Bøker av Wim Klooster

Volume II delves into the revolutions of France, Europe, and Haiti, with particular focus on the French Revolution and the changes it wrought. The demarcation between property and power, and the changes in family life, religious practices, and socio-economic relations are explored, as well as the preoccupation with violence and terror, both of which were conspicuous aspects of the revolution. Simultaneous movements in England, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, and Poland-Lithuania are also discussed. The volume ends with the Haitian Revolution and its impact on neighboring countries, revealing how the revolution was comprised of several smaller revolutions, and how, once the independent black State of Haiti was established, an effort was made to fulfill the promises of freedom and equality.

Volume III covers the Iberian Empires and the important ethnic dimension of the Ibero-American independence movements, revealing the contrasting dynamics created by the Spanish imperial crisis at home and in the colonies. It bears out the experimental nature of political changes, the shared experiences and contrasts across different areas, and the connections to the revolutionary French Caribbean. The special nature of the emancipatory processes launched in the European metropoles of Spain and Portugal is explored, as are the connections between Spanish America and Brazil, as well as between Brazil and Portuguese Africa. It ends with an assessment of Brazil and how the survival of slavery is shown to have been essential to the new monarchy, although simultaneously, enslaved people began pressing their own demands, just like the indigenous population.

Wim Klooster and Gert Oostindie present a fresh look at the Dutch Atlantic in the period following the imperial moment of the seventeenth century. This epoch (1680-1815), the authors argue, marked a distinct and significant era in which Dutch military power declined and Dutch colonies began to chart a more autonomous path.The loss of Brazil and New Netherland were twin blows to Dutch imperial pretensions. Yet the Dutch Atlantic hardly faded into insignificance. Instead, the influence of the Dutch remained, as they were increasingly drawn into the imperial systems of Britain, Spain, and France. In their synthetic and comparative history, Klooster and Oostindie reveal the fragmented identity and interconnectedness of the Dutch in three Atlantic theaters: West Africa, Guiana, and the insular Caribbean. They show that the colonies and trading posts were heterogeneous in their governance, religious profiles, and ethnic compositions and were marked by creolization. Even as colonial control weakened, the imprint of Dutch political, economic, and cultural authority would mark territories around the Atlantic for decades to come.Realm between Empires is a powerful revisionist history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and provides a much-needed counterpoint to the more widely known British and French Atlantic histories.

In The Dutch Moment, Wim Klooster shows how the Dutch built and eventually lost an Atlantic empire that stretched from the homeland in the United Provinces to the Hudson River and from Brazil and the Caribbean to the African Gold Coast. The fleets and armies that fought for the Dutch in the decades-long war against Spain included numerous...

Reveals several central themes in the field of Atlantic history, from the concept of European empire to slavery and Diaspora