Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World,   ISBN:9781596915992

Customer Rating: 

This book rides on the fascination people have for Vermeer, the painter's limited production and the lack of information about his life.

I thought the analysis of elements in Vermeer's paintings would drive the chapters. As I read on, I realized Vermeer was an excuse to talk about commerce and exploration during the 1600s.

Don't take me wrong, all of that was interesting, but I thought the economic/historical analysis went on at times a little too long.

I also found the references to Donne's "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (starting from "No man is an Island") could actually have supported the book's ideas more effectively. I would have put that chapter first and titled the book after Donne's thoughts!

The books subtitle is "The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World" but commerce with the Far East (and in fact with the Americas with all probability) is not something which began in the 1600s. There is evidence of exchanges to and from the East since the Greeks' time. During the Romans epoch, African Numids were recruited to fight side by side with European legions.

What changed in the 1600s was the increase of volume in commerce. This was in part fueled by the spreading of ideas and communication supported by the invention of the print press, and the improved complexity of the European and Asian financial systems.

Customer Rating: 

Using a visual highway of inspection via the paintings of 16th Century Dutch Master Vermeer the author presents a most interesting and informative portrayal of the most engaging period of the globalization of the world. The background stories developed from the context of the images presented in the artists work provide a lauching pad of inquiry that allows the reader to immerse themselves into a time period when civilizations began to reach out and really touch eachother like never before. Students of the modern era of commercial globalization be they business oriented or just desirous of what makes the world tick today will find the answers in this well written and facinating journey into the past. As a Professor of international business I have found that my students relate well to the images and the weaving of tales around them as dramaically and vividly presented in Brook's book. Readers of all gendre are encouraged to take this historic trip to uncover the building blocks of our integrated and interlinked world. Those who have enjoyed the works of Laurence Bergreen (Over the Edge of the World and Marco Polo), the Pulitzer Prize author Jared Diamond (Guns. Germs and Steel)and the popular Thomas L. Freidman(Hot, Flat, and Crowded, The World Is Flat, The Lexus and the Olive Tree); this is a must read.

Customer Rating: 

Vermeer's Hat is a wonderful look at history through the "doorway" of a painting. This was a book that was hard to put down when I was called to dinner. Highly recommended for a look at the world of the 1600's, and the linkage of Europe, North America and Asia.

Customer Rating: 

In 1660 or 1661 Vermeer painted "A View of Delft," his hometown in Holland. In that picture looms a massive roofline, sheltering the offices of the Dutch East India Company (known as the VOC), which was happily (and unconsciously) engaged in irrevocably changing the world. What the VOC's merchant members thought they were doing was trying to make a few (okay--a lot) of guilders from trading with China, Japan and every other East Asian country that would have them. To do so required endangering thousands of men and (eventually) hundreds of ships in vastly perilous voyages of exploration, trading, diplomacy, piracy and pillage, with conquest, enslavement and colonization thrown in as opportunity offered. The VOC's efforts (and those of competitors from elsewhere in Europe) created the first world-wide commercial trading channels, something utterly different from the trickle of trade in luxury items that had existed since ancient times.

Author Brook uses the VOC building and details from other Vermeer paintings as "portals" into the seventeenth century to describe VOC and its competitors beginning to bring disparate peoples into ever closer and inescapably permanent contact. The weighing of some silver, for example, opens the story of how silver flooded the world in the seventeenth century causing not only profound economic changes but equally deep changes in cultures and outlooks. For good or ill the seventeenth century began the commercialization and shrinking of the world that continues today and did so at the cost of much treasure, blood and personal and cultural displacement (although with much gain in some quarters as well). It is always so, as our own times confirm.

The book can only hint at the full story but Brook provides an ample array of sources and recommended readings for those interested in going further. He does well at showing not only how products swept from one end of the globe to the other but also how their sweep often left human fear, disruption and suffering in its wake.

Customer Rating: 

A fascinating book about a subject that does not immediately sound fascinating...17th century international trade networks. Or, how beaver, china, tobacco and silver changed the world. Since the Dutch were the premier traders of the 16th and early 17th century, Vermeer's paintings are an excellent place to anchor this tale. Highly recommended!