Amsterdam 1585–1790: Emergence, Dominance, and Decline

Amsterdam had acquired the reputation as Europe’s dominant insurance centre long before Le Moine de L’Espine’s volume The Commerce of Amsterdam first appeared in 1696. The city’s insurance industry emerged in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, quickly developed into a thriving business, and held onto its prominent position for more than a century. The beginning of the end came in the eighteenth century, and was only relative at first; it did not become abundantly clear until the nineteenth century that Amsterdam had lost its position of leadership, and was in fact reduced to a second-rate insurance market. This story of the emergence, maturity, and eventual decline of a market is inevitably rooted in the interactions of the individuals and groups involved, and the institutional framework which governed their transactions.