The Dark Side of Dutch Prosperity: A 17th-Century Mercantile Empire
2025-01-30
The Dutch Republic, in the 17th century, was Europe's most powerful mercantile power. Its prosperity, as Julie Berger Hochstrasser notes, was built on the foundational elements of capitalism: rapacious resource extraction and privatization, exploitation of waged and unwaged labor, colonial theft, profit from trade, and the concealment of these exploitative practices. As Marx highlighted in *Capital*, the visible marketplace contrasts sharply with the hidden realities of production. Simon Schama's *The Embarrassment of Riches* showcases Amsterdam's opulent streets, filled with goods from around the world, while obscuring the suffering in plantations, ships, mines, and refineries that made this abundance possible.