Printing privileges first appeared on the European continent in the fifteenth century, almost immediately after the invention of the printing press.⁵ While the granting of printing privileges was a novelty, privileges as a legal form were not. They had a long history, tracing back to Roman law, where privileges were used to legitimise an exceptional position that gave a group or individual some advantage over the majority – effectively a form of discrimination. By this definition, therefore, privileges were used for a variety of purposes that went far beyond our current understanding of copyright.⁶ For example, privileges were used to determine the legal status of creditors, heirs, and artificial persons such as guilds. Printing privileges were just one possible variation of a system: they were exclusive rights granted to (a group of) individuals for the commercial exploitation of a variety of printed materials such as books, engravings, or globes. Typically, privileges were granted to individuals or institutions for a limited period of time by the highest authorities of a given jurisdiction. In the Dutch case, where the question of sovereignty remained a thorny issue, the question of who was responsible for granting privileges remained a contentious issue that depended on the assertion of concrete political power relations.

A Dutch system of printing privileges developed in the 1580s, at the height of the Dutch Revolt. Resisting their Spanish overlords, the Dutch political leadership felt the need to take official printing policy into their own hands. This meant that the highest authorities appropriated the right to grant privileges to authors, engravers, translators and, most notably, printers. These privileges remained valid for a limited period of time (usually six to fifteen years) and were designed to protect either a single work or a series of works from being copied. Illegal reproductions were confiscated, and infringers on the privilege were fined.⁷ In this respect, the Dutch system largely mirrored those already in place in other countries throughout Europe, and particularly in the Southern Netherlands. This connection is evidenced, among other things, by the fact that in 1584 the independent Dutch authorities granted the ‘chief printer’ (hooftdrucker) of the Netherlands, Christophe Plantin, one of the first privileges in the Republic, ‘similar to that granted to him by the king in the Chancellery of Brabant on 15 March 1563, for six years after the printing of each edition’.⁸

However, in the transition from a vassal state to an independent republic, the administration of privileges changed from the previous situation in which the Council of Brabant and the Privy Council had played a central role. Following the abdication of Philip ii in 1581, the revolutionary States of Holland initially assumed the right to grant privileges, as can be illustrated by the privilege granted to the printer of the famous Apology of William of Orange, in which the latter defended himself against the ban imposed on him by Philip ii.⁹ This propagandistic treatise was preceded by an ‘Advertisement to the Reader’ in which William of Orange himself warned that ‘no other translation, in any language, is to be regarded as genuine and of value, except those which have been translated by order and command of His Excellency, and which have been examined by him before being placed in the hands of Charles Silvius for printing’.¹⁰ The printing privilege, granted later in the year, was printed directly below this warning and closely related to it; it gave the printer Charles Silvius the right to print the book to the exclusion of all others for three years (fig. 1).¹¹

The use of printing privileges to disseminate and control the circulation of knowledge continued when the Duke of Anjou came to power in 1582, and the right to grant privileges passed into his hands.¹² This is evidenced, for instance, by the privilege for the lavishly illustrated book on the duke’s own joyous entry into Antwerp, as printed by Plantin. The privilege for this treatise stated that the Duke of Anjou, being the only brother of the King of France, ‘has retained and confirmed Plantin as his printer, and has given him the authority to print all edicts, mandates, letters patent, statutes, ordinances, placards, and other things concerning the general public’.¹³ Once again, the exclusive right to print was used to regulate the dissemination of knowledge, especially in matters that concerned the common good. The same was true when Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, came to power in late 1585 as the new Governor-General of the United Provinces. He severed the connection with Plantin but continued the time-honoured custom of seigniorial justice by granting Cornelis Claeszoon the privilege of printing the Image or Figure Book. Serving the Ordinance of Currency.¹⁴ The text of this privilege made it clear that:

In this case, too, the purpose of the printing privilege was to inform the general public about state affairs and matters of general concern. As we shall see, this was no different when the Dutch Republic took on its final political form.

