Expansion in History (EIH) is a book series that examines the history of expansion, which may be defined very broadly as the process of enlargement or extension of power, wealth, meaning, and knowledge by individuals, groups, networks, polities, societies, and civilizations across space and over time. The idea for this series’ originates from the historical observation and proposition that all or nearly all polities, societies, and civilizations across the world and over the longue durée have either participated in or experienced that process. It also redresses the potential misconception that expansion historically was the exclusive preserve of one and only one part of the globe.

EIH proposes to publish (a) texts (or other acceptable alternative forms of evidence, e.g., visual representations), transcriptions and annotated English translations; and (b) monographs that engage topics dealing with this theme that utilize, interpret, and compare them through empirically driven research, examination, and interpretation. EIH’s editorial board is convinced that the selection and examination of original texts and/or seminal works written by participants or historical actors that were involved and engaged in this process is a desirable method to document and elucidate the themes and questions that surround it. Towards that end, this series proposes to make available discrete, seminal individual and serial original non-Romance and Romance language texts and/or works in reproduction (either in the electronic or print version of the series), framed by an introduction, transcription, and English language translation with annotations that engage further and discuss this historical process and the corresponding response to it. The series will also receive and publish works of transcription and translation and monographs that identify, answer, and helps us to understand a series of individual or collective questions as to how and whether the agents involved in this process viewed the nature, opportunity, necessity, or imperative to expand. When, why, and how did this occur? How, when, and why did it change and what if anything remained the same over space and time. Was or is expansion and contraction of polities, societies, and civilizations a historical imperative? What are the historical similarities and dissimilarities over different parts of the globe in participating in this process? What were the environmental and ecological factors that were shared or not? Specifically, how is expanding over land and sea the same or different? What are the shared drivers and/or original and culturally distinct features in the conception, organization, projection, and execution of this process?

EIH also actively seeks to locate case studies on or examples of this historical process that ranged narrowly or broadly geographically and/or replicates the similitudes and diversity of writing and observation as to how each society responded to the different components involved in their participation or not in the historical process of expansion. We envisage texts or manuscripts that discuss a variety of issues pertaining to the opportunities, threats, options, management and organization of the population, culture, and resources of polities or societies. Some examples may be found in the writings and/or case studies of the expansion of peoples involved in non-imperial, diasporas and sedentary or nomadic peoples over different and challenging natural and physical environments. EIH will actively seek to include work that linguistically originates from areas and regions of the world that, generally and here-to-fore, have not been incorporated into a corpus of work that is as wide ranging, diverse, or is as focused in its comparative handling of the historical process of expansion. Works from students and scholars in Asian, African, American, European and/or Atlantic, Pacific, Indian Ocean studies, with expertise in regard to writings on and the history of expansion, for example, of Africans, Arabs, Chinese, Indo-Persians, Manchus, Meso-Americans, Mongols, Ottomans, and Russians that focus on issues pertaining to the expansion of the peoples and polities of those regions, which will permit an informed and nuanced discussion and debate on the study or the de-compartmentalization of the study pertaining to the historical process of expansion over time in those areas. The series shall selectively consider works from the history of European expansion that will aid in formulating the type of discussion and debate that we hope this series will develop.

By publishing a series of volumes that define, examine, and answer one or more of these questions concerning the process of expansion, we will collect and reproduce a corpus of scholarship that may be provocative and stimulate a suggestive re-consideration of the commonality and, to use Lieberman’s suggestion, that the potential for ‘strange parallels’ in behavior and between geographically distant and disparate locations, agents, polities, and civilizations over time. Consequently, we shall not spatially or temporally delimit the parameters for consideration in this series, although we imagine that most submissions may deal with the pre- and early modern periods.

Based on the above-mentioned objectives and parameters, the EIH series looks forward to receiving approaches and submissions from authors of important publishing projects, which include the transcription, translation, and annotation of original manuscript materials in non-Romance and Romance languages and/or monographs that engage the history of expansion. EIH is also keen on publishing monographs that engage topics dealing with this theme that utilize, interpret, and compare them through empirically driven research, examination, and interpretation. EIH, in particular, is also interested in publishing monographs that utilize, discuss and engage and/or compare materials i.e. texts and annotated translations that have already been published in the series.

Towards that purpose, I am pleased to introduce the inaugural volume 1 of Brill’s EIH series. It is a monograph, authored by Gerrit Knaap, entitled: Genesis and Nemesis of the First Dutch Colonial Empire in Asia and Africa, 1596–1811. Based upon a sweeping command of Dutch East India Company (VOC) primary sources, Knaap’s manuscript offers a thought-provoking thematic examination and chronological survey of the Dutch Republic’s overseas and colonial expansion to and in Asia, via the VOC, primarily, and its servants, over some two centuries, 1596–1811. It elucidates and deals with several conceptual and theoretical issues that are intrinsically important and germane to a polity’s definition of and how it chooses to execute the process of expansion in general and long-distances overseas in particular in the early modern period. One of this work’s major arguments and contributions is its advocacy that the VOC’s expansion in Asia was an imperial project and must be seen as an act of empire, or, at the very minimum, the attempt to construct one via the innovative utilization of a highly organized and dynamic commercial institution with significant political and diplomatic power and naval and military resources.

Genesis and Nemesis deals with many themes and utilizes publications that are known to specialists in this field and research that examines imperialism, early modern Asian history and global history, the use of those materials strengthens the author’s efforts to project and enhance the archival cases and materials that he has marshalled and incorporated in an effort to provide a new comprehensive vision of Dutch expansion in Asia during the VOC period. This volume, consequently, is an exciting and stimulating piece of work that should be warmly engaged, debated, and received by the EIH series’ readership.