Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

England. 58 In his sweeping history of European colonization, first published in 1770, the abbé
Guillaume-Thomas Raynal observed that the Dutch had taught Spain and Portugal a lesson in the
benefits of industry and commerce:
But the two nations that had subdued the East and West Indies, neglected arts and agriculture.
They imagined everything was to be obtained by gold, without considering that it is labor alone
that procures it: they were convinced, though late, and at their own expense, that the industry
which they lost, was more valuable than the riches they acquired; and the Dutch taught them this
severe instruction. 59
This quotation represents the reforming attitude and supreme confidence of the late eighteenth
century. But two centuries earlier, when Spain and Portugal ruled the seas, might not the Dutch
have learned some lessons from them as well?
Equally important to these questions of inter-imperial learning is to re-evaluate the
political geography of the Dutch Republic itself. With some exceptions, non-Dutch scholars have
tended to read the history of Amsterdam or of Holland as representative of the United Provinces
as a whole. 60 Amsterdam was by far the wealthiest and most populous of Holland's cities, and the
Province of Holland paid slightly more than 58% of the States General’s total budget, so the
emphasis is not unjustified. But other parts of Holland did not always share Amsterdam's views
and other provinces differed dramatically from Holland in language, social structure, and
outlook. The failure to take a wider geographical perspective is particularly problematic in the
case of the WIC, which (compared to the VOC) drew a disproportionate amount of its initial
58 J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2006); See also Sophus A. Reinert, Translating Empire: Emulation and the Origins of Political
Economy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011).
59 The quotation is based on the English translation of 1777 as excerpted in Henry C. Clark, Commerce, Culture, &
Liberty: Readings on Capitalism Before Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), 613. A complete modern
edition in English is Guillaume Thomas Raynal, Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of
the Europeans in the East and West Indies, trans. J. O. Justamond, vol. 1 (New York: Negro Universities Press,
1969).
60 An important exception is Israel, The Dutch Republic.
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