Description
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.
Table of Contents
Introduction; 1: Emulating Success: Contemporary Views of the Dutch Economy before 1800; 2: Holland's New Fiscal Regime, 1572–1576; 3: The Efficiency of Taxation in Holland 1; 4: The Political Economy of Bread in the Dutch Republic; 5: Mutual Advantages: State Bankers as Brokers between the City of Amsterdam and the Dutch Republic; 6: Tax Morale and Citizenship in the Dutch Republic; 7: Rural Development and Landownership in Holland, c.1400–1650 1; 8: Financing Water Management in Rijnland, 1500–1800; 9: The Organization of Long-Distance Trade in England and the Dutch Republic, 1550–1650 1; 10: The Union of Utrecht, Tariff Barriers, and the Interprovincial Beer Trade in the Dutch Republic 1; 11: Local Particularism Challenged, 1795–1813
