Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa: Empires, Merchants the Atlantic System, 1580 1674: 22

By looking at Dutch and Portuguese systems of settlement and trade in Western Africa, this book sheds new light on the formation of Dutch and Portuguese imperial frames, forms of commercial organisation and their role on the seventeenth-century-Atlantic. More than fifty years have passed since Charles Boxer wrote his major works on the Dutch-Portuguese rivalries in the Atlantic and attributed the successful takeover of North-eastern Brazil, Angola, São Tomé and the Gold Coast forts by the WIC to the superior naval power of the Dutch.This book reexamines the systems of settlement and trade of these States and their subjects in Western Africa and the Atlantic, offering a fresh insight on discussions about the success and failure of Dutch and Portuguese States, Companies and Merchants in the seventeenth-century-Atlantic.