| Abstract: |
During this eventful period profound cultural, political and economic shifts in both Europe and the Americas directly affected the eastern archipelagos. The new spirit of enquiry was exemplified in the great sea voyages of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1768) , James Cook (1770–71) and the French explorers of the early nineteenth centuries. On 4 July 1776 the Americans had rejected British colonial rule, and 1789 marked the crumbling of the ancien régime in France . During the French revolutionary wars (1792–1802) the Netherlands were occupied (1794–95), while English blockades again broke connections between Asia and Holland.
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