Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

news from around the world and furnished this news to readers throughout northern Europe.
Amsterdam also was a center for other ephemera, especially pamphlets, and for the publication
of scholarly books, nautical manuals, maps, atlases, accounting guides, and price currents. 10
Even those merchants who did little or no business in Amsterdam were obliged to maintain a
representative there, just to stay on top of the news. As Woodruff Smith and, following him, Clé
Lesger, have argued, Amsterdam's role as an “information exchange” both contributed to and
helped to reinforce the Dutch Republic's hegemonic position in international commerce. News
and economic power were closely intertwined. 11
As this chapter will show, however, news traveled along other roads than just those that
led to Amsterdam. News of the revolt arrived first in Middelburg, an important commercial city
in its own right and the host, at least in 1645, of the meetings the Heren XIX. Like the board of
the VOC, the Heren XIX met on a rotating schedule for six years in Amsterdam and then two in
Middelburg, a system intentionally designed to reduce Amsterdam's dominance within the new
monopoly companies. 12 And once in the company’s hands, the news was sent first to The Hague,
the political center of the Dutch Republic and the seat of both the States of Holland and the
States General, and to the Prince of Orange, Frederik Hendrik, who at this time was encamped in
northern Flanders. 13 Only then was it sent to Amsterdam. Highly sensitive in nature, the news
also was not immediately set into print. Within a matter of days the two most important
10
Smith, “The Function of Commercial Centers in the Modernization of European Capitalism: Amsterdam as an
Information Exchange in the Seventeenth Century”; Burke, A social history of knowledge.
11
Smith, “The Function of Commercial Centers in the Modernization of European Capitalism: Amsterdam as an
Information Exchange in the Seventeenth Century”; Clé Lesger, “The Printing Press and the Rise of the Amsterdam
Information Exchange Around 1600”, n.d. See also Clé Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam ten Tijde van de Opstand:
Kooplieden, Commerciële Expansie en Verandering in de Ruimtelijke Economie van de Nederlanden, ca. 1550-ca.
1630 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001).
12
Den Heijer, De Geschiedenis van de WIC; Den Heijer, De Geoctrooieerde Compagnie; Gaastra, The Dutch East
India Company.
13
Zeeuwsarchief 2.1, inv.nr. 951, Staten van Zeeland, Ingekomen Stukken, letter from Frederik Hendrik to the States
of Zeeland, September 20, 1645. On Frederk Hendrik, see Poelhekke, Frederik Hendrik, Prins van Oranje.
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