Agents of European Overseas Empires - Private Colonisers, 1450-1800

Agents of European overseas empires involves contributors who specialise on often overlooked aspects of imperial endeavour: 'private' European interests, companies, merchants or courtiers, who conducted their own activities both with and without the benediction of polities. The chapters adopt intra- as well as inter-imperial perspectives and transport the reader to colonial America, the West Indies, the Cape of Good Hope, Batavia, or Ceylon, through the Dutch, English, French and Spanish empires. Agents of European overseas empires offers crucial insight on how these actors acquired profits and power and, in turn, laid the platforms for European global empires.

About the author

Agnès Delahaye is Professor of American History at Lyon 2 University
Elodie Peyrol-Kleiber is Associate Professor of American History at Poitiers University
L. H. Roper is SUNY Distinguished Professor of History at the State University of New York at New Paltz
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke is Professor of American History at Paris 8 University (Vincennes Saint-Denis)

Product details

• Assisted by: Agnès Delahaye (Editor), Elodie Peyrol-Kleiber (Editor), Roper L. H. (Editor), Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (Editor)
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 20.01.2026
• EAN: 9781526195791
• ISBN: 978-1-5261-9579-1
• No. of pages: 280
• Illustrations: 1 map
• Series: Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Modern era up to 1918; Social sciences, law, business > Business > General, dictionaries; European History, HISTORY / Europe / General, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic History, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Colonialism & imperialism, Economic history, Colonialism and imperialism