Trade and Finance in Global Missions (16th–18th Centuries). Hélène Vu Thanh and Ines G. Županov, eds. Studies in Christian Mission 57. Leiden: Brill, 2021. xviii + 314 pp. $166.

allowing different players, reflecting a selective but relatively broad section of the civil population, in both the colonies and the Republic. Neither was Dutch Brazil a performanceand growth-oriented society of self-exploitation, like philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes contemporary neoliberalism. According to Han, this self-exploitation is the result of ubiquitous surveillance and the quest for personal gratification, both of which reduce humans to self-imposed slavery in the service of both Big Capital and Big Government, which act as one and the same technocracy. Using Kollman’s theory of lobbying, Van den Tol describes how interest groups could use direct as well as outside lobbying strategies. Ordinary people used petitions to reach political mandates, and personal relations and societal capital were vital tools to influence decision-making. Lobbying was a relatively cooperative form of interaction between people and decision-makers, and was chosen over the more confrontational option of going to court. Van den Tol concludes that, as a result, institutions were largely the product of lobbying by knowledgeable individuals, either on an individual level or forming a lobbying alliance. Comparisons can also be geographic. It would be interesting to compare Dutch Brazil with lobbying in an Asian context. The Dutch East India Company had to deal with highly developed societies in India and East Asia. As a result, lobbying had to include local Indigenous administrations or the Mughal Empire. Trading along the Malabar and Coromandel Coasts took place in an arguably Asia-centric world where Asian producers still had a considerable advantage compared to their European counterparts. To what extent was Dutch Brazil part of this Asia-centric world, and how did this affect lobbying efforts? Today, again, we are moving toward a more Asia-centric world where lobbying, especially in so-called neo-Confucian systems which confuse Confucianism with capitalism, is only between Big Government and Big Capital. Van den Tol provides us with an interesting case study with many implications for today’s lobbying or the lack of it. It allows us to conclude that lobbying in the seventeenth century, at least in some cases, was more polycentric than lobbying in today’s neoliberal technocracy.