Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-246) and index.
Contents:
1. Introduction. The market as a party? -- 2. Eight hundred years of economic growth, 1000-1800 -- 3. Between feudalism and freedom, 1000-1350 -- 4. Capitalism and civil society in late medieval Holland, 1350-1566 -- 5. A capitalist revolution? The Dutch Revolt, 1566-1609 -- 6. New capitalism at home and overseas -- 7. The republican state and "varieties of capitalism" -- 8. Capitalism and inequality in the eighteenth century -- 9. Conclusion.
Summary:
"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 across Europe. Pioneers of Capitalism examines the 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."-- provided by publisher
Series:
The Princeton economic history of the Western world
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.