Price, J. L., Dutch Society, 1588-1713 (2000), 306p.
This is the fourth book by J. L. Price, who is now an emeritus Reader in History at
the University of Hull, on Dutch history and culture during its Golden Age. His books are
good places to start for those without a great deal of background in the subject and are
widely used as required reading in university courses in early modern European history.
The first was Culture and Society in the Dutch Republic during the Seventeenth Century
(1974) and concentrated on seventeenth Dutch cultural, linguistic and artistic
achievements. Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, published in 2011, also focused on
culture and includes more material on science. Holland and the Dutch Republic: The
Politics of Particularism (1994) discussed the novel political system of the Republic.
Dutch Society, 1588-1713 emphasizes Dutch social history of the period. It is in excellent
synthesis of contemporary scholarship on the subject. Price writes well and he does not
burden his work with the social jargon and theories of social history that is regrettably
common in contemporary social history. A good deal has been published recently about
the economic success of the Republic, which, despite its modest population of about two
million, was the pre-eminent European economy and the world’s leading trading nation
during the seventeenth century. As many writers have acknowledged, it was the first
‘modern economy’ in the sense that it was first to achieve sustained economic growth and
its citizens to this day enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. There has
also been a good deal of recent writing on Dutch naval and military success during its
Golden Age and the English seem finally to have acknowledge that William of Orange
and Mary Stuart’s seizure of the English crown in 1689 was a result of a huge and
successful invasion of England.
Much less, however, has been written in English about Dutch seventeenth century
social history. Contemporary Dutch society is often labeled today as one of the world’s
most liberal societies. While the latter is highly debatable, and Dutch society did not have
this liberal reputation during the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, there was wide
European agreement during the seventeenth century that the Dutch Republic had a
remarkable level of religious toleration and was dominated not by an aristocracy but what
later came to be called the bourgeoisie. Price argues that the Republic’s society, although
a mixture of old and new institutions and customs, can rightly be categorized as an early
European capitalist society that provided a model for the future. He argues that modern
research contests one of the key historiographical traditions of Dutch history, which saw
the seventeenth century as its Golden Age and relegates all that came after to an anticlimax. In terms of the standard of living and the quality of life, however, the real Dutch
golden age of the Dutch has been the period of prosperity and peace since WW II.
What was golden about its earlier Golden Age was its precociousness. Moreover,
Price argues that this preceded the seventeenth century and the period of its revolt against
Spain. Already at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the maritime-provinces, and
especially Holland, had a population that was 50% urban, a percentage not reached in
England until 1850 and later elsewhere in Europe. Holland’s rural areas were already a
market society in 1600 with a capitalist agriculture and a good deal of rural industry. The
inland areas of the north and east saw the bulk of the disruption from the eighty years war
with Spain and remained relatively more rural and traditional compared to Holland,
although quite prosperous by general European standards. Price argues that Holland’s
economic and social pre-eminence should be dated from about 1590 to 1670. From the
latter date, economic leadership gradually passed to England, although the average Dutch
standard of living was not surpassed by Britain until at least the very late eighteenth
century. Price notes that despite Dutch wealth, the lower levels of the working classes
remained relatively poor and real poverty increased in the second half of the seventeenth
century. He also points out society made little progress against disease during its Golden
Age and in this sense it was fundamentally different from modern society. It was,
however, modern in the sense that it was an urbanized capitalist society with a modern
class structure two hundred years earlier than the rest of Western Europe. It was also
modern in the sense that independent craftsmen and small landholders lost their
independence and became employees of capitalist industrialists and farmers. While other
Europeans marveled at the role of women in the economy, many were, for example,
active in retail trade, most women worked at menial jobs with low pay. Daughters were
dependent on their fathers and legally married women were second-class citizens. In the
upper levels of society women were already retreating into the domestic sphere, a
characteristic that was ‘modern’ until the second-half of the twentieth century. Two areas
in which society was also much more modern than the rest of Europe was the relative
religious toleration prevalent in the Republic and the size of the art market that catered to
a wide segment of society. Price concludes that this ‘bourgeois society’ was an island of
relative modernity in a much more traditional Europe and this was especially so in the
maritime regions and in Holland.