Material Culture and the Anglo-Dutch Atlantic, 1600-1700
This session invites contributions that examine the material culture of New Amsterdam (present-day New York) within a broader Anglo-Dutch Atlantic framework. The only Dutch colony on the North American mainland, it emerged as a trading hub for American goods and served as a key site for Dutch mercantile expansion and cross-cultural exchange. Within this colonial environment, Dutch settlers, Indigenous communities, and enslaved Africans lived in proximity, shaping a shared yet unequal social and material landscape. From 1664, following its seizure under Charles II, the colony became a site of English rule and imperial ambition, incorporating New York into a growing number of English settlements which began with the establishment of Virginia in 1607. These two phases of the colony’s history have long been considered as separate cultural-historical moments.
This session considers the colony in the context of Anglo-Dutch relations throughout the 17th Century, a period in which Low Countries artistic leadership was increasingly dominant in England, but which also saw three Anglo-Dutch wars (1652-74) and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ (1688) which led to the transfer of political, naval and mercantile power from Amsterdam to London. We will bring together studies of visual and material culture in the Anglo-Dutch sphere and the colonies to consider how they might inform one another, what light they shed on shared colonial practices, and ways in which they resist easy definition. We invite papers that consider artists, objects, and artworks as primary sources for understanding processes of exchange and the formation of entangled Anglo-Dutch and Atlantic histories.
Lead Convenor: Meredith Hale, Senior Lecturer, Art History & Visual Culture, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
Co-convenors: Tamar van Riessen, PhD-Candidate, Art History & Visual Culture, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
To submit a Paper to this Session, please follow the guidance on the conference website and complete the AAH 2027 Call for Papers Proposal Submission Form.
Submissions are due by 23:59 UK, Sunday 25 October 2026