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

A work of major importance for the economic history of both Europe and North America.

David Ormrod (Author)

9780521048644, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 January 2008

420 pages, 10 b/w illus. 1 map 33 tables
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.4 cm, 0.637 kg

'Ormrod has produced a very detailed analysis on the basis of years of scholarship; the British and Dutch economies have been compared time and again but never in as much depth as in this study.' Institute of Historical Research

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 reorganization 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.

List of maps and illustrations
List of figures
List of tables
Preface and acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
1. National economies and the history of the market
Part I. England, Holland and the Commercial Revolution: 2. Dutch trade hegemony and 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 reorganisation 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
Appendixes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Maritime history [HBTM], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]