European shipbuilding and ship repairs outside Europe: Problems, questions and some hypotheses

Abstract

This special issue explains how and why European maritime powers resorted to ship repair and shipbuilding overseas, and how these activities, in multiple ways, justify a re-evaluation of the global impact of shipbuilding worldwide and the influence it had in defining overseas empires. The explanation and further considerations in the core articles examining the Dutch experience of shipbuilding and ship repairs overseas, in both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, are based on original research, in which the Dutch experience is positioned in relation to what is known for the French, the English/British, the Portuguese and the Spanish empires. Rather, however, than aiming at a comparative approach to this subject, the goal of these articles is to produce a baseline of information that may lie at the core of future research in specific areas of the world, across different empires, or between regions in the same empire.