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1 - Citizens and Institutions

from Part I - Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2025

Maurits den Hollander
Affiliation:
Tilburg University
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Summary

This chapter analyzes the shift towards a closer involvement of the Amsterdam authorities in the lives of citizens from all layers of society that occurred through various institutional innovations after the city turned Protestant in 1578. Credit was a unifying economic phenomenon in Amsterdam, and examining the function of credit allows us to shed light on the connections between people from various classes. Focusing on the phenomenon of insolvency, essentially a breakdown of credit, makes it possible to open up broader perspectives on the early modern economy. Guilds and their civic middle-class values shaped social and economic policies of this period in important ways, clearly displaying the integration among different social groups that also came to be reflected in contemporary legal theory and practice. Religious communities also occupied an important role in financial conflict resolution between creditors and debtors. The moral dimensions of insolvency that become manifest through the acts of various Amsterdam consistories reflect important changes in the attitudes towards insolvency that are typical of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic.

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