In Amsterdam one is struck immediately by the weight of the past. But I found the common tropes available to be inadequate in framing the story of the city for the visitor. I visited both the City and the Canal Museums, which have elaborate, high-tech summaries of the city's Golden Age that produced the historic canals and houses for which Amsterdam is world famous. Unfortunately, these potted histories leave much to be desired, and not just because they are popular displays.
The Golden Age is torn from most of the European, global and even national context that made it possible:
Nor is there much, if any, recognition of the distinctiveness of the Dutch political economy within Europe, other than its Protestantism. This was literally and figuratively a marginal place, and it is in the world's peripheries where social and economic innovation is most readily incubated, because of the freedom from accepted/past social orders. To wit:
Then, there are the reasons why Amsterdam was transcended by London and Holland by England in the further advance of European economic development and global power. These hardly register in the official histories beyond the tale of William of Orange becoming the British King in 1688 and a succession of indecisive Anglo-Dutch Wars – typically shorn of their real purpose, commercial supremacy and control of colonies. Why did England (Britain) triumph?
Finally, there is the effect of the Industrial Age on Amsterdam, which merits hardly a word in all the hype over the Golden Age. England gave birth to the Industrial Revolution, not Holland, which was more thoroughly under the suzereignty of merchants and bankers (recall that the Industrial Revolution broke out in the north of England, NOT in London, for the same reason). But as the Dutch followed England's lead, the railroad, triumphant symbol of 19th century industrialism, took over the old port of Amsterdam, cutting the city off from the sea and turning its face inward. Worse, the rise of German industry along the Rhine made southern cities like Rotterdam into the new global shipping points of the northern European economy, as they are today. Amsterdam's Baltic and British trade routes were eclipsed and the city fell back among European centers.
Richard Walker is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. His research is focused on economic geography, regional development, capitalism and politics, cities and urbanism, resources and environment, class and race. Walker visited the Amsterdam Centre for Urban Studies mid September 2014 to give a guest lecture, titled “Surprising San Francisco: The Success and Failure of the World's Tech Center”.
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