Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Introduction

   1. Introduction

      • Virginia West Lunsford

      Pages 1-6

3. The Dutch Sea Robber Defined

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 7-7

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   2. Kapers and Commissievaarders: The Dutch Privateer

      • Virginia West Lunsford

      Pages 9-34

   3. A “Malicious Business”: Piracy in the Dutch Republic

      • Virginia West Lunsford

      Pages 35-64

4. Cultural Underpinnings

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 65-65

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   2. Collective Identity, Nationalism, and the Golden Age Netherlands

      • Virginia West Lunsford

      Pages 67-99

   3. Piracy, The Dutch, and the Seventeenth-Century Seas

      • Virginia West Lunsford

      Pages 101-137

5. Conclusions

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 139-139

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   2. Prizes and “Excesses”: The Golden Age Pirate

      • Virginia West Lunsford

      Pages 141-175

   3. The Dutch Freebooter in the Golden Age

      • Virginia West Lunsford

      Pages 177-210

6. Back Matter

   Pages 211-354

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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.

• Europe
• European history
• history
• seventeenth century

VIRGINIA LUNSFORD-POE is an Assistant Professor of History at the United States Naval Academy, USA. She lives in Annapolis, Maryland.

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