Beschreibung
Jacob Leisler emigrated to the Dutch colony of Nieu Nederlandt in North
America in 1660. He was the son of a Reformed minister and hailed from
Frankfurt on the Main. To posterity Jacob Leisler is known for his role
during the Glorious Revolution in 1689 as rebel against the English
governor of the colony of New York – for which he was cruelly put to death
in 1691. The essays in this collection show that Leisler’s world had many
more faces and sides: there is the military aspect of Leisler’s career,
the mercantile world in which Leisler lived (and was captured by Algerian
pirates), the religious world that got him into a fierce fight with a
Dutch-Reformed pastor, and finally the larger ideological, political, and economic
context that ranges from a study of the role of the little port of Dover
(England) to the larger issues related to the role of colonies in the
Atlantic economy and the British Empire. A number of general themes hold
the essays together: Two are of particular importance: The Atlantic nature
of religion and the transnational character of the Atlantic
economy.
Most of the essays were presentations to a workshop held at the Centre for
the Study of Human Settlement and Historical Change at the National
University of Ireland in Galway.
