Elzevirian Republics, wise merchants, and new perspectives on Spain and Portugal in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic

Abstract

Between 1625 and 1649, the Leiden publishing house Elzevir issued a series of thirty-five descriptions of all European, a selection of non-European, and three ancient states, that became known as the ‘Elzevirian Republics’. This essay focuses on two of these ‘Republics’, Johannes de Laet’s descriptions of Spain and Portugal. I argue that these books convey an attitude towards geopolitics that is best understood in the light of Caspar Barlaeus’s ideal of the ‘wise merchant’ (mercator sapiens) and the historical regent-merchant culture in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. The essay draws on recent scholarship in the history of knowledge, commerce, and the pre-history of objectivity.