Dutch Navy of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1993), of which a greatly enlarged Dutch version was published in 1998 under the title Varend Verleden. De Nederlandse oorlogsvloot in de 17de en 18de eeuw.
Stephen Conway is Reader in History at University College, London. He is the author of The War of American Independence 17751783 (1995) and The British Isles and the War of American Independence (2000). He is currently working on a book on the impact of mid-eighteenth-century war on the British Isles.
Jur van Goor is Senior Lecturer in Colonialism, Decolonisation and Development Studies within the History Department at the University of Utrecht. His main publications are Jan Kompagnie as Schoolmaster Dutch Education in Ceylon 16901796 (1978), Trading Companies in Asia 16001830 (1986), De Nederlandse Kolonin. Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse expansie 16001975 (1994, 1997) and Indische avonturen. Opmerkelijk ontmoetingen met een andere wereld (2000). He is also editor of Generale Missiven der VOC.
Edwin Horlings is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the History Department of the University of Amsterdam. He specialises in macroeconomic quantitative history and is an expert on historical national accounting. His current work concerns the long-term relationship between economic growth and the quality of life. Recent publications include works on the macroeconomic development of the Netherlands and Belgium in the nineteenth century and the development of the standard of living during the last two centuries. He is the co-author (with J.P. Smits and J.L. van Zanden) of Dutch GNP and its Components 18001913 (2000).
P. J. Marshall FBA is Professor Emeritus of Kings College, London and was President of the Royal Historical Society, 19962000. His monographs include East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (1976), Bengal the British Bridgehead: Eastern India 17401828 (1987) and he is the editor of The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire, II, The Eighteenth Century (1998).
Bob Moore is Reader in Modern History at the University of Sheffield. He is the author of Refugees from Nazi Germany in the Netherlands, 19331940 (1986), Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 19401945 (1997) and the editor of Resistance in Western Europe (2000).
Henk van Nierop is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Amsterdam and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Golden Age. His publications include The Nobility of Holland: From Knights to Regents, 15001650 (1993) and Het Verraad van het Noorderkwartier: Oorlog, Terreur en Recht in de Nederlandse Opstand
