During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Dutch Republic performed a crucial function as the cultural and intellectual clearinghouse of Europe. It was partly through the existence of a well-established and highly competitive publishing industry and book trade that the Dutch were able to play such a prominent role in the international transmission of knowledge and ideas.
Yet our understanding of the Dutch involvement in the European book trade still is limited and important questions remain to be answered. How was Dutch publishing and bookselling for the international market organised? What was the nature of the books that were exchanged?
In order to stimulate research in this field an international colloquium was held in 1990 at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS), under the title "'Le Magasin de l'Univers.' The Dutch Republic as the Centre of the European Book Trade". This volume brings together the twenty-two contributions presented at the conference by historians of the book from England, France, Switzerland, the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands.