Tracing the colonial careers of two former Napoleonic officials: Godert van der Capellen and Bernard Besier

During the Age of Revolutions, the Dutch colonial world changed fundamentally. An early modern system of trading settlements gave way to modern colonies. During the Napoleonic period, the British takeover of Dutch Asian colonies marked the beginning of a profoundly intertwined British-Dutch colonial world that emerged in Asia. Thus, empire-building and identity-building in this Asian sphere were a transnational process. A second, related, historiographical trend is the attention paid to travelling officials as part of empire-building, both in Commonwealth history and more recently in post-Napoleonic history. Studying individuals’ mobility can deepen the understanding of the dynamics within colonial empires.