This study examines the wholesale trade in sugar from Brazil to markets in Europe. The principal market was northwestern Europe, but for much of the time between 1550 and 1630 Portugal was drawn into the conflict between Habsburg Spain and the Dutch Republic. In spite of political obstacles, the trade persisted because it was not subject to monopolies and was relatively lightly regulated and taxed. The investment structure was highly international, as Portugal and northwestern Europe exchanged communities of merchants who were mobile and inter-imperial in both their composition and...

This book explores Swedish encounters with American Indians in the New Sweden colony on the Delaware River during the second half of the seventeenth century. To place Swedish-Indian interactions in perspective, a comparison is made with Swedish-Saami colonial relations during the same time period. These were two expressions of Great Power ambitions that place Sweden firmly within the context of European colonialism, but also meant the two outstanding examples of Swedish encounters with indigenous populations. Focus is on issues of land ownership and transactions, on trade, and on cultural...

This volume offers an introduction to recent scholarship on an understudied dimension of Napoleonic and Atlantic history, bringing together scholars working from Latin American cultural history to European diplomatic history. Without pretending to provide a comprehensive treatment of Napoleon's Atlantic impact, fourteen chapters trace the direct and indirect consequences of France's substantial post-1804/5 retreat from an Atlantic presence, and suggest how Napoleonic era world wars contributed to emerging post-imperial identities in the Americas. As such, the book offers something new to...

Dutch Atlantic Connections focuses on the Dutch dimension of the integrated Atlantic World between 1680 and 1800. In recent years, it has increasingly become clear that Dutch activities in this Atlantic world were of far greater significance than historians hitherto assumed. This volume illustrates how Dutch networks functioned in the Atlantic and highlights the pivotal and, indeed, exceptional role of the Dutch in the Atlantic. The chapters present the economic function of the Dutch as middlemen and brokers who helped the Atlantic system operate by embedding themselves in the networks...