This volume is an attempt to give the American reader an idea of the extent of the Dutch network of trade in the seventeenth century. Although some effort is made to sketch out, however briefly, the activities of the Dutch in various regions throughout the century, emphas1s has been placed on their first entrance into these areas in that period. In each area the goods which the Netherlanders received have been indicated as well as the products they traded for them. The arrangement of the chapters calls for an explanation. Students of Dutch history will think of Surat and Persia as a natural unit, and of Malabar and Ceylon, Japan and China, West Africa and Brazil as being other entities which one would naturally discuss together. I have adopted the more obvious national divisions, Persia, India, Japan, Brazil, etc., as being more easily com prehensible for the casual reader. Within the chapters I have then explained the trade connections between West Africa and Brazil, Surat and Persia, and so forth.

IN the following pages an attempt has been made to give the essential facts of the history of the Elsevier family, and to show the relations of the printers to the world around them. Printing and publishing history is sometimes written as personal reminiscence, as aesthetic or technical criticism, or as a guide for book collectors. There is something to be said for treating it as a phase of economic or social history, and this treatment has been attempted here. There are difficulties inherent in the task which are not at first apparent. Printers are in touch on the one hand with the world of manufacturing and commerce, and on the other hand with the world of literature and scholarship - with not merely one phase of literature and learning but with a great many. As a result the innocent enthusiast who attempts to follow the activities of a publisher as he moves in the various milieux will constant ly find himself in strange regions he knows nothing about. He will probably wish he had never entered them, and his learned readers will probably wish so, too. So much assistance from friends has been sought and given that the story presented is a mosaic of the learning of others. The writer has reserved for himself only the special province of errors and omissions, and hereby lays claim to all such as may be found.