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Civet is derived from civet cats, which are actually not cats at all but members of the mongoose family, native to Asia and Africa. In southern China, civet meat is a great delicacy—the “tiger” in the celebrated dragon, tiger, and phoenix soup. In 2004, civet cats were linked to the SARS outbreak and thousands were destroyed. In addition to its culinary importance, the civet cat also has a gland near its anus containing a musky, buttery substance. This secretion, called civet, has long been used to make some of the world's most expensive perfumes.

In the medieval era, civet was included in sweet-smelling pomanders thought to have the power to ward off disease. In the sixteenth century, it became a precious ingredient in high-end fragrances, coveted by the finest parfumiers of Paris. Before the advent of regular bathing and deodorants, fragrances strong enough to cover body odor were in great demand by the wealthy. Indeed, few things cost more per ounce than the highest-quality civet—in some cases, not even gold.

As a result, there was a thriving international trade in civet cats in the seventeenth century, and many tried to profit from it. England's Daniel Defoe, for example, earned a living by breeding civet cats before he wrote Robinson Crusoe. By the 1620s, however, the Dutch had cornered the civet trade.

Large merchant firms in Amsterdam sent Dutch ships to India, Java, and Guinea and brought back civet cats by the thousands. The civet cats were then raised in cages in Amsterdam, where they were fed milk and egg whites so that the civet they produced would be white, as opposed to its natural yellow or brownish color. Every several days, trained workers pinned down the live animals, squeezed open their perineal glands, and carefully scraped out the secretion. The civet was then quickly bottled—civet darkens and thickens when exposed to air—and exported along with certificates of purity to luxury markets throughout Europe.

Civet was just one commodity in Europe's “rich trades”—the immensely lucrative traffic in luxury commodities—which the Dutch Republic dominated for much of the seventeenth century. The formula was straightforward. Dutch ships traveled to far-flung corners of the world, carrying back East Indies pepper and spices, sugar from Brazil and Sào Tome, Turkish mohair, Castilian wool, and Indian cotton and raw diamonds. The Dutch either traded these riches throughout Europe or brought them back to Holland, where the raw materials were processed and reexported at enormous profit in the form of luxury tapestries, patterned silks, fine linens, and exquisitely cut gemstones. So spectacularly profitable was this global trade that the English, French, Germans, Venetians, and especially Spanish all vied to control it—or even just parts of it.1

A note on nomenclature, which in the case of the Netherlands can be quite confusing: The European country that today is officially named the Kingdom of the Netherlands is often called Holland, even by the Dutch themselves. Technically, however, Holland refers only to the Netherlands’ two most economically and politically important provinces, North Holland and South Holland, which include the major cities of Amsterdam, Delft, Haarlem, The Hague, Leiden, and Rotterdam.

To complicate matters further, the Netherlands’ borders and political configuration have changed significantly over time. In the Middle Ages, the territory roughly covering modern Belgium, Luxembourg, northwest France, and the Netherlands was known as the Low Countries. (Belgium and Luxembourg achieved independence in the 1830s.) The Reformation brought dramatic changes. For a time, southern Netherlands came under the authority of the Catholic Hapsburgs, while Protestant-dominated northern Netherlands became known as the United Provinces, and eventually the Republic of the United Provinces.2

In this chapter, I will use all these terms—the Low Countries, the Netherlands, the Dutch Republic, the United Provinces— depending on the historical context. Holland will generally