In considering the ‘imagining of Amsterdam’ in the context of globalization, the focus of this book falls on how the city has at various times been involved in and affected by globalizing tendencies in politics, economics, and, more especially, culture. The present chapter, taking an historical approach, will consider some of the ways in which Amsterdam has viewed itself over several centuries in the light of various waves of globalization. It is concerned with Amsterdam's view of its own position in the world, including its position in the emerging Dutch nation, as a European capital, and as the centre of a global trading and financial empire. The interaction between these different levels of self-perception and selfrepresentation is of particular importance: the principal objective in what follows is to uncover and unpick the kinds of ideas Amsterdammers have entertained about their city's position in the world in terms of their self-image or perceived identity, and in contexts ranging from the municipal, through the regional and the national, to the European and the global.

In doing so we shall concentrate on Amsterdam's status as an icon of commercial capitalism over several centuries, and particularly on the city's self-image in a colonial context at various points since the seventeenth century, right up to the twentieth. We shall be principally concerned with self-images in the sense of visual, graphic images in the public spaces of the city, on the facades of private houses and business premises, and decorating the great public and commercial institutions that have been built in the centre of Amsterdam, always a city more of burghers and merchants, of civic rule and civic pride, than of princes and sovereigns. In many academic disciplines, especially where an interest is shown in visual culture, there is an increasing recognition that many of the images which surround us in our daily lives are charged with meaning, and as a whole can be highly active in the social, cultural, and political process. Historians have perhaps been more reluctant than other scholars to branch out into using visual sources, but there has been a developing discussion over several decades; it is now widely accepted that a systematic use of visual images as historical evidence is not only illuminating and interesting, but perhaps even essential.