Innocence Abroad: The Dutch Imagination and the New World, 1570-1670

Innocence Abroad explores the process of encounter that took place between the Netherlands and the New World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The ‘discovery’ of America coincided with the foundation of the Dutch Republic, a correspondence of much significance for the Netherlands. From the opening of their Revolt against Hapsburg Spain through the climax of their Golden Age, the Dutch looked to America - in political pamphlets and patriotic histories, epic poetry and allegorical prints, landscape painting and decorative maps - for a means of articulating a new national identity. This book demonstrates how the image of America fashioned in the Netherlands, and especially the twin themes of ‘innocence’ and ‘tyranny’, became integrally associated with the evolving political, moral, and economic agenda. It investigates the energetic Dutch response to the New World while examining the operation of geographic discourse and colonial ideology within the culture of the Dutch Golden Age. Winner of the Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Best Book Prize 2002.