A Miracle Mirrored?: The Reception of Dutch Economic and Political Thought in Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

This review article discusses recent publications by David Onnekink, Sophus Reinert, Gijs Rommelse, Jacob Soll, and Arthur Weststeijn from the perspective of the reception of Dutch economic and political thought in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. The Dutch Republic has been called ‘the first modern economy’ by Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude. It looms large in ongoing academic and public policy debates about ‘The Great Divergence’, i.e. the question why the West made the transition to an industrialized economy around 1800, while China did not. Just how innovative the inhabitants... Mehr ...