Laver's strength is storytelling. He makes use of many detailed examples, culled almost exclusively from the seventeenth-century 'dagregisters', to engage the reader.

Monumenta Nipponica

Michael Laver's concise but wide-ranging study of the Dutch East India Company in Tokugawa Japan adopts the lens of gift exchange to provide a fascinating account of the political, social, and material engagements that facilitated and embodied the Japanese-Dutch relationship from the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

Early Modern Low Countries

Michael Laver collects fascinating stories about the political and economic roles played by the performance of gift exchanges between the Dutch East India Company and the Japanese. All those interested in the history of trade will find this book both illuminating, enjoyable, and broadly readable.

Terrance Jackson, Professor of History, Adrian College, Michigan, USA

This study brings together scattered and sometimes inaccessible data to position the shogun's realm firmly within the burgeoning field of diplomatic history and present-giving. It will be of use to historians of international encounter, overseas trade, knowledge transfer, and all those who wonder how cultures seek - and so often fail - to put themselves across when encounter the Other.

Timon Screech, Professor of the History of Art, SOAS, University of London, UK

Michael Laver's The Dutch East India Company in Early Modern Japan: Gift Giving and Diplomacy presents a readable, coherent, and detailed study of gift giving and its importance to the Dutch East India Company in maintaining its trade relationship with Tokugawa leaders.

John E. Van Sant, BMGN Low Countries Historical Review