Wars Overseas by Gerrit Knaap, Henk Heijer - 9789087284060

Wars OverseasMilitary Operations by Company and State Outside Europe 1595-1814\nAuthor(s): Gerrit Knaap, Henk Heijer\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Leiden University Press, Netherlands\nImprint: Leiden University Press\nISBN-13: 9789087284060, 978-9087284060\nSynopsis\nWars Overseas focuses on Dutch military actions outside Europe in the early-modern period. Those actions were rooted in the Eighty Years' War, the conflict between Spain and the northern Netherlands that led to the creation of the independent Dutch Republic. The Republic was determined to trade in tropical products from Asia, Africa and the Americas, commodities on which the Iberians had had a monopoly for a century or more. To do so, however, it would have to fight. The fledgling State did not itself have the resources for such an undertaking and effectively left it to two monopolistic trading companies, the Dutch East India Company or VOC and the Dutch West India Company or WIC. In Asia, through an adroit policy of wa.