After Leicester’s departure in December 1587, there was some initial confusion as to which authority had the right to grant privileges. At first, the Council of State took on this role, as it had previously assisted Leicester in the distribution of exclusive printing rights. However, following a political manoeuvre that deprived the Council of State of the right to grant any privileges, the States-General assumed the power to grant them from April 1588 onwards.¹⁶ From then on, three levels of government interfered with the issuing of privileges in the Republic: the States-General, the provincial States and, in exceptional cases, the municipal authorities. The States-General was the central political body in which each of the seven provinces that made up the Dutch Republic was represented with one vote. As a result, a privilege granted by the States-General was valid in each of the provinces (but not, for example, in the Kingdom of France, and certainly not in the rival Habsburg Netherlands). The provincial States, in turn, had power over provincial jurisdiction. In principle, this meant that a privilege granted by the States of Holland was not valid in the province of Utrecht, for example. Despite their limited validity, the importance of provincial privileges grew steadily over time, not so much because of a growing sense of independence on the part of the provincial authorities, but because of the establishment of new booksellers’ guilds in various towns in the province of Holland.¹⁷ Finally, a privilege granted by the municipal authorities was only valid within the jurisdiction of a particular city. Such municipal printing privileges were not often used, however. When granted, they usually covered materials of local importance such as textbooks for use in the city’s Latin schools.

Irrespective of the level of political power involved, the procedure for obtaining a privilege in the Republic was set in motion when an applicant submitted a petition to the relevant authorities setting out the reasons why he or she considered certain material to be worthy of privilege. The reasons for which applicants sought privilege were varied. However, as in other European countries, the most common justification was to reward the labour invested in the work and to protect the printer from unfair competition in the form of pirated editions. Printing privileges were primarily intended to reduce the printer’s risk, and the privilege provided no ‘property rights’ with respect to the author’s intellectual work. Still, authors and others who provided creative input (such as translators and engravers) were certainly not excluded from judicial favour. For example, when Festus Hommius (1576-1642, later secretary of the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619) applied for a privilege for his translation of the Explicationes catecheticae by Zacharias Ursinus, the authorities granted it on the grounds that a privilege would ensure ‘that the applicant could more easily find a publisher who would be willing and able to bear the great expense of printing, and who would not be harmed by other printers or booksellers’.¹⁸ The privilege thus gave creative workers some control over their work, even though that was not the fundamental purpose of the system. By granting the privilege, the government reduced the risk for printers and facilitated the realisation of projects. Given the importance of the privilege to print production, it is interesting to examine which works the authorities chose to honour and protect.

Printing privileges enabled their holders to do something that was normally against the law, namely, to establish an economic monopoly. The justification for such privileges was therefore embedded in language that focused strongly on moral justice. It would be unjust if others could freely benefit from the investment of time, effort, or money made by the printer or the first author, and the disseminator of ‘useful’ knowledge had to be rewarded so that others would follow his lead. If the justification for a privilege was couched entirely in terms of merit and reward, the reality was that monopoly rights usually had to be bought. Although we still know relatively little about the price that had to be paid for a privilege issued by the States-General, the archives of the Keeper of the Seal show that in the first decades of the seventeenth century the average stamp duty for a privilege from the province of Holland was set at six pounds.¹⁹ However, some privileges were issued free of charge. The famous cartographer Willem Jansz Blaeu, for example, was granted a ‘gratis’ privilege in 1608, giving him the exclusive right for ten years to ‘sell all works by his own hand which he has newly invented or shall invent during that period’.²⁰ It is possible that, behind the scenes, such privileges cost more than the official stamp duties suggested, not least because it is well known that one had to offer numerous ‘douceurs’ to facilitate any action by the relevant authorities in The Hague. Nevertheless, booksellers’ accounts from the later seventeenth century indicate that the total cost of a privilege rarely exceeded forty guilders.²¹ This was a negligible amount compared to the profits that could be made on certain titles.

