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NATIONAL MAGAZINE

AND

Industrial Record.

VOL. II. NEW YORK, DECEMBER, 1845.

HISTORICAL SKETCH

OF

No. VII.

THE COMMERCE OF HOLLAND.

HAVING given in our last number an historical sketch of the commerce of France, we propose now to inquire into the rise, progress, and decline of the trade of Holland.

On no part of the subject relating to the early commerce and wealth of the several European nations, whose commercial importance marked their intercourse during the four centuries, from the 14th to the 18th, has there been more general misconception than with regard to Holland.

An idea appears to have prevailed that the wealth of Holland was entirely owing to the employment of its commercial marine, or, in other words, the carrying trade, and that she had little or no internal industry. It is our purpose to inquire how far this is founded in fact, and we think the truth will appear to be, that Holland was among the first to devote herself to manufactures-more particularly to those of which wool constituted the raw material-and this, long before England and France seriously embarked in them. We have already shown, in our article on general commerce, in our August number, that England obtained her knowledge of making woollen cloth from Holland, and that as late as the time of James L., between 1603 and 1625, all woollen cloths were made white in England, and sent to Holland to be dyed; so that Holland was vastly ahead of England, as late as the commencement of the seventeenth century, in the art of cloth making, though she had, for more than two centuries previous, imported her wool from thence. But we shall not let this rest upon any testimony short of that of Holland herself, which we shall soon give in a public document emanating from her William IV.

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