The Familial State Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe by Julia Adams

The Familial State
A volume in
T H E WILDER H O U S E SERIES
IN POLITICS, HISTORY,
AND CULTURE
edited by David Laitin

George Steinmetz
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Library of Congress Catloging-in -Publication Data
Adams, Julia.
The familial state : ruling families and merchant capitalism in early modern Europe / Julia
Adams.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-3308-5 (cloth :alk.paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8014-7404-0 (pbk. :alk.paper)
1. State, The—History. 2. Netherlands—Commerce—History—17th century. 3.
Mercantile system—Netherlands—History—17th century. 4. Elite (Social sciences)—
Netherlands—History—17th century. 5. Mercantile system—Great Britain—History—18th cen-
tury. 6. Mercantile system—France—History—18th century. I. Title: Ruling families and
merchant capitalism in early modern Europe. II. Tide.
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The Familial State
Ruling Families and
Merchant Capitalism in
Early Modern Europe
JULIA ADAMS
Cornell University Press

Ithaca and London
To my parents, Virginia Rives Adams (1931-2000)
and Tliomas Tilley Adams
Acknowledgments
T his book began life in the Sociology Department of the University of

Wisconsin, where I had the benefit of a wonderful advisor, Erik Olin
Wright. I thank Erik, Chas Camic, Suzanne Desan, Richard Lachmann,
Rob Howell, Ann Orloff, and Ron Aminzade for their terrific support
and advice. Like Mark Gould, who introduced me to historical sociology
at Haver ford College, they have become treasured friends as well as
inspiring academic interlocutors.
My initial research was generously funded by a Chateaubriand
Fellowship from the French government and a Social Science Research
Council dissertation fellowship. The University Fellowship I received
from the Sociology Department at the University of Wisconsin was a
much-appreciated support during the initial writing year.
During my research time abroad, I was befriended and helped along by
many kind souls. I am especially grateful to Femme Gaastra, Els van Eyck
van Heslinga, and Marjolein 't Hart. I benefited both from their organi-
zational aid and from reading their superb historical work. I am also
indebted to the staff of Columbia University's outpost in Paris, Reid Hall,
and the friendly fellow researchers I met there, all of whom made that
stage of my work more pleasant and fruitful.
My years as an assistant professor were spent at the University of
Michigan and, because Michigan combines a terrific Sociology
Department with unparalleled interdisciplinarity, I can't imagine a better
intellectual home for me at that stage of my work. At Michigan I incorpo-
rated the family and gender dimensions that fundamentally changed what
had been an argument in classical political economy and made it effec-
tively a completely new book. It also meant more research and writing. I
spend a great semester based in Edinburgh, Scotland, doing just that. I
extend my heartfelt thanks to the International Social Sciences Institute
(ISSI) for hosting me and to my friend Sharon Witherspoon for her
bountiful hospitality.
My colleagues at Michigan, departmental and extra-departmental, were
a never-ending source of intellectual inspiration. Here I mention only
rx
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
those who had a direct impact on this particular book, but that hardly
does justice to my sense of broader intellectual obligation to those col-
leagues and to Michigan's exciting academic atmosphere. An early version
of chapter 2 was read by the Sociology Study Group (which at that time
included me, Miige Gocek, Howard Kimeldorf, and Jeff Paige), and the
introduction was dissected by the Goils Group (the lineup then consisting
of Sonya Rose, Julie Skurski, Peggy Somers, Jackie Stevens, and Ann
Stolcr). It was Geoff Eley's idea that I present materials from chapter 3 at
the Program in the Comparative Study of Social Transformations (CSST),
and I profited from his reactions and from CSSTs intellectual dynamism'
Arland Thornton gave me helpful written comments after 1 gave an earlier
draft of that same chapter at the Family Studies Seminar at the Institute
for Social Research. These spaces, plus the Early Modern Group, the
Institute for the Humanities, and the Michigan Society of Fellows, were
all wonderful interdisciplinary venues for talk. I also learned much from
conversations with Kerry Ward, fellow VOC aficionado; Val Kivelson; and
Linda Gregerson, with whom I co-taught an inspiring course on early
modern European history. I owe Celeste Brusati a big thank you for her
expertise in Dutch Golden Age art and society. Most of all, however, I
thank George Steinmetz, long-time friend and fellow laborer in the social
theory trenches, who in addition to his many other intellectual virtues has
always been compelled by the arguments in this book. When he was at the
University of Chicago, George, along with David Laitin, also had an edi-
torial hand in the book which appears as the last in the excellent Wilder
House series that they co-edited.
While at Michigan, I benefited from an American Council of Learned
Societies fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities and
Fulbright summer grants, and leave time and general research support
from the University of Michigan. I am also grateful to the journals
Comparative Studies in Society and History (CSSH) and Theory and Society,
which published earlier versions of chapters 2 and 3 respectively. Ray Grew'
then editor of CSSH, and Chuck Tilly, at Theory and Society, gave me
insightful written comments that made their way into the final versions.
In a project that has extended over a number of years and sustained several
interruptions, it is difficult to remember—much less to separate out!—which
formal academic presentations were dedicated specifically to arguments that
appear here rather than in other related intellectual projects. But as near as I
can recall, I presented such materials to the sociology departments of
Columbia University, Northwestern University, University of California at
Acknowledgments xi
Los Angeles, and University of Minnesota. I also discussed portions of the

manuscript at talks at the Fordham University History Department; the
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Wassenaar, Holland; the Social
Theory Workshop at the University of Chicago; and at various conferences.
Fd like to thank the audiences at all of those venues for their stimulating
questions and comments.
At different points in the life of the book, Michael Burawoy, Richard
Lachmann, Barbara Laslett, Steve Pincus, and Art Stinchcombe gave me
marvelously helpful written feedback. I was not able to act on all their
suggestions, but the book is stronger because of their critical comments.
My greatest intellectual debt, however, is to Nancy Cur tin. She has
argued with me and shared her deep (seemingly bottomless) knowledge
of early modern England, and she bucked me up at a particularly fraught
juncture, when I came close to abandoning the project. I owe her a lot.
Roger Haydon, my editor at Cornell University Press, deserves special
mention for his amazing capacity to combine intellectual acuteness, a great
sense of humor, and saintly patience. He's needed all three qualities in
order to wrest the manuscript from my hands. I also appreciate the help
I've received from Teresa Jesionowski, Julie Nemer, and Kathy Wood. And
to the indispensable Pat Preston, who has made that manuscript a legible
one, often apparently against my efforts, I say a big thank you.
Acknowledgments are a little like family lineages. How fitting, then, that
my fundamental debts are to family: my aunt Nancy and uncle Claude, who
made me so welcome during my Paris sojourns; my dear siblings Janet,
Claire, and Doug; and my husband Jeff Jordan and son Andrew Adams
Jordan, enormous and delightful distractions. Surely the fact that the book
ultimately did get done is related to Andrew's reaching the age when he
began trying to, as he said, "put in some new words" when I'd left the text
up on the computer. That was a sign: time to finish up. Perhaps I can blame
anv mistakes in the book on his editorial interventions.
With all my remaining childhood narcissism, I wish that my mother
had lived to see the publication of this book. She was, as my father is, a
lover of history, and thev communicated their enthusiasm to me. I feel
tremendously blessed to have had their love and support. Sharper than a
serpent's tooth I may have been at times, especially during the adolescent
years, but never thankless. I dedicate this book to both of them.
JULIA ADAMS
New Haven, Connecticut
The Familial State
Introduction: The Netherlands
as Point of Departure
T o anyone curious about the rise of states in early modern Europe, or

the making of the modern world more generally, the Netherlands
might seem an idiosyncratic launching point. The seven United Provinces
of the Netherlands, also known as the Dutch Republic, were tiny even
when bunched together and had a relatively small population. 1 The
Republic was just emerging into political autonomy at the close of the six-
teenth century, too, and was caught up in a revolt against its erstwhile
Spanish overlord that lasted for eighty long years, until independence was
ratified in 1648. No wonder, then, that those looking to understand
evolving forms of state power are wont to turn their eyes elsewhere. Yet
the Netherlands was a world-historical actor in the formative earlv mod-
ern era, conventionally taken to span the period between 1500 and 1800—
so much so that it is now indelibly associated with the seventeenth
century, sometimes called the Dutch Golden Age. During those years the
Dutch forged the first global commercial/colonial system and established
an unprecedented position of world power. The Netherlands also wit-
nessed the development of a brilliant national culture, paradoxically cele-
brating and disturbed by its own unforeseen abundance. 2 Dutch
developments in general, and its politico-economic arrangements in par-
ticular, shaped the political histories of other regions and countries in
Europe and the colonial territories in the East and West Indies. If the
1
When it comes to things Dutch, terminology can be confusing. Throughout this book, the
Netherlands refers to the seven United Provinces, also known as the Dutch Republic.
Holland is the largest of those provinces. The term Low Counto'ies covers what is approxi-
mately the present-day Netherlands and Belgium. Dutch denotes the inhabitants of the
Netherlands and their language. The United Provinces had about r.5 million inhabitants in
1600, compared to some TO million in Iberia and 16-20 million in neighboring France.
2
This paradox is eloquently depicted in Schama (1987).
2 T H E FAMILIAL STATE
Dutch Republic ultimately declined—and we will have to examine

whether it did or not—it did so after playing a most influential role.
This book puts the Netherlands at center stage for still another reason: it
can illuminate processes of early modern European development and
mechanisms of politico-economic stability and change more generally. The
Dutch Republic has been flagged by social scientists before as a potentially
instructive case, even a foundational one in the making of modernity, but
it has proved surprisingly hard to assimilate. World-systems analysts, for
instance, beginning with Immanuel Wallerstein, have not only underlined
but helped us see the fundamental role of the Netherlands as the first
hegemonic power in the rise of a globally extended system. Of course
world-systems analysts see hegemony in a specific way, as defined by the
reproduction and appropriation of economic surplus, flowing from the
global specialization and rationalization that supposedly gives rise to the
efficiency and higher labor productivity that is the hallmark of capitalism.
As capital accumulates, they argue, it is secured by exchange on the world
market, with, in Wallerstein's phrase, "the nonmarket assist of state
machineries" (1974-89,1: 38). A "strong" state makes possible and secures
world hegemony. And there's the rub: although the Netherlands was first
among equals in the Golden Age, the Dutch state falls stubbornly outside
the dictates of the theory. Throughout the early modern era, the
Netherlands had what Wallerstein himself calls a "jerry-rigged" political
apparatus (1974-89, 2: 38), an apparendy weak and ramshackle affair. How
could this have jibed with the far-flung dominance of the Golden Age?
And why didn't the ruling elite of the Netherlands mobilize the tremen-
dous influx of resources to do something about that state, restructuring
with an eye to maintaining the conditions within which their mercantile
system flourished? World-systems theory wavers on the first question and
remains silent on the second, even as it marks the passage of the torch of
hegemony from the Netherlands to England in the eighteenth century.3
The Netherlands is a theoretical irritant out of proportion to its small size.
In this world-systems analysis is symptomatic; the same is true of other
theoretical systems, whose proponents have wanted to devise—usually as a
vehicle for explaining the Great Revolutions of early modern Europe—a
general-theoretic or at least single-paradigm explanation of state formation
and breakdown.
3
In Adams (1994b), I provide an extensive discussion of the relationship between world-sys-
tems analvsis and the Dutch case.
The Netherlands as Point of Departure 3
But anomalies and irritants are potentially productive. "States have

flourished which meet none of the criteria of the political scientist/'
writes Joseph Strayer (1970), "for example the Netherlands in the sev-
enteenth century" (5). Perhaps social science criteria have been too
limited. Partisans of all theoretical approaches could benefit from tak-
ing a closer look at the Netherlands, whether they are focusing on the
protracted transition from feudalism to capitalist democracy that soci-
ologists have been arguing about for decades (and will probably argue
about forever) or the leap from classical patriarchy to modern forms of
institutionalized male dominance canvassed in recent feminist theory.
It is surprising, but to suggest this still involves swimming against the
scholarly tide, for England and France continue to stand as the canoni-
cal cases of European political development. It is an "ever-present
temptation" in social science, as Charles Tilly notes, to take those
countries as exemplars of "successful" state formation "and all others
as failures to be explained by features of the French and English experi-
ence that they lacked" (1994, 16-17). This caution is equally important
for feminist theories of early modern European politics because their
overwhelming emphasis on the courtly arrangements of France and
England has encouraged a tendency to treat nascent states as reducible
to a king—a single capital F Father—or at most a royal family. When
the monarch (or the court) stands in for the whole of early modern
European high politics and one node is taken to substitute for a com-
plex and uneven network of governance, I argue, the gendered, famil-
ial character of Old Regime states is actually underplayed.
Highlighting the Dutch state, which lacked a monarch but was
nonetheless a patriarchal patrimonial formation, is my way of supplying
a corrective and widening the potential contribution of gender analysis
to theories of state building. En route I hope to revise our collective
view of what transpired in the more canonical cases as well.
At the core of this problem and of this book, therefore, lies the
enigma of the Dutch state: an Ariadne's thread that can help us unravel
the knotty role of transitional states in early modern Europe. Chapter 1
sets out from the sociological literature on state formation in Europe
and goes on to develop a general conceptual approach to states in for-
mation that integrates feminist theory and an enriched Weberian con-
cept of patrimonial power—that characteristic form of rule in which a
ruler (such as a monarch or a lesser lord or stadholder, literally "state-
holder") and the corporations that the ruler recognizes or sponsors
jointly do politics and share the prerogatives of sovereignty.4 I think of

