Michiel van Groesen's Imagining the Americas in Print: Books, Maps, and Encounters in the Atlantic World, part of Brill's series Library of the Written Word and The Handpress World, is a collection of his essays, seven published previously, two in English for the first time, and two original to this volume.

Van Groesen explores the ways that print shapes conceptualization, in this case during the seventeenth century when Netherlandish print culture shaped what Karen Ordahl Kupperman has called America in European Consciousness (1995). Indeed, van Groesen connects his work to both Kupperman's collection and Anthony Grafton's New Worlds, Ancient Texts (1992). For his part, van Groesen argues that print culture facilitated the Dutch transition from curiosity about the Americas to control over territory there, and it fostered nationalistic nostalgia when that territory was lost. He places the effects of this print culture unambiguously in the European conflict between the Dutch and Habsburg Spain, a conflict that spilled over into the Americas and was appreciably conducted in print.

The essays address many fundamental themes in the print culture history of early modern Europe. The question of intentionality in print is viewed through the Dutch West Indies Company and its investors, with official local and state support, as it adopted a deliberate strategy to create particular points of view on their competition with Spain and Portugal in the Americas. The company intentionally manipulated Dutch print culture, in both positive and negative ways, for its own benefit. Further, van Groesen offers much needed insight into another incessant question for book historians: were printers and publishers motivated by profit or by ideology? While the Dutch were convicted Protestants strongly supporting that confessional perspective, the Dutch West Indies Company was a joint stock company that had to worry about attracting investors and sympathizers from all over Europe. Van Groesen concludes that in this sector of Dutch printing, profit dominated. His essays also shine necessary light on challenging questions about reader response. The evidence presented about the ways that the De Bry family of engravers manipulated text and image for commercial reasons emphasizes just how deliberate—and successful—a publisher, printer, engraver, and editor could be in influencing readers’ perceptions of texts and images. Additionally, van Groesen volume devotes considerable attention to the relationship between text and images in printed books. Image trumps text in the cases presented, especially copperplate engravings, which were at their zenith in “the Dutch moment.” He substantiates the visual manipulation that was employed not only to catch the reader's eye but, more importantly, to convey a specialized message; his conclusions leave little room for doubt about recognition and deployment of the didactic qualities of printed images. This is made abundantly clear in chapter 9's discussion of the construction of cannibalism. Old images were provocatively altered and new, anonymous images included extremely lurid depictions of indigenous Americans killing, butchering, cooking, and eating human beings. Cannibalism was equated with Brazil, providing moral imperative to Dutch Atlantic ambitions and justifying power relationships in the Americas and in Europe.

Van Groesen makes a solid contribution to the well-established study of Netherlandish news publication. However, his greatest contributions come from the study of news maps and copperplate engravings, two genres perfected by the Dutch book trade in the seventeenth century that are underserved in the scholarship. The peripatetic De Bry family of master engravers is an exemplar of both the production of what van Groesen calls “coffee table books” and the way sources were obtained for texts and engravings (33). Theodore de Bry actually copied from John White's original watercolor drawings made in the English Roanoke colony, having obtained them from an English promoter of American colonization, Richard Hakluyt. With these methods, the De Brys provided an enduring model for Dutch publishing about the Americas.

Claes Jansz Visscher, another engraver, is also integral to these essays. His copperplate maps had the same, if not greater, enduring impact as the De Bry prints on Dutch Americana. Visscher was responsible for the 1630s rise of the news map. Engraved maps—often based on personal observations—along with images of soldiers, natives, ships, defensive structures, and the like were combined with a narrative text about Dutch expansion. Moreover, these constituent parts could stand alone as prints or pamphlets. The Dutch West Indies Company commissioned Visscher to make several of these maps supporting its attempts and conquests in Brazil. He was a brilliant engraver, yet he manipulated images and text, becoming, as van Groesen says, a “spin-doctor” and the “mouthpiece” for the company (132, 137). He does, however, admit a quandary about the readership of these maps as they were printed in a very large format and often posted on walls in public places, including brothels, to be read.

Van Groesen firmly situates this research in the Atlantic context, although most of the material is focused on South America, in Brazil. Because it is a collection of essays and not a monograph, there is overlap especially in providing background context. One of the new essays in this collection is distinctly not well aligned with the other chapters and common themes. In a text that both studies and relies on images, some of the illustrations are unfortunately of low quality. As a Brill publication, the book has a hefty price tag. Clearly, this book was published before the current budgetary crisis in research and higher education institutions, but at the moment libraries cannot afford it, if they could before. These are, however, small criticisms.

In the final analysis, this book is a critical addition to early modern European print culture studies. It is especially valuable for the information on the less studied genres of news maps and copperplate engravings as well as the deliberate manipulation of text and image to create a particular opinion. Michiel van Groesen's work makes an impact as substantial as that of the publishers and engravers he studies. Undoubtedly it will also be as enduring in its influence.