Preface
This book is the result of a thorough revision of the Ph.D. thesis that I defended at the University of Amsterdam, on 22 June 2018 (Between Shared and Conflicting Interests. The Political Economy of the Markets for Public Debt in the Dutch Republic, 1600–1795). I cannot emphasise enough the value of the guidance and inspiration in that process offered to me by my supervisors Joost Jonker and Marjolein ’t Hart. The aim of the revised version was to make it more accessible to a wider audience than the Ph.D. thesis. To that end, I reduced its size in a hopefully more readable style. I also added a completely new chapter on the position of the province of Holland within the Dutch Republic. Within that chapter 2, I gave an overview of the most important developments in political economy and analysed the Dutch figures. I also added an international comparison for more perspective on the Dutch situation and figures. Furthermore, I processed and added more archival material in the various chapters. For example, I expanded the analysis of the domestic private capital market with more data from Holland and the rural district (nedergerecht) Wagenborgen in Groningen. Furthermore, I almost doubled the number of observations in the analysis of the Frisian newspaper advertisements. For the case of the province of Groningen, I completed the reconstruction of the provincial debt by starting the series around 1625. I also made a novel reconstruction of the interest payments by this province, which is missing in the archival overviews and thus in the Gewestelijke Financiën series. Furthermore, I added observations of daily wages in Zeeland and Groningen. In the latter case, this meant an extension of the existing analysis back in time to the 1610s and improved quality of the analysis with better data in the period 1630–1680. For Zeeland, I improved the analysis of the effect of the tax on bonds. This allowed an improved comparison with Holland. A similar analysis for Holland subsequently improved the comparative analysis with Friesland. In several other cases, I made minor corrections by re-examining the archive materials or by processing archive material that I had already collected but not or insufficiently analysed.
I am grateful for the support and help I received in the revision process. In general, I thank Maarten Prak and Wijnand Mijnhardt for their encouragement to present my Ph.D. thesis to a wider audience and in a more accessible way, after reading the original manuscript. I would like to thank the editors from Brill publishers for their patience and support, Wendel Scholma, Alessandra Giliberto and Melissa Allieri. The same goes for the LEHI series editors Jeroen Touwen and Peer Vries (former). I am also obliged to the two anonymous referees for multiple valuable suggestions and feedback on the original Ph.D. manuscript. I am grateful to Oscar Gelderblom, Joost Jonker and Christiaan van Bochove who shared their work in progress on auctions and the former for the underlying data on Weesmeesterkennissen, VOC bonds and private merchant credit. Clare Wilkinson copy-edited the final manuscript and improved my language. Gerhard de Kok confirmed my impression about the importance of English funds based on his data about the portfolio of the Zeeland regent Daniël Rademacher. I thank Victor Enthoven for suggesting to make the case of Holland more explicit and Evelien Walhout, Christiaan van Bochove and Wietse Veenstra for feedback on the progress of rewritten chapters.
Other colleagues, family and friends have been supportive along the process by either listing to or discussing ideas about the book, including the people from Stichting Geschiedenis van de Overheidsfinanciën, Werkgroep de Achttiende Eeuw, and Samuel Kruizinga, Lodewijk Petram, Reinier van Langevelden, Roeland Scherff, Judith Manni, Maarten Pansier, Lucas van Braam van Vloten and Suze Zijlstra. Last and the most I thank my wife Mirjam and our children for their unconditional love.