Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570-1670

ISBN-13: 9780521804080 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 482 str.

Benjamin Schmidt

Opis

Innocence Abroad explores the process of encounter that took place between the Netherlands and the New World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The "discovery" of America coincided with the foundation of the Dutch Republic, a correspondence of much significance for the Netherlands. From the opening of their Revolt against Hapsburg Spain through the climax of their Golden Age, the Dutch looked to America--in political pamphlets and patriotic histories, epic poetry and allegorical prints, landscape painting and decorative maps--for a means of articulating a new national identity. This book demonstrates how the image of America fashioned by the Dutch, and especially the twin topoi of "innocence" and "tyranny," became integrally associated with evolving political, moral and economic agenda. It investigates the energetic Dutch response to the New World while examining, more generally, the operation of geographic discourse and colonial ideology within the Dutch Golden Age.

Recenzje

'This is a book with the plot of Animal Farm, George Orwell's great Trotskyite attack on the history of the Soviet Union … Schmidt's book is essentially one of intellectual history, or at least of the history of representations … without major flaws … he also provides much basis for comparative insights.' South African Historical Journal

Spis treści

Acknowledgments; Preface: cultural geography in an age of encounter; 1. The Dutch discovery of America; 2. Revolutionary geography; 3. Innocence and commerce abroad; 4. A loss of innocence; 5. The rise and fall of America, or tyranny abroad; Epilogue: the Dutch and their new worlds; Notes; Bibliography; Index.