Elizabeth A. Sutton is assistant professor of art history at the University of Northern Iowa.
Capitalism and Cartography in the Dutch Golden Age offers an incisive, compelling analysis of two Dutch phenomena familiar to most historians and art historians the rise of early modern capitalism and the dissemination of printed maps. In a series of case studies focusing on Amsterdam, New Amsterdam, and the Dutch in Brazil, she explores the interdependency between Dutch mercantilism and mapping with critical aplomb. This timely, innovative account offers new ways of seeing how the structuring principles of mercantile development informed and were informed by Dutch practices of making maps and profile views. At home and abroad, printed maps, she argues, reinforced the rationalist logic of capitalism. While demonstrating a close connection between modes of picturing the Netherlands and the processes by which they were given political form, Sutton also brings her argument forward to the present day and to the continuing relationships between money, power, and visualization. --Claudia Swan, Northwestern University