Dutch Colonial Policy in the Seventeenth Century

George Masselman

The Journal of Economic History, 1961, vol. 21, issue 4, 455-468

Abstract: During the seventeenth century the Dutch had possessions in almost every continent, but their main interest was and continued to be the Malay Archipelago, now known as Indonesia. The search for these islands, known to be the source of spices, had launched die Age of Discovery with the explosive effect of opening the whole world to the countries of Western Europe. The Portuguese and Spanish had divided the world between themselves by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494). Their aim was twofold: exploitation of newly discovered lands and a crusade to spread the Christian faith. England and the Dutch Republic, both Protestant, refused to abide by this arbitrary division, which had been sanctioned by die Pope. Both countries defended the principle that “the sea was as free as the air.”

Date: 1961
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jechis:v:21:y:1961:i:04:p:455-468_10

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().