Dutch Sailmaker and sailor Jan Struys' (c.1629-c.1694) account of his various overseas travels became a bestseller after its first publication in Amsterdam in 1676, and was later translated into English, French, German and Russian. This new book depicts the story of its author's life as well as the first singular analysis of the Struys text.

This book investigates Russia's transformation into a European Power by way of the activities of the tsarist translator and official Andrei Vinius, who became an important advisor to Peter the Great. Vinius emerges as an influential conduit of Western culture and technology, who played a key role in transforming Muscovy into Russia.

This study investigates a less-than-wholesome chapter in capitalism's early manifestation in the Dutch Republic and its seventeenth-century global economic entanglements in the arms trade and mercenary warfare, showing how the Dutch accumulation of great wealth was closely linked to their involvement in warfare at home and far abroad.