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Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000-1800 - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000-1800

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How medieval Dutch society laid the foundations for modern capitalism

The Netherlands was one of the pioneers of capitalism in the Middle Ages, giving rise to the spectacular Dutch Golden Age while ushering in an era of unprecedented, long-term economic growth. Pioneers of Capitalism examines the formal and informal institutions in the Netherlands that made this economic miracle possible, providing a groundbreaking new history of the emergence and early development of capitalism.

Drawing on the latest quantitative theories in economic research, Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden show how Dutch cities, corporations, guilds, commons, and other private and semipublic organizations provided safeguards for market transactions in the state’s absence. Informal institutions developed in the Netherlands long before the state created public safeguards for economic activity. Prak and van Zanden argue that, in the Netherlands itself, capitalism emerged within a robust civil society that constrained and counterbalanced its centrifugal forces, but that an unrestrained capitalism ruled in the overseas territories. Rather than collapsing under unrestricted greed, the Dutch economy flourished, but prosperity at home came at the price of slavery and other dire consequences for people outside Europe.

Pioneers of Capitalism offers a panoramic account of the early history of capitalism, revealing how a small region of medieval Europe transformed itself into a powerhouse of sustained economic growth, and changed the world in the process.

ISBN-13: 9780691242330

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication Date: 06-11-2024

Pages: 280

Series: The Princeton Economic History of the Western World - #83

Maarten Prak is professor of social and economic history at Utrecht University. His books include Citizens without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World, c. 1000–1789. Jan Luiten van Zanden is professor of global economic history at Utrecht University. His books include The Strictures of Inheritance: The Dutch Economy in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton).

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“The economy and polity of the Dutch Golden Age is well traveled scholarly territory. Prak and van Zanden add critical knowledge about their medieval foundations as well as penetrating insight into the interaction between markets, civic associations, and ‘varieties of capitalism’ in the development process. This highly readable book will both instruct and delight.”—Anne E. C. McCants, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“This is simply the best brief account of Dutch capitalism ever written. It offers fresh historical insights concerning the interrelationships of market, state, and civil society at the same time that it suggests how modern societies might fashion a capitalism we can live with and even prosper under.”—Jan de Vries, University of California, Berkeley

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

1 Introduction: The Market as a Party? 1

2 Eight Hundred Years of Economic Growth, 1000-1800 14

3 Between Feudalism and Freedom, 1000-1350 28

4 Capitalism and Civil Society in Late Medieval Holland, 1350-1566 58

5 A Capitalist Revolution? The Dutch Revolt, 1566-1609 90

6 New Capitalism at Home and Overseas 118

7 The Republican State and "Varieties of Capitalism" 144

8 Capitalism and Inequality in the Eighteenth Century 169

9 Conclusion 199

Notes 211

Bibliography 225

Index 247