these states under construction as familial states, stressing the ideal-
typical tie between paternal political rule and the multiple arrange-
ments among the family heads that inhabit and shape the evolving
political organizations and the economic flows they managed.
In chapters 2 and 3, I argue that a particular form of governance—an
institutional nexus fusing a set of elite patriarchal families with a merchant
capitalist class and a locally grounded patrimonial state—was a key factor in
the spectacular ascent of the Dutch. Elite merchant-regent family heads
managed to lay claim to parts of the Dutch state, which became the de facto
property of family lineages and clans. These ruling families assumed the
mantle of time-honored traditionalism while wielding state office and privi-
lege in some strikingly innovative ways—notably in launching the huge sov-
ereign chartered companies targeted at the East and West Indies that
formed the sprawling Dutch overseas empire and the future of Dutch
domestic politics. The companies also forged the template for the first great
wave of empire: they were economic and military forces with which all com-
ers had to contend, and they were widely imitated by other European hope-
fuls, leaving their traces in the interior of these metropolitan states as well.
These privileged spots in the Dutch state lured men in several intercon-
nected ways. They entitled the lucky few who held them to make claims on
flows of resources and to take authoritative, far-reaching decisions. They
also enshrined and expanded the glory of family lineages, particularly the
status of their leading male representatives who occupied the posts. Chapter
3 foregrounds this gendered familial aspect of patrimonial power in the rise
of the Dutch. Political privilege was the backdrop against which the identity
of family scions took shape, the setting in which specific forms of elite mas-
culinity celebrating a man's statist pedigree were enacted and elaborated.
Perhaps this sounds strange, for the popular and scholarly image of the
United Provinces is typically one of doughty individualistic burghers, not
patriarchal power plays and elite lineage politics. Yet it is precisely in die
Netherlands, where global commercial capitalist dominance was grafted to
localized familial rule, that the uneven and contradictory development
definitive of early modern patrimonial states—and therefore also their
empires—is starkly revealed.
4
On the concept of patrimonialism, see Weber (1968 [1922], 226, 293-97, 1006-7, 1010-13,
1022-23,1028-31). Chapter 1 explores this idea at more length.
The glory of the Golden Age dimmed in the late seventeenth century,
and the spectacular rise was followed by the downturn that lent early
modern Dutch history its dramatic zigzag shape. Dutch decline was
partly due to what we think of as exogenous factors, as many historians
and social scientists have asserted. Perhaps this was only to be expected:
given the interregional and international integration that the Dutch
leader helped create, mounting pressure told on the Netherlands' vulner-
able entrepot role. My claim, pursued in chapter 5, is that the zag in the
Dutch zigzag also reflects a particular form of state construction and a
partial collapse not well accounted for in the theoretical literature on state
formation. The missing piece of the puzzle is the patrimonial institutional
nexus. The elite family heads, the merchant-regents, armed with the pow-
erful concept of paternal rule, were able to take over the state, reforging
generations of elite politico-economic authority. The Dutch patriarchs
went on to invent a series of ingenious patrimonial pacts that further rein-
forced local genealogies of office. They effectively locked a dispersed and
localized form of political privilege into place, one that guaranteed their
families places in the economic sun but sharply limited state capacities in
the eighteenth century. Try as they might—and they did try—the elite
could not come to grips with this latter problem, much less solve it.
Chapter 5 contends that in the Dutch case the family investments in forms
of politico-economic privilege supported continued political fragmenta-
tion. Thus, the unique three-way patrimonial configuration that fostered
the rise of the Netherlands helped unravel its form of governance and its
global empire a century later.
The canonical cases, France and England, serve first of all as the back-
drop against which I assess my claim that the Netherlands' unique version
of governance contributed to the formation and ultimately the dissolution
of Dutch hegemony. To some scholars, the early modern Netherlands
looks so unusual, so different from the canonical cases, that its idiosyncra-
cies seem to preclude any such comparison: Wasn't it a capitalist enclave
hemmed in by continental feudalisms? a burgher republic surrounded by
monarchies like France, which embraced an aristocratic absolutism, and
England, which inclined toward a mixed monarchical/estatist system?
Although they are easily overstated, these differences are important. They
inflected the link between states and rulers foregrounded here, as we shall
see, and were reflected in how the various protonational elites understood
their own exercise of sovereignty and the relationship of sovereignty itself.
In this vein, chapters 4 and 6 underscore unexplored similarities in the

dynamics of patrimonial development and decline. In France and England
as well as the Netherlands, coalitions of men—or, more precisely, men
who represented elite patriarchal families—came to possess and control
pieces of patrimonial states, deploying them to intergenerational family
advantage. These coalitions implanted themselves in the evolving state
apparatuses and spinoff sovereign companies that revolutionized the
mechanisms of overseas capital accumulation and projected newly multi-
plied military force abroad. These states in the making therefore came to
resemble one another in certain important ways. They featured converg-
ing kinds of political conflict and cohesion, for example, and strikingly
similar institutional innovations and rigidities as family heads collectively
devised ways to grasp their privileges more tightly. The men themselves
changed because of their families' having sunk their roots into state office.
Among other things, they become the authors of reinvented forms of
patriarchal political authority. In all three sites, this involved not simply
their own rule but also the cultural claims and institutional moves of
superordinate "political fathers"—monarchs and monarchical substitutes.
Conversely, by virtue of this common platform of rule and reconstitution
of political claims-making, key differences emerged in the class content of
the ruling family coalitions, in their uneasy relationships with monarchical
dynastic projects, and in their articulation with changing forms of elite
masculinity. These differences carved out distinctive trajectories of
domestic state formation and colonial ventures. The conventional picture
of politics in eighteenth-century northern Europe is one of Dutch
decline, English triumph, and French collapse. This is crude but not
wrong. Here I explore the causal mechanism of domestic patrimonial
forms—the three-way institutional nexus of elite families, state, and eco-
nomic flows—and their overseas expansion.
The book as a whole also tells a consistent story of mutual influence
within an emergent global formation. Once the United Provinces of the
Netherlands had gained their position in the teeth of Iberian resistance,
France and England became the principal rivals in the international com-
mercial/colonial stakes, covetous of the munificent flow of resources into
the Netherlands and the political position that made it possible. Sometimes
this tricornered relationship was collaborative; sometimes it exploded in
internecine war. And as Dutch dominance gathered force, the rulers of the
contending states deliberately set themselves to copy, perfect, and surpass
key Dutch institutions while alternately harassing and collaborating with
the United Provinces on its home turf and at its colonial outposts. The bur-
geoning world network of relationships among patrimonial powers—
including the dynastic ties that linked them—undermined the terms of the
Netherlands' dominance, transforming the opportunity structures available
to all state builders. The Dutch tertiusjjaudem—or de lachende derde, in the
Dutch proverb—was no longer laughing.5
The constitution of the basic elements of this tricornered relationship,
particularly the founding of the key chartered companies at the behest of
elites and their home states, sets the terms of the beginning of my historical
narrative; the supersession of this mode of doing family politics and business
marks the end. En route, I draw on several sources: manuscript and printed
primary sources or archival records of Dutch politico-economic negotia-
tions, elite family documents, and local contracts regarding elite office-
holding and a wealth of secondary source materials on the Netherlands,
France, England, and other relevant countries and regions, including col-
lective biographies, or prosopographies, of Dutch urban regencies. I also
make use of information on the 303 members of the Holland and Zeeland
chambers of the Dutch East Indies Company (1602-1795), in which I sup-
plement the excellent data that were gathered under the auspices of the
Werkgroep Elites at Leiden University, the Netherlands.6
The Netherlands is a small country, but I see it as the vehicle for tack-
ling theoretical issues of the largest possible interest.
Cases, Mechanisms, Institutions, and Speculations
A few analytical strategies pursued in this book are worth signaling in

advance. First is the role of case studies. We recognize the "big cases" of
the Netherlands, France, and England as countries then, as now, conven-
tionally delimited by malleable geographic borders. Here they are also
nicknames, shorthand for empirical sites where developing state, elite
families, and class relations are linked in coherent patterns or gestalts and
whose borders may vary over time without disturbing their political
integrity or conceptual unity. Considered in highly abstract terms, chapter
1 argues, each of these master cases can be seen as a version of a single
template of patriarchal patrimonialism. Or, rather, we can revise and put
5
Georg Simmel (1950 [1923]) penned the classic analysis of the vicissitudes of the tertius
gciudcnSy or laughing third party, in a tricornered relationship.
6
I am particularly grateful to Dr. Femme Gaastra for making these materials available to me.
to use Max Weber's ideal type to spodight certain "deep analogies"

(Stinchcombe 1978). Claims to sovereignty were couched in formally
identical ways, for example, and the capacity to make economic and polit-
ical claims was delegated to corporate groups along similar lines. I also
argue that a single form of elite family household characteristic of north-
west Europe was entangled with emergent state power.7 Establishing
these broadly shared features and the configurational connections among
them (Ragin 2000, chap. 3) will enable me to draw certain sweeping com-
parisons, and to treat the Netherlands, France, and England as compara-
ble at the outset of the period under examination.
At less lofty levels of abstraction and analysis, however, political structures
varied tremendously on the very component dimensions that deep analo-
gies highlight. Relationships between the monarch and corporate elites
gave rise to political arrangements ranging from estatist to absolutist in the
seventeenth century, as we will see, with the Netherlands on the former end
of the continuum, France on the latter, and England in between. Sovereign
power was more or less locally or centrally organized. States and their asso-
ciated corporations might be more or less dependent on certain groups or
practices for resources, political support, and symbolic legitimacy. They
might be inhabited by merchant family cliques, seigneurial family lineages,
or composed of complex combinations and alliances of the two. And so on.
Historically distinctive political visions also left their mark on each state.
Differences such as these were not simply decorative; they shaped social
outcomes that matter for the historical narrative. At certain points in my
overall story, therefore, some of these mechanisms become the focus and
the relevant units or cases for comparative analysis of political stability and
change.8 The challenge is to take these causal clusters and shallower analo-
gies, detach them from the grand sweep of larger total historical sequences,
and then reassemble them into newly meaningful and more manageable
series that help us better understand long-term historical stability and trans-
formation. This is also an analytical narrative, a story of how certain men
developed and operated a key institutional hinge, one that was first a tool
for global hegemonic projects and later a millstone around their necks.
7
This family structure was nuclear, with stem extensions, centered around the father, and it
combined aspects of bilateral and patrilineal descent (see Seccombe 1992). S:>nic historians
and sociologists refer to the form as "western," juxtaposing it to the joint family of eastern
provenance, but I resist eliding structural features and geography.
8
Ragin and Becker (1992) is an excellent edited collection on the problems of defining and
using cases. Many definitions of causal mechanism abound in today's social science litera-
ture, but I have found Stinchcombe's (1991) approach particularly useful.
As some personal, group, and institutional histories intersect with others

that are also changing—pervading individual domains and reorganizing ties
among them—they come together in time-bound conjunctures.9 "Things
happen because of constellations of factors," as Andrew Abbott (1992)
remarks, "not because of a few fundamental effects acting independently"
(68). When Holland's merchant capitalists sought to anchor themselves and
their families in the state, just to give one simplified example, and were strug-
gling mightily with Stadholder and Prince Willem II over state policy, the
smallpox germ intervened in what seemed to the merchants like the nick of
time, carrying ofTWillem, who left behind him only a posthumous son, and
making possible the merchants' ascendancy in the First Stadholderless
Period. Many such conjunctures—or points where separate causal streams
converge—came and went in die course of hundreds of years of history and
in an unfolding system of global reach. For us, they are defined by intersect-
ing local theories that together set one another's scope conditions. I do not
claim to have specified all the relevant constellations or theorized the mani-
fold processes that engendered them—that would be an inherently impossi-
ble task in any event. You will not, for example, find a theory of smallpox in
this book. What is relevant in this instance is the character of the familial
state. A vulnerable leader can go down because of all manner of things, but
this particular leader could not easily be replaced because contemporaries
saw themselves as bound by the rules of family patrilineal succession in poli-
tics. And because this familial element was key to the organization of power,
any event or process or line of determination—anything from volcanic erup-
tions to apocalyptic religious doctrines—would have been routed through
and imprinted by this particular institutional space that I describe. Politics is
the art of the possible10—but possible worlds are enclosed within historical
institutional horizons. I make an overarching argument for the importance
of a specific institution—patriarchal patrilineal relations of rule, interlocked
with politico-economic development—in constructing and framing those
horizons in early modern Europe.
9
Sociologists from a variety of theoretical perspectives seem to be converging on this point.
In a recent debate between Somers (1998) and Kiser and Hechter (1991,1998), for example,
both argue that forms of path dependence are essential parts of social science inquiry,
although they disagree about most other issues, including the relationship between causal
narrative on the one hand and narrative strategies of explanation on the other. See also
Adams, Clemens, and Orloff (2005).
10
The phrase "Politics is die art of the possible" is attributed to Otto von Bismarck
(1815-1898).
io T H E FAMILIAL STATE
The actors themselves see some of these historical possibilities (and no

doubt others that we do not) and react to them on the basis of the ongoing
accumulation of the historical past as they recall and reconstruct it, mixing
memory, strategy, and desire. Ideally, those operations of historical memory
and projection into the future—to the extent that we researchers can see
and decipher them—would be fully incorporated into the evolving nature
of each case and the overall field of action as well. In this book, the major
actors whose fortunes I trace are elite men, men at the apex of an emerging
global social formation. In their reconstructed self-presentations, they place
themselves as the subjects of kings and princes but also—and perhaps more
so over time—as the subjects of history. In fact, this book captures what I
take to be a key intermediate stage in cultural representation, in which these
men portray themselves as politico-economic representatives and leading
agents of their family lineages. I do try to register the tremendous creativity
and venturesomeness of these men and the ways that they loosed dynamic
social energies whose effects we moderns still feel, coupled with the seamy
underside of their innovations, including dramatic increases in exploitation,
new forms of slavery and patriarchy. They themselves felt the sharp end of
the stick of their own institutional inventions, which should give comfort to
moralists everywhere. But the point is not to perform some operation of
ideological unmasking or to insist on the bad faith of the actors, but to try
to respect the historical frames for their motivations and actions and the
complexity of their collective legacies.
Macrohistorical work seems to me to call for a curious combination of
humility and boldness on the part of the researcher. Why humility? The
relatively small number of cases or historical paths that we study consists of
overdetermined social processes, in which there are often more causes than
outcomes. One response to this problem is to retain fully deterministic,
lawlike models, to hunger after hypothetico-deductive general theory, but
to purge certain processes or causal factors on the grounds that they can-
not be adeqirately measured. Radical surgery of this sort does not elimi-
nate those elusive causes and processes, however; it merely fails to assess
them, introducing systematic bias into one's account. I hope to wend an
intervening way between this unsatisfactory approach and a purely histori-
cal event-based style of narrative explanation. Partisans of sociological
"covering laws" in the manner of the physical sciences may find this inter-
mediary path vexing, but it seems to me unavoidable when we undertake
large-scale historical problems, perhaps particularly so in early modern
Europe, where dispersed forms of power engendered a special kind of
The Netherlands as Point of Departure n
indeterminacy, which should be reflected in, and not glossed over by, our
sociological accounts.
There is another reason for humility. Even the master cases in my
account are immensely complicated by interdependence, only some of
which can be dodged by changing levels of abstraction or employing
fancy methodological footwork. And in fact their evolving interdepend-
ence is a crucial part of my story. Under these conditions, macrosociolo-
gists may keep on formulating general laws about the elements of a
system, but they will never be able to rigorously test most of them from
the standpoint of strict scientific method. Counterfactual speculations
become as important as facts given this state of affairs. Controversy con-
tinues to dog the use of counterfactuals, even though facts themselves are
now widely recognized as social constructions, indispensable to think
with but surrounded by their own sticky issues. Yet social scientists rely on
counterfactuals all the time (they are implicit in every regression equa-
tion), whether they know it or not. To pin down a supposed causal effect,
we must situate ourselves within a hypothetical conceptual space, imagin-
ing that everything about a given process remains the same except for the
characteristic or process we are investigating. The difference between the
actual outcome and the likelv outcome in the counterfactual situation is
the theoretical causal effect. Thus Max Weber defined a counterfactual as
the "mental construction of a course of events which is altered through
modifications in one of more 'conditions'" (Weber 1949 [1905], 173).
Sometimes we have the facts to make confident claims evaluating the
modification; at other times, especially in macrohistorical work, we do
not. Counterfactual speculation is key in such situations, although it must
be disciplined, reined in, to be useful. "We must be very careful in defin-
ing counterfactuals," caution Gary King, Robert Keohane and Sidney
Verba (1994), "although they are obviously counter to the facts, they
must be reasonable and it should be possible for the counterfactual event
to have occurred under precisely stated circumstances" (77-78). But just
what counts as reasonable? King, Keohane, and Verba do not help us
here! An interpretive and analogical sense of the texture of history is one
important source of ideas and, to the extent that I have achieved that as
an autodidact, it is largely from reading and talking to historians.11
11
I have also found helpful the discussions of idiographic counterfactual argumentation in
Hawthorn (1991) and Tetlock and Belkin (1996, 7).
But even the finest-grained and most historically situated interpretive

sense would not be enough without social theory, and this is where the
boldness inherent in macrohistorical research enters in. By this I do not
mean the chimera of a general social theory that incorporates or trounces
all others, although my narrative does serve to eliminate some narrower
approaches that have been proposed as candidates for such a general-the-
oretic explanation of state formation, colonialism, and revolution (see
chap. i). Instead, by systematically incorporating family and gender into
the structures of global political economy, I concentrate on charting what
I take to be new territory in the study of the formation of European
states. Unfolding a comparative-historical narrative informed and guided
by theory enables me to improve our maps of the key institutional config-
uration in early modern politics and to weigh its potential articulation
with a range of factors, opportunities, and constraints that intersect with
the doings of elite men at the institutional fulcrum point they inhabited,
redesigned, and wielded. This approach is systematic and structuralist
because I believe that, even when it is not possible to show that any one
factor or mechanism is necessary or sufficient or to weigh their interaction
with empirical precision, it is still important to make theoretical argu-
ments about history as clearly and systematically as we can. But this
approach refuses the quixotic fantasy of final theoretical closure in favor
of the collective project of opening new questions, new possibilities for
focused historical comparison, and of constructing historical social theory
and new possibilities for explanation. I hope that The Familial State helps
build the foundation of a more adequate explanation of historical hege-
monies, of varying patterns of state formation and collapse in early mod-
ern Europe.
I
The Patrimonial Nexus and

