The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism, 1650–1770

by David Ormrod

• ISBN13: 9780521819268
• ISBN10: 0521819261
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-04-21
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In early modern Europe, and particularly in the Netherlands, commercial empires were held together as much by cities as by unified nation states. David Ormrod here takes a regional economy as his preferred unit of analysis, the North Sea economy: an interlocking network of trades shaped by public and private interests, and the matrix within which Anglo-Dutch competition, borrowing and collaboration took shape. He shows how England's increasingly coherent mercantilist objectives undermined Dutch commercial hegemony, in ways which contributed to the restructuring of the North Sea staplemarket system. The commercial revolution has rightly been identified with product diversification and the expansion of long distance trading, but the reorganisation of England's nearby European trades was equally important, providing the foundation for eighteenth-century commercial growth and facilitating the expansion of the Atlantic economy. With the Anglo-Scottish union of 1707, the last piece of a national British entrepot system was put into place.

Table of Contents

1. National economies and the history of the market

Part I. England, Holland and the Commercial Revolution: 2. Dutch trade hegemony and the English competition, 1650-1700

3. English commercial expansion and the Dutch staplemarket, 1700-1770

Part II. English Trade with the Dutch Staplemarket: 4. Rivalry, crisis and reorganization in the woollen export trade

5. Import-substitution and European linen imports

6. The Dutch staplemarket and the growth of English re-exports

7. England, Holland and the international grain trade

8. The coal trade and energy resources

Part III. Dutch Decline and English Expansion: 9. The shipping industry and the impact of war

10. Protectionism and Dutch economic decline

11. Conclusion: commercial growth and the divergence of England.