For Love of Gain
... We Amsterdammers journey...
Wherever profit leads us, to every sea and shore,
For love of gain the wide world's harbors we explore.
JOOST VON DEN VONDEL^1
A
s countries go, Holland is small—almost as small as Portugal,. and hardly big enough to play the grand imperialist. In 1500, the
Dutch numbered about 1 million; 150 years later, twice that. Small,
but potent: in the seventeenth century, half the people lived in cities,
a higher percentage than anywhere else in Europe. And active: an ob
server of 1627 noted that Dutch roads and waterways were crowded,
"that there are not so many carriages (and heaven knows there are) in
Rome than there are wagons here, filled with travelers, while the canals,
which crisscross the country in all directions, are covered by innumer
able boats."^2 Even more impressive were the ports large and small,
hives of shipping. By the 1560s the province of Holland alone pos
sessed some one thousand eight hundred seagoing ships—six times
those floated by Venice at the height of its prosperity a century earlier.
About five hundred of these were attached to Amsterdam, but in fact
the whole seaboard was a pincushion of masts: over five hundred busses
for the herring trade alone, sited for the most part in small ports long
forgotten—Hoorn, Enkhuizen, Medemblik.^3
Once again, a small European nation surpassed itself, and this
achievement reflected both intrinsic capabilities and the highly com
petitive character of European nation building. Above all, Dutch sue-