Description: Agents of European overseas empires involves contributors who specialise on often overlooked aspects of imperial endeavour: 'private' European interests, companies, merchants or courtiers, who conducted their own activities both with and without the benediction of polities. The chapters adopt intra- as well as inter-imperial perspectives and transport the reader to colonial America, the West Indies, the Cape of Good Hope, Batavia, or Ceylon, through the Dutch, English, French and Spanish empires. Agents of European overseas empires offers crucial insight on how these actors acquired profits and power and, in turn, laid the platforms for European global empires.
Review Quotes:
'Adds new perspectives and voices to the history of imperialism within the early modern Atlantic world ... The book's organization also lends itself toward serving as a valuable pedagogical tool ... a powerful and convincing invitation to reimagine the early modern Atlantic.'
--Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 55, no. 3-4