The Politics of Global Transfer

In the recent past, a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to the exchange and encounters between the material cultures of, for example, early modern European artistic practices and American and Asian objects, practices, and traditions of image-making, allowing so much early modern art history to take on global dimensions. This discussion will consider the agency and the political currency of the objects and people whose encounters characterize early modern global transfer, with special reference to the role of global transactions in the formation of the Dutch Republic.