While studying European guilds last year, I came across a debate over the “Golden Age” of the Netherlands (1580 to 1680). The issue was whether Dutch guilds were weak or strong. I wanted to delve into this subject, but doing so would have been futile. I don’t know the Dutch language. The best writing about Dutch guilds in the seventeenth century would be in Dutch.
I suspect that many historians, including economic historians, have experienced this same problem and not given the Dutch the study they deserve. Historians tend to praise the early muscularity of the Netherlands economy but then dismiss the country as being unimportant in the long run because it missed out on the Industrial Revolution.
This, despite the facts that the country increased its farmland by one-third (from 1300 to 1800) through reclamation from the sea, it had a prosperous economy before any other country, and it had a sturdy middle class in the age of Rembrandt. But it didn’t have factories until late in the nineteenth century, so it was “backward.” It fell off the charts of history—its high point being 1688, when its stadtholder, William of Orange, became the king of England.
During the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s I used to joke that if a pollster called and asked me where Nicaragua (home of the Contra rebels) was, I wouldn’t have an answer. It’s amazing that I could be so geographically ignorant (and this was just one example) and still view myself as an educated adult.[1]
For me, that has changed. Now that I am studying history, I am aware of the importance of geography. How can I understand Irish rebellions if I don’t know where the Pale and Ulster are? How much can I learn about the woolen industry in Languedoc if I don’t know where Languedoc is and whether it could raise its own sheep?
I am a convert. (That’s why I include two geography websites on the right-hand side of this blog.) Yet some of the most fundamental geographical insights come from outside the field of history. The chief outside influence, I venture to say, is evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond, whose remarkable book Guns, Germs, and Steel reestablished geography as a major force in shaping history.[2]
