AMSTERDAM

AMSTERDAM. With a population of around 11,000 in 1514, Amsterdam ranked among the middling towns of Europe at the close of the Middle Ages. Two hundred years later, the city was the fourth largest in Europe, with an estimated population of 200,000. Most of this growth had occurred between 1585 and 1650. It was all the more remarkable because, among Europe's ten largest cities, Amsterdam was the only one that was not a state capital; its expansion was a commercial phenomenon.

Situated on the confluence of the River Amstel, which gave the city its name, and an arm of the sea called the IJ, Amsterdam's location provided a deep and safe natural harbor for international shipping. In the sixteenth century the city was able to capture a substantial share of the expanding trade between Holland and the Baltic, which helped feed the city's waterlogged hinterland. Amsterdam became the most significant of Antwerp's satellite ports in the northern Low Countries.

Amsterdam's position changed dramatically in the course of the Dutch Revolt. Initially loyal to the Spanish king, the city was blockaded for years before it decided to join the rebel side in 1578. Then, in 1585, Antwerp was reconquered by the Spaniards, and in retaliation the rebels cut off shipping on the River Scheldt. Antwerp's merchant community dispersed, with many eventually settling in Amsterdam. Together with the local merchants they initiated a remarkable boom. Already in the 1590s Amsterdam merchants fitted out ships to explore various routes to the East Indies. Their success led to the establishment of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) in 1602, with Amsterdam merchants providing more than half of the initial capital. When the Dutch West India Company (West-Indische Compagnie, or WIC) was established in 1621, Amsterdam merchants were again the most important providers of capital. During the first half of the seventeenth century Amsterdam developed into the "staple" of western Europe, where every conceivable product available on the world market was sold.

The economic boom attracted large numbers of people to Amsterdam, both from within the Dutch Republic and from other countries. During the seventeenth century roughly one third of Amsterdam's population was of foreign origin, while another third had migrated to the city from within the Dutch borders. To make room for all these newcomers, the city's territory had to be expanded. The most significant additions were made in two stages during the 1610s and the 1660s, when Amsterdam obtained its characteristic shape. The old city center was surrounded by a ring of three main canals, designed especially with the newly rich merchant class in mind. The canals were in turn enveloped by a ring of cheaper housing for artisan and working-class households. These two expansions also thwarted the development of suburbs and ensured that all of Amsterdam's population remained firmly under the control of the city's institutions.

Within the confederate Dutch Republic, Amsterdam enjoyed much autonomy. Its politicians, mostly recruited from the merchant community, were also indirectly involved in determining national priorities, ensuring, for example, that Amsterdam's trade interests in the Baltic remained well protected. Amsterdam's four burgomasters, three of whom were replaced each year, were sometimes considered as the most powerful men in the country. The defense of the town's political independence was of great importance to them. The burgomasters ruled Amsterdam itself with the help of a great many corporate institutions. The guilds, for example, were and remained very important in the local economy. During the seventeenth century their number doubled, and they organized as much as a third of the population. Public order was maintained with the help of the civic militias.

The city's culture reflected this emphasis on civic institutions. In 1648 work began on the building of a new town hall, which was to be the largest purely civic building created in seventeenth-century Europe. Its magnificent design in fashionable Dutch classicism, lavishly decorated with monumental sculpture and paintings, was a monument to Amsterdam's achievements. The central hall was significantly known as the Citizens' Hall. Civic virtue was also a central theme in what was to become the most famous painting of Amsterdam's Golden Age, Rembrandt's Nightwatch (1642), which depicts the officers of a militia company guarding the town at night. This, and numerous similar collective portraits of militia officers, were created to be displayed in public.

Amsterdam's political independence, and the commercial attitude of its leading citizens, also helped create a tolerant religious climate, most significantly expressed in the treatment of Jewish immigrants. Holland did not have a Jewish community before the end of the sixteenth century, and when the first Jews arrived from Portugal in the 1590s the authorities were very open-minded about their settlement in Amsterdam. Jewish residents could obtain citizenship rights, albeit on restricted conditions. In the course of the seventeenth century two large synagogues were built in Amsterdam. Although a Jewish neighborhood developed in Amsterdam, it was not a ghetto, and Jews were permitted to live throughout the city.

Economic prosperity lasted longer in Amsterdam than in any of the other Dutch towns. However, in the course of the eighteenth century it became clear that Amsterdam's heyday was over. Most tellingly, the growth of its population, already slackening in the second half of the seventeenth century, was really over by 1740. The extra space that had been added by the extension of the 1660s remained partly unoccupied. The merchants, once the most dynamic force of the city, became conservative in their outlook, and many families retired from business altogether. Banking became the most significant element of the city's service sector, but it did little in terms of local employment. Poverty skyrocketed, especially during the 1780s and 1790s, when ultimately one in five families depended on poor relief. By then, the glory days of the Golden Age were still treasured by the small part of the population fortunate—and wealthy—enough to live on one of the main canals. Elsewhere, in the narrow back alleys where whole families were crowded into a single room or cellar, Amsterdam had come to look like any other European city.

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