Interimperial foundations: early Anglo-Dutch trade in the Caribbean and New Amsterdam -- 'Courted and highly prized': Anglo-Dutch trade at midcentury -- Mercantilist goals and colonial needs: interimperial trade amidst war and crisis -- Local adaptations I: Anglo-Dutch trade in the English West Indies -- Local adaptations II: Anglo-Dutch trade in New York -- 'A conspiracy in people of all ranks': the evolution of intracolonial networks -- Epilogue: diverging interests: Anglo-Dutch trade and the Molasses Act
Summary
Throughout history the British Atlantic has often been depicted as a series of well-ordered colonial ports that functioned as nodes of Atlantic shipping, where orderliness reflected the effectiveness of the regulatory apparatus constructed to contain Atlantic commerce. Colonial ports were governable places where British vessels, and only British vessels, were to deliver English goods in exchange for colonial produce. Yet behind these sanitized depictions lay another story, one about the porousness of commercial regulation, the informality and persistent illegality of exchanges in the British E