Theories of State Formation
I f a state can be defined as an organization that wields sovereign control

over territories and populations, in the last instance by force, then early
modern European states were emphatically states in the making.1 Of
course states are always being made and remade, whether in trivial or fun-
damental ways, and it is tempting to think about eliminating the concept
of state altogether, perhaps in favor of a more flexible idea of changing
"degrees of stateness" (Nettl 1968). But if all eras are transitional, to para-
phrase George Orwell, some eras are more transitional than others. This
book begins at an important fulcrum point in the history of state forma-
tion, when aspiring rulers in late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century
Europe had developed and advanced the basic claims to sovereignty to
authoritative regulation of political activities and communities that I take
to be the cultural bedrock of statehood yet were grappling with incessant
problems of trying to project and delegate sovereign power while uphold-
ing recognized claims to it.2
These would-be sovereigns and state builders were finding that their
territorial and regulatory reach systematically exceeded their grasp.
Within the fluctuating boundaries of nascent states, rulers did not always
1
A state can be said to be constituted when regulation and (in the last instance) coercion are
anchored in a relatively distinct and differentiated organization. Some form of this institu-
tional definition, derived from Max Weber but minus the criterion of legitimacy, has been
widely adopted. See, for example, Giddens (1985, 121), Mann (i993> 55)> Poggi (1990),
Skocpol (T979, 22), and Tilly (1975, 27).
2
Hinsley's useful little book (1986 [1966]) defines its subject as a concept that "originally
and tor a long time expressed the idea that there is a final and absolute authority in the polit-
ical community" (1). This concept was explicitly defined by European political theorists in
die late sixteenth century. See, for example, Bodin (1992).
13
have the means to simply impose their rule permanently; the exiguous
organizations at their disposal lacked what Michael Mann (i993> 59~6i)
calls the "infrastructural power" to enforce most of their commands.
Rulers had to make deals if they were to be effective, which might involve
ceding certain sovereign powers to corporate estates, guilds, towns, char-
tered companies, and so on. They were also building states from the
ground up by forging workable arrangements that linked together sover-
eign enclaves into a single ongoing network or cartel under broader juris-
diction. The aggregated corporate origins of some of these sovereign
cartels lingered on in their names—including the United Provinces of the
Netherlands (the Dutch Republic's full federated title). This chapter, and
the book as a whole, argues that these pervasive political deals and delega-
tions of sovereignty created some distinctive political opportunities and
pitfalls for early modern state builders.
State formation also proceeded in the face of multiple contending
claims and claimants to sovereignty. The geographically uneven legacy of
feudalism and empire had dispersed effective power among a series of
manorial political economies, autonomous towns, and other enclaves,
closely clustered in some areas of Europe, thin on the ground in others
(Anderson 1974b; Hall 1986). "Europe had always been politically frag-
mented, despite even the best efforts of the Romans . . ." insists Paul
Kennedy (1987,17). Max Weber suggests that the presence of these mul-
tiple powers, and the juridical and military multicephality .that they
entailed, was one of Europe's distinguishing social features.3 Even in
areas that boasted a single titular ruler, a motley collection of
seigneuries, principalities, bishoprics, city-states, and other corporations
jostled for supremacy, often over the same geographical space. At this
moment of blooming, buzzing confusion, circa 1500, there were some
five hundred or so entities with pretensions to sovereign status, com-
pared to about thirty in present-day Europe (Tilly 1990, 42-43).
Moreover, there was nothing approaching an organized states system
that overarched the fray. The representatives of emergent states were
putting forward innovative claims to sovereign rights over territory,
3
Later scholars have tended to agree. For example, Barkey (1994) compares this back-
ground aspect of European state making with the unitary Ottoman Empire, whereas
Lieberman (2003) emphasizes the political dispersion of feudal and early modern Europe as
a point of difference with Southeast Asia. For a contrary perspective, see Lewis and Wigen
(1997, 99-100). They contend that similarities in fragmentation of power characterized all
pre-modern Eurasian states.
Patrimonial Nexus 15
streams of goods, and populations while working out the ground rules
by which such claims would be negotiated and adjudicated.4
What states, and state sovereignty, were to be was itself an open ques-
tion in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. Was a state an emana-
tion of divine right? a social contract? a collection of feudal families?
These urgent political questions—all versions of "Who shall govern, how,
and on what grounds?"—were insistently raised by European men and
women, whether they sought to buttress established styles of sovereignty
or imagined and demanded novel forms of self-rule. Chapter 2 opens with
the Dutch Revolt (and the ensuing Eighty Years War of liberation against
Habsburg Spain), a concentrated burst of popular and patrician political
creativity and the opening salvo in the great European conflicts that
included the French Fronde and the English Revolution during the sev-
enteenth centurv.
The way in which a state, or any individual or aggregate actor for that
matter, comes to define itself, set goals, and forge alliances should always
be viewed as problematic and malleable rather than being prematurely
solved by assumptions that actors necessarily have stable, fixed identities
or constant and preexisting interests. So the new historical institutionalists
remind us (Thelen and Steinmo 1992, 7-11), and their methodological
caution goes double, it seems to me, for early modern Europe, in which
foundational political institutions were being created de novo. The goals
articulated for states, the rules regulating the pursuit of those ends, and
the character of the political actors involved were all being hammered
out, within a cultural framework that assumed that the mass of people
would simply be excluded from any routine political decision-making
role. My study focuses on patricians, not plebs. It addresses the evolving
nature of ruling elites, the relationships among them, and the patrimonial
political institutions by which they governed and were governed. This in
no way denies the historical importance of popular political activity in
western Europe, of course, but the overall argument takes it as given that
this activity' is of interest for my purposes only insofar as it evoked recipro-
cal reactions from states and ruling elites. Rather than exhaustively
describing a picture of social reality, this study depicts a key hinge or joint
in the anatomy of state formation. The analytical entry point is that of the
collective ruler, comprising both relationships among rulers and those
between rulers and their staffs or agents. This is the favored approach of a
See Bartelson (1995) regarding the emergence of formal diplomacy as an alternative to war.
more venerable historical institutionalise Max Weber, and his concept of

"patrimonialism" offers a jumping-off point from which we can begin to
make sense of these liminal, divided forms of rule. What you will find in
this chapter, then, instead of any sort of general theory of state formation
or transition from feudalism to capitalism, is a dissection of an institu-
tional nexus that I argue was the key mechanism for early modern rule.
A Plethora of Patrimonial Powers
Patrimonialism5 is a concept, an ideal type, by which Weber meant to cap-

ture a certain style of rule, a distinctive mode of governance that mimics
and extends the rules of the game prevalent in rulers' family-households.
The familial is a crucial part of early modern rulers' authority, but I bracket
it for a bit to pursue the dimension of household administration. In a single
state, political power and administration are considered the ruler's "per-
sonal property," distinguishing the patrimonial office from the bureaucratic
separation of "private" and "official" with which "we moderns" are more
familiar. The ruler therefore exercises power with wide discretion, although
he is also circumscribed by what can be interpreted as "sacred tradition"
(Weber 1968 [1922], 1028-29). Patrimonial rulers typically rule, and consoli-
date and extend their reach, by granting politico-economic privileges to fol-
lowers or agents of some sort. In Europe, where corporate groups had
long-established legitimacy, those agents were likely to be corporate groups
or estates, which were then liable for certain reciprocal obligations to the
ruler.6 This hoary practice enabled rulers in early modern Europe to gather
funds and deploy power while corporate elites, in turn, got economic con-
cessions, political representation, derived symbolic status, and, crucially,
family advancement. In the broadest sense, then, patrimonial political sys-
tems become ones in which a ruler (such as a monarch or a lesser lord or
stadholder) and corporations that the ruler recognizes or sponsors jointly
carry out political tasks and share the prerogatives of sovereignty.
5
On the concept of patrimonialism, see Max Weber (1968 [1922], 226, 293-97, 1006-7,
1010-13,1022-23,1028-31).
6
As Bossenga (1991,5) notes, the French word privilege itself derives from the Latin for "pri-
vate laws": "that is, laws allowing members of one particular group or territory to enjoy
advantages that others did not possess." Burns (1980) discusses patrimonial rulers' consoli-
dation of authority by creating new corporate bodies as well as reviving purportedly tradi-
tional ones.
Weber (1968 [1922], 1031-32) argues that the original seeds of patrimo-
nial domination lie in the patterns of governance in a ruler's or chief's
household, particularly in the moment when dependents are granted fiefs,
benefices, or other politico-economic privileges and immunities, becom-
ing officials and clients of their ruler and now patron, while separating
themselves from his household to form their own households. This situa-
tion gives rise to a style of administration structured by the ruler's ad hoc,
unstable, and always revocable delegation of powers, in sharp contrast,
according to Weber (1028-31), to the ideal-typical rational-legal bureau-
cracy of impersonal rules, clear-cut spheres of competence, and ordered
hierarchies of personnel and procedures. Perhaps all good origin myths
contain at least a grain of truth. But whether or not we believe the story
that Weber tells about the genesis of patrimonial domination, we can rec-
ognize that, once in place, this style of rule encourages troublesome ten-
sions and tendencies.
First, patrimonial governance tends to parcellize downward. The prac-
tice of consolidating and extending rule by delegating sovereign powers
to officials and corporate elites, together with the fuzzy boundary
between office and incumbent, ensures that patrimonial structures con-
tinually threaten to devolve into multiple segmented headships.
"Accordingly, some degree of appropriation of office is endemic; in
extreme cases of decentralized patrimonialism, all government author-
ity—with corresponding economic rights—may be treated as a private
possession" (Theobald 1982,555), or if not private, precisely, as an exten-
sion of the appropriating family-household. As a purely formal property
of patrimonial rule, this says nothing, yet, about the substantive nature of
the person or people doing the appropriating or about what they might
be expected to do with their takings.
Second, still on a formal level, we can expect these organizations to be
crosscut by peculiarly patterned tensions. One likely fault line runs
between the rulers and corporate elites. Their mutual dependence was a
hallmark of early modern European states, whether the crown had the
upper hand, as in the absolutist tendency that we see in France, or the
elite-headed corporations did, as in the estatist mode that chapter 2
argues prevailed in the seventeenth-century Netherlands.7 As analytical
terms that indicate the locus of sovereignty, they are not meant to imply
7
Regarding estatism, see Max Weber's comments on "rule by notables (honoriatores)"
(1968 [1922], 1009-10, 1038-42). The term estatism is preferable, in my view, because it
makes explicit the conceptual and historical parallel to absolutism that I want to emphasize.
18 THE FAMILIAL STATE
that corporate officeholders lacked any regulative power in absolutist

regimes or that the monarch or stadholder completely disappeared when
corporate elites dominated decision making. Today's scholars often exag-
gerate the supposedly unchecked power wielded by absolutist monarchs,
so it still escapes notice that these two modes of exercising power were
close cousins. They are prone to the same kinds of strains, both between
rulers and corporate elites and among the corporations themselves, that
might well be assigned incompatible mandates and overlapping jurisdic-
tions. In such polities, corporate bodies were "constrained chiefly by the
concurrent, traditional rights vested in other individuals and bodies"
(Poggi 1990, 48-49). Those rights and privileges were avowedly tradi-
tional, but they were not always mutually exclusive or placidly accepted.
Whether these tensions merely simmered or exploded outright, they
would continue to be developmentally significant until that time when
states became superordinate powerholders and the decision-making and
regulatory functions of the key patrimonial corporations were abol-
ished—an event that, as we see in chapter 6, can be precisely dated.
Patrimonial rule is a fixed form that paradoxically allows for institu-
tional innovation. This is the third developmental tendency that I explore
below. In his pioneering analysis of what he calls "historical bureaucratic
empires," Smuel N. Eisenstadt (1963) stresses the capacity of patrimonial
rulers and their dependents to capture uncommitted, "free-floating
resources'' and redirect them to substantially new enterprises, which may
run the gamut from mere spendthrift waste to a more productive expan-
sion of sovereignty into new substantive areas to new moves toward
rational-legal bureaucratic centralization, strengthening the lineaments of
state formation. The content of these enterprises and what their political
consequences may be are best left to concrete historical investigation, and
are dealt with throughout this book. Two things are clear, however. First,
patrimonial rulers will face serious challenges when they radically depart
from perceived past practice, especially in trying to expand the range of
their own power base and sovereign reach. In the long run, as Eisenstadt
argues, innovations that systematically recreate and expand free-floating
resources are likely to undermine accepted bases of social cohesion and
reproduction, endangering the very conditions of rule that they support.
Second, rulers will also have to confront entrenched beliefs about the
proper place of political power, which is considered legitimate only as
long as it remains within the bounds of precedent and time-honored "tra-
dition" (Weber 1968 [1922], 1020). "These traditional beliefs do not entail
the constant repetition of custom," notes Mark Gould, glossing Weber,

