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was known as the States General, and it met at Den Haag (The Hague); it had no domestic legislative authority, and could only carry out foreign policy by unanimous decision, a formula designed to reassure the independent-minded merchants of every Dutch city. The role of Stadholder was the most important in each province, roughly equivalent to that of governor, though the same person could occupy this position in any number of provinces. Meanwhile, in the south – and also in 1579 – representatives of the southern provinces signed the Union of Arras, a Catholic-led agreement that declared loyalty to Philip II and counterbalanced the Union of Utrecht in the north. Thus, the Low Countries were, de facto, divided into two – the Spanish Netherlands and the United Provinces – beginning a separation that would lead, after many changes, to the creation of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. With the return of more settled times, Amsterdam was now free to carry on with what it did best – trading and making money.

History |

The Golden Age

The brilliance of Amsterdam’s explosion onto the European scene is as difficult to underestimate as it is to detail. The size of its merchant fleet carrying Baltic grain into Europe had long been considerable and even the Spaniards had been unable to undermine Dutch maritime strength. Furthermore, with the decline of Antwerp, whose skilled workers had fled north after their city had been incorporated into the Spanish Netherlands, Amsterdam now became the unrivalled emporium for the products of northern and southern Europe as well as the East and West Indies. The city didn’t prosper from its market alone, though, as Amsterdam ships also carried produce, a cargo trade that greatly increased the city’s wealth. Dutch banking and investment brought further prosperity, and by the middle of the seventeenth century Amsterdam’s wealth was spectacular. The Calvinist bourgeoisie indulged themselves in fine canal houses, and commissioned images of themselves in group portraits. Civic pride knew no bounds as great monuments to self-aggrandizement, such as the new town hall (now the Koninklijk Paleis), were hastily erected, and, if some went hungry, few starved, as the poor were cared for in municipal almshouses.

The arts flourished and religious tolerance was extended even to the traditional scapegoats, the Jews, and in particular the Sephardic Jews, who had been hounded from Spain by the Inquisition, but were guaranteed freedom from religious persecution under the terms of the Union of Utrecht. By the end of the eighteenth century, Jews accounted for ten percent of the city’s population. Guilds and craft associations thrived, and in the first half of the seventeenth century Amsterdam’s population quadrupled; the relatively high wages paid by the city’s industries attracted agricultural workers from every part of the country and Protestant refugees arrived from every corner of Catholic Europe.

History | The Golden Age |

Tulipomania

Nothing exemplifies the economic bubble of seventeenth-century Amsterdam more than the arrival of the tulip. As a relatively exotic flower, a native of Turkey, it had already captured the imagination of other parts of Europe, and its arrival in the United Provinces – coinciding as it did with an abrupt rise in personal domestic wealth – led to it becoming the bloom of choice for the discerning collector and horticulturalist. New varieties were developed voraciously and the trade in tulip bulbs boomed in the 1630s, with prices spiralling out of control and culminating in three rare bulbs changing hands for the price of a house. By this time it was less about flowers, and more about speculation, with tulips being seen as a way of getting rich quick. However, such speculation couldn’t be sustained, and the bottom fell out of the tulip market in 1637, when, in the space of three months, prices collapsed to around ten percent of their previous value, and thousands lost everything they possessed. Today tulips and other blooms still define some of the Dutch landscape, but seeing