Neptune and the Netherlands: State, Economy, and War at Sea in the Renaissance FROM THE PUBLISHER
This book investigates how the rulers of the Habsburg world empire developed and implemented a central maritime policy for the Netherlands and appointed an admiral of the sea or admiral-general for that purpose. It also explains why the Habsburgs were eventually unable to gain control of the maritime affairs of the Netherlands, in spite of the support of the powerful Burgundian Lords of Veere, who occupied the central position of admiral from 1491 to 1558. From their power base on the island of Walcheren to Zeeland, known as the key to the Netherlands at the time because of its central location between Holland, Flanders, Antwerp and the sea, they held an ideal vantage point for exercising the admiralship. The result not only offers an insight into the organisation of the war fleet, maritime trade and fishery, privateering and prize law in the Habsburg Netherlands, but also puts the success of the later Dutch Republic in a new perspective.
SYNOPSIS
A specialist in the history of the Netherlands, maritime history, and the history of the European Expansion, Sicking (history, U. of Leiden) points out that in a country like the Netherlands, whose very territory was to some extent reclaimed from the sea, maritime history cannot be considered a specialty separate from general history. He focuses therefore on the maritime aspects of the process of state formation in the country in order to connect the political, institutional, and economic history with maritime history and to analyze the interactions between them. By starting not with the Dutch Republic in the Golden Age but with the preceding Habsburg Netherlands, he hopes to avoid the conventions of national history that have emerged. Distributed by Aspen. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
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