"but they do necessitate a legitimation of innovation in terms of past
practice" (Gould 1987,168). Traditionalism in this sense is a cultural con-
struct. Just how far rulers and their challengers could (or would) stretch
discursive definitions of u the traditional" in the face of elite and popular
resistance remains to be historically explored.
One of the most dramatic instances of state innovation in early modern
Europe was the founding of the chartered merchant and colonial compa-
nies, huge enterprises that undertook to project state sovereignty over
great distances. The East and West Indies companies, formed in the
Netherlands, France, and England around 1600, combined state-spon-
sored monopolies on objects or areas of trade, sovereign rights over a ter-
ritory and its inhabitants, and capital supplied by private investors. These
behemoths propelled the first great wave of European empire and colo-
nialism. They interest me particularly because they were key parts of the
metropolitan states' mercantile/colonial apparatuses and policies that,
like the fiscal structures with which they overlapped, were on the cutting
edge of state-building processes.8 By comparing at key points how and
under whose authority the politics of international commercial and colo-
nial links are organized, by exploring where the boundaries of state
authority are drawn and redrawn, and by asking how and why these
boundaries shift, we can clarify the driving forces of Dutch, French, and
English politico-economic development.
In Which States Charter Sovereign Companies . . .
The companies were the fruits of a centuries-long gestation period. We

can trace one line of their institutional pedigree to the long, continuing
development of the legal form of the corporation, issuing in the revolu-
tionary concept of shareholding, in which private persons delegated rights
to dispose of parts of their property. Another forerunner was the habit of
collaboration between entrepreneurial elites and political authorities,
adumbrated in fourteenth-century Genoa and prominent in the Iberian
colonial enterprises of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in which gov-
ernment and merchants worked together while remaining institutionally
8
For analyses of fiscal structures as a leading edge of state formation, see, for example,
Ardant (1975), Braun (1975), Lachmann and Adams (1988), Levi (1988), Mann (1980),
Schumpeter (1954 [i9i8])> and 't Hart (1993).
separate (Coornaert 1967, 221, 229-34). Clearly the great companies did
not spring forth like Athena from Zeus's head, born fully formed and bat-
de-ready. What was politically novel about the companies of the 1600s
and 1700s, however, was their sheer scale and reach, their institutional
permanence, and most of all the uneasy coupling of their delegated sover-
eign rights and their mandate to pursue commercial profits and colonial
power on behalf of their home state. Unlike the sixteenth-century
Portuguese Estado da India, the great companies of the 1600s and 1700s
fused aspects of delegated sovereignty and profit-making firm in u a
unique European and especially north-west European phenomenon,"
writes Niels Steensgaard; nevertheless, they were not really "developmen-
tal deviations," as he contends (1981, 247, 251). On the contrary, rulers in
early modern Europe often created situations of artificial scarcity and
rent-seeking by granting and enforcing monopolies, using their compara-
tive advantage in violence to insist on and enforce specific property rights
advantageous to them. Chartered companies were extreme but clearly
recognizable legacies of this modus operandi (Ekelund and Tollison 1981,
19-25; Levi 1988,112-13,122; North and Thomas 1973, 99-100).
Nonetheless the companies represented enticing new instruments of
metropolitan mercantilist advancement, from the ruler's point of view,
because the political capacity of patrimonial states rested on the organiza-
tion and resources of corporate groups (and on the instruments thai the
state had to regulate their activities), as well as on the state's own institu-
tions, such as they were. The formal access to the resources and expertise
of merchant capitalists that the company form seemed to promise meant
that rulers could dream of siphoning off an ever-larger share of the
world's trade goods and bullion via the companies. In an age of politically
enforced world trade, these hopes were intimately, in (act indissoluble
tied to visions of the companies as means to expansive state power at
home and abroad (Heckscher 1955 [1931]; Viner 1969 [1948]). All else
being equal, predatory rulers were torn between their desire to foster sov-
ereign corporations, and their inclination to abrogate charters, demand-
ing new protection payoffs or creating new monopolies to increase their
own profits (Lane 1979). For merchants, and for corporate elites and
investors in general, all necessarily dependent on the ruler's whim, patri-
monial rule spelled both opportunity and deep uncertainty.
As the most important of the state's constituent corporations with sov-
ereign ambitions, the companies appear in several guises in this book.
They were, first of all, symptoms or barometers of metropolitan rule,
combining, in the most concentrated way, thoroughly characteristic patri-

monial forms of accumulation with institutions of political regulation and
force. Thus chapters 2 and 4 argue that the uncertainty that was endemic
to patrimonial rule was minimized when corporate elites controlled the
levers of power—that is, when the monarch or stadholder was politically
subordinated to the estates, as in the Netherlands of the Golden Age—
and was accentuated when the crown held the balance of power or when
power was contested, as in seventeenth-century France and England,
respectively. Furthermore, I argue that the companies registered the
imprint of the ongoing struggle between elite and ruler, and among
diverse elite factions, in their forms and in the relative contours of their
colonial enterprises.9 If the directors were landed seigneurs, rather than
merchant capitalists, and failed to grasp or interest themselves in the
basics of reproducing colonial commerce over the long run, the enter-
prise's chances of getting off the ground, much less succeeding, would
likely be gready lessened. Formally speaking, privilege holders in char-
tered companies possessed, often virtually owned, the means of adminis-
tration, and the directors were in an unparalleled position to dictate
policy. What were the directors' identities and outlooks? From whence
arose their resources and capacities? To answer these questions, as I try to
do below, we need to explore other bodies of theory, to bring them into
relationship with one another, and to sift relevant historical materials.
The companies were also wayward sovereign actors in their own right in
the emergent global commercial/colonial system. "It is surely true to say
that the Dutch East Indies Company is not only a trading company but also
a state," remarked company director Coenraad van Beuningen in the 1680s,
summing up the corporation's sovereign power as well as its fused politico-
economic character. Thus, the following chapters treat the sovereign com-
panies as generative, not merely reflective, of state formation in Europe, via
the conjoined mechanisms of trade and empire. In the words of Michael
Doyle (1986, 45), "Empire is a relationship, formal or informal, in which
one state controls the effective political sovereignty of another political soci-
ety. It can be achieved by force, by political collaboration, by economic,
9
The work of Steensgaard (1974) and Lane (1979) has suggested that the enterprises that
used force largely to plunder and attack competitors tended to receive diminishing returns
(Steensgaard argues that the Portuguese Estado da India was a prime example). Those that
used force to extort payment from "customers" for "protection" against real and imagined
threats enjoyed increasing returns by stabilizing the trade environment and gained a com-
petitive advantage by selling goods at a price high enough to cover the costs of protection,
yet lower than competitors' prices (Lane 1979,45-46).
social, or cultural dependence. Imperialism is simply the process or policy of

establishing or maintaining an empire." No one study can deal with all
aspects of the imperial trading projects, even one that limits its compass to
the impact on the metropole, as this one does.10 Nevertheless, any coherent
story of European state formation must devote some attention to imperial
commerce and therefore to the sovereign companies.
Some scholars, such as Ann Stoler (1995) and Edward Said (1993), have
traced the subtle impact of nineteenth-century Western colonial practices
on various aspects of metropolitan culture. An analysis of the earlier
period—of early modern metropolitan political development—must
attend to boomerang effects of a cruder sort as well. Economic resources
flowed to the metropole through the companies' pipelines; power strug-
gles among companies, and between the companies and states, reconsti-
tuted the evolving matrix of overlapping political economies. Colonialism
made for moral deformations in metropolitan populations, more or less
subtle imprints that endure to this day. But if the companies did well—
tricky term because, the more successful they were, the more thorough-
going and potentially terrible their colonial legacy might be—then the
metropole stood to gain immeasurably in this cruder sense: from the
expansion of sovereignty over trade routes, colonized peoples, and terri-
tory; from the primitive accumulation of capital; from the promotion of
metropolitan life chances; and even from the validation of religious faith.
But this was true only, I argue, for certain metropolitan groups and under
certain social conditions. Even in Holland, the rising tide did not lift all
boats.
Merchant Capitalism and State Formation
Long-distance commerce was the leading economic (or politico-eco-

nomic) sector in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, the source
of enormous profits and the cutting edge of organizational experimenta-
tion.11 Its dynamism depended on the interstitial role of merchants in a
10
There is a vast literature on the companies that deals with their operation on the ground
in the colonies. A useful English-language introduction is Furber (1976). Elsewhere (Adams
1996) I deal with principal-agent problems and other features of the internal workings of
company organization.
11
For organizational innovations central to such state institutions as mercantilist policies,
central banking, and public debt, see North and Thomas (1973, 95> 152-56) and de Vries
(1976, 228-32).
largely precapitalist world, extending from the Americas to Africa to Asia to

Europe and beyond. Their superprofits derived both from ttade with feudal
economies in Europe, in spices, grain, textiles, and other commodities, and
from the enforced extraction of surplus, via the chartered companies, from
tributary modes of production in colonies abroad. There they could also tap
a part of the profits derived from using peasant and slave labor at less than
the cost of its reproduction, as the Dutch did in the Moluccan spice islands
and the Surinam sugar plantations (van Zanden 1993). Because of the prod-
ucts and distances involved, because they coerced some of those with whom
they traded, and because home markets were politically regulated, long-dis-
tance traders could assume a relatively inelastic demand for the goods they
controlled (Dobb 1963 [1947], 2C=>2; Magnusson 1978). Merchant capital
derived some of its extraordinary vitality from the paradoxical persistence of
autarchic productive enclaves and politically restricted monopoly markets at
home and abroad and from the growth of free labor and capital available in
some areas of the European metropole—particularly in Holland and
England, precocious developers par excellence, where free wage labor and
rural and urban petty commodity production coexisted with feudal institu-
tions throughout the early modern period (Dobb 1963 [1947]).12
On the one hand, resources from trade and commercialized agriculture
concentrated in cities, promoting demographic growth, simplifying
resource extraction, and, we expect, stimulating state formation. "We
might imagine a continuum," writes Charles Tilly, "from an imperial
Russia in which a cumbersome state apparatus grew up to wrest military
men and resources from a huge but uncommercialized economy, to a
Dutch Republic which relied heavily on navies, ran its military forces on
temporary grants from its city-dominated provinces, easily drew taxes from
customs and excise, and never created a substantial central bureaucracy"
(1990, 95). Commercialization promotes "free-floating resources" of the
sort dear to Eisenstadt: men, money, and materials that can be directed
toward state projects, including war, empire, and those prosaic processes
tiiat expanded state capacity, bureaucratization, and centralization. Some
12
These areas experienced a protracted transitional period in which no one mode of produc-
tion was dominant. As Sweezy puts it, "the forms of labor relations that were most common
in the statistical sense were unstable and incapable of providing the basis of a viable social
order" (1978 [1950], 51). Producers tended to be partially divorced from the land and no
longer able to provide completely for their own subsistence, but whether this was due to
colonial force, to enclosures (Cohen and Weitzman 1975,161-76), to peasant by-employment
(Kriedte 1981, 141), or to endogenous demographic growth (Tilly 1984) varied. See also
Gould (1987).
sociologists, including Paul Sweezy (1978 [1950]) and Immanuel

Wallerstein (1980), have gone so (ar as to argue that the expansion of mar-
kets was the major driving force in the process of development and differ-
entiation in Europe. On the other hand, the passage from patrimonialism,
when rulers relied on independent brokers or contractors to provide
armed force and state loans, to a state's capacity to mobilize its own popu-
lation and handle its fisc directly was mined with potential obstacles.13
Several related factors intervened between inflows of commercial capi-
tal and metropolitan politico-economic development during the cen-
turies-long transition from feudalism to capitalism in Europe. The first
was property or class relations. Generally speaking, commercial expansion
favors sustained development when capital has been released from feudal
institutional restrictions, such as guilds and restrictive monopoly charters,
and the class structure is organized around free wage labor. "Only under
conditions of free wage labor will the individual producing units (com-
bining labor power and means of production) be forced to sell in order to
buy, to buy in order to survive and reproduce, and ultimately to expand
and innovate to maintain this position in relationship to other competing
productive units" (Brenner 1977, 32). Otherwise, as Robert Brenner
argues, commercially driven development eventually runs up against the
limits of a feudal agrarian economy. Those limits characterized most
regions of Europe through the eighteenth century and even beyond,
where peasantries were the primary engine of production and the surplus
they produced continued to be exacted by political means by crowns,
manors, churches, and the elites of other ruling institutions. In that con-
text, the spread of markets may even slow productive innovation by inten-
sifying lords' (and others') extra-economic coercion of the peasantry
(Brenner 1978, 124-25; Dobb 1963 [1947], 42; see also Marx 1967 [1867],
325-31).
Any precapitalist mode of production structures the social space in
which merchant capital is deployed. It is not simply that important
trades and industries are closely linked to the agrarian foundation. The
expansion of interregional markets, domestic and foreign, is also limited.
In early modern Europe, these markets were in any case based on politi-
cally enforced monopolies or monopsonies of scarce goods rather than
on the sale of mass quantities at low prices. In that context, particular
13
See Adams (1994b) tor a more detailed assessment of the virtues and shortcomings of
world-systems analysis in the development of the early modern Netherlands.
metropolitan merchant groupings could make their mark on political

institutions, whereas others were denied the opportunity. Merchants
could also exit the circuit of capital accumulation with relative ease. Even
those who were emancipated from direct political controls were not sys-
tematically compelled by competitive pressures, as Mark Gould points
out (1987, 129-35). They could withdraw their resources from trade or
manufacturing and invest them in state privileges—a course of action
resentfully rendered in several languages by the phrase "the betrayal of
the bourgeoisie." A patrimonial politico-economic opportunity structure
made that choice possible, and the greater profits and prestige to be had
often made it desirable as well.
The second factor was the corporate organization of the elites based in
local and regional governments, including but not limited to the large-
scale merchants crucial to massive commercial and colonial projects. They
could sometimes act in concert to oppose rulers' attempts to tax or other-
wise extract resources or to compel rulers to adopt changes in politico-
economic organization, whether for war-making or other state projects,
including religious and dynastic aims. Under certain circumstances,
including the familial ones that I explore later in this chapter and
throughout the book, this capacity might issue in stable pacts among
members of the elite grounded in one or more political institutions. And
with the strengthening of lateral bonds came the possibility of pooling
and managing vertical patronage relations, enabling elites to collectively
mobilize their clients, even against the behest of monarchs. In this fash-
ion, the urban merchant oligarchies could become part and parcel of state
structures—they could become powerful rulers themselves. Of course,
the development of enduring corporate bodies and even representative
assemblies could strengthen monarchs and other superordinate rulers as
well, by enabling them to tax the "landed and trading rich" with the lat-
ter's consent (Mann 1986,477).14 As Thomas Ertman (1997, 28-34) argues
in his analysis of the vicissitudes of constitutionalism and parliamentarism
in early modern Europe, different forms of representation can act as inde-
pendent influences on infrastructural development.
Corporate organization, and the kind of power and visibility with which it
invested elites, also encouraged (and was implicated in) venal office-holding
practices, which are now much less likely than representative assemblies to be
14
Charles Tilly (1990) also points to this possibility in his discussion of the "dangerous
liaisons" between urban-based ruling elites and state builders in early modern Europe.
celebrated by historians and sociologists but which remain a crucial element

