Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands

Download or read book Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands written by V. Lunsford and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-06-03 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.