Kees Boterbloem, "Russia and the Dutch Republic, 1566–1725: A Forgotten Friendship" (Lexington Books, 2021)

New Books in Economic and Business History · Nov 24, 2022 · 46m

Once upon a time, it was said that Russia was isolated and ignorant until Peter the Great opened Russia to the West and ushered in modernization. While Tsar Peter I surely did look to the West in his quest to modernize Russia, these processes were underway well before Peter ever launched his first sailboat. Thousands of Europeans who lived in Moscow under the first Romanovs contributed in myriad ways to these modernizing processes. A significant portion of them were from the Netherlands, the small republic at Europe’s edge that threw off its Spanish overloads, mastered its marshy littoral…