| Popis: |
This chapter examines the ways in which overseas ministers and church figures in the Netherlands both collaborated with empire building initiatives and conflicted with them. It describes a Calvinist identity that mixed easily with a republican, commercial, and anti-Hapsburg ethos in the seventeenth century to animate the aspirations and ambitions of the East India Company (VOC) and West India Company (WIC). Ministers sought to spread the cultural and religious influence of Dutch Calvinism within the geopolitical framework of commerce and empire. The chapter talks about church leaders and company officials who cooperated extensively in the ordering of colonial societies despite the divergent visions of mission and empire. Predikanten and governors drew from Dutch structures and customs to address their most pressing social problems. |
