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On the Modernity of the Dutch Republic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Jan deVries
Jan deVries
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Extract

The political and economic institutions of the Dutch Republic puzzle the historian. Closely juxtaposed are elements suggesting a tantalizing precociousness and elements which hearken to the medieval past. The Republic was the creation of a revolution; it can be identified as the first European state to throw off a monarchical regime and bring a bourgeois social class to full political power. On the other hand, the foremost motive behind this rebellion was the resistance of medieval, municipal particularism to governmental centralization—to modernization, if you will.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-second Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 1973 , pp. 191 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1973

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References

1 See: Barbour, Violet, Capitalism in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1963)Google Scholar; also Kossman, E. H., “The Dutch Republic,” in New Cambridge Modern History, V: The Ascendancy of France, 1648–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961)Google Scholar, where Dutch greatness is described as “a greatness ad interim.”

2 This, of course, is from the well known work of Hobsbawm, E. H., “The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” in Aston, Trevor, ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660 (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1967)Google Scholar.

3 This view is often buried in text books. See Mathias, Peter, The First Industrial Nation (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969), pp. 8–9Google Scholar. The numerous works on the Dutch economy by Charles Wilson reflect some of this argument. For an explicit statement: Wee, H. van der and Peeters, Th., “Un modèle dynamique de croissance interséculaire du commerce modial (Xllle-XVIIIe siecle),” Annales (Economies, Sociétés, Civilizations), XXV (1970), 100–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 This is the theme of recent works by Douglass C. North. See his “The Creation of Property Rights in Western Europe 900–1700 A.D.: A Theoretical Model,” (mimeographed) and, with Robert Paul Thomas, “The Rise and Fall of the Manorial System: A Theoretical Model,” (mimeographed). For a review of village land organization, see Blum, Jerome, “The European Village as Community: Origins and Functions,” Agricultural History, XLV (1971), 157–178Google Scholar.

5 The transfer of sovereignty and the confiscation of monastic lands were the chief causes of confusion. For examples of tenants who benefited from the chaos see: Sannes, H., Geschiedenis van het Bildt (Franeker: T. Wever, 1951–1956), V. 1, pp. 139–238Google Scholar; t'Hart, G., Historische Beschrijving van de Hoge Heerlijkheid van Heenvliet (Den Helder: C. de Boer, 1949), p. 146Google Scholar.

6 Groot Placaat-en Charterboek van Vriesland, compiled by Hohenlansberg, G. F. Baron thoe Schwartzenberg en. (Leeuwarden, 1768–1793), V. 4, p. 416Google Scholar. The survival of Friesian law in this province distinguishes it from all others. For descriptions of Friesian law see: Heck, P., Die altfriesische gerichtsverfassung (Weimar, 1894)Google Scholar; N. E. Alga, Ein, enkele rechthistorische aspecten van de grondeigendom in Westlauwers Friesland (Groningen: P. Noordhoff, n.d.).

7 Andreae, S. J. Fockema, “Middeleeuwsch Oegstgeest,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis. L (1935), 260–262Google Scholar.

8 Hofstee, E. W., Het Oldampt (Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1937), V. 1, p. 187Google Scholar; Gosses, I. H. and Japikse, N., Handboek tot de staatkundige geschiedenis van Nederland (3rd ed.; 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1937), p. 119Google Scholar.

9 See: Bath, B. H. Slicher van, “Boerenvrijheid,” Economisch-Histotische Herdrukken ('s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), pp. 272–294Google Scholar. This condition was not unique to the maritime Netherlands, of course. Slicher van Bath identifies a series of European regions—the Alpine districts of France, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, most of Scandinavia, the Danelaw of England, and the North Sea coastal littoral—which shared the common conditions of an “overabundance of surface water” and, consequently were never manorialized, or succeeded in suppressing it at an early date. He goes on to identify the peasant freedom which flourished in these regions as the bedrock foundation of western European democracy.

10 Gelder, H. A. Enno van, “De Hollandse adel in de tijd van de Opstand,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, XLV (1930), 130–131Google Scholar; see also, Gelder, H. A. Enno van, Nederlandse dorpen in de 16e eeuw (Amsterdam: Noord-Hollandsche Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1953)Google Scholar. This work consists of a number of case studies showing the variety of legal and political institutions in the different districts of the Burgundian Netherlands.