The question, then, is why some works appeared under privilege and others did not. It should be noted that it was not compulsory to apply for a privilege in the Dutch Republic, and estimations suggest that only 1 percent of the total printed output in the seventeenth century appeared under privilege.²² Paul Hoftijzer has argued that this was because printers only considered the process of obtaining a privilege worthwhile when they expected a work to be a resounding success; when a book had already proven to be a bestseller; or when they wished to protect their investment in a particular project, for instance because it required the use of high-quality paper and engravings, or because it involved extraordinary editing and translation costs.²³ These observations are certainly not inaccurate, and it is clear that printers had a strong financial interest in obtaining monopoly rights to certain titles through privileges. But there was more to it than just financial gain. A privilege also represented, quite literally, a form of state-sanctioned preferential treatment.²⁴ For this reason, Simon Groenveld and Nadine Orenstein have suggested that a privilege may have conferred a certain ‘faux prestige’, even if – in their view – it did not imply state approval.²⁵ Elsewhere, I have extended this argument by arguing that there was indeed a mutually beneficial relationship between printers and authorities, wherein a privilege also signalled that the authorities valued certain content.²⁶ This article takes the argument a step further, positing that a printing privilege functioned as a mechanism to actively shape readers’ preferences and was thus part of the soft power apparatus that reinforced and maintained existing power structures.

A compelling piece of evidence for this argument lies in the nature and variety of titles that were favoured by the authorities. This selection was largely driven by the need to standardise aspects of society such as law, religion, medical knowledge, hymns, and historical records, where the lines between politics, commerce, and ethical beliefs were often blurred. For instance, the government granted privileges to specific theological works, like those by William Perkins and Jean Taffin, which not only set a moral benchmark but also promoted specific religious ideas.²⁷ Privileges were also important in the market for medical knowledge or for textbooks, such as the Reduced Tables of Interest by Petrus Andreas Duyrcantius, published in 1616, whose privilege indicated that the book was meant to educate ‘all simple souls’ in arithmetic.²⁸ Similarly, privileges were instrumental in projects such as Johannes Halsbergius’s Dutch translation of Du Mornay’s De la verité de la religion chestienne, a Christian guidebook deemed essential by the East Indies’ governors for warning travellers to Asia and Africa against ‘the Muslims in particular’.²⁹ These examples show how granting privileges was strategically used by authorities to shape societal standards. In a related vein, the authorities also granted privileges to prestigious projects that could put the Republic on the map as a respectable centre of learning. One of the many examples here is the Rosarum Politicum by the German scholar George Gentius, a Latin translation and commentary on the Gulistān that became a standard work for the study of Persian for centuries.³⁰

However, privileges were not only granted for well-known works by famous authors or translators. Other types of work produced under privilege included official judgments and government decrees that required wide circulation in a standardised format. These were not expensive printed books, but rather more affordable printed matter.³¹ Pamphlets with moral undertones could sometimes count on privileged treatment as well. One example was the publication of The Repentance by Jean Haren, a Walloon Reformed minister from Bruges who had temporarily converted to Catholicism before returning to the Reformed church. In 1610, the States-General granted the printer Louis Elzevier a six-year privilege to publish Haren’s Repentance in both French and (translated into) Dutch.³² The small quarto booklet of four gatherings, without illustrations, could not have been expensive to produce, even if a translator had to be paid. Rather, it seems that the States wanted to ensure that a proper edition of this pamphlet was published for the edification of the public. The privilege was thus not just a sign of ‘false prestige’, but of a special favour that served the interests of the state, in order to co-opt the reading public, to promote its own culture and values, and to manipulate the political agenda.³³

Once a privilege had been granted, it had to be communicated so that other actors in the printing business were aware of its existence. One way of doing this was to send messengers to the door of the relevant actors in question, or to have the town’s printer (operating under privilege, by the way) print a sort of flyer with the town’s coat of arms on it, which could be posted in public places as a warning to others.³⁴ Another time-honoured way of publicising privileges was through advertisements in newspapers, which, in fact, often appeared under privilege as well.³⁵ In 1690, for example, the mayors of Amsterdam agreed that henceforth only one single French newspaper would be allowed to appear under the name Gazette d’Amsterdam. This was the immediate trigger for the fifteen-year privilege granted by the States of Holland to the editor of this newspaper, the French Huguenot refugee Jean Tronchin Dubreuil, on the express condition that he ‘would print nothing against the state’.³⁶ The exclusive privilege of the Gazette d’Amsterdam was to last well into the eighteenth century.³⁷ Meanwhile, other publishers with French language skills were trying to obtain other privileges, including the privilege of translating German newspapers into French, which was finally granted to the French news compiler Paul Acéré, seigneur des Forges, on condition that he published his name and those of any translators with the pieces and ‘take care that no offence should be caused to any person, high or low’.³⁸ In this case, too, it is clear that the privilege was not only a means of protecting local printers from the immoral act of piracy, but also a way to streamline the circulation of knowledge in an international market.

