Schama, S., The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the
Golden Age (1987), 698p.
This substantial and richly illustrated book (with 314 black and white
illustrations) began as Schama’s lectures at Harvard. The book was widely reviewed in
the popular press and sold an unusually large number of copies for a scholarly work on
the seventeenth century cultural history of a small but historically very important
European country. During the seventeenth century the English and the French, who were
jealous of the spectacular economic success of the Dutch Republic, worried about its
naval power, and feared that its burgher dominated Republican form of government
might be contagious, lampooned the Dutch with a caricature of being stingy, stodgy,
plodding, and single-minded accumulators of money. Schama’s lively and entertaining
book dispels those myths. His title suggests that the Dutch of the Golden Age were a bit
embarrassed about their wealth and did not display it conspicuously as the wealthy did in
other European countries. They did, however, enjoy it and created a distinctive
‘burgerlijk’ culture that did not fit the stereotype of the popular interpretations of Max
Weber’s thesis about the connections between the growth of Protestantism and
Capitalism offers. Schama, Influenced by the French Annales School of historiography
and the work of anthropologists on social relations, believes that societies are defined by
ideas and perceptions. He argues that national identities are real and can be identified.
He observes that are formed “by an array of beliefs locked together in relational
patterns.” He admits that his method is “shameless eclecticism.” He uses a wealth of
images and objects—especially paintings, drawings, etchings, woodcuts, decorative arts,
and architecture--as well as many literary sources, published letters and diaries, a modest
number of archival sources, and many obscure nineteenth century secondary sources to
explore the social and cultural history of the period through a wealth of fascinating and
unusual stories. His interpretation of Dutch culture is not especially about the theater,
music or literature of the elite. Nor is it about ideology, or economic and political culture.
Instead, he emphasizes such topics as how they raised and educated their children, the
lives of domestic servants and prostitutes, relations between masters and servants, the
domestic roles of women, care of the old, and attitudes toward the sick, orphans and the
poor. Some of his chapter section and chapter headings demonstrate the range of his
topics: “Feast, Fasting and Timely Atonement;’ “Whales on the Beach;” “Between Mars
and Mercury;” “In the realm of Queen Money;” Housewives and Hussies;” “In the
Republic of Children;” “Inside, Outside;” “Doors; and “Worms.” Schama believes that
ethical and prudential conventions define Dutch life more than material and economic
conditions. He argues that a broad section of the population did well out of capitalism and
that society was unified by common customs and conventions. He does discuss outsiders,
such as gypsies and homosexuals, but insists that the majority of the poor and less
fortunate were accepted in as part of Dutch society and shared its national identity.
The central argument of the book is that the chief characteristic of Golden Age
Dutch culture was moderation, a balance between social contradictions and between
excess and abstention. Schama seeks to explain “how cultural norms that the Dutch
community took as their rule book was generated from their encounter between
apparently irreconcilable imperatives.” In other words, they sought to live both ethically
and well. He argues that “the Dutch economy in its prime did not then turn on the habit
of thrift, observing “that there is as much reason to describe it as a spend-and-prosper
economy as a save-and-prosper economy.” The Dutch often used the symbolism of water
to explain moderation and balance. On the one hand, the sea and their location on
Europe’s most important delta gave them an opportunity to prosper, while at the same
time they had to constantly protect themselves from floods. Ostentatious display of
wealth was seen as an overvloed (a flood). While one can point to some large, luxurious
and richly decorated houses, such as on hose on the Gouden Bocht of the Heerengracht
(the Golden Bend of the Gentlemen’s canal) in Amsterdam, and to the country houses on
the river Vecht outside of the city, the houses and estates of most wealthy Dutch burghers
were modest in size and ornamentation compared to those of the rich in neighboring
countries. Inside their houses the Dutch displayed their wealth with an abundance of
furniture, carpets, paintings, maps, silver, books and cabinets of curiosities from all over
the world.
Schama goes to some length to explain that “Dutch moralists (exclusively male)
seemed insistent that this commonwealth stood or fell by the untarnished virtue of
women.” Reviewers have noted that this was not unique to Dutch society and similar
sentiments were expressed in England and other European societies. This, and his many
other generalizations about Dutch culture and identity, points to a general problem with
his argument. Are his conclusions about Dutch culture uniquely Dutch, and are they
representative of Dutch culture as a whole? He states that “Dutch culture was the
property of all sorts and social conditions” and describes it as the culture of “a brede
middenstand,” or what the English call the ‘middling sort.’ Although he concedes that it
was the burghers who “gave shape, perspective and meaning to the rush of historical
experience with which the Netherlands were beset,” he concludes, that Golden Age
Dutch culture was a unified and shared culture that was tied together with a common
patriotism and shared by almost everyone in society. He does not label it a ‘bourgeois’
culture or a ‘middle class culture, as is commonly done, and does not explicitly consider
the possibility that material and economic differences created fairly distinct elite and
popular cultures. Critics have noted that Schama ignored a great deal of Dutch
scholarship that pointed out that there were serious social tensions between the
comfortable burghers and the poor, that there were indeed many who did not share in the
benefits of Dutch capitalism, and, as non-citizens, did not share in the famous charity
institutions of the Republic. As one critic noted, Schama tends to discuss the iconography
of Dutch art and literature, and then conclude that these perceptions about Dutch culture
reflect social reality. To put it another way, Schama takes the perceptions of social
relations held by the well to do as the reality of Dutch social relations and culture.
Many historians use works of art as illustrations and read them at face value.
Schama, however, has read widely in the art history of the Dutch Golden Age and is well
aware of the debate among Dutch art historians about the balance between precise
observation and symbolic connation in Dutch iconographic studies. He subscribes to the
theory of the dominance of symbols in Dutch art rather than to the view that the iconic
contribution of Dutch art of the period is realistic description, or what has been called
“the art of describing.” He argues that the representation of the poor, the miserable, and
those that misbehave in Dutch pictures shows that the unfortunate are not outcasts in
society. Others might argue that presence of the losers of Dutch capitalism in art
represents the propensity of the prosperous Dutch bourgeoisie to use the poor to
demonstrate their own virtue and success.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with Schama’s thesis that Dutch culture of the
brede middenstand dominated society and constituted a balanced moderation between
virtue and the acquisition of wealth, this book is worth reading. Schama is a marvelous,
entertaining and enlightening storyteller. The value of the book lies in the details and the
stories. He has a wonderful ability to choose interesting and often surprising things and
people to examine the customs of everyday life, the perceptions of fascinating characters,
and his always thought provoking reading of the meaning of artistic works. The book
includes a valuable bibliographical guide for further exploration of the mentality of the
Dutch Golden Age.