This book is the first comprehensive study of the radical political thought of the brothers Johan and Pieter de la Court, two eminent theorists from the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic who played a pivotal role in the rise of commercial republicanism.

This book is the first comprehensive study of the radical political thought of the brothers Johan and Pieter de la Court, two eminent theorists from the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic who played a pivotal role in the rise of commercial republicanism.

Elizabeth A. Sutton explores the fascinating but previously neglected history of corporate cartography during the Dutch Golden Age, from circa 1600 to 1650. She examines how maps were used as propaganda tools for the Dutch West India Company in order to encourage the commodification of land and an overall capitalist agenda.

State Communication and Public Politics in the Dutch Golden Age describes the political communication practices of the authorities in the early modern Netherlands. Der Weduwen provides an in-depth study of early modern state communication: the manner in which government sought to inform its citizens, publicise its laws, and engage publicly in quarrels with political opponents. These communication strategies, including proclamations, the use of town criers, and the printing and affixing of hundreds of thousands of edicts, underpinned the political stability of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Based on systematic research in thirty-two Dutch archives, this book demonstrates for the first time how the wealthiest, most literate, and most politically participatory state of early modern Europe was shaped by the communication of political information. It makes a decisive case for the importance of communication to the relationship between rulers and ruled, and the extent to which early modern authorities relied on the active consent of their subjects to legitimise their government.

During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was transformed into a leading political power in Europe, with global trading interests. It nurtured some of the period's greatest luminaries, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Descartes and Spinoza. Long celebrated for its religious tolerance, artistic innovation and economic modernity, the United Provinces of the Netherlands also became known for their involvement with slavery and military repression in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. This Companion provides a compelling overview of the best scholarship on this much debated era, written by a wide range of experts in the field. Unique in its balanced treatment of global, political, socio-economic, literary, artistic, religious, and intellectual history, its nineteen chapters offer an indispensable guide for anyone interested in the world of the Dutch Golden Age.

This volume explores the relevance of decline within the republican tradition. While scholarship on republicanism thrives, the idea of decline, which has been prominent in republican theory since antiquity, has received relatively little attention. The essays in this volume take a broad cultural perspective and study a wide variety of authors and (con)texts to situate decline among the key concepts in the history of republicanism. Most contributions focus on the Dutch Republic during the Age of Enlightenment and Revolutions, the area of expertise of Wyger Velema, to whom this volume is dedicated. Other case studies include early modern Spain and Venice, the German Enlightenment, and the Weimar Republic. Contributors are: Remieg Aerts, Hans Erich Bödeker, Wiep van Bunge, Lisa Kattenberg, Wessel Krul, Matthijs Lok, Alessandro Metlica, Ida Nijenhuis, Eleá de la Porte, Jan Rotmans, Niek van Sas, Freya Sierhuis, and Lina Weber.

While Spinoza’s impact on the early Enlightenment has always found due attention of historians of philosophy, several 17th-century Dutch thinkers who were active before Spinoza’s Tractatus theologico-politicus was published have been largely neglected: in particular Spinoza’s teacher, Franciscus van den Enden (Vrye Politijke Stellingen, 1665), Johan and Pieter de la Court (Consideratien van Staet, 1660, Politike discoursen, 1662), Lodewijk Meyer (Philosophia S. Scripturae Interpres, 1666), the anonymous De Jure Ecclesiasticorum (1665), and Adriaan Koerbagh (Een Bloemhof van allerley lieflijkheyd, 1668, Een Ligt schynende in duystere plaatsen, 1668). The articles of this volume focus on their political philosophy as well as their philosophy of religion in order to assess their contributions to the development of radical movements (republicanism / anti-monarchism, critique of religion, atheism) in the Enlightenment.