‘Adds new perspectives and voices to the history of imperialism within the early modern Atlantic world … The book’s organization also lends itself toward serving as a valuable pedagogical tool … a powerful and convincing invitation to reimagine the early modern Atlantic.’
—Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 55, no. 3-4

Introduction
Agnès Delahaye, Elodie Peyrol-Kleiber, L. H. Roper & Bertrand Van Ruymbeke

Part I: Tensions within imperial projects
1 Global trade and its benefits for ‘the nation’: the examples of early modern France and Britain
Susanne Lachenicht
2 Comparing and criticising early modern imperial policies in the Age of Revolution: Abbé Raynal’s Histoire philosophique et politique des deux Indes
François Brizay
3 Global pursuits: English overseas initiatives of the long seventeenth century in perspective
L. H. Roper

Part II: The limits of imperial control
4 The limits of royal control over migration to Spanish America in the
sixteenth century
Eric Roulet
5 Imperial struggles, colonisation and the Dutch slave trade in seventeenth century New Netherland
Anne-Claire Faucquez
6 The control of unfree labour across the Dutch empire in the eighteenth century
Elisabeth Heijmans & Rafaël Thiebaut

Part III: Local adaptations and developments
7 Settler colonialism and early American history
Trevor Burnard & Agnès Delahaye
8 Colonising the Cape of Good Hope: company policy and settlers’ interests in a contested space of European occupation in Southern Africa
Marilyn Garcia-Chapleau
9 Shipping mules in the eighteenth century: New England’s equine exports to the West Indies
Charlotte Carrington-Farmer

Epilogue: Perspectives on the mechanisms and impacts of overseas colonisation in the early modern era – then and now
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke