Trade, globalization, and Dutch art and architecture: interrogating Dutchness and the Golden Age

Abstract

We all look to our past to define our present, but we don't always realize that our view of the past is shaped by subsequent events. It's easy to forget that the Dutch dominated the world's oceans and trade in the seventeenth century when our cultural imagination conjures up tulips and wooden shoes instead of spices and slavery. This book examines the Dutch so-called "Golden Age" though its artistic and architectural legacy, recapturing the global dimensions of this period by looking beyond familiar artworks to consider exotic collectibles and trade goods, and the ways in which far-flung colonial cities were made to look and feel like home. Using the tools of art history to approach questions about memory, history, and how cultures define themselves, this book demonstrates the centrality of material and visual culture to understanding history and cultural identity.

Contents

Introduction : Grasping at the past -- The gilded cage : Dutch global aspirations -- Gathering the goods : Dutch still life painting and the end of the "Golden Age" -- Dutch Batavia : an ideal Dutch city? -- Simplifying the past : Willemstad's historic and historicizing Architecture -- Conclusion : The "Golden Age" today.