Comments by "Lynott Parris" (@DenUitvreter) on "The Dutch Golden Age – How the Dutch Republic Became so Prosperous in the 17th Century" video.

  1. The Dutch Golden Age started with the VOC? Really? Correct me if I'm wrong but I've understood that at the heigtht of it's power in the 17th century, the VOC had a fleet 140 merchant ships. That might seem a lot for that time and it was, but around 1650 there were about 20.000 Dutch merchant ships sailing the seas, mainly around Europe. This not only had a lot to do with the 'fluyt' design, but also with the 'invention' of the crank, allowing for wind mill powered saws. The Dutch shipped about half of Europe's goods. Let's not confuse the dark side with it's economic importance. The Amsterdam row houses were build on the Baltic Sea Trade (de moedernegotie, mother negotion), the North Sea trade, the Mediterrenean trade and a few on the world's oceans trade too, including the WIC and the VOC.
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  2.  @Ned-nw6ge  It's probably less than 1%. There was the huge European trade, which didn't take a year to get there and a year to return, but brought profit every month. But besides the huge European sea trade there was also a lot of trade on rivers and canals, a lot of fishery (the herring fishery alone made more money annually than the entire VOC at it's peak), and a lot of industry. From fake china to more than half of Europe's books printed in the Dutch Republic, lots of cloth, furniture, a large weapon industry. The Dutch already had a big spending middle class, even the painting industry was colossal for it's day because ordinary people who could not afford what's now a Dutch master did buy paintings. The Dutch didn't take part in the transatlantic slavery until 1638, more than half way through it's golden age. The VOC only started paying dividend in 1631. The 5% is a rather dubious calculation to support the fashionable idea that suffering somehow equals economic importance. That 5% is the entire slave related industry from peak years, so for example sugar bought from a French of English slave colony, transported all over to the Dutch republic, processed and refined and then sold. That's not how BNP works. The Dutch Republic's decision to give up on it's moral/calvinist objection to slavery is very important and interesting from a moral point of view, but not very relevant economically, especially not in the rise of the Dutch Republic because that already happened without the WIC, mostly a financial faillure and a war success, and the VOC's money.
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  3. William invited himself, while preparing the invasion he asked those parliamentarians to write him an invitation, because he wanted to make it look like something else than the invasion it was.
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  4.  @lws7394  There is the history of ethics and morality, and there is economic history. People tend to mix them up, of course morally and culturally the VOC is much more important than the boring Baltic bulk trade of wheat and wood and stuff like that. But let's not forget that the tulip mania, a symptom of excessive wealth, started years before the WIC got involved with the transatlantic slavery and only 1 year after the VOC finally started paying dividends. So that wealth couldn't have come from that.
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