Tell me about the Dutch Golden Age, /his/.
What made them so successful? What caused them to be absorbed by the French Empire?
What was their most astounding feat?
I want to know!
>>1128676
Calvinism.
>What made them so successful?
The Dutch East India Company (VoC). Living in the Netherlands meant you pretty much had to deal with water, so the Dutch became adept at seafaring and building dykes and such. The VoC was the key behind the Dutch success in terms of spice trade.
>What caused them to be absorbed by the French Empire?
Napoleon. The Dutch were good at fighting at sea (See second and third Anglo-Dutch Wars, Dutch-Portuguese War), but at land they had no chance against the French.
>What was their most astounding feat?
That they were pretty damn successful as a tiny nation even though they had the French, the Germans and the English right next to them. At least the Portuguese had only one neighbor to worry about.
Also pretty impressive is the Franco-Dutch War. Read about it.
>>1128701
VOC, not VoC.
>>1128712
Antwerp got fucked and lost its status as large trade city, amsterdam basically took over.
Also what >>1128701 said
>>1128820
1576 sack of Antwerp.
Antwerp was the New York of Europe at the time whereas Amsterdam was just an irrelevant little town. The sack ruined the city as a result of the sack itself and many fortunes, including the jewish ones, moving to Amsterdam.
That's what triggered Amsterdam's financial and commercial take off.
Did the tulip hyperinflation thing actually happen?
>>1128676
Heavily urbanized like 40-50% in some areas against Europe's average of between 5 and 10%
Shitton of industry in said cities i.e. Cloth production, clay pipes, cannons and arms, pottery, ships etc etc.
Heavily industrialized countryside with the Zaan region having a couple of hundred sawmills for the shipping industry in an area not much bigger than Manhatten. Tons of kelp burning ovens too.
All in all it can be said even the countryside was not focusing that much on agriculture
Trade is more an outcome of this production capability rather than the cause of it. But then again it contributes so as to form a sort of vicious circle.
>>1129004
Yes
>>1129013
What caused it?
>>1129020
Both domestic demand for foreign goods and export. Export results in the market widening meaning more say linnen cloth can be produced and sold in Poland or something like that. At some point though production cannot be expanded further and people with money to invest will have to invest it in the carrying trade.
>>1129020
It was a speculative bubble. The price was rising steadily, so people bought them not for their own sake, but to sell later at a higher price. The person they sold to would be doing the same thing, and so on. So the rise in price is a self-fulfilling prophecy, even though nobody actually values a flower more than a house.
>>1128820
Yes, protestants from flanders fleed french catholic persecution.
