Shaping the Space and Places of Portuguese and Dutch Global Trade: The Carte di Castello of Cosimo III de' Medici

During a visit to the Netherlands between 1667 and 1668, Prince Cosimo III de’ Medici purchased a conspicuous collection of “plans of various ports, cities, fortresses and coasts of both the East and West Indies” from the Dutch India Companies. Two years later, during a second European journey, having arrived in Lisbon, Cosimo purchased copies of large-scale nautical charts of the coasts of Africa, Arabia and Persia and the Indian subcontinent. Through the lenses of Dutch and Iberian maps and landscape painting, these documents, known as Carte di Castello, display the global mercantile world of the mid-17th century. This article considers Prince Cosimo’s interest in long-distance trade and sea routes, within the overlapping frameworks of the Portuguese empire and Dutch trade companies, by following him on his first journey to the Netherlands. In Amsterdam he had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with the activities of the Dutch East and West India Companies, experiencing firsthand their wealth and at the same time learning about the places that structured the Dutch global trade networks. One specific context, particularly highlighted by the documentation acquired by Prince Cosimo, will be analyzed: the vast maritime region of the so-called “Spice Islands” in the Maluku Archipelago. This analysis will allow us to highlight two specific, structural aspects of trades developed by the Dutch companies and by the Portuguese, in the framework of the Estado da Índia, with respect to the spatiality of their trade networks: the reticular and insular dimension of global maritime commercial spaces and networks combined with the attempt of construction of Mediterranean maritime spaces, on a global scale. These two interconnected dimensions prove crucial to the economic and political management of long-distance networks during the sixteenth and seventeenth century.