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While the inclusion of a hybrid perspective to highlight local dynamics has become increasingly common in the analysis of both colonial and postcolonial literature, the dominant intercontinental connection in the analysis of this literature has remained with the (former) motherland. The lack of attention to intercontinental connections is particularly deplorable when it comes to the analysis of literature written in the language of a former colonial empire that consisted of a global network of possessions. One of these languages is Dutch. While the seventeenth-century were relative latecomers in the European colonial expansion, they were able to build a network that achieved global dimensions. With West India Company (WIC) operations in New Netherland on the American East Coast, the Caribbean, Northeastern Brazil and the African West Coast, and East India Company (VOC) operations in South Africa, the Malabar, Coromandel and the Bengal coast in India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malacca in Malaysia, Ayutthaya in Siam (Thailand), Tainan in Formosa (Taiwan), Deshima in Japan and the islands of the Southeast Asian archipelago, the achieved dominion over global trade for more than a century. Paraphrasing Paul Gilroy, one could argue that there was not just a Dutch Atlantic in the seventeenth century but rather a Dutch Oceanus. Despite its global scale, the intercultural dynamics in the literature that developed in this transoceanic network have traditionally been studied from a and/or a local perspective but rarely from a multi-continental one. This collection of articles presents new perspectives on colonial and postcolonial literature by shifting the compass of analysis. Naturally, an important point of the compass continues to point in the direction of Amsterdam, The Hague and Leiden, be it due to the use of the language, the importance of publishers, readers, media and research centers, the memory of heritage in libraries and archives or the large number of citizens with roots in the former colonial world. Other points of the compass, however, indicate different directions. They highlight the importance of pluricontinental contacts within the global colonial network and pay specific attention to groups in the colonial and postcolonial context that have operated through a network of contacts in the diaspora such as the Afro-Caribbean, the Sephardic Jewish and the Indo-European communities.
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