Afterword: The Mutual Constitution of the Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish Empires in the Long Seventeenth Century

Empires do not rise and get consolidated in a vacuum. Instead, they develop in close interaction with other empires and polities, with all sides seizing military, diplomatic, and economic opportunities presented to them, both in metropoles and colonies. The relationships in the long seventeenth century between Portugal, Spain, and the Dutch Republic that form the subject of this volume exemplify this dynamic. Religious contests, mutual military confrontations and collaborations as well as commercial intertwinement helped shape the composition of these empires and conditioned how they functioned. The chapters show, each in their own way and for four continents—Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas—how the three powers mutually constituted each other. At the same time, the contributors do not concentrate exclusively on the Iberian countries and the Dutch Republic, since that would have meant leaving out the roles played by other powers, not only England and France, but also various African and Asian states. Michael Jarvis (Chap. 6 ), for instance, makes a persuasive case for African agency in dealing with Portuguese and Dutch incursions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. What decided the Luso-Dutch contest in the end was not European military force, he writes, but “West African coastal nations and their inclinations to ally themselves with Portuguese or Dutch forces.”