Heaven's Wrath

D. L. Noorlander is Assistant Professor of History at the State University of New York at Oneonta. Follow him on X @DLNoorlander.

Heaven's Wrath is a well-written and enjoyable monograph based on thorough research in an enormous collection of primary sources by an author who demonstrates joy in writing. Noorlander has written a book that is a boon for everyone interested in any religious element of the Dutch Atlantic. It will prove to be a welcome reference (in both the text itself and its footnotes) for everyone working on this general topic.(New West Indian Guide) For me, as a Dutch scholar of New Netherland, Heaven's Wrath is a nail in the coffin of the antiquated idea that New Amsterdam was founded solely 'to make a buck,'. Heaven's Wrath is a deeply impressive, even-handed, and nuanced treatment of the relationship between faith, worship, and the emerging capitalist economy of the Dutch Republic, as epitomized in the West India Company. It is an important contribution to the scholarship of the Atlantic World.(The New England Quarterly) Heaven's Wrath adds an important perspective to the growing scholarship that shows that the company's objectives were not exclusively or even largely commercial.(William & Mary Quarterly) In Heaven's Wrath, the American historian Danny Noorlander successfully disproves some of the 'most persistent claims' made in Anglo-American scholarship about the role of religion in early modern Dutch expansion.(Low Countries Historical Review) Writing with clarity, sardonic humor, and a vibrant selection of quotes from diligently mined materials, D. L. Noorlander gives a fresh account of the often-separate institutional histories of the seventeenth-century Dutch Reformed Church and the Dutch West India Company (WIC). He provides plentiful evidence that spiritual zeal drove Dutch colonization in the Atlantic, and that it was religious rigor among the WIC's administrators and their colonial directors and ministers, not laxity, that prevented the widespread conversion of conquered or neighboring populations.(Early American Literature) Noorlander, fluent in Dutch, exploits both English and Dutch sources to good effect. He shines a bright light on how churchmen forged a moral edge to the commercial ambitions of the West India Company. With "God and Mammon" cast as "partners" in the era of Dutch Atlantic expansion—and near equal partners at that—Noorlander presents a significant correction to the popular view that only New England Puritans can claim the mantle of sublime religious motivation for their colonial conquests.(Journal of British Studies) Heaven's Wrath is a groundbreaking work that will become the standard for those seeking to understand the role of the DRC [Dutch Reformed Church] and WIC [West India Company] in the early modern Atlantic world.(Church History) In Heaven's Wrath, Noorlander provides a new focused study of the Netherlands' Atlantic Empire that dismisses one old idea and breathes new life into another as part of his analysis of Calvinist influence in the West India Company (WIC). He effectively challenges prevailing truisms regarding the Dutch Empire in West Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, and New Netherland.(Pennsylvania History)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Role of Reformed Christianity in the Commercial and Colonial Endeavors of the Dutch Golden Age1. The Dutch Reformed Church and the World: The International Concerns of the Calvinist Ministry2. Faith and Worship in a Merchant Community: The Directors of the Dutch West India Company3. Baptized by Water and Fire: The Religious Rites of the Company's Early Fleets and Conquests4. Planting the Lord's Vineyard in Foreign Soil: Public Worship in Early Dutch Forts and Settlements5. Reformers in the Land of the Holy Cross: The Calvinist Mission in Brazil before the Portuguese Revolt6. Turmoil in the Garden of Eden: Dissent and Reform in New Netherland and the Dutch Caribbean7. The Harvest Was Great, the Laborers Few: Missionary Work among Africans and Native Americans8. God and Mammon in the Dutch Atlantic World: Conflict over Religious Resources and PowerConclusion: The Dutch Joint- Stock Companies and the Catholic Powers in Comparative Perspective