of early modern European state formation all the same. Venality was a
money-making instrument that enabled rulers to target influential elites
(including big-time merchant capitalists) and to draw them into the embrace
of the state. Rulers would typically sell or rent privileges and offices to aspi-
rants for a certain period, in exchange for a lump sum or periodic payments.
This was a key instance of the larger style of patrimonial accumulation and
governance by which rulers created situations of artificial scarcity in the form
of state-guaranteed economic privileges of one sort or another and awarded,
loaned, or sold them to favored individuals or groups. Recall that privileges
also incorporated a range of sovereign prerogatives, extending even to mak-
ing war on foreign powers in the case of die chartered companies.
This style of conducting politics may seem a shaky foundation for pre-
dictable governance and accumulation—two key conditions for develop-
ment. Rulers in feudal and early modern Europe who traded protection
and justice for revenue not only proffered or withdrew favors at will, but
often did so as a matter of expediency, to capture more resources or clout
in the short run. Even the favored recipients of rulers1 largesse could
never count on its continuing on the agreed-cn terms. Property rights—
including claims to sovereign power—were liable to systematic violation.
But political privilege often assumed a seemingly traditional fixity, even in
the rare cases that rulers could afford to redeem it or had the power to
override it, undergirded when corporate elites could collectively organize
to defend their stake in the state. Thus, I argue in later chapters that
venality and associated styles of patrimonial governance welded states to
the political goals and reproduction of particular elites as those elites in
turn tightened their grip on pieces of patrimonial power. Under certain
conditions, this dynamic encouraged politico-economic rigidity,
entrenched fragmentation of sovereignty, and diminished state capacity.
Under others, it fostered plural, decentralized possibilities that might be
seized by innovative individuals or groups, or even centralized revolution
from above.
A third important factor intervening between commercialization and
state building was the status of intercorporate political relations. The mul-
tiple sovereign corporations, loosely anchored in a number of European
countries, led relatively autonomous lives as seekers after global territorial
and trading rights. Just as Theda Skocpol posits with respect to full-blown
states, corporations with sovereign rights were uneasily poised at the
interstices, "between domestic socio-political orders and the transnational
relations within which they must maneuver for survival and advantage in
relation to other states" (Skocpol 1985, 8; see also 1979, 29-31). They also
interacted with other, similar sovereign corporations at home and abroad,
and a goodly part of this interaction was armed, dangerous, and conse-
quential for the emergent global order (Adams 1994b; Spruyt 1994;
Thomson 1994). Corporations thus faced some pressures that were quite
similar to those their parent states were experiencing. Sociologists and
political scientists have repeatedly emphasized that European rulers' des-
perate search for unprecedented sums of money and credit for war, lest
they be wiped off the map, often unwittingly reshaped states.15 So if they
were to avoid being absorbed by competitors—if they were to eliminate
their competitors instead—corporations had to create an infrastructure
for their armed forces, both homegrown and mercenary, and keep up
with technological innovations in war even as those innovations drove the
costs of maintaining armed forces through the roof.
Metropolitan states could be a last line of resort for chartered companies
in military or fiscal trouble. To the extent that this was the case, we might
expect the companies' enthusiasm for waging war to drive metropolitan
states' bureaucratization and centralization—if it didn't bankrupt them first.
But war making and state making are not necessarily mutually reinforcing
dynamics. The simultaneous existence of overlapping state and substate sov-
ereignties multiplies the contingencies involved in sovereign state formation
by several orders of magnitude. Contending corporations with pretensions
to tar-flung trade routes and territories can introduce military entanglements
on multiple fronts. If those commitments come home to haunt metropolitan
states, they are liable to invite what Paul Kennedy (1987) has called, in
another context, imperial overextension, even politico-economic collapse. It
is also possible that intercorporate conflicts and their ad hoc resolutions
could spur metropolitan rulers' hesitant steps toward creating a normative
framework transcending struggles among individual states—rules of the
diplomatic game that might even serve as a functional substitute for making
war.16 Or, of course, bankuptcy, political extinction or other neo-Darwinian
nightmares might be die outcome. All of these moves in turn could affect
15
See, for example, Skocpol (1979), Tilly (1985,1990), and Mann (1980,1993).
16
There is not a lot of agreement among sociologists about die importance of this overarch-
ing framework. Contrast, for example, Poggi's claim that "among sovereign states there is
no higher rationality or normative solidarity, only die exercise of distributive power, norm-
lessness, and anarchy" (1990, 23-5) with Mann's "In multi-power-actor civilizations, like
Europe or die modern West, geopolitical relations exist within a broader civilization
the companies and the politico-economic arrangements within the territories

claimed by each European state.
Note that there were also openings for new forms of lateral concerted
action here, even in the heat of competition or battle, new possibilities for
men's thinking about their collective corporate selves and corporate oth-
ers as potential allies, able to decide important matters without a ruler's
intervention or say-so. This was heady stuff and potentially very danger-
ous to both the hierarchical organization of patrimonial rule and the sta-
bilities of hegemony.
Given these intervening factors and the many indeterminacies they intro-
duce, it is at the least premature—and probably wrong—to argue that mer-
chant capital and companies had any one single impact on metropolitan
development and state building. Perhaps they preempted economic devel-
opment, as Maurice Dobb insists (1963 [1947], 121-22). But I think that
Dobb is too hasty. The companies established the colonial system, after all,
based largely on slave-plantation and settler colonies, which later served as a
captured market for the metropole; under those conditions, and others,
they may have acted as a "forced draught" fanning development at home,
as Eric Hobsbawm has speculated with respect to England (1967, 46-47>
53-56; see also Luxemburg 1951 [1913]). We will have to see. It is clear, how
ever, that there are simply no guarantees that expanding markets will cumu-
late in any particular type of state form or (more broadly) capitalist
development in the metropole. This is so even if development is interpreted
in a strictly economic sense, as Shiue (2003) shows in her comparison of
economic development in China and early modern Europe. And politically,
merchant capital may strengthen patrimonial politico-economic organiza-
tion as it embeds conservative elite oligarchies into patrimonial states. The
impact of merchant capital, especially the sovereign companies, simply can-
not be setded in advance, without historical analysis.
The Familial State
My argument so far has dealt with the politico-economic aspects of state for-
mation, taking off from Max Weber's classical commentaries on patrimonial
embodying transnational and transgovemmental power networks and norms" (i993, 50).
Among students of international relations, Rosecrance (1986) is unusual in that he analyzes
states as embodying distinctive norms.
evolution and devolution. This section ventures beyond that terrain, survey-
ing the familial and gender-specific features of patrimonial politics. As many
early modern contemporaries noticed, whether enviously or critically, the
state builder, monied man, and family patriarch tended to be one and the
same. This was no accident. Politically secured private accumulation pro-
moted a man's honor, his family, and his hopeful line of descent; conversely,
the reputation of his lineage qualified him to occupy lucrative state positions
and to pass them along to his sons, nephews, and grandsons. In more struc-
tural terms, one of the general arguments of this book is that paternal
authority and patriarchal status are core dimensions of patrimonial rule;
entwined with the articulations of political privilege and property relations
specific to the times, they could be expected to shape the development of the
Dutch and other European states in a range of specific ways, as canvassed in
the remainder of this book.
When we ponder the times and places when fathers ruled 17 —and not
merely incidentally, but by virtue of their paternal status—we tend to
think in terms of precapitalist, stateless societies. This is a reasonable
reflex, encouraged by a vast anthropological literature on the symbols and
practices of paternal power in these societies and on family lineages as pri-
mary political actors. But with the rise of capitalism and national states, it
is generally suggested, kinship gives way to kingship, lineage control to
formal administrative regulation, paternal power to a neutered politics or
(in some feminist versions) generically enforced male dominance, and
families fade from macropolitics. It is not too much to say that the admin-
istrative system in these primitive states, unlike the lineage or tribal struc-
ture in the stateless societies, uis never the kinship system writ large, but is
organized on totally different principles" (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard
1958, quoted in Hinsley 1986 [1966]).18 Much important anthropological
work charts the passage from kin-centered to statist systems.
Nevertheless, such a stark conceptual division is useless for those of us
interested in early modern Europe or in any other liminal period or place
in which elite families and states meshed.
17
When Fathers Ruled is the evocative title of Ozment (1983), dealing with family life in
Reformation Europe. More broadly, of course, "rule of die father" is the translation of the
Greek patriarchy. Taking the term to index any belief or social system that awards men
precedence and power on the basis of paternal status, I use this concept patriarchy to repre-
sent a tactical compromise between the narrowest definitions, stressing the exercise of pater-
nal rights alone, and the most general, emphasizing male dominance.
18
See Gailey (1988) and Silverblatt (1987).
The exception for Europeanists—that is, the site in which analysts have
traced commonalities or longae duree continuities with the pervasive famil-
ism of stateless societies—is of course the monarchy. It was in thirteenth-
century England and France that "the hereditary right to the crown on the
part of the eldest son became . . . deeply engrained as an "indefeasible
right' and an incontestable, if unwritten, law of the realm" (Kantorowicz
i957> 333)- The crown itself was a useful fiction, and as such it interwove
many symbolic strands, embodying hereditary royal privilege, sovereign
rights, the composite body of king and household, and medieval legal tra-
ditions stressing the corporate oneness of father and son (381-82,391-95).
No doubt it was this particular religious tradition of corporate indissolubil-
ity that enabled rulers to accept corporate bodies as legitimate partners in
rule—a trope that could be deployed to authorize later parliamentary
actions and (as we see in chapters 5 and 6) the much later stirrings of dem-
ocratic discourse. In any case, courtly rituals revolving around the royal
and crypto-royal family-households of medieval and early modern Europe
assumed these core meanings as a backdrop, in moments of opposition or
parody as well as veneration and reconstitution.19
Ritualized representations of the crown, and of rulership more broadly,
also dramatized the sexual division of labor inherent in courtly political
culture. But it took much ideological and political labor to shore up the
principles of gender difference institutionalized in European monarchies,
as recent feminist work has shown. 20 Early modern European courts were
organized around distinctions among men as well as the male-female
hierarchies that today's social scientists are more attuned to expect. Key
to any anatomy of monarchical rule under patrimonialism are representa-
tions of relations between fathers and sons (and, by extension, more and
less privileged sons) as dominant and subordinate masculinities ordered
around images of fatherhood and filiality and the political relations
among father-rulers conducted on the basis of their socially recognized
paternal status.
The lineaments of stability of monarchical power, as we see in the fol-
lowing chapters, are also characteristic points of pressure. When a ruling
sovereign is female or when a female regency is created to fill a hiatus in
the male lineage, wrhen a royal dynasty is being founded by a a new man"
19
See Wilentz's (1985) edited collection on political ritual. The publicity of absolutist famil-
ial courtly ritual is beautifully captured by Gianfranco Poggi in a famous passage about die
king of France (1978, 68-69).
20
See, for example, Pateman (1988), Weil (2000), Jones (1993), and Miller (1998).
(dynastically speaking, a fatherless son), when a king fails to enforce gen-

der hierarchies in his family-household, or is merely thought to have
transgressed them in some way—these are standard situations in which we
expect the gender-specific foundations of political order to be fore-
grounded and undermined. Insofar as the king's authority is the mimetic
basis for other men's, local relations of paternity and filiality will also be
disrupted. Thus, feminist theorists and historians have convincingly
argued that chaotic monarchical gender orders destabilized rule in the
prequel to the great revolutions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
Europe, which eventually unseated various father-kings in favor of frac-
tious fraternal male citizenries.21
These insights, and the use of patriarchy, can be extended beyond
monarchies so that it becomes possible to capture the various points of
intersection between family and masculinity that were so central to elite
political cultures of early modern Europe. The capacity to father children,
for example, especially sons, was celebrated as a sine qua non of elite man-
hood as well as the fount of continuity of family lineages. Paternity was
interpreted through the optic of official ideologies of masculine activity,
creativity, and power that extended beyond lineal reproduction to a more
general sense of political husbandry and direction.22 What I am signaling
here is not only the centrality but also the cultural character of the symbol
of the father-ruler, its historical plasticity', and potential appropriability by
social actors—even women! When women were invested as monarchs in
their own right, for example, as in the much-analyzed case of Elizabeth I
of England, they were wont to emphasize supposedly paternal qualities
and capacities alongside their femininity to enforce their pretensions to
royal legitimacy.23 Thus, my use of the concept of patriarchy is broader
21
Pateman (1988, chap. 4); Landes (1988, chap. 4); Hunt (1992, chap. 6). Adams (2005) dis-
cusses the patriarchal element of postmodernism in more detail.
22
In his discussion of late-medieval political theory, Kantorowicz registers the influence
of a philosophical heritage shaped by Aristotelian notions of generation—including beliefs
that seminal fluid is charged with power "deriving from the soul of the begetter and
impressing itself on the son"—as well as the Stoic doctrine of "seminal principles," all
overlaid with a Christian religious twist (1957, 332). Given the close symbolic connection
between male procrcativity and patrimonial state power, it should not surprise us to find
that courtly socialization practices dramatized the phallus. See, for example, Marvick's
analysis of a court doctor's journal dealing with the socialization of Louis XIII of France
(1986, chap. 3).
23
See, for example, Axton (1977), and Helgerson (1992, 298) on Elizabedi I's "empowering
doubleness." If kings had two bodies, one corporeal and die other organizational, then
queens juggled at least three.
than the idea of a family form characterized by male headship (Seccombe

1992, 30) and more historically precise than the use common in radical
feminist theory, in which the term designates all forms of institutionalized
male dominance (MacKinnon 1989). By patriarchy, I mean an image or
ideology of paternal rule that may link familial with macropolitical, eco-
nomic, or other sociocultural practices. Weber himself saw patriarchal
domination not only as the purest logical form of traditional authority
but as the historical seed of patrimonialism. His definition of patrimonial-
ism actually has a patriarchal core. But as I have argued elsewhere (Adams
2005), Weber sees father rule as a natural rather than a sociocultural phe-
nomenon: "The woman is dependent because of the normal superiority
of the physical and intellectual energies of the male . . ." (Weber 1968
[1922], 1007). This is not surprising, given the times in which he wrote
and the foundational role in his writings of conceptual oppositions associ-
ated, for Weber, with fixed notions of masculinity and femininity. Now,
equipped with a sense of the cultural construction of principles of political
authority and with more tools with which to analyze them, we can do
better.24
Nevertheless, sociological theories of state formation have remained
remarkably resistant to specifically feminist concepts, observations, and
insights and even to wrhat every schoolchild knows: that elite families and
states were intimately interlocked in early modern Europe. The sociology
of patrimonial state power and systems of office-holding has bypassed the
gendered, familial rules of reproduction of the system itself. This is a seri-
ous omission because, when the reproduction of monarchies and ruling
elites rests on gendered family principles (including the symbolics of
paternal authority, marriage, and inheritance), family patterns are also
directly constitutive of societal modes of politico-economic reproduc-
tion. They help determine how political alliances are formed and how
power is transferred, how new members of the elite are recruited, how
political rule is legitimated, and when it founders. Yet analysts of
European state formation have failed to capture these dimensions theo-
retically, even as they have repeatedly registered the empirical presence of
family and gender in high, and especially courtly, politics.25 In alerting us
to these dimensions of feudal and early modern European monarchies,
24
This includes, of course, the ways in which people produce notions of gender from their
observations of biological sex differences—and what they take to be biological sex differences.
25
One example is Perry Anderson's (1974a) otherwise superb work on the "lineages" of the
absolutist state.
feminist theorists and historians have therefore made it possible to see

exciting new distinctions and to deploy them analytically. "We believe,"
write Barbara Laslett and Johanna Brenner (1989), "that the concepts of
social reproduction and gender allow for explanations that are more his-
torical and dynamic, that recognize both human agency and social struc-
ture. It is in this way that history as a process of structuring can be more
fully understood" (400). This book attempts to specify this belief to early
modern Europe, to show that gender and family are neglected con-
stituents of the development of state power and institutions, and to out-
line as precisely as possible the historical mechanisms by which gender
and family made a difference.
Feminist theory, for its part, has failed to address and incorporate
sociological theories of state formation. As a result, feminist analyses of
early modern European politics have exhibited certain generic gaps and
problems. The monarch or court is often elided with the whole of high
politics, so that one site comes to stand in for the sprawling, contested
network of patrimonial governance. 26 Conversely, the state tends to be
interpreted as if it were analogous, if not reducible, to a single royal
family. A third problem is the collapse of historical institutional analysis
into the cultural space, most commonly when state building is folded
into the construction of national belongingness. State and nation for-
mation may well be related—I believe they are—but they are not the
same thing. Finally, and most problematically, contemporaries' com-
mentaries and philosophical meditations on states are taken to reflect
what states actually were. Landes (1988), Pateman (1988), and Jones
(*993), for example, have served up brilliant critical rereadings of
Rousseau (Landes) and the classical English contract theorists (Pateman
and Jones), but have also advanced broad claims about state formation
per se on that basis. All of these are metonymical moves, taking the part
for the whole. They elide important distinctions among states, on the
one hand, and obscure similarities between monarchical-absolutist and
republican-estatist polities, on the other.
In particular, in my opinion, they miss the potential political importance
of familial coalitions of male officeholders implanted in the wider apparatus
of rule. The male heads of elite families sought control over state offices
26
See, for example, Hunt (1992) and Pateman (1988). This problem also plagues
Helgerson's (1992) ground-breaking work on forms of nationhood in early modern
England. As he himself says, disarmingly, "In compiling this list I have done little more dian
add 'state' to formulations that I made earlier in terms of the monarchy."
and perquisites, the source of prestige and revenue as well as decision-mak-