Privileges, by definition, had an international dimension. We know that they were traded on international markets and that, due to their limited validity, authors and printers repeatedly sought out different authorities in order to accumulate as many exclusive rights as possible for a given title. A notable example is the case of Otto van Veen, the teacher of Peter Paul Rubens, who worked mainly in the Southern Netherlands as court painter to Isabella and Albert of Austria. In 1609, the Dutch States-General granted him a privilege

Van Veen’s famous emblem books were then published in Antwerp for the author with privileges from the pope, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the Kings of Spain and France, and the Dutch authorities (principum belgi).⁴⁰

The case of Van Veen, and others like him, puts a different complexion on the idea that privileges were merely aimed at protecting local printers from competition. Privileges also held value as gifts and instruments of patronage, where the author’s reputation, rather than the place of publication, was the main factor of consideration. For instance, in 1613 the Dutch authorities granted a privilege to the renowned humanist Adrianus Schrieckius for his The Beginnings of the First Peoples of Europe (1614), which had also been privileged by Isabella and Albert of Austria.⁴¹ Schrieckius was stationed in Ypres when he applied for the privilege and decided to have the book printed by the local printer François Bellet, who was best known for his production of Jesuit books. It was unusual for the Dutch authorities to grant such privileges to inhabitants of the Habsburg Netherlands. But this took place during the Twelve Years’ Truce, when relations between the northern and southern Netherlands were somewhat normalised. The Dutch authorities may also have turned a blind eye in this case because Schrieckius argued in his voluminous tract that Dutch was in fact the mother of all languages, already spoken in paradise. Contrary to Van Veen, Schrieckius did not hesitate to proudly display the privileges granted by both the Dutch and Habsburg authorities side by side (fig. 2).

The fact that the Dutch authorities granted privileges for the production of printed matter outside their jurisdiction shows that they were not only intended to protect local printers from piracy; printing privileges were also an expression of approval by which the authorities wished to favour certain projects. Conversely, foreign authorities also granted privileges to authors and printers who had established themselves in the Dutch Republic. An interesting case in this respect is the privilege granted for a publication by Joseph Scaliger, the famous French humanist who had taken over the chair of history and law at Leiden University after the departure of Justus Lipsius. One of Scaliger’s first publications after arriving in the Republic was a curious book on the squaring of the circle (Cyclometria Elementa, 1594), printed by Franciscus Raphelengius the Elder, who was at the time in charge of the Leiden branch of his father-in-law Christophe Plantin’s printing imperium.⁴² Scaliger’s treatise on humanist mathematics was printed on exclusive paper and protected by an exclusive privilege granted directly to the printer by the King of France, Henry iv. The privilege gave a lengthy explanation of the motives behind it, focusing mainly on the disadvantages that the learned public might suffer if deprived of Raphelengius’s publications.⁴³ It was to avoid this from happening that the French king wished to protect the printer’s activities in Leiden by issuing a ten-year privilege, whereby all printers in France were forbidden to reprint or sell Raphelengius’s books, in whole or in part, without the printer’s permission. The French protection of a Leiden-based printer clearly shows that privileges did not always serve to protect local printers from piracy, even if its legal scope was limited to clearly defined boundaries of political power.

