"By the dawn of the 19th century, the Netherlands had established colonies and trading posts across Asia and the rest of the world, linking them directly to international networks of intellectual exchange and production. Drawing on extensive new research, and bringing much new scholarship before English readers for the first time, this wide-ranging volume examines how knowledge was created and circulated throughout the Dutch Empire, and how these processes compared with those of the Imperial Britain, Spain, and Russia. The results are of significant interest for historians, anthropologists, geographers, scholars of the history and philosophy of science"--