ing power, and consolidated the position of their lineages by exchanging
women in complex intermarriages. In struggling to ensure that their sons,
their patrimony, and their name endured and prospered, elite family heads
also created family mythologies honoring their own lineages and their
right, as fathers, to govern. They successfully laid claim to parts of their
respective states and their corporate projections in the Netherlands,
France, England, Iberia, and elsewhere in Europe. They converted posi-
tions of sovereignty into the property of their descendants when they
seized hold of inheritable offices and privileges, both individually and in
coalitions or cliques. This appropriation established elite authority and
identity on an intergenerational basis, I argue, while wedding the patrimo-
nial state and company policy to concrete family goals.27 Another strand of
feminist work can help us signally at this point, and I explicitly draw on it
in the succeeding chapters: the excellent work of historians—including his
torians of gender—who have dealt with family and office-holding in Old
Regime Europe. One theoretical challenge that this book takes on is to
further develop and integrate arguments and findings about how elites cre-
ated and were disciplined by the familial dimension of patrimonial privi-
lege, dependent on and in struggle against monarchs and their functional
substitutes, the avatars of overarching principles of ruling fatherhood.
"Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" might have been the motto
of both rulers and elites with respect to one another—they were all part of
the collective ruler and the familial apparatus of governance.
As the patriarchal family and lineal networks and ideologies were woven
into the web of patrimonial power, they formed what we might call a
familial state. With this rather abstract term, I mean to highlight two
points. First, gendered familial criteria are constitutive of macropolitical
authority. In the case of early modern Europe, rulers—not simply mon-
archs but also corporate elites—grounded their political claims on the
basis of hereditary qualification and patriarchal power rather than on the
basis of adherence to rational-legal procedure or other substantive stan-
dards of justice (to put the issue in Max Weber's terms). Second, the
important political offices and privileges are distributed to agents on the
27
van Dijk and Roorda (i97i)> Stone and Stone (1986), and Giesey (1977) have published
pioneering historical work on elite families, marriage and inheritance practices, and the pur-
suit of offices and perquisites in the early modern Netherlands, England, and France, respec-
tively. None has systematically studied the mutual influence of those family practices and
state development.
basis of their publicly performed gender identities, their perceived family

ties and position. Rather than portraying elite patrilineages and kin
groups as simply having been displaced by states in Europe, therefore,
these dimensions help make sense of the periods—centuries long, in
Europe—in which the two were closely articulated.
Precisely when—that is, at what historical conjuncture—certain elites
implanted their families in states and sovereign spinoffs was also poten-
tially important for politico-economic development. Stephen Krasner's
(1984) model of "punctuated equilibrium" in politics, derived from
Steven Jay Gould's and Niles Eldredge's (1977) concept, holds that the
stable social arrangements that structure politics-as-usual are periodically
disrupted by crises that undermine these arrangements, opening up the
possibility of abrupt institutional transformation and thus for heated con-
flicts over the shape of change. In patrimonial contexts, the family coali-
tions that control the state during these fluid periods have a decisive say
over future institutional arrangements and policy. They were an "initiat-
ing nucleus" or clique, a "small exclusive group of persons with a com-
mon interest," desire, or goal (Dalton 1959, chap. 3); they could be
expected to forward the goals of particular lineages and kin groups, as
well as staking claims to the state on behalf of family members and clients.
The specificity of these groups, as well as the manner of their political
installation, lay behind their differential capacity to take advantage of
what Ronald Burt Jr. (1992) calls "structural holes" in the global competi-
tion for power and resources (including colonies). Leading representa-
tives of these groups also devised broad interelite pacts, deals, or
settlements that regulated the form, enforcement, and intergenerational
supply and demand of patrimonial privilege. The Dutch elite pioneered
key aspects of these patrimonial pacts, as we see in chapter 5, as they did
so many other early modern innovations that were later picked up and
elaborated by contending European elites.
But if patrimonial state formation can be seen as a process of tying
together nodes in a single cartel or network, in mutable arrangements
that are variably centralized and contingently integrated, then elite family
pacts or settlements in moments of political crisis are also likely to affect
the long-term possibilities for political flexibility. Along these lines,
Mancur Olson (1984) has argued persuasively that the repeated rise and
institutionalization of cliques or power groups are a more general
dynamic that has fostered institutional stagnation in a wide variety of soci-
eties the world over. But not always, I hasten to add. In the chapters that
follow, I explore the dynamics associated both with the familism of these
particular cliques or groups and with patriarchy as their articulating polit-
ical principle.28 I also examine the breakdown and—in England's case—
supersession of the familial mode of political organization. There the
ruling families had a hand in their own taming and transcendance.
By now readers will have gathered that I do not see gendered family
practices as the sole dimension or cause of social change. In the fabric of
history, they were but one thread, although an important and analytically
repressed one. In the following chapters, I avoid the synecdochal leanings
of feminist theory, particularly when associated with monocausal claims
regarding gender and political transformation. Strong theories are good,
and this tendency to theoretical closure testifies, in a backhanded way, to
the compelling coherence of the corpus of feminist work. But reducing
the entirety of early modern European states to fathers writ large (or at
most, families or lineages) will not do—patrimonial polities were broader
than that. Elite family-households, kin groups, and patrilineagcs func-
tioned as core institutional centers, around which formed institutions that
departed from the established ways of conducting business and new
organizations controlling the principal concentrated means of regulation
and coercion within territories in Europe and farther abroad. The top-
most echelons of rule could remain obdurately familial while the lower-
level offices were rationalized, bureaucratized, and staffed by patronage
ties.29 This at least was a possible line of development.
I examine two key sites of institutional innovation in the chapters to
come: the chartered companies and other corporate bodies, and the polit-
ical crucible of interfamily relations itself. These patrimonial organizations
were families embedded in states that they were inventing as they went
along. Thus, a patrimonial family regime could institute rational-legal
bureaucratic reforms, and those reforms could in turn shape family-style
rule. And given the decentered nature of patrimonial authority in western
Europe, such change was possible in any apparatus and at all levels. I
identify these points of transition while asking several larger questions:
28
In fact, this wider optic helps resolve Olson's own puzzlement about France, which he
takes to be an anomaly with respect to his model.
29
As Parsons (1966, 21-25) suggests, it may be useful to think of a state taking shape as polit-
ical activities are organized in specific institutions and roles in the nascent state sector are
handed out according to a set of distinct, specialized requirements rather than according to
incumbents' roles in other institutions—including the family. But this is useful only if we
keep in mind that, once instituted, the lines between state and nonstate can again be
blurred.
When will family regimes seek to block such reforms? favor a patronage
svstem in which offices are structured bureaucraticallv but officeholders
continue to be recruited according to particularistic—including familial—
criteria? press for a revolution from above by abolishing patrimonial privi-
lege altogether?
Family and gender are perennial and protean building blocks of politi-
cal authority. They are also unstable and dynamic concepts. This has not
prevented them from profoundly shaping and fixing political discourses
and forms of governance, which in early modern Europe included monar-
chies, republics, chartered companies, and all manner of corporate organ-
izations. These discourses and institutions, in turn, changed the
definitions of masculinity and femininity in the early modern elites, as well
as more broadly, and the contours of family behavior and the definitions
of family itself.
2
State Making, Hegemony,

and Corporate Conflict
in the Dutch Golden Age
I n this chapter, I examine the politico-economic aspects of the rise of the

Dutch Republic and the global commercial system that it forged in its
first century, the brilliant Golden Age, focusing in particular on the way in
which the structure of patrimonial rule helped the Dutch elite garner enor-
mous profits and project unprecedented power abroad. Chapter 3 then
takes up the gender-specific, familial aspects of patrimonial governance and
dominance during the same period. The two chapters are two sides of the
same coin or interlocking pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Together they illumi-
nate how elite men operated the levers of the institutional organization of
the first globally dominant power, combining novel modes of operation
with die indelible marks of the patrimonial system within which it arose.
The argument in this chapter proceeds in several steps. I first analyze the
mercantile character of Dutch patrimonial rule, forged during the fifty years
following the initial declaration of independence from Habsburg Spain
(1570s to 1620s). This analysis is borne out by the merchant control of the
innovative patrimonial corporations (particularly the East and West Indies
Companies) through which the metropolitan elite successfully sought to
extend its capacity for forcible accumulation. This enabled the Dutch to
seize existing possibilities and to create an international commercial-colonial
system, a network organized around the Netherlands as an active entrepot
trader. The chapter then takes up a major domestic threat to achieved patri-
monial governance—intercorporate struggle, which sharpened during the
Netherlands' rise to commercial dominance. Influential Amsterdam mer-
chant-regents, and the Dutch East Indies Company, wanted to eliminate the
West Indies Company as a competitor and a hindrance to commercial
opportunity. They helped marginalize and weaken the Company, thereby
38
The Dutch Golden Ajje 39
reshaping the Dutch colonial empire. The patrimonial state thus opened the
first cracks in Dutch hegemony.
Finally, in the last part of the chapter, I show that the possession of pat-
rimonial privileges changed the class character of those who held them.
The dominant merchant class may have captured the Dutch state, but
state structure and policies in turn reshaped the predilections of the gov-
erning elite, transforming them into rentier capitalists. This may have had
its points economically (at least for the elite men involved), but it but-
tressed the pronounced local and provincial basis of state building in the
Netherlands. Overall, this chapter contends that the patrimonial state
structure and capacities helped the Dutch merchant-regents create a
dominant position in world trade, including coerced colonial commerce,
and that the fruits of that dominance reinforced the Netherlands' local-
ized version of patrimonial power. The struggles in which the Dutch
elites engaged en route—both among themselves and with other con-
tenders for world power—were consequential as well as bloody. They
could also have gone quite differentiy.
Merchant Revolution and Estatist

Power in the Netherlands
Our story really begins during the Dutch Revolt against the patrimonial
overlord of the Low Countries, Habsburg Spain, in the tliick of one of
the chronic tussles over sovereignty between early modern rulers and cor-
porate elites. King Philip II was bent on bringing the Low Countries
more firmly under imperial control. He and his minions wanted to repress
the spread of Protestantism and to step up fiscal demands on the repre-
sentatives of the towns and provincial States of the Low Countries in
order to finance Spain's war with France. Against Habsburg efforts to
strengthen the crown's capacity for absolutist rule, corporate elites were
passionately insisting on their self-proclaimed traditional estatist rights.
The revolt that would eventually liberate all seven northern provinces of
the Low Countries broke out in 1566, and the Dutch States-General had
established a precarious sovereignty by the mid-i570s. (This was not what
we now understand as popular sovereignty, to be sure, but rather an
image of the States as partimonial guardian of the "large privileges, pre-
rogatives, immunities and other liberties" on behalf of the people; van
Gelderen 1992.) The delegates of several of the rebellious provinces sealed
their gains with a defensive pact against Spain, known as the Union of
Utrecht, in 1579. The pact ultimately served as the basis of the new state,
although the territory it covered waxed and waned with the fortunes of
the Eighty Years War.1
But what kind of state would it be? The early years of the Republic, the
1570s to the 1620s, witnessed tremendous struggles over this question.
These struggles were entwined with conflicts within the ragtag coalition of
early Dutch state builders, a coalition that included merchants, pirates,
urban burghers, and dissident seigneurial landlords. It was not simply a
state that was evolving, but a particular blend of corporation and class. The
Habsburg rulers had already done their bit by systematically favoring urban
merchants as a corporate counterweight to the weak, but restive, nobility,
which had begun to withdraw to rural estates even before the revolt (van
Nierop 1984). The Habsburgs supported the efforts of towns to buy up the
remaining seigneuries around their walls and expand their control over the
economic activities of their hinterlands (see de Vries 1974,48) and had also
consulted towns and provincial States about taxation and new laws and
(customarily) about decisions on war and peace that affected the provinces
(Koenigsberger 1982, 103-4).2 Crown military projects and fiscal demands
had molded preexisting interurban networks into more organized and
potentially solidary provincial estates (Blockmans 1978), in which wealthy
merchants occupied an usually powerful place, controlling the crucial town
councils by the mid-sixteenth century. In Holland and Zeeland, most of the
councillors were either shipowners or directly involved in overseas trade
(Boxer 1965, 7-8; Burke i960, 30; Kossmann 1978,5-8). So it should not be
surprising that large-scale merchants quickly came to the fore within Dutch
politics during the revolt.
The turning point for the revolt hinged on a specific politico-economic
intervention that, as many historians have pointed out, spurred both Dutch
mercantile accumulation and the consolidation of political power (de Vries
and van der Woude 1997; Israel 1995). In 1585, the Dutch managed to block-
ade the Scheldt River after the Spanish recaptured Antwerp, permanently
preventing trading ships from reaching that city. The closing of the Scheldt
ended Antwerp's role as the key textile and Asian product entrepot,
1
Parker (1977) provides a concise English-language history of the upheaval.
2
This was particularly important in the Netherlands, a highly urbanized agglomeration,
with many sizeable towns rather than one or a few large ones. Fifty-two percent of
Holland's population already lived in towns in 1514 (Baelde 1988, 69), and this percentage
rose further during the sixteenth century (de Vries 1984).
The Dutch Golden Age 41
and Antwerp's loss was Amsterdam's gain. Some 60,000-120,000 southern

