Dr. Gijs Dreijer, lecturer in the History Department of the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC), recently published a new book, entitled “Private Entrepreneurship and European Imperialism: Dutch Entrepreneurs in the Scramble for Africa (1830s-1910s)”. The book is open access, thanks to a grant from NWO, and was written as part of the NWO VICI project ‘Exploiting the Empire of Others’ at Leiden University.
“Private Entrepreneurship and European Imperialism” presents a groundbreaking new perspective on European imperialism in Africa, by focusing on the role of Dutch private entrepreneurs in colonial activities during the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’. Distinguishing between a state-based ‘Partition of’ and an actor-based ‘Scramble for’ Africa, the book illustrates this process by tracking the entrepreneurial strategy of a group of Dutch entrepreneurs in the Scramble, at a time when the Dutch state itself largely withdrew from the African continent.
This book thus investigates why and how nineteenth-century Dutch entrepreneurs from the port city of Rotterdam invested significant resources in West and West Central Africa between the 1830s and the 1910s. It demonstrates the trans-national nature of colonial investments in the Scramble for Africa, highlighting the crucial role Dutch entrepreneurs played in trade, production and investment in empires across West and West Central Africa (the Congo Free State, French Congo and Portuguese Angola). The book aims to rethink the Dutch role in European imperialism more broadly and its repercussions in the present day.
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