Part 33 (2/2)

[Footnote 717: Cp. Ashley, as cited, i, 104-112; Schanz, as cited, i, 331.]

[Footnote 718: Cp. W. von Ochenkowski, _Englands wirtschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters_, 1879. pp. 177-82, 221-31.

Cp. the author's _Trade and Tariffs_, pt. ii, ch. ii, -- 1.]

[Footnote 719: Hallam, _Middle Ages_, iii, 335. On private war in general see Robertson's _View_, note 21 to -- i.]

[Footnote 720: Ashley, i, 108, 109.]

[Footnote 721: Whereas in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries England and Flanders had freely exchanged trading privileges, in the fifteenth century they begin to withdraw them, treating each other as trading rivals (Schanz, i, 7, 8).]

[Footnote 722: Ashley, i, 110.]

[Footnote 723: This principle may have been copied from the practice of the Lombard _Umiliati_. The common account of that order is that when in 1014 the Emperor banished a number of Lombards, chiefly Milanese, into Germany, they formed themselves into a religious society, called ”The Humbled,” and in that corporate capacity devoted themselves to various trades, in particular to wool-working. Returning to Milan in 1019, they developed their organisation there. Down to 1140 all the members were laymen; but thereafter priests were placed in control. For long the organisation was in high repute both for commercial skill and for culture. Ultimately, like all other corporate orders, they grew corrupt; and in 1571 they were suppressed by Pius V. (Pignotti, _Hist. of Tuscany_, Eng. trans. 1823, pp. 266-67, _note_, following Tiraboschi.)]

[Footnote 724: In such accounts as M'Culloch's (_Treatises and Essays_) and those of the German patriotic historians the Hansa is seen in a rather delusive abstract. The useful monograph of Miss Zimmern (_The Hansa Towns_: Story of the Nations Series) gives a good idea of the reality. See in particular pp. 82-147. It should be noted, however, that Lubeck is credited with being the first northern town to adopt the Oriental usage of water-pipes (Macpherson, _Annals of Commerce_, 1802, i, 381).]

Chapter IV

HOLLAND

NOTE ON LITERATURE

The special interest of Dutch history for English and other readers led in past generations to a more general sociological study of it than was given to almost any other. L. Guicciardini's _Description of the Low Countries_ (_Descrizione ... di tutti Paesi Ba.s.si_, etc., Anversa, folio, 1567, 1581, etc.; trans. in French, 1568, etc.; in English, 1593; in Dutch, 1582; in Latin, 1613, etc.) is one of the fullest surveys of the kind made till recent times. Sir William Temple's _Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands_ (1672) laid for English readers further foundations of an intelligent knowledge of the vital conditions of the State which had been in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the great commercial rival of England; and in the eighteenth century many English writers discussed the fortunes of Dutch commerce. An English translation was made of the remarkably sagacious work variously known as the _Memoirs of John de Witt_, the _True Interest of Holland_, and _Political Maxims of the State of Holland_ (really written by De Witt's friend, Pierre Delacourt; De Witt, however, contributing two chapters), and much attention was given to it here and on the Continent.

In addition to the many and copious histories written in the eighteenth century in Dutch, three or four voluminous and competent histories of the Low Countries were written in French--_e.g._, those of Dujardin (1757, etc., 8 vols. 4to), Cerisier (1777, etc., 10 vols. 12mo), Le Clerc (1723-28, 3 vols. folio), Wicquefort (1719, folio, proceeding from Peace of Munster). Of late years, though the lesson is as important as ever, it appears to be less generally attended to. In our own country, however, have appeared Davies' _History of Holland_ (1841, 3 vols.), a careful but not often an illuminating work, which oddly begins with the statement that ”there is scarcely any nation whose history has been so little understood or so generally neglected as that of Holland”; T.

Colley Grattan's earlier and shorter book (_The Netherlands_, 1830), which is still worth reading for a general view based on adequate learning; and the much better known works of Motley, _The Rise of the Dutch Republic_ (1856) and the _History of the United Netherlands_ (1861-68), which deal minutely with only a period of fifty-five years of Dutch history, and of which, as of the work of Davies, the sociological value is much below the annalistic. All three are impaired as literature by their stale rhetoric. The same malady infects the second volume of the _Industrial History of the Free Nations_ (1846), by W. Torrens M'Cullagh (afterwards M'Cullagh Torrens); but this, which deals with Holland, is the better section of that treatise, and it gives distinct help to a scientific conception of the process of Dutch history, as does J.R. M'Culloch's _Essay on the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Commerce in Holland_, which is one of the best of his _Essays and Treatises_ (2nd ed. 1859). The _Holland_ of the late Professor Thorold Rogers has merit as a vivacious conspectus, but hardly rises to the opportunity.