Netherlands refugees, fleeing economic hardship and religious persecution,
brought their substantial capital and industrial and commercial skills to the
north (Briels 1985,213-28). Amsterdam merchants were able to gain increas-
ing leverage over the flourishing trade in raw wool (van Houtte 1964).
Textile manufacture in Holland towns boomed; in Leiden, it registered a
rise from 38,130 pieces in 1588 to 73,047 in 1609 (Posthumus 1908-1939,
2:60-64,107,129). In retaliation, Philip II (from 1580-1640 also the king of
Portugal) embargoed all foreign ships in Iberian harbors in 1585, an action
aimed primarily at the Dutch (Boxer 1965, 42; Bruijn et al. 1987,1-6). He
followed this up in 1594 with a ban on Dutch trade in the Americas (van den
Boogaart 1982,115-16).
No tocsin sounded, but for Dutch merchants a moment of liberation was
at hand. The barriers to using Iberia as the accustomed mercantile interme-
diary, coupled with the infusion of capital and skills from southern emigres
and newly available knowledge about trade routes and territories, provided
the means and impetus for Dutch merchants to initiate their own voyages
to Asia in the 1590s, and after that precompanies (voorcompajjnieen) multi-
plied rapidly in Holland and Zeeland (Gaastra 1982, IT). By 1601, fourteen
fleets (sixty-five ships) had sailed to the East Indies, far more than even the
Portuguese had sent in that period. Dutch merchants were making similar
efforts at expansion in the Adantic; they traded actively in Brazil despite
Philip's ban and smuggled salt out of the Caribbean in spite of the declared
Spanish monopoly. From 1593, Holland and Zeeland merchants formed
precompanies to compete with Portuguese slave-traders on the Guinea
coast (Goslinga 1971,116-25; van den Boogaart 1982,115-16; van Dillen 1970,
139-43). Established patterns of exchange based on bulk transshipment now
broadened to incorporate other high-value commercial streams in addition
to East and West Indies trade. As Jonathan Israel shows, the Dutch
advanced dramatically in the Baltic, Russian, Mediterranean, and Caribbean
market share (Israel 1989, 43-66). The domination of these trades required
more than just entrepot storage space; it also depended on the growing tex-
tile industry already mentioned. As the leading edge of commercial expan-
sion shifted to the colonial and rich trades, the merchants engaged in
colonial trade, proclaiming the need for the state to help merchants secure
wider opportunities in the Indies, swept into power in Amsterdam in 1601
(Elias 1923, 44-46). Heading the group were the precompany directors,
Reynier Pauw and Gerrit Bicker, soon to be founding directors of the
Dutch East Indies Company.
Thus, the position of merchants within the governing coalition, particu-

larly the long-distance merchants of the colonial trades, was greatly strength-
ened by the course of the revolt itself. The revolt propelled Holland and
Zeeland merchants to the forefront of the Dutch elite and consolidated a
revolutionary coalition that bound to the merchants disaffected nobles,
pirates, manufacturers, burghers and anti-Spanish Calvinist preachers. It was
this motiey group—dubbed "Hogglanders," "Butterboxes," and "Sovereign
Lords Millers and Cheeseheads" by their contemptuous but envious English
rivals—that struggled to carve out the outlines of a new state.
The state builders pursued two courses of action in these formative and
combative years as they sought to consolidate sovereign control over newly
claimed areas. In the earliest phase, which was punctuated by military threats
to the integrity of the United Provinces themselves, the regents topped off
the inherited patrimonial structures with quasi-monarchical protectors
appointed by the States-General. The first candidates were foreigners,
selected on the basis of Dutch alliances with France and England, respec-
tively: the Duke of Anjou (1581-83) and the Earl of Leicester (1585-87). The
regents were trying to find a tractable stand-in for the Habsburg monarch,
but this domesticated absolutist patrimonial path proved a dead end. Anjou
attempted a coup d'etat and was forced to withdraw to France. Leicester
sought to bend Dutch foreign policy to the dictates of the English crown
and to build an alliance with lower-class burghers in place of the regents in
order to strengthen his own position; the regents of Holland and Utrecht
had him dismissed.3 The state builders fell back on the indigenous stadhold-
ers, historically chosen from the princes of the House of Orange, but limited
dieir powers. The first stadholder of Holland under the republic, Willem I
the Silent (d. 1584), was technically a servant of the state rather than a sover-
eign ruler, although he retained important political prerogatives, such as the
captainship of the army, that assured him and his descendants an independ-
ent power base, especially during the protracted war of independence from
Spain. On this institutional foundation, and on the basis of their lordly and
dynastic prestige, later scions of the House of Orange would gesture fitfully
at broader sovereign, if never fully absolutist, rights.
The second phase, which was rational-legal bureaucratic in thrust, saw a
pioneering effort to build an integrated central state based on an attempt to
eliminate venal office-holding and to transform the Council of State (Raad
van State) into the nucleus of a national administration. The regents of the
3
The period of Anjou and Leicester is discussed in Schofter (1988a, 141-42, 147-52).
States of Holland led the way by abolishing venality in 1579. Patronage per-
sisted, but sales of office and privilege were legally abrogated. The edict was
extended to the provincial admiralties, installed in 1597, which collected cus-
toms duties from merchants and maintained the navy with the proceeds
{Resolutien van de Staten van Holland May 9-10,1579; Groot Placaet-boek 3,
100). The States of Holland initially enforced the ban, even with respect to
the offices nominally controlled by the Prince of Orange. Following
Holland's lead and urging, the regents of other provincial States enacted
similar laws. At the outset of the reform, then, there was a shift away from
venality, although it was both regionally uneven (with the regents of the
maritime provinces negotiating the transition most successfully) and institu-
tionally variable, making more headway in the law courts and Council of
State than in the army. The proscription of venality did not eliminate fraud
and corruption, and it was never as stable as an ideologically supported rev-
olution on behalf of the people and nation, which would have separated
state officials and the holders of sovereign prerogatives from ownership of
the means of administration. What it did do was help concentrate politico-
economic control, and future patronage, in the hands of the rebellious
regents at a crucial early juncture of state formation.
The creation of a sovereign center around the Council of State was a
complementary institutional innovation. No longer a tool of the
Habsburgs after the overthrow, the Raad became the sole general govern-
mental body in the 1580s. Its broad and vaguely bounded responsibilities
included national policy formation (with respect to the ongoing war),
oversight of state finances and the fleet, and evaluation of any reports
from Dutch ambassadors abroad. Its officers foreswore any connection to
their home territories and divested themselves of any other state offices
for the duration of their term. During the early period of state formation,
the council had more power and autonomy than it did later on. Its access
to funds was independent of the States-General, it made major decisions
on wartime strategy, and it actively disagreed with the States over issues
and areas in which their jurisdictions overlapped.4
4
My account of the Council of State is drawn from the following sources: Fockema Andreae
(1969); Fontaine (1950); van Deursen (1964-1965); van Slingelandt (1785). Van Deursen
maintains that the council was subordinate to the States-General from the beginning,
whereas others, beginning with van Slingelandt, hold that its responsibilities and capacity to
act narrowed over time. I find the latter argument convincing, for reasons that would
occupy too much space to be articulated here.
Powerful social actors arrayed themselves against the council's claims to

the status of sovereign center, however, and they drew from the same con-
stituencies that resisted the imposition of a new absolutist patrimonial
ruler. The provincial delegates to the States-General were opposed; so
were the merchant-regents of Holland, who refused to relinquish control
over maritime policy or the naval dominance they had established in Low
Countries waters and who went so far as to suborn the Council of State in
order to block government investigations of illegal collaboration in smug-
gling and customs fraud between the Amsterdam admiralty and leading
merchants (Elias 1963 [1903-1905], xl-xli; Vlekke 1945, 147, 153). Their
objections were focused by the presence of a formal representative of
England on the council, raising doubts and complaints about its independ-
ent sovereign status. In this instance, Maurits, Stadholder Willem I's ambi-
tious successor, cast his lot with the regent patriciate, while resisting on his
own account the council's attempts to direct wartime army strategy.5
Tricornered conflicts among the Council of State, stadholder, and States-
General continued into the earlv seventeenth centurv, but the council was
never able to establish institutional capacities to conduct a national policy
or to enforce sovereign directives on recalcitrant corporations. Instead, the
regents' organ and mouthpiece, the States-General, pruned the powers of
the council in 1588, restricting it to implementing the State's directives.
The States-General declared itself in 1590 "the sovereign institution of the
country," with "no overlord except the deputies of the provincial estates
themselves."6 The founding Union of Utrecht, which did not establish
common central institutions, became the fallback basis and the closest
thing to a constitution of the estatist patrimonial state.
So, both the homegrown absolutist and rational-legal bureaucratic
strategies foundered on the rocks of urban and provincial opposition and
organized merchant-class resistance articulated via patrimonial state bod-
ies. The key state-building agents in the Netherlands, the merchant-
regents of the mercantile provinces and the stadholders, had so far
succeeded in preserving the system of segmented sovereignty. The mer-
chant-regents were assured an advantageous fiscal position and
5
In at least two cases, Maurits (d. 1625) explicitly ignored the Raad's directives, acting with-
out its consent. See Fontaine (1950, 282-89).
6
Regarding the council's ultimate lack of sovereign prerogatives, see Elias (1923, $0) and
Fockema Andreae (1969). Although struggles between the States-General and the council
continued into the early seventeenth century, the council lacked institutional capacities to
condu :t a national policy or to enforce sovereign directives on recalcitrant provinces, towns,
or corporations.
autonomous naval power under the prevailing corporate town- and

province-based system. They believed, reasonably enough, that they had
much to lose from the introduction of a unitary public system of fiscal
and military apparatuses. The stadholders, for their part, saw their control
of their most important power base, the army, under threat. In addition,
as we see in chapter 3, regents and stadholders, as elite family heads,
believed that they were entided to family property in office and privilege
and felt threatened by any prospective shift away from these mingled
forms of property holding and political power. Perceived politico-eco-
nomic advantage dovetailed with passionately held beliefs about the pre-
rogatives of dynasty, creating powerful elite resistance to sovereign
unification. In any case, the parcellized patrimonial system worked well
enough, and state builders were not yet compelled, either by internal
problems or outside pressures, to find a radically different way to operate.
They would face such problems and pressures in time.
Thus about fifteen hundred regents—town councilors and magistrates,
together with the members of the upper judicial and governmental col-
leges and high administrative officials—were reaffirmed as the ruling elite.
The regents of the fifty-eight privileged voting (stemhebbende) towns,
coupled with representatives of the nobility and corporate franchise-hold-
ing farms, in turn sent delegates to the provincial States. The provincial
assemblies in turn were supposed to agree unanimously in the big deci-
sions on war, peace, and taxes affecting the whole union. The union
reserved sovereignty to the provincial States and empowered the States-
General to enact only what had been previously agreed on in those bod-
ies7 (Fockema Andreae 1969, 36-39; Schoffer 1988). This was even
without the wild card of the stadholders—in the seventeenth century,
provincially based and plural, in the eighteenth, eventually unified in one
hereditary figure. As R. R Palmer remarks, the intricacies of the newly
independent Dutch state "baffle brief description" (1959-1964, 1: 38).
They might even resist a lengthy excursus.
How did such a hydra hang together as a single sovereign body? Why
did this patchwork politico-economic structure work at all, much less
7
In Holland, the towns held eighteen out of nineteen votes. In Zeeland, only one noble
voted, the Prince of Orange. In the northeast, States membership derived from the owner-
ship of areas where franchise-holding farms had stood, but the city oligarchy controlled par-
ticipation. In Overijssel, the three towns had three votes to the nobility's one. In
Groningen, the city and nobility had one vote each. In Friesland the towns had only one
vote out of tour. For an English-language summary of the mechanics of voting prerogatives,
see Vlekke (i945, 162-64).
46 T H E FAMI U AL STATE
work brilliantly? One old, and now reinvigorated, argument names

Calvinism as the cause. Certainly the Calvinist movement was an impor-
tant factor in the establishment of rule, as Schama (1987), van Gelderen
(1992) and especially Gorski (i993> 2003) have emphasized. The Calvinists
originated presbyterian organizational forms that secured and legitimated
federal political life and endowed a broad cross section of the population
of the emergent republic with a shared sense of protonational purpose. In
that sense, Dutch Calvinism paralleled the articulatory role of militant
Protestantism that Christopher Hill (1967) has identified in seventeenth-
century England. Popular civic consciousness in the Netherlands drew
heavily on medieval traditions of urban liberty, as previously noted, but it
was also rooted in a newly broadened, imagined community—as both
Schama (1987) and Gorski (2003) note, an idea of the Republic as a nation
of the elect founded on a covenant with God. The Dutch Revolt against
Habsburg Spain was further fueled by assertions of patrimonial privilege
fused with novel charismatic connections between the revolt and biblical
dramas: between Philip II and Pharaoh, between William I the Silent and
Moses, and between the Netherlands and Israel.8 These connections
fueled later claims to symbolic founding fatherhood by scions of the
House of Orange (see chaps. 3 and 5); I doubt that the singular and
hereditary stadholderate of the eighteenth century would have been pos-
sible without them. Nevertheless, it is also the case that Calvinism faded
as a primary force in state formation by the 1620s. In that momentous
decade, Saint and Regent were institutionally divorced. We must then
look elsewhere for the forces that bound together the Netherlands' con-
stitutive corporate bodies—cities, companies, guilds, provinces, and so
on—when so much conspired to divide them.
In essence, this slice of my argument is a Weberian one about the
rationalization of charisma, with an accent on the struggles that launched
the process, and the contradictions embedded in its historical way stations
and institutional resolutions. In the early years of the Dutch Republic, we
can chart the historical moments at which interelite struggles put paid to
some regents' dreams of domestic theocracy. Instead, Calvinist energies
were redirected into and diffused in government institutions without
8
The concept of "imagined community" is, of course, Benedict Anderson's (1983). See
Schama (1987) regarding Biblical images and the Netherlands. Gorski (2003) points out that
Calvinism and Calvinists had a key role in creating a new civic consciousness, an intermedi-
ate form that was neither that of Renaissance citv-states nor modern nation-states and that
this form had important worldwide consequences.
specifically religious aims, including, as Gorski shows, the army (Gorski

