This chapter uncovers the intellectual roots of the exceptionalist narrative of the Dutch empire as a trading empire. It shows how this narrative originated in the humanist culture of the Dutch Republic around 1600 and became ingrained in elite and popular culture in the following decades. Analysing texts, imagery and urban architecture, Weststeijn argues that the idea of a non-territorial commercial empire gained weight because of its dominant manifestations in the Dutch public sphere around 1650 and in the visual culture of the European Enlightenment, which celebrated Dutch commercial imperialism as a Company-Republic. The dominance of this representation of empire in terms of a corporate instead of a national entity explains why the concept of a ‘Dutch empire’ never became an ideological construct.