'Wars Overseas' focuses on Dutch military actions outside Europe in the early-modern period. Those actions were rooted in the Eighty Years’ War, the conflict between Spain and the northern Netherlands that led to the creation of the independent Dutch Republic. The Republic was determined to trade in tropical products from Asia, Africa and the Americas, commodities on which the Iberians had had a monopoly for a century or more. To do so, however, it would have to fight. The fledgling State d...

This volume intervenes in the growing field of transimperial history, which explores interactions across empires—European and non-European—between the mid-1800s and mid-1900s, a period of heightened imperial entanglement. It focuses on how actors from one empire came to know, interpret, and position themselves in relation to actors from other empires, emphasizing the role of socio-professional profiles, informal networks, and formal institutions. The volume is structured around three them...