Money In The Dutch Republic

Offers a distinctive history of money as an everyday social technology in the Dutch Republic from 1600 to 1850.

For abstract see: Linda Peeters, in Bibliografische attenderingslijst voor docenten Neerlandistiek in het buitenland, jrg. 13, nr. 2 (juni 1998); p. 30; Jeremy Black, in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis jrg. 111, no. 3 (1998); p. 526-527; Leonard Blussé, in Itinerario vol. XXIV, no. 3/4 (2000); p. 213-214.

Overview of the financial history of the Netherlands from the sixteenth century onwards.

In the first half of the seventeenth century the Dutch Republic emerged as one of Europe's leading maritime powers. The political and military leadership of this small country was based on large-scale borrowing from an increasingly wealthy middle class of merchants, manufacturers and regents This volume presents the first comprehensive account of the political economy of the Dutch republic from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. Building on earlier scholarship and extensive new evidence it tackles two main issues: the effect of political revolution on property rights and public finance, and the ability of the nation to renegotiate issues of taxation and government borrowing in changing political circumstances. The essays in this volume chart the Republic's rise during the seventeenth century, and its subsequent decline as other European nations adopted the Dutch financial model and warfare bankrupted the state in the eighteenth century. By following the United Provinces's financial ability to respond to the changing national and international circumstances across a three-hundred year period, much can be learned not only about the Dutch experience, but the wider European implications as well.

In the 1630s the Netherlands was gripped by tulipmania: a speculative fever unprecedented in scale and, as popular history would have it, folly. We all know the outline of the story—how otherwise sensible merchants, nobles, and artisans spent all they had (and much that they didn’t) on tulip bulbs. We have heard how these bulbs changed hands hundreds of times in a single day, and how some bulbs, sold and resold for thousands of guilders, never even existed. Tulipmania is seen as an example of the gullibility of crowds and the dangers of financial speculation. But it wasn’t like that. As Anne Goldgar reveals in Tulipmania, not one of these stories is true. Making use of extensive archival research, she lays waste to the legends, revealing that while the 1630s did see a speculative bubble in tulip prices, neither the height of the bubble nor its bursting were anywhere near as dramatic as we tend to think. By clearing away the accumulated myths, Goldgar is able to show us instead the far more interesting reality: the ways in which tulipmania reflected deep anxieties about the transformation of Dutch society in the Golden Age. “Goldgar tells us at the start of her excellent debunking book: ‘Most of what we have heard of [tulipmania] is not true.’. . . She tells a new story.”—Simon Kuper, Financial Times

For abstract see: Linda Peeters, in Bibliografische attenderingslijst voor docenten Neerlandistiek in het buitenland, jrg. 13, nr. 2 (juni 1998); p. 30; Jeremy Black, in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis jrg. 111, no. 3 (1998); p. 526-527; Leonard Blussé, in Itinerario vol. XXIV, no. 3/4 (2000); p. 213-214.

This study offers an overview of the development and structure of the remarkable public finances of the Dutch Republic. Comparisons with the Venetian Republic, Britain and the Ottoman Empire underline the importance of ‘urbanization trajectories’ in understanding differences in fiscal performance.

Today, public administration is moving in new directions. Reforms are focusing on the quality of services for citizens and businesses and on the efficiency of administration (the “back office” of government). This report examines quality and efficiency of government in the Netherlands.