2003) and, as I show in the next chapter, the ruling families including the
closest thing to a monarchical center, the House of Orange. The vision of
an emergent nation-state was infused with the sacred, although the ele-
ment of nation was (however uneasily) composed of Catholics and Jews
as well as Protestants and that of the state as interprovincial pact pressed
federalism to its centripetal limits. The defeat of theocracy could have
issued in the collapse of Dutch governing institutions and almost did at
several junctures. This would probably have led to the triumph of
Habsburg Spain in the Eighty Years War and the extinction of the Dutch
Republic. Why didn't this happen?
A major force for unity was the province of Holland's leading role.
Having vanquished the Council of State, Holland, and especially the mer-
chant-controlled city council of Amsterdam and the province's chief pub-
lic servant, the Grand Pensionary, rapidly assumed a more prominent
political position. Between them the Holland States and Amsterdam town
council managed to monopolize the appointment and direction of the
key personnel in matters of foreign policy, tax collection, the navy, and
the chartered companies. The grand pensionary quickly usurped the place
of the States-General's Griffier and served as a kind of prime minister
avant la lettre, designing and conducting foreign-policy initiatives.
Holland appointed and paid almost all diplomats; Amsterdam itself con-
trolled (and appointed and paid) many ambassadors, including those for
Paris, the Scandinavian countries, and the Hanseatic cities. These diplo-
mats sought guidance from their provincial and town authorities as well
as the States-General (Boogman 1979, 396-97). Holland also came to
appoint and dominate three of the five naval admiralties, charged with
collecting the convoy and license monies (taxes on shipping) that main-
tained the navy—a fact that turned out to be crucial in sealing the
province's, and Amsterdam's, dominant position. In the key policy areas
of international commercial and colonial politics, the power of the
Amsterdam and Holland regents was rapidly configured into political
structures themselves.
Holland's merchant-regents married rhetorical persuasion to their
institutional clout. "It is true that the State is seen as the organ of one
particular group, destined to create favorable conditions for the latter's
maximum expansion," writes Antonio Gramsci. "But the development
and expansion of the particular group are conceived of, and presented, as
being the motor force of a universal expansion, of a development of all
the 'national' energies" (Gramsci 1971,182). In just this sense, the merchant-
regents successfully campaigned for support from (or at least acquiescence
by) other provinces and groups on the basis of how desirable their projects
would be for the Netherlands as a whole (see Schoffer 1964, 64-98). This is
second nature to us now, but it was not something that die rulers of France,
for example, would have imagined in the early seventeenth century. Finally, if
push came to shove, and other provinces and cities or the stadholders resis-
ted more tactful leadership, the Holland regents could use what amounted
to a fiscal veto over policy implementation. Holland contributed at least 59
percent (and often up to 66 percent, if not more) of the state's annual
budget and Amsterdam a significant portion of Holland's.9 Of this, the
regent elite paid a substantial share. In 1600, about one-half of the
Amsterdam regents were large-scale merchants (Burke 1974, 43, 58). The
merchant-regents' fiscal resources helped keep the unwieldy ship of state
afloat, and they laid heavy hands on the tiller.10 These mechanisms—fiscal,
institutional, and ideological—gave the merchant capitalists, especially
Amsterdam's, extraordinary say in state policy.
There was a paradoxical side to Holland's and Amsterdam's hold on sov-
ereign power. The merchant-regents used their emergent central position in
the global coerced commercial and colonial patterns to secure a solid strate-
gic advantage in political decisions at home. 11 Amsterdam's leaders pressed
their advantage in the network of towns in the provincial estates of Holland,
as did Holland's lenders in the States-General. Partly as a consequence, the
stadholders were subordinated to the estates, and the power of the would-be
patrimonial monarch was restrained. This was a good thing for trade, and
thus, again, for Amsterdam's and Holland's position in the Union.
9
Estimates of Amsterdam's share differ fairly widely, however, from approximately 15 to 50
percent. For a recent discussion of this issue, see 't Hare (iySy).
10
Hence the structure and composition of the Amsterdam government was crucial. The
thirty-six members of the town council (vroedschap), propertied men chosen tor life by
cooptation, supplied a list of regents from which the four mayors were elected annually, in
addition to participating in the election of the aldermen {schepenen) responsible for making
laws. The council also advised the mayors, who headed the council; supervised religious and
poor-relief institutions; oversaw taxation and the city's financial institutions, the civil militia,
and army garrisons; and appointed representatives to the Council of State and the admiral
ties. See Porta (i975> 23-25). Regarding merchant monopolization, see also Klein (1965).
11
In the social network literature, centrality is understood in a number of ways (Freeman
1979). Here I am thinking of the dimension of betweenness. If betweenness is taken to indi-
cate the extent to which other units must traverse the unit of reference in order to reach
other units, then units (or actors) that are central, in the sense of having high betweenness,
are the most likely to be situated on unique chains joining peripheral actors.
Sovereign monarchs were wild cards in the game of applying state power in
favor of moneymaking: they might favor trade and colonial expansion, but
they might also engage themselves (and state resources) in dynastic schemes
or pursue lordly territorial goals at variance with capital accumulation
(Weber 1968 [1922], 1094-95). That Grotius, the illustrious Dutch jurist,
authored both the international maritime doctrine of "Mare Liberum" and
a domestic political theory that enabled die collective rule of the regents and
provincial estates over both their would-be sovereign monarchs and the peo-
ple was brilliantly innovative and structurally symptomatic.
The temporary taming of the stadholdcrs enabled the merchant-regents
to exercise more control over the domestic political conditions for long-dis-
tance trade and colonial expansion. Potential governance problems were
minimized at the outset of the first wave of European colonialism (circa
1600) by the Netherlands' special brand of corporate patrimonialism, which
would help make the Dutch the most successful player in the mercantilist
game. On the other hand, sovereign power remained segmented, fluid, and
vulnerable to displacement and disintegration. Holland's merchant-regents
tried to stake their own ceremonial claims to being a sacred center—claims
that have left their traces in built forms such as the Amsterdam Town Hall,
erected in 1648, with its marriage of classical and godly motifs and its spec-
tacular floor (which is still there) depicting the global reach of Amsterdam-
centered Dutch trade and military might. At times of national crisis,
however, the House of Orange-Nassau and the dream of a stadholder-king,
always present as a lurking double symbol of Dutch unity and popular
resistance to elite merchant-regent rule, could seem more compelling.12
This was particularly true during foreign invasions (see in chap. 3) and at
other times when the state's centripetal tendencies were most apparent.
Chartered Companies and the PJse of the Colonial Interest
The fledgling state, committed to promoting international commercial

interests, faced its first serious colonial challenge when confronted by
12
Even the stadholders were designated by the provincial States during the period under
examination. Although die regents of different provinces could designate the same candi-
date as their provincial stadholder, it was also possible to have more than one stadholder
simultaneously. It was not until 1747 that the regents legally mandated that just one heredi-
tary stadholder, the Prince of Orange, represent the whole of the Netherlands. For an
English-language account of the stadholderate, see Rowen (1988).
competition among individual merchants (the precompanies, or voorcom-

pagniecn). The growing competition was raising spice prices in Asia and
lowering selling prices in the Netherlands, thus endangering the profits of
the whole trade. The alliance between the Amsterdam regents and the
Holland Grand Pensionary Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, who encouraged
and mediated negotiations among those concerned, persuaded other mer-
chants to put aside their fears of Amsterdam's dominance and pool their
efforts, and the state chartered the East Indies Company (Verenigde Oost-
Indische Compagnie, or VOC) in 1602.[3 The charter awarded the VOC a
twenty-one-year monopoly on trade east of the Cape of Good Hope. The
tripartite monopoly covered shipping, objects of trade, and their sale in the
Netherlands. The charter also delegated sovereign rights to the company
while rendering it dependent on the state for the recognition and renewal
of its monopoly privileges and territorial claims and for the domestic sup-
port of its monopoly. The East Indies Company was a patrimonial state cre-
ation and a merged state-merchant partnership from the start.
The VOC was also one of the first examples of a limited liability com-
pany, pioneering the concept of permanent capital and a partial distinc-
tion between company and individual assets.14 As such, it was able to
attract a strikingly broad range of investors and to accumulate an
unprecedented initial capital, which reached the then huge sum of
6,424,588 guilders (florins). The company also reflected the composition
of the Dutch elite, both in terms of class and region. Most initial share-
holders were large-scale wholesale merchants; they also invested propor-
tionately the most money. Amsterdam investors supplied 57 percent of the
initial capital.15 As they continued to buy up smaller shareholders, the
number of shareholders in the Amsterdam chamber shrank from 1,143 in
1602 to 830 in 1612 (van Dillen 1958).
The founding merchants of the precompanies themselves were an inde-
pendent causal factor in establishing the VOC, and they retained their
13
Based on Gaastra (1982, 9 - n ) and Prakash (1987, 185-86). A reproduction of the charter
can be found in Cau (1658, 530).
14
The major improvements over the precompanies were that shareholders contributed to
the company itself, not to the individual directors; that they contributed for a period often
years, not one voyage; and that directors were not personally responsible tor company debts,
whereas shareholders were responsible only for debts up to the amount of their investment.
See van Dillen (1958, 20-34).
15
Amsterdam merchants furnished 1.7 million guilders in 1602 alone, enticed by prospects
such as one precompany's 400-500 percent profit on a single fleet (Boxer 1965, 25; Gaastra
1982, 21-26).
place and their voice in its direction. Thirty-six men served as directors of
the Amsterdam chamber in its first fifteen years. Twenty-four of the
twenty-five about whom I have information were large-scale wholesale
merchants and one was an admiral. At least ten held city office, and a
number of them were opinion leaders and key players in the town coun-
cil.16 Large-scale merchants also composed the bulk of shareholders; they
invested voluntarily and invested proportionately the most money, con-
tinuing to buy out smaller shareholders in the company's early years (van
Dillen 1958, 45-49). Clearly, merchant self-organization, as instanced by
the numerous independent merchant voyages to Asia, the merchants' ini-
tiative in appealing to the state for further help in their overheated trade,
and their voluntary rather than coerced investment in the VOC, left its
mark on the company, most importantly in the merchants' active and
continuing control over that body's directorate.
The corporation was also created in the image of the estatist state. The
charter distributed policy making and operations across six regional cham-
bers (kamers) and a regionally balanced central court of directors. Each
chamber was to build and furnish its own ships and recruit its own sailors,
whereas return cargos and profits were to be proportionally redistributed.
Eight of the central court of directors (the Seventeen Gentlemen, Heren
XVII) came from Amsterdam, four from Middelburg, one each from the
four small chambers, and the seventeenth was to be elected from either
Middelburg or one of the small chambers.17 Vacancies were to be filled by
cooption from short lists of large shareholders handed over by the chamber
directors in question to the magistrate of the relevant town. In the early
stages of the VOC's history, this mechanism forged even closer ties between
the interests of the company and regents and was one source of the com-
pany's success. These ties were close from the beginning: of the thirty-six
initial directors of the Amsterdam chamber, at least ten can definitely be
said to have held city office,18 and a number of them were opinion leaders
and key political players in the town council.
16
They were Pauw, Bas, Hasselaer senior, Caerel, de Velaer, Poppen, Raey, Reynst,
Jonckheyn, Ten Grootenhuys, Cloeck, Bicker, Helmer, Le Maire, Sem, de Vogelaer, van
Beuningen, van Hellemont, Oetgens, Witsen, Schellinger, Rijckacrt, Hasselaer junior,
Brouwer, and Trip.
17
The initial investments of the chambers were Amsterdam, 3,679,915 guilders; Middelburg
(Zeeland), 1,300,405; Delft, 469,400; Rotterdam, 173,000; Hoorn, 266,868; and Enkhuizen,
540,000. See Gaastra (1982, 21-22).
18
These men were Pauw, Bas, Hasselaer, Jonckheyn, Bicker, van Beuningen, Oetgens,
Witsen, Schellinger, and Rijckhaert.
Profits and power were the watchwords of the company, as they were for
all patrimonial corporations. Grand Pensionary van Oldenbarnevelt asserted
in 1602 that a company was necessary ufor damaging the enemy and for
security of the fatherland" (quoted in Boxer 1979, i). 19 The VOC did well
from the outset. Mounting an offensive against the Iberian empire in the
East Indies, with a view to making money and cutting the costs of war to
the States-General, the company made rapid inroads in the Spice Islands,
the South Moluccas and Banda Islands, the source of the world's cloves and
nutmeg, forcing the Portuguese off Amboina in the Moluccas in 1605 and
securing a foothold in Ternate and Tidore. Some merchant investors resis-
ted this bellicose turn of events (van Dillen 1958,19). In 1608, and again in
1613, some protested and withdrew from the company, but they had no dis-
cernable impact on policy. The Dutch route to mercantile riches was not
free trade but an explicitly coercive politico-economic project. The VOC's
commercial and militarv success transformed the international balance of
power and helped to hurry Spain to the negotiating table, where Dutch
colonial projects had suddenly become bargaining chips.
At this stage, the accumulation strategies of Dutch carrying traders and
colonial merchants were contradictory, and they voiced opposing inter-
ests in the outcome of the negotiations with Spain. The carrying traders
wanted peace and were willing to trade away the possibility of colonial
gains to get it. The colonial interest strongly opposed the grand pension-
ary's proposal that the VOC be liquidated and plans for a West Indies
Company scrapped in exchange for Spanish recognition of Dutch inde-
pendence. The most vociferous opposition emanated from the
Amsterdam town council, which argued that peace would damage trade
and privateering in the Indies and that the West Indies Company (backed
by the council since 1606) would never be realized (Elias 1963, xlix; van
Hoboken i960, 48). Despite their opposition, and that of the stadholder
and the hard-line Calvinist clergy, the Twelve-Year Truce was signed in
1609. The majority of the representatives to the Holland States had come
to support the Grand Pensionary and an end to the hostilities. The States
of the land provinces had also supported peace, hoping for lower taxes.
The truce specified that Spain recognized the independence of the
United Provinces and that both would keep their Indies possessions.20
19
The founding of the VOC was an extension of the policy by which the States of Holland and
many towns gave the precompanies arms and exempted them from duties. Unlike the VOC,
however, the precompanies neither had sovereign rights nor made claims to sovereignty.
20
Parker neatly sums up the situation from Spain's point of view: "Spain was not prepared
The truce did benefit European carrying traders, shipbuilders, and

sailors,21 but it could not produce a permanent peace because of domestic
opposition. The VOC's success continued to strengthen the hand of the
colonial traders and the Amsterdam city council, and their opposition ulti-
mately carried the day. The Seventeen Gentlemen propagandized against
the truce at home, actively petitioning the States-General, provincial States,
and key town councils, while "their men in the Indies" worked to seize as
much territory as possible and to monopolize the world spice trade (Furber
1976, 34; Israel 1982, 13-15, 36). During the truce, the VOC defiantly
expanded its operations, sending to Asia 76 ships carrying 8,500 men from
1602 to 1610 and 117 ships carrying 19,000 men from 1611 to 1620.22 The
company designated Batavia (Jakarta) as its Indies entrepot and headquar-
ters in 1611 and stationed its governor-general there. Because cotton cloth
was the commodity most in demand in the Indonesian spice-producing
areas and access to a stable supply would reduce the need for specie, the
VOC moved in on the trade in cotton cloth emanating from the southeast
Indian coast, where it soon supplanted the Portuguese in relations with
indigenous traders and producers (Raychaudhuri 1962). But the Seventeen
Gentlemen were forced to hold back on their ambitious plans for expansion
into the Chinese silk and Ceylonese cinnamon trades, and the ruling faction
blamed van Oldenbarnevelt and the truce (Elias 1923, 39-44). The colonial
interest and Amsterdam's efforts to overturn it, joined by Leiden and other
manufacturing towns, as well as inland towns in Holland and Zeeland,23
succeeded in reversing the policy. The colonial interest was instrumental in
the struggles that led to van Oldenbarnevelt's execution in 1618 and the
renewal of war with Iberia.24
to abandon for ever her monopoly status in the New World, but neither was she prepared to
continue fighting in the Netherlands for the sake of the Portuguese Indies" (1979,54-55)-
21
Danish Sound toll data show that the Dutch position in the Baltic improved tremen-
dously: the Dutch share of total ships entering the Baltic rose from 60 to over 70 percent in
1609-20, a level that was never reached again (den Haan 1977, 141, i97~99; see also
Christensen 1941). The Dutch part of the Mediterranean carrying trade between Spain and
Italy and of the rich Levant trades also climbed steeply (Israel 1989).
22
See Bruijn et al. (1987) for more complete figures on VOC tonnages and cargoes. The num-
bers of ships were still relatively small, but the values of die cargoes were disproportionately high.
2d
These towns were now bypassed because goods were shipped directly from the Baltic and
France instead of via their waterways. Although the land provinces did not get higher taxes,
they did not get tax cuts either. Israel provides a brilliant historical reconstruction of the
economic impact of the truce (1989, 86-101).
24
For a concise English-language history of this period, see Kossmann (1970,371-34).
The issue was not, it should be emphasized, a lack of state support for
long-distance and colonial power and profit. In fact, the States-General
had supported the VOC against its own shareholders and its charter at a
critical juncture in 1612, enabling the company to hold off on paying divi-
dends and to begin accumulating permanent capital. In that same year,
the States-General had contributed toward building a fortified trading
post on the Gold Coast of Africa (van den Boogart 1982, 115; Elias 1923,
39-44). 25 The issue was, rather, that the merchants concerned considered
the level of support inadequate, and the structure of the Dutch state
enabled them to act on their perceived interests.
The accession of the colonial interest to power in the States-General and
the resumption of the war against Iberia opened the way for an all-out com-
bative colonial strategy in Asia and the Americas. The Seventeen Gentlemen
promoted the imperialist visionary Jan Pieterszoon Coen to governor-gen-
eral (1619-23, 1627-29). Coen's goals, expanding the so-called country
(intra-Asian) trade in order to accumulate a permanent Asian capital and
seizing the world spice monopoly, were realized in the seventeenth century.
Coen moved aggressively and decisively against indigenous and European
competitors. The English in particular, he insisted in 1620, had no right to a
single "grain of sand (niet een sandeken) in the Mollucas, Amboina or
Banda" (letter of May 11, 1620, in Coen 1