11 Theissen, J. S., Central gezag en Friesche vrijheid (Groningen: M. De Waal, 1907), pp. 5–7Google Scholar; Guibal, C. J., Democratic en oligarche tijdens de Republiek (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1934), pp. 62–85Google Scholar.

12 Enno van Gelder, Nederlandse dorpen, pp. 21–32; A. de Goede, Swannotsrecht, Westfriesche rechtsgeschiedenis (Utrecht: Kemink en Zoon, n.d.), V. I, p. 405.

13 Enno van Gelder, “Hollandse adel,” pp. 130–131.

14 Niemeyer, J. F., Delft en Delfland (Leiden: Burgersdijk en Niermans, 1944), p. 60Google Scholar; Gosses, I. H., “De vorming van het graafschap Holland,” Verspreide Geschriften (Groningen: J. B. Wolters, 1946), p. 310Google Scholar; Linde, H. van der, De cope (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1956), pp. 70–72Google Scholar. The similarities between colonization in Holland and Germany rest in part, as van der Linde has shown, on the fact that Hollanders experienced in colonization practices went to Germany, first to the Bremer marshes and later to Prussia, to participate in the colonization movement.

15 Oorkondenboek van het Sticht Utrecht, compiled by Muller, Fz. S. and Bouman, A. C., (Utrecht, 1920–1954), V. I, document no. 245Google Scholar.

16 van der Linde, De cope, pp. 169, 171, 184.

17 But not for lack of historical monographs. See: Andreae, S. J. Fockema, Studiën over Waterschapsgeschiedenis (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1950–1952)Google Scholar; Andreae, S. J. Fockema, Het Hoogheemraadschap van Rijnland (Leiden: Eduard Ijdo, 1934)Google Scholar; Dolk, F. J. A., Geschiedenis van het Hoogheemraadschap Delfland ('s-Gravenhage, 1939)Google Scholar; Winsemius, J. P., De historische ontwikkeling van het waterstaatsrecht in Friesland ('s-Gravenhage, 1948)Google Scholar.

18 Andreae, S. J. Fockema, in the one article on these institutions written in English: “Embanking and Drainage Authorities in the Netherlands during the Middle Ages,” Speculum, XXVIII (1952), 158–167Google Scholar.

19 Fockema Andreae, “Oegstgeest,” pp. 261–262.

20 Meer, C. H. Cock-van, “Capelle aan de Ijssel in de middeleeuwen: reconstuering van het grondbezit,” Holland: regional-historisch tijdscrift, IV (1972), 76–88Google Scholar.

21 The author has personally examined those in the Archief der Nedergerechten, Rijksarchief in Friesland, Leeuwarden, and the Notariële Archieven, Rijksarchief in Noord Holland, Haarlem.

22 Yarranton, Andrew, England's Improvement by Sea and Land to Out-do the Dutch without Fighting, to Pay Debts without Moneys, to set at Work all the Poor of England with the Growth of our own Lands (London, 1677), p. 11Google Scholar.

23 Informacie up den Staet Faculteyt en Gelegenheyt van de Steden ende Dorpen van Holland en Vriesland … gedaen in den jaer 1514, compiled and with an introduction by Fruin, R. J. (Leiden, 1866)Google Scholar.

24 Wijs, J. A. A., Bijdrage tot de kennis van het leenstelsel in de Republiek Holland ('s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1939), p. 21Google Scholar. Wijs reckons that about 800 of the fiefs concern real property. If the average size of each fief were ten morgen (0.85 hectare per morgen), they would embrace about one percent of the cultivated land of Holland in the eighteenth century. Wijs, Leenstelsel, p. 95.

25 The seigneurial rights of Heenvliet, which were quite substantial, remained in the same family for centuries until 1612. Then the debt-ridden heirs put them on the block. They were sold again in 1670, and again in 1730 and 1737. t'Hart, Heenvliet, pp. 214–233; Wijs, Leenstelsel, p. 82.