Joris van den Tol is a postdoctoral visiting scholar at Harvard University (2019-2021). His research project is funded through a Rubicon grant of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). He recently defended his PhD on lobbying in relation to the Dutch colony in Brazil at Leiden University under supervision of Cátia Antunes (Leiden) and Wim Klooster (Clark). His postdoctoral project seeks to answer the questions why Dutch merchants petitioned the Amsterdam City Council for policy changes mostly affecting relations with the English Empire in the seventeenth century and why were there plans for a new Dutch chartered Company to protect trade in the English colonies in Virginia, Barbados, and the Leeward Islands. It posits the Important role of a transnational advocacy network (TAN) that included Dutch merchants and English planters and demonstrates the interdependence between economic interests and political decision-making in international politics and diplomacy. Illuminating the historical origins of transnational advocacy networks, this research would also stress the importance of non-state actors in the making of empire, and it would challenge the national frameworks of analysis.