The curious mélange of legal power and political prestige could, of course, also lead to conflict. A good example here is the case of the prominent French author François Eudes de Mézeray, who was granted a privilege by the Dutch authorities to publish two books on French history.⁴⁴ In 1668, Mézeray, whose books had previously been printed with a privilege granted by the French king, planned to have his books printed and sold on the Dutch market ‘for the use of the inhabitants of these lands’.⁴⁵ In 1672, however, Louis xiv invaded the Dutch Republic, an act which would mark the beginning of the Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678). This allowed the Amsterdam printer Abraham Wolfgang to apply to the Dutch authorities for a privilege on his behalf to reprint Mézeray’s Chronological Summary of French History. He argued that the French were charging excessive prices for their books, ‘so that the booksellers in this country could not exchange the books they printed for the French ones and still make a profit’.⁴⁶ The printer had therefore begun reprinting the book in quarto and was almost finished with his work. But he had recently learned that Mézeray had been granted an earlier privilege by the Dutch authorities, which he now sought to have revoked. He argued that the privilege had not been clearly advertised by its holder, thus essentially rendering it invalid. Moreover, it was not customary to grant privileges to people residing outside the province and, in any case, privileges granted in times of peace should be revoked in times of war, if only because it was officially forbidden to trade with the French and the book in question was therefore difficult to obtain. Wolfgang’s line of argument apparently resonated with the Dutch authorities, who granted him a new fifteen-year privilege to reprint Mézeray’s version of French history.⁴⁷ This case illustrates how the interplay of legal power and political prestige could lead to conflict, depending on the specific circumstances, but also how the granting of a privilege involved constant negotiation between the various interested parties.

As we have seen, the authorities granted a printing privilege when they believed that a financial guarantee, secured by temporary monopoly rights, would contribute to the publication of works that would benefit the common good.⁴⁸ This contextual background can in turn help us to understand the timing of the appearance of specific works, such as the Dutch translation of Hugo Grotius’s treatise Mare liberum. Grotius’s work on the freedom of the seas was essentially a propagandistic treatise arguing that the Dutch should have the same right to sail and trade in the East Indies as other states. First published in Latin at the express request of the Zeeland Chamber of the Dutch East India Company, the Freedom of the Seas has been aptly summarised as ‘a justification of colonialism, colonial trade, and colonial rule’.⁴⁹ Beyond the subject matter, it is however the printing history of the book that shows how the authorities interfered in the production of texts and how privileges were used in this context to maintain control over the contents.

The Latin version of the Freedom of the Seas, which Grotius had worked on for several years, was ready for printing in 1608, but its publication was delayed until the end of April 1609, at the request of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, so as not to jeopardise the ongoing negotiations for the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-1621).⁵⁰ It was only when the truce between the Spanish Habsburgs and the Dutch was concluded on 9 April 1609 that the Dutch authorities allowed Grotius’s treatise on to be published, albeit without a privilege and without any reference to its author. During the conferences between the Spanish Habsburgs and the Dutch, it was also agreed that the truce would come into force in the East Indies one year after its ratification in Europe. Soon, however, it appeared impossible to maintain the truce in the East Indies, and ‘by 1613 at the latest […] the Twelve Years’ Truce had definitively broken down in the regions covered by the voc Charter’.⁵¹ It was no coincidence that the privileged translation of Grotius’s text into Dutch appeared at precisely this time ‘for the progress of the fatherland’, as the title page announced. The Dutch authorities used the translation of the Mare liberum as part of their strategy to defend their foreign policy to a domestic audience. As the Leiden printer Jan Huybrechtsz explained in his preface, the pamphlet ‘should be read by everyone […] as a proof of the right granted to us by God, but begrudged by some powerful states. So that what Latinists know but do not practice may be understood by those who deal with these questions every day.’⁵²

When Huybrechtsz applied for the privilege of publishing the translation on 15 August 1614, the States-General decided to consult Grotius first to see if he was satisfied with the result.⁵³ Three days later, the printer was indeed granted exclusive rights to sell and produce the booklet, and the federal authorities decided to buy a copy for their own use.⁵⁴ This clearly suggests that the States-General wanted to ensure that the translation was correct, since the printing privilege meant that the content of the book was in line with their semi-official position. By monopolising the means of publication, the ruling authorities were thus able to shape public discourse in a way that reinforced their political dominance as part of a broader strategy to establish cultural hegemony.

Grotius’s case was not unique. It was during the negotiations over a privilege that the authorities could intervene in the way that knowledge was communicated to a wider audience. An interesting example of this was the case of Emmanuel van Meteren, a polymathic merchant who was called to account for his controversial publication entitled The Dutch History of our Times.⁵⁵ As a consul of Dutch merchants in England, Van Meteren had collected many notes on various political issues over the years, notes which, encouraged by his cousin Abraham Ortelius, he finally decided to publish in 1593. Once completed, Van Meteren sent his manuscript to an engraver in Germany to provide the illustrations for the book. But the engraver died suddenly, while still in possession of the manuscript, and his descendants then decided to print an unauthorised translation of the work in German and Latin, which duly appeared in Nuremberg and Cologne. There was little the author could do about this form of piracy; the situation would be different, however, when the book was the subject of a later reprint on Dutch soil.

