ABSTRACT
Benjamin Schmidt has recently suggested that the Dutch Republic became both the central entry point for exotic goods from the west and the east into Europe via its trading companies, and a central production point for distributing ‘geographical exoticism’ (including maps, books, paintings, and the like) from Dutch workshops to the rest of Europe.1 As Schmidt emphasises, this consumption of exotica created European identity. Building on his work, we argue here that this European identity-making reflected distinct gendered and dynastic features of power in the early modern period. The global aspirations of the House of Orange-Nassau were not only on display in Dutch-ruled territories abroad. In this chapter, we examine how dynastic power on the global stage was expressed in Europe, by both women and men associated with this transnational House. How did gender affect the practices of exotic gift exchange and the objects that were to be transferred and displayed, and to whom? What messages did objects sourced from around the globe convey as part of the collections of Orange-Nassau women and men? In both contexts, objects changed meanings and made new claims about the power of the House and its affiliates as they moved to, and between, sites across Europe, as part of the wider Dutch globalism and exotic consumption behaviours of the period. Dynastic status and claims to power beyond Europe were expressed through the governance of a wide range of material forms, from exotic animals and plants, to collections of non-animated material culture such as lacquer boxes and cabinets, porcelain, exotic garments, and textiles. They provided a myriad of, often gender-specific, sites for interpreting and projecting Orange-Nassau presentations of status and identity that, in some cases, became understood in their wake as behaviours of specific commodity consumption for the European elite more broadly.