Of the many French, Belgian, and German works on special periods of the history of the Low Countries, some have a special and general scientific interest. Among these is the research of M. Alphonse Wauters on _Les libertes communales_ (Bruxelles, 1878). Barante's _Histoire des Ducs de Bourgogne_ (4th ed. 1838-40) contains much interesting matter on the Burgundian period. The a.s.siduous research of M. Lefevre Pontalis, _Jean de Witt, Grand Pensionnaire de Hollande_ (2 tom. 1884; Eng. trans. 2 vols.), throws a full light on one of the most critical periods of Dutch history.

Dutch works on the history of the Low Countries in general, and the United Provinces in particular, are many and voluminous; indeed, no history has been more amply written. The good general history of the Netherlands by N.G. van Kampen, which appeared in German in the series of Heeren and Uckert (1831-33), is only partially superseded by the _Geschichte der Niederlande_ of Wenzelburger (Bd. i, 1879; ii, 1886), which is not completed. But the most readable general history of the Netherlands yet produced is that of P.J. Blok, _Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk_ (1892, etc.), of which there is a competent but unfortunately abridged English translation (Putnams, vol. i, 1898).

Standard modern Dutch works are those of J.A. Vijnne, _Geschiedenis van het Vaderland_, and J. van Lennep, _De Geschiedenis van Nederland_. For Belgian history in particular the authorities are similarly numerous.

The _Manuel de l'histoire de Belgique_, by J. David (Louvain, 1847), will be found a good handbook of authorities, episodes, and chronology, though without any sociological element. The _Histoire de Belgique_ of Th. Juste (Bruxelles, 1895, 3 tom. 4to) is comprehensive, but disfigured by insupportable ill.u.s.trations.

-- 1. _The Rise of the Netherlands_

The case of Holland is one of those which at first sight seem to flout the sociological maxim that civilisations flourish in virtue partly of natural advantages and partly of psychological pressures. On the face of things, it would seem that the original negation of natural advantage could hardly be carried farther than here. A land pieced together out of drained marshes certainly tells more of man's effort than of Nature's bounty. Yet even here the process of natural law is perfectly sequent and intelligible.

One of the least-noted influences of the sea on civilisation is the economic basis it yields in the way of food-supply. Already in Caesar's time the Batavians were partly fishermen; and it may be taken as certain that through all the troubled ages down to the period of industry and commerce it was the resource of fis.h.i.+ng that mainly maintained and retained population in the sea-board swamps of the Low Countries. Here was a harvest that enemies could not destroy, that demanded no ploughing and sowing, and that could not well be reaped by the labour of slaves.

When war and devastation could absolutely depopulate the cultivated land, forcing all men to flee from famine, the sea for ever yielded some return to him who could but get afloat with net or line; and he who could sail the sea had a double chance of life and freedom as against land enemies. Thus a sea marsh could be humanly advantaged as against a fruitful plain, and could be a surer dwelling-place. The tables were first effectually turned when the Norse pirates attacked from the sea--an irresistible inroad which seems to have driven the sea-board Frisians (as it did the coast inhabitants of France) in crowds into slavery for protection, thus laying a broad foundation of popular serfdom.[725] When, however, the Norse empire began to fail, the sea as a source of sustenance again counted for civilisation; and when to this natural basis of population and subsistence there was added the peculiar stimulus set up by a religious inculcation or encouragement of a fish diet, the fis.h.i.+ng-grounds of the continent became relatively richer estates than mines and vineyards. Venice and Holland alike owed much to the superst.i.tion which made Christians akreophagous on Fridays and fast-days and all through the forty days of Lent. When the plan of salting herrings was. .h.i.t upon,[726] all Christian Europe helped to make the fortunes of the fisheries.

Net-making may have led to weaving; in any case weaving is the first important industry developed in the Low Countries. It depended mainly on the wool of England; and on the basis of the ancient seafaring there thus arose a sea-going commerce.[727] Further, the position of Flanders,[728] as a trade-centre for northern and southern Europe, served to make it a market for all manner of produce; and round such a market population and manufactures grew together. It belonged to the conditions that, though the territory came under feudal rule like every other in the medieval military period, the cities were relatively energetic all along,[729] theirs being (after the Dark Ages, when the work was largely done by the Church) the task of maintaining the sea-d.y.k.es[730] and water-ways, and theirs the wealth on which alone the feudal over-lords could hope to flourish in an unfruitful land. The over-lords, on their part, saw the expediency of encouraging foreigners to settle and add to their taxable population,[731] thus establis.h.i.+ng the tradition of political tolerance long before the Protestant period.

Hence arose in the Netherlands, after the Renaissance, the phenomenon of a dense industrial population flouris.h.i.+ng on a soil which finally could not be made to feed them,[732] and carrying on a vast s.h.i.+pping trade without owning a single good harbour and without possessing home-grown timber wherewith to build their s.h.i.+ps, or home-products to freight them.[733]

One of the determinants of this growth on a partially democratic footing was clearly the primary and peculiar necessity for combination by the inhabitants to maintain the great sea-d.y.k.es, the ca.n.a.ls, and the embankments of the low-lying river-lands in the interior.[734] It was a public bond in peace, over and above the normal tie of common enmities.

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