The Dutch printer Jacob Cornelisz Vennecool had obtained a copy of the German translation, which he decided to retranslate into Dutch for the local market. On 22 August 1597, the printer received an eight-year privilege from the Dutch authorities for his future publication plans.⁵⁶ When Van Meteren got wind of the planned publication, he was infuriated and tried to persuade Vennecool to print an authorised work instead. After some argument and disagreement, and with the encouragement of the States-General, the printer agreed, and Van Meteren returned to England with the promise that Justus Menius would correct the ‘gross errors’ in consultation with the author.⁵⁷ The book was partly rewritten, though this could not prevent a huge uproar when it was finally published in 1599. The authorities were unhappy with the contents, to say the least. They wanted to know how Van Meteren had managed to obtain information about what had been discussed in camera at the States-General. In addition, members of both the States of Holland and Utrecht felt that there were still several ‘errors’ in the text, and complaints were received from individuals who felt that they were not accurately represented in the book.⁵⁸ Further printings were immediately banned, and existing copies recalled. Van Meteren tried to excuse himself by saying that it had never been his intention to incriminate the States, but rather to exonerate them, and to this end he had ‘repeatedly asked [the printer] to keep the privilege he had been granted secret’.⁵⁹ It was in vain. After he had revealed the names of his informants to the authorities, Van Meteren left the country under the impression that his book would not appear on the market.

Half a year later, however, the storm had died down somewhat, and the authorities tacitly condoned the redistribution of Van Meteren’s work.⁶⁰ The printer then decided to produce a new edition, but this too caused controversy. Again, he came into conflict with Van Meteren and, following an intervention by the States-General, it was decided that he should print nothing that was uncorrected by the author and, in particular, that he print nothing concerning England, Scotland, or Ireland without the approval of the authorities.⁶¹ The book then appeared on the market in 1605 with ‘with privilege not to be pirated’, as the title page stated.⁶² It had been revised by the printer for typographical errors, but otherwise did not bear Van Meteren’s approval.⁶³

Behind the scenes, Van Meteren complained vehemently about the course of the events, not least in a letter to his friend Christiaan Huygens in which he explained that he was working on a new version of the book because in his earlier work, ‘with censorship and printer’s privilege, I had made my work partisan and not neutral, as I am trying to do now, with the idea of having it printed outside the country, without privilege’.⁶⁴ This new version did indeed appear a few years later, in 1609, ‘printed for the author’ in Scotland, according to the imprint, and without privilege.⁶⁵ It was republished several times until Van Meteren’s death in 1612. It was at this point that his descendants claimed the right to reprint the book officially in the Dutch Republic and tried to obtain a privilege from the authorities to do so. After some discussion, the members of the States-General decided to grant the privilege on the condition that they be given the freedom to rewrite certain passages. Six months later a licensed version appeared on the market.⁶⁶ This rewritten version (with renewed privileges) was highly successful; it was published in numerous editions well into the eighteenth century and is still used today by historians writing about early Dutch history. That the book also served as a symbol of national pride at the time is suggested by the fact that the printer was expected to deliver sixteen copies of the book ‘on account of the generality’ as gifts for the members of the States, ‘as well as one that might serve to be displayed on the conference table of the High and Mighty Lords, and another for the clerk’.⁶⁷

