Court, Credit, and Capital

Amsterdam's Insolvency Legislation in the Dutch Golden Age

Maurits den Hollander

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009631075
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Seventeenth-century Amsterdam was a city of innovations. Explosive economic growth, the expansion of overseas trade, and a high level of religious tolerance sparked great institutional, socioeconomic and legal changes, a period generally known as 'the Dutch Golden Age.' In this book, Maurits den Hollander discusses how insolvency legislation contributed to the rise of a modern commercial order in seventeenth-century Amsterdam. He analyzes the procedure and principles behind Amsterdam's specialized insolvency court (the Desolate Boedelskamer, 1643) from a theoretical perspective as well as through the eyes of citizens whose businesses failed. The Amsterdam authorities created a regulatory environment which solved insolvency more leniently, and thus economically more efficiently, than in previous times or places. Moving beyond the traditional view of insolvency as a moral failure and the debtor as a criminal, the Amsterdam court recognized that business failure was often beyond the insolvent's personal control, and helped restore trust and credit among creditors and debtors.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• A Note on Currency and Naming Conventions
• Introduction
• Part I Context
• Part II Procedure and Staff
• Part III Insolvents
• General Conclusion
• Appendix: Accords Datasets
• Archival Sources
• Bibliography
• Index