Witsen's World: Nicolaas Witsen (1641–1717) between the Dutch East India Company and the Republic of Letters

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Abstract
In a collection of essays concerning the inevitably diverse vicissitudes of the representatives of that phenomenon collectively known as ‘the Company's servants,’ the inclusion of Nicolaas Witsen may come as a surprise. In our democratic age, he undoubtedly would have termed himself a ‘servant’ of the Dutch East India Company; in his own, more hierarchical times, he will have considered himself one of the Company's masters, as indeed he was. Whatever the powers of the Heren XVII may actually have been, Witsen for many years was one of the directors of the Amsterdam Chamber, the Company's most powerful division, and one of Amsterdam representatives to the bi-annual assembly which actually directed the Company's affairs at home, and tried to do so abroad, in its far-flung commercial empire, where other servants often held far greater, and less controlable power.

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