The story of Van Meteren’s Dutch History provides yet another example of the strategic use of privileges by the authorities to control the dissemination of knowledge. This control extended beyond mere textual content and into the realms of images and cartography.⁶⁸ The authorities did not simply grant privileges; they used them as tools to manage how knowledge was presented and marketed to the public. This ability to dictate the circulation of intellectual and visual content underscored their broader agenda of establishing and maintaining hegemony across cultural spheres. Another important element of this approach involved the distribution of portraits of famous people, which helped to establish a canon of knowledge. How this worked can be illustrated by the example of Willem Jacobs Delff (c. 1580-1638), a well-known engraver from Delft, who was granted a privilege on 17 October 1626 which gave him the exclusive right to print and sell (or have printed) all the portraits he would create in the future.⁶⁹ The condition for this privilege was that the engraver had to submit his portraits to the States-General before they could be put into circulation. On 12 November 1627, after he had indeed submitted his work to the authorities, Willem Jacobs received permission to publish the portrait of the former princess consort Louise de Coligny (1555-1620), the last wife of William of Orange.⁷⁰ On 12 July 1628 he also received permission to publish two portraits of the King of Great Britain.⁷¹ On the same day, however, he complained that two Amsterdam booksellers had infringed on his privilege. François van den Hoeye was accused of copying the portraits of the King and Queen of Bohemia, the Prince and Princess of Orange, and the portraits of Prince William and Prince Maurice at an older age, while Jacobus Hondius was accused of copying the portraits of the said prince and princess (figs. 3–6).⁷² Willem Jacobs Delff had brought an action against these copycats before the court of Amsterdam which had been dragging on; the central authorities promised to write to the court to ensure that his case would be heard soon. On a later occasion, the States-General intervened again, ordering that the prints by Hondius and Van den Hoeye be withdrawn from the market while the case was still pending, so that Willem Jacobs Delff could fully enjoy his privilege.⁷³ This not only underscores the direct involvement of the authorities in the production and regulation of printed materials but also highlights how privileges were used strategically to shape the cultural landscape, reinforcing authorised narratives and controlling the portrayal of important historical and political figures. Through such actions, the Dutch authorities shaped public perception and cultural memory while influencing both the creation and the consumption of knowledge.

It was not until the last quarter of the seventeenth century that a shift occurred, with the privilege increasingly seen as a commercial matter and no longer necessarily as an implicit form of state support. This shift was directly linked to a political conflict in which a privilege granted by the States was seen as going against the interests of the state because it offended foreign governments.⁷⁴ On the one hand, the booksellers’ guilds gained more and more influence over the granting of privileges, as they were increasingly consulted before any rights were granted. Their voice – the voice of the trade – grew louder and louder, and in several petitions and agreements they insisted that the privilege was indeed nothing more than a delimitation of the printers’ financial investment.⁷⁵ At the same time, the voice of the author was becoming more and more audible, opposing the absolute right of printers to dispose of written works as they saw fit. A new balance was thus slowly emerging between state support, commerce, and individual claims to creation. Although old practices of prejudice and privilege persisted, a new path was being forged in which soft power was not directly coordinated by the state, but implemented by proxy through institutions and social organisations such as guilds and artistic societies.⁷⁶

Printing privileges are commonly understood as straightforward means employed by printers to strengthen their economic position on the local market and to secure the place of steady sellers in their portfolio. This article has demonstrated, however, that they were also integral to the soft power mechanisms employed by the Dutch authorities to establish the Republic as an important state in its own right. The examples presented show how Dutch authorities used privileges to standardise, disseminate, and control the circulation of knowledge, highlighting in this respect that ‘the local’ cannot be seen in isolation from inter-European connections. Indeed, as I intend to explore in further research, this understanding of the nature of printing privileges was not unique to the Dutch Republic, and I am not arguing for Dutch distinctiveness in this regard. For example, when the Portuguese monk Serafim de Freitas wrote a polemic against Grotius’s work on the free seas, he was granted a ten-year exclusive privilege by Philip iv of Spain, on the condition that the content of his writings be reviewed before mass publication.⁷⁷ This provides further evidence that political authorities across Europe used privileges to control the circulation of knowledge and that legal protection and property rights in the world of print were often directly linked to international affairs.

An insight into this aspect of the privilege system enhances our understanding of how, why, and when certain publications were brought to market. With specific reference to the Dutch Republic, the aim of this essay has been thus to shift the perspective from viewing printing privileges solely as economically motivated to demonstrating how the authorities used privileges to promote ‘useful’ knowledge, that is, the type of knowledge they considered beneficial. This shift in emphasis should help to correct the still widespread misconception that the Dutch occupied an exceptional position within the European system of privileges, and that the authorities played only a minor role in the regulation of printing in the Republic. By putting the focus on the system of printing privileges, it becomes clear that state authorities actively intervened to shape the nature of printed knowledge, adding yet another layer to our evolving understanding of the circulation of knowledge in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic.