The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age by Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen (review)

In September 1999, in my capacity as Curator of the Dutch and Flemish Collections at the British Library, I initiated the organization of an international conference entitled The Bookshop of the World: The Role of the Low Countries in the Book-Trade, 1473–1941 (the proceedings of which were published by Hes & De Graaf, 2001). The subtitle was there to signal a deliberate effort to get away from the narrowness of and the obsession with the Dutch Golden Age. It is flattering that, two decades later, the same title was chosen by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen for their joint study on a comparable topic. However, its subtitle, ‘Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age’, marks a significant difference in approach.

In order to conceptualize historical processes and provide a unified narrative on a subject-matter that is characterized by limitless diversity, historians have adopted metaphors derived from botanical growth, from the biological life cycle, or from a geographical passage or pathway. Such metaphors share aspects of origin or source and suggest flow and unfolding. History develops in stages. Logically, its trajectory must lead us somewhere. What more exciting destination than a Golden or Gilded Age? The metaphor originates in Hesiod’s thinking. He described it as a period in which all humans were created directly by Olympian gods. The notion proved multi-interpretable. Rousseau’s theories on the ‘noble savage’ shaped the topos of an idyllic golden age at a place (island) sheltered from nefarious Western influences. In his socio-political teachings Henri de Saint-Simon suggested the imminence of a golden age in which all workers would be free and equal. Almost every account of national history, be it Spanish, Danish, Belarusian, Polish, or any other, identifies a ‘24-carat period’ in the course of time. The Dutch Golden Age can be summarized in the following terms.

The 1585 Spanish sacking of Antwerp brought about mass migration of Flemish citizens to the northern Netherlands, causing a shift in the balance of power within the Low Countries. Based on the experience of Flemish mercantile cities, the Dutch Republic built a rich commercial and artistic empire. In a time when the notion of nationhood was non-existent, Holland was effectively made up of cities. This city culture created a society that did not nurture the leading role of an aristocracy, but encouraged socio-economic life to be dominated by its burghers. Equality of chance gave society a competitive edge. Unlike the rest of seventeenth century Europe, Holland created unparalleled wealth in (colonial) trade, fishing, and banking, and experienced a flourishing of art, science, and medicine, backed up by a printing and publishing trade working in overdrive. During the seventeenth century more books were printed here than in the rest of Europe put together. To historians, Dutch Republic and Golden Age were (and are) interchangeable terms.

The ‘Golden Age approach’ in historiography has a fundamental drawback. The notion of continuity is sidelined and contextual factors are blurred. Like Burckhardt’s Renaissance in Italy, the chosen age appears as a period frozen in time, a paradise lost. The authors of this study tread similar lofty grounds. In the Prelude (p. 3) they declare the emergence of the Dutch Republic nothing less than a ‘miracle’—and proceed in four hundred pages religiously explaining the inexplicable. The term reappears in the concluding remarks (p. 404). Unfortunately, the feast of creative endeavour cannot last and at some time the party will lose its sparkle—which reminded me of a line in Noël Coward’s On with the Dance: ‘Cocktails and laughter . . . but what comes after?’

Having reached the climax of perfection, de-vitalization is inevitable, and the creative boom turns to bust. The notion of decline becomes an...