This book presents tables which give a virtually complete survey of the direct ship ping between the Netherlands and Asia between 1595-1795. This period contains, first, the voyages of the so-called Voorcompagnieen and, then, those for and under control of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC). The survey ends in 1795. That year saw an end of the regular sailings of the VOC between the Netherlands and Asia, since, following the Batavian revolution in January, the Netherlands be came involved in war with England. The last outward voyage left on 26 December 1794. After news of the changed situation in the Netherlands was received in Asia, the last homeward voyage took place in the spring of 1795. The VOC itself was dis banded in 1798. In total 66 voyages of the voorcompagnieen are listed, one more than the tradition ally accepted number. The reconnaissance ship, POSTILJON, from the fleet ofMahu and De Cordes, that was collected en route is given its own number (0022). Since the attempt of the Australische Compagnie to circumvent the monopoly of the VOC can be considered as a continuation of the voorcompagnieen the voyage of Schouten and Le Maire is also listed (0196-0197). For the rest, exclusively the outward and homeward voyages of the VOC are men tioned in the tables. Of those there were in total 4722 outward and 3359 homeward.

Dagomar Degroot offers the first detailed analysis of how a society thrived amid the Little Ice Age, a period of climatic cooling that reached its chilliest point between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The precocious economy, unusual environment, and dynamic intellectual culture of the Dutch Republic in its seventeenth-century Golden Age allowed it to thrive as neighboring societies unraveled in the face of extremes in temperature and precipitation. By tracing the occasionally counterintuitive manifestations of climate change from global to local scales, Degroot finds that the Little Ice Age presented not only challenges for Dutch citizens but also opportunities that they aggressively exploited in conducting commerce, waging war, and creating culture. The overall success of their Republic in coping with climate change offers lessons that we would be wise to heed today, as we confront the growing crisis of global warming.

Eight months into its maiden voyage to the Indies, the Dutch East India Company’s Batavia sank on June 4, 1629 on Morning Reef in the Houtman Abrolhos off the western coast of Australia. Wendy van Duivenvoorde’s five-year study was aimed at reconstructing the hull of Batavia, the only excavated remains of an early seventeenth-century Indiaman to have been raised and conserved in a way that permits detailed examination, using data retrieved from the archaeological remains, interpreted in the light of company archives, ship journals, and Dutch texts on shipbuilding of this period. Over two hundred tables, charts, drawings, and photographs are included.

A 1996 comparative study of the Netherlands from the late sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

The United Dutch East India Company was the first public company, preceding the formation of the English East-India Company by over 40 years. Its fame as the first public company which heralded the transition from feudalism to modern capitalism and its remarkable financial success for nearly two centuries ensure its importance in the history of capitalism. Although a publicly owned, highly complex and diversified business, and commonly agreed to be the largest and most profitable business in the 17th century, throughout its existence the Dutch East-India Company never produced public accounts of its financial affairs which would have allowed investors to judge the performance of the Company. Its financial accounting, which changed little during its lifetime, was not designed as an aid to rational investment decision-making by communicating the Company’s financial performance but to be a means of promoting sound stewardship by senior management. This study examines the contributions of accounting to the remarkable success of the Dutch East-India Company and the influences on these accounting practices. From the time that the German economic historian Werner Sombart proposed that accounting techniques, most especially double-entry bookkeeping, were critical to the development of modern capitalism and the public company, historians and accounting scholars have debated the extent and importance of these contributions. The Dutch East-India Company was a capitalistic enterprise that had a public, permanent capital and its principal objective was to continually increase profit by reinvesting its returns in the business. Rather than the organisation and management of the Dutch East-India Company reflecting the perceived benefits of a particular bookkeeping method, the supremacy that it achieved and maintained in a very hazardous business at a time of recurring conflict between European states was a consequence of the practicalities of 17th century business and The Netherlands’ unique, threatening natural environment which shaped its social and political institutions.

Jacob Leisler emigrated to the Dutch colony of Nieu Nederlandt in North America in 1660. He was the son of a Reformed minister and hailed from Frankfurt on the Main. To posterity Jacob Leisler is known for his role during the Glorious Revolution in 1689 as rebel against the English governor of the colony of New York - for which he was cruelly put to death in 1691. The essays in this collection show that Leisler's world had many more faces and sides: there is the military aspect of Leisler's career, the mercantile world in which Leisler lived (and was captured by Algerian pirates), the religious world that got him into a fierce fight with a Dutch-Reformed pastor, and finally the larger ideological, political, and economic context that ranges from a study of the role of the little port of Dover (England) to the larger issues related to the role of colonies in the Atlantic economy and the British Empire. A number of general themes hold the essays together: Two are of particular importance: The Atlantic nature of religion and the transnational character of the Atlantic economy. Most of the essays were presentations to a workshop held at the Centre for the Study of Human Settlement and Historical Change at the National University of Ireland in Galway.