The Dutch Republic

The Reformed communities in the Dutch Republic raised close to 64,000 thalers for their co-religionist refugee brethren from the Palatinate between 1626 and 1645, coming a close second to what was raised among Calvinists in England. A considerable proportion of that – nearly a third – was collected in Amsterdam alone, where the Reformed Church Council became the fulcrum for the charitable collection in the United Provinces for the exiles from the Palatinate. The sum of 64,000 thalers was clearly considerable in the early seventeenth century, but what exactly did it amount to in terms of assistance? It is notoriously difficult to provide modern equivalents to seventeenth-century currency, but as a guide to value five to six thalers would have bought enough grain to feed one person for a year in 1618. The 64,000 thalers would, in other words, have been enough to feed 10,667 people for a year or more than 350 for thirty years disregarding inflation.