The Rise of the Amsterdam Market and Information Exchange

This groundbreaking study challenges the notion that the shift of commercial power from Antwerp to Amsterdam in the sixteenth century was inevitable, and that the persistence of medieval practices in the former city doomed it to economic decline. Instead, it is argued that the physical division of the Low Countries into separate, hostile, states forced Amsterdam to redefine its role as trading capital of the Dutch Republic, and provided it with unique opportunities that it fully exploited.