This week’s research has been especially diffuse, as I try to tie up a few loose ends for the book I’m writing — largely without success, as having pulled on each thread, they just keep on unravelling. One of these loose ends was a throwaway remark in Lewes Roberts’s 1638 description of the world through the eyes of an English merchant. In talking of Amsterdam, he noted how it had become wealthy because of the “great plenty of moneys which they deliver out at easy rates of interest”, which was now seeking investment opportunities with which to earn higher returns. Lacking land, he says, the Dutch had few options left with which to employ their savings, except long-distance navigation. Certainly, as Davis Kedrosky pointed out the other week, Dutch agriculture was from very early on extremely intensive. They had done all they could to squeeze every last investment opportunity out of their
"It’s hard to say exactly how much the Dutch invested in England, but it doesn’t appear to have bought them much political influence. "
This is a wild conjecture but the Glorious Revolution comes to mind here. Perhaps trade, investment, and business relationships with the Dutch made members of parliament more favorable to inviting a Dutchman (and his English wife) to take the English throne when they had grown tired of the incumbent king?
"It’s hard to say exactly how much the Dutch invested in England, but it doesn’t appear to have bought them much political influence. "
This is a wild conjecture but the Glorious Revolution comes to mind here. Perhaps trade, investment, and business relationships with the Dutch made members of parliament more favorable to inviting a Dutchman (and his English wife) to take the English throne when they had grown tired of the incumbent king?