This work admirably addresses a somewhat neglected topic in the otherwise burgeoning historical literature on the Atlantic world: the role of the Dutch. The focus here is on the “second Dutch Atlantic”, defined by the authors as encompassing the period of the “long eighteenth century”, from 1680 to 1815, which followed the so-called Dutch “golden age” in the Atlantic. The authors have performed a signal service to historians, particularly Anglophone scholars with limited facility in the Dutch language, by narratively and analytically synthesizing the considerable scholarship produced by Dutch scholars over the last two to three decades. This inclusive approach incorporates extensive work by the two authors themselves, both distinguished historians of the Caribbean, supplemented as well by frequent references to relevant archival sources. The result is a work that convincingly refutes the older view of the Dutch Atlantic as unworthy of attention and “riddled with failures”.Footnote ¹ In place of failure, the authors emphasise the “entangled” character of the Dutch Atlantic “realm”, that is, its critical role in “interimperial” exchange in the broader Atlantic world. In the end, the story is also one of decline, at least economically, in the wake of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War.

In a series of concise and clear chapters, the authors explore the character and evolution of the diverse second Dutch Atlantic, going well beyond the Eurocentric, traditionally Dutch approach of “company history” (the West-Indische Compagnie or WIC). The first substantial chapter appropriately charts the interimperial role of the Dutch in the Caribbean and western Africa from its inception in the late sixteenth century, making clear the vital Dutch contribution to the commercial growth of the larger Atlantic world. Next, the authors analyse the institutions constructed to manage Dutch activity in this space and specifically the WIC. Three successive chapters move from economic and institutional to social and cultural history to separately examine the impact of Dutch activities on the lives of the inhabitants of Dutch West Africa, the Guyanas, and the Dutch Caribbean isles. The heterogeneous nature of the Dutch Atlantic is manifest. A fascinating chapter on the “circulation of knowledge” charts the intellectual currents, principally botanical and medical, that developed in the Dutch Atlantic. Finally, the authors detail the causes and consequences of the Dutch decline with the collapse of the republic and the effects of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.

The work perhaps best serves as a starting point for more in-depth investigation of several issues. One might quibble, for example, with the authors' periodization of the first and second Dutch Atlantic. They premise the transition on the end of Dutch expansion in the Atlantic and the bankruptcy of the WIC, thereby assigning primacy to changes emanating from the Netherlands. Did this shift profoundly reshape the lives of the people of the Dutch Atlantic? It was certainly not the case at the Dutch “establishments” in West Africa, for example. Further, the authors describe the Dutch Atlantic as a “realm between empires”, without stating explicitly what significance that phrase is meant to convey, particularly the term “realm”. In other words, in what sense was the Dutch Atlantic not an “empire”? Finally, while here and there comparisons with the histories of the British and French Atlantic in the eighteenth century are briefly discussed, these beg for greater elaboration. Nevertheless, Realm Between Empires is an indispensable guide to the history of the Dutch Atlantic and a stimulus for more in-depth investigation.