37 pages • 1 hour read
Timothy BrookVermeer's Hat
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapter 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Journeys”
In his analysis of The Card Players, a mid-17th century Dutch painting by Hendrik Van der Burch, Brook focuses on a young Black servant who looks out of the painting, holding the viewer’s gaze. Brook uses the presence of this boy in the Netherlands to consider the various ways people moved around the world at that time, whether voluntarily or not. Movement took place at all levels of society and included the wealthy and the poor.
Brook lists four categories of movement. Some, like the 10-year-old servant in The Card Players, were forcibly removed from their home countries. While people from Africa had been traveling to Europe since the 15th century, Europe’s lust for forced labor intensified the flow of enslaved African workers, many of whom ended up in the Low Countries. Likewise, enslaved labor was key for the development of colonies in the Americas; most of the enslaved workforce that ended up there was part of the forced movement of people from Africa.
Others had to abandon their home countries to survive. For example, poor Chinese migrants from Fujian and other areas fled the constant threat of war with and conquest by the Manchus, and the inability to make a living due to strict regulations. They came to Spanish-controlled Macao, one of the most important trading ports, to find opportunities for work despite the horrible conditions of that city’s Parián ghetto.
Some involuntary 17th-century movements comprised those who wanted to return home after finding themselves in new environments. These included the victims of shipwrecks, such as those on the VOC ship Nieuw Haarlem, stranded for about a year before rescue after coming aground in Malaysia. Shipwreck survivors often faced hostile local populations, the threat of being viewed as pirates, or worse. However, sometimes shipwrecks led to people acclimating to their new environments. For instance, Jan Janszoon Weltevree was a Dutchman who was shipwrecked on his way to Taiwan on Cheju Island in Korea, where he lived for 39 years. Similarly, two Dutch mariners expressed their desire to stay in Madagascar rather than return to Europe.
Finally, some people traveled abroad intentionally. One example is Dominican missionary Angelo Cocchi, who wanted to reach China and convert the Chinese people to Christianity. Dominicans approached converting differently than Jesuits, preferring to stay under the radar of officials because they believed that their work would be compromised if they parlayed or gave concessions to local and national authorities. In this way, Cocchi managed to remain in China, where others might have been exiled or executed.
Brook considers another painting, The Journey of the Magi to Bethlehem by Delft artist Leonaert Bramer. Instead of exploring the painting’s religious or doctrinal themes, Brook uses it to discuss diversity in the context of 17th-century migration. Using visual clues, such as clothing, skin tone, and hair color, Brook identifies the three figures in the painting as a Black African Balthasar, a Dutch Caspar, and a Jewish Melchior. This variety of racial, ethnic, and national heritages highlights the results of the connection of different cultures.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Endings: No Man Is an Island”
Brook summarizes the ramifications of 17th-century globalization and interconnectedness on the modern world. Second contacts, the need for better trade routes, transculturation, and the movement of peoples, eventually produced common ideas about humanity. With the development of ports where many cultures intermingled, the world was no longer a static place with isolated nations, but a connected web. Brook uses a famous phrase by English theologian John Donne—“no man is an island”—to underscore this connection, which Brook argues is the result of decisions made in the 17th century.
The 1648 Peace of Westphalia—two treaties that ended the calamitous period of the Thirty Years War— shored up globalization by strengthening Europe and creating a new understanding of politics. Before, states were viewed as separate fiefdoms of monarchs. Now, they were increasingly seen as sovereign entities that were part of an international system, with complex domestic dynamics between governments, businesses seeking gain, and private citizens with private wealth. Economic interests became paramount, as the need for and ability to bring about global trade trumped the whims of monarchs. One example of this change was the strained relationship between Great Britain and China in the 19th century. To solve the seeming problem of a trade imbalance—Britain wanted to import Chinese goods, but China had little interest in the products of British industry—Britain started growing opium in its colonies in India, and then exporting the highly addictive drug to China to recoup the silver bullion that had paid for Chinese trade goods and remained in China. The resulting wars showed the interconnection between commerce and political power.
Brook ends the book where he began, with Delft. The Netherlands lost some of its standing in the world after the French invasion of 1795. As a result, Dutch cultural products in general—and painters, such as Vermeer, in particular—were devalued. Nevertheless, his paintings remain open doors to the inroads of history to this day.
Chapter 7-8 Analysis
Brook uses The Card Players to demonstrate The Movement of People in the 17th century. Because he focuses primarily on those in the lower classes, the categories of movement Brook describes primarily involve coerced or otherwise involuntary migration. The Black servant boy in the painting exemplifies the most extreme case: the enslavement of people from Africa—a practice that flourished in the 17th century in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe. Other unwilling travelers tend to be people in positions of limited or no authority: sailors who survive shipwrecks and economic migrants from China forced to endure the terrible conditions of ghettos in Spanish-controlled Macao and Manila. The fact that all of these kinds of movements also involve particularly virulent forms of racism adds to the impression that most people who comprised the migrating population had little recourse in their original lives.
Brook also demonstrates that the Impetus Toward Globalization, once underway, became inescapable. Even places like China and Japan—countries that wanted to close themselves off from the rest of the world for reasons of safety and a belief in cultural superiority—were unable to completely ignore or push back the European cultural, military, and especially commercial forces that were eager for inroads into these desirable Asian markets.
Despite this seemingly negative depiction of migratory patterns around the world, and the inescapability of globalization, Brook sees the 17th century’s effects on global interconnection as a positive development. He argues that the very fact that people were able to make their way to points so distant from where they started shows the power of sharing goals and desires and working toward a common goal. He lauds the diversity that was typical in 17th-century travel, and that often made white Europeans the minority aboard their ships. Brook also heralds movement as playing a large role in increasing cartographic, sociological, and ecological knowledge. Finally, Brook contends that the conflict, cultural misunderstanding, and power struggles that came from second contacts eventually resulted in the recognition of a shared humanity and a shared history—elements that are crucial to stronger connection and better communication. Brook hopes that this trend continues into the present, revealing that people the world over are much more similar than they might think; learning about the past makes them better equipped to understand the macrocosm of people in the present and to chart a more sustainable future.
