Trade
The Dutch East India Company, 1600–1660
A Portrait of a Dutch Merchant. Although Dutch merchants were among the most successful traders in the seventeenth century world, the austerity of their clothing reflected their Calvinist religious beliefs. Here a shipowner and his family are shown with the trading vessels that provided them with great wealth. (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Valenciennes, France/Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY) Early Dutch trading ventures…
Most Recent
Viking Exploration and Colonization
Exploration and Colonization in the North Atlantic (870–1000) At about the same time that Alfred was beginning his heroic defence of Wessex against the great army (c.870), intrepid Norwegian mariners began exploring the ‘islands’ of the North Atlantic known to the ancients and contemporary historians like Bede as Thule –…
London: The Medieval Port
Alfred was already a battle-hardened young man when he succeeded his father to the throne of Wessex in 871 at the age of 21, having spent much of his teenage years fighting the Vikings on land and sea. Following his victory at the Battle of Edington in 878, the Viking…
London: The Romans and Early Saxons I
At the end of the last Ice Age the world warmed and the glaciers melted. Large volumes of water flowed from Britain, south and east, through what is now the London area, which at times would have been completely submerged by a very wide river. The rising water level formed…
London: The Romans and Early Saxons II
Roman ships When Julius Caesar’s fleet took part in a battle against the ships of the Veneti tribe of Brittany in 56 BC he noted how their vessels were better than his own for the conditions of the Atlantic coast. The Veneti ships had shallower keels that were more suited…
Hanseatic Hostilities with England in the 1470s
New challenges in the Baltic region began to confront the Hanseatic League during the second half of the fourteenth century, which forced the new confederation of cities to prove its mettle. In 1360, King Valdemar IV (ca. 1320–1375) began to pursue a policy of Danish hegemony in the Baltic Sea…
Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
Full-scale replica of a Dutch sailing ship – a VOC-ship in the Golden Century of Holland. The “Prins Willem”, built in 1651 at Middelburg, Zeeland (the Netherlands) was one of the largest of East Indiamen to be constructed during the 17th Century. Built to withstand long and often hazardous sea…