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Consuls-of-State and the Redemption of Slaves: The Dutch Republic and the Western Mediterranean, 1616–1651

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2015

Erica Heinsen-Roach
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Abstract

At the end of the sixteenth century, the Dutch Republic developed a trade empire of global proportions. The Dutch government played a substantial role in building and sustaining merchant enterprises by allowing chartered companies to act on its behalf. In the Mediterranean, however, the authorities relied on a variety of commercial-diplomatic agents to promote commerce. This article argues that Dutch consuls in the western Mediterranean transformed from merchant-consuls into state-representatives and played a crucial role in sustaining diplomatic relations with states in the Maghreb. By comparing the conditions under which consuls liberated captives in Algiers and Morocco during the first half of the seventeenth century, the article examines how consuls continuously had to adjust their mission to the interests of different institutions and individuals. The article concludes that the expansion of Dutch global commerce in the Mediterranean did not evolve according to a standard script but in consuls’ interactions with local conditions and customary practices. The article contributes to the New Diplomatic History that emphasizes how successful diplomatic relations in the early modern world depended on a range of different diplomatic actors who created forms of state diplomacy beyond treaty making and alliances.

Keywords

consulscaptivitydiplomacyMediterraneanredemption
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , April 2015 , pp. 69 - 90
Copyright
© 2015 Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

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Footnotes

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Erica Heinsen-Roach is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of History & Politics at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USA). Her research interests include the global connections and cultural interactions between European and non-European societies in the early modern period. Her dissertation, “Consuls, Captives, and Corsairs: The Creation of Dutch Diplomacy in the Mediterranean, 1596–1699” received the 2014 Parker Schmitt Dissertation Award from the European Section of the Southern Historical Association.

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