Dutch Capital and World Capitalism Capitalisme hollondais et capitalisme mondial

Throughout the seventeenth century, Holland was the unrivalled centre of world trade and banking. This economic success fascinated contemporaries, and questions about it still exercise historians today. Is it appropriate to view the economic position of the Dutch during this period in terms of 'supremacy', or, as Immanuel Wallerstein has argued, of 'hegemony'? If so, how is this to be explained, as well as measured? Did it mark a radically new stage in the history of international trade? Was the role of Amsterdam really more important than that of Antwerp and Venice together? And how did such a dominant position, once gained, come to be lost to England, who in turn surrendered it to the United States? These questions remain crucial to anyone wishing to understand the dynamics of the development of capitalist world economy in the modern period, and in this book some thirty historians attempt to provide answers to them.

Part I. The economy of the United Provinces/L'economie des Provinces-Unies: 1. Le capitalisme hollandais et l'organisation de l'espace dans les Provinces-Unies Jean-Claude Boyer; 2. The economic situation in the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth century Bernard Hendrik Slicher van Bath; 3. An inquiry into the behaviour of wages in the Dutch Republic and the Southern Netherlands from 1580 to 1800 Jan de Vries; Part II. Dutch capitalism and Europe/Le capitalisme hollandais et l'Europe: 4. Dutch capitalism and the European world-economy Peter Wolfgang Klein; 5. Dutch hegemony in the seventeenth-century world-economy Immanuel Wallerstein; 6. Les interdependances economiques dans le champ d'action europeen des Hollandais (XVIe-XVIIIe siecle) Pierre Jeannin; 7. Image du capitalisme hollandais au XVIIIe siecle. Le miroir marseillais Charles Carriere; Part III. Dutch capitalism and Asia/Le capitalisme hollandais et l'Asie: 8. The import of bullion and coin into Asia by the Dutch East India Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Ivo Schoffer & F.S. Gaastra; 9. The Dutch East India Company as an institutional innovation Niels Steensgaard; 10. Le capitalisme hollandais Denys Lombard; Part IV. Measuring the Dutch economy/Mesures de l'economie hollandaise: 11. Hommage aux historiens hollandais et contribution a l'histoire economique des Provinces-Unies Michel Morineau.

Throughout the seventeenth century, Holland was the unrivalled centre of world trade and banking. This economic success fascinated contemporaries, and questions about it still exercise historians today. Is it appropriate to view the economic position of the Dutch during this period in terms of 'supremacy', or, as Immanuel Wallerstein has argued, of 'hegemony'?