Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands 1000–1800

The Netherlands pioneered capitalism in the Middle Ages, leading to the Dutch Golden Age and long-term economic growth. Prak and 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, and how capitalism emerged within a robust civil society that constrained and counterbalanced its centrifugal forces. However, an unrestrained capitalism ruled in the overseas territories, leading to slavery and other dire consequences for people outside Europe.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 11 June 2024
Publisher: Princeton University Press

The Netherlands was a pioneer of capitalism in the Middle Ages, leading to the Dutch Golden Age and 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.

Weight: 444g
Dimension: 233 x 155 x 20 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780691242330