Preface

Summary

Wars Overseas. Military Operations by Company and State Outside Europe, 1595–1814 is Part 5 of the six-part Military History of the Netherlands series. Its subject is the military actions of the voc and wic — the Dutch East India Company and Dutch West India Company respectively — in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Asia, Africa and America, and the deployment of force by the Dutch state overseas, particularly in the revolutionary years between 1789 and 1814.

The Military History of the Netherlands is published under the auspices of the Netherlands Institute of Military History (nimh). In 2005, when the old historical research departments of the various branches of the armed forces were merged in this new institution, a series of this kind seemed like a good way of sharing the knowledge that was concentrated in the nimh with a wider audience. What the series aims to do, therefore, is provide everyone working in the field of defence with the historical background to contemporary problems, to give anyone teaching or learning about military history a solid foundation on which to build, and to offer a broad readership a greater awareness of the Netherlands’ military past.

Central to the series are the operations of the armed forces of the Netherlands. How did they develop? What were their characteristics? Why did they occur? We took this approach because preparing and executing military operations is at the heart of the collective actions that constitute war. Essentially, they provide the rationale for the armed forces’ existence. They are also the armed forces’ exclusive domain. What they are not, are isolated phenomena occurring in a vacuum, and equally this is not simply an analysis of what happened on the battlefield, as had been the norm in military history for so long. Why and how an army is deployed is intimately related to the political, economic, social and cultural developments that take place in a society. Unravelling those connections can give us a clearer understanding of warfare as a social phenomenon.

The key theme of this book, the military operations of the armed forces of the Netherlands, connects all the titles in this series. But each book also develops along its own lines depending on the specific period covered and the social circumstances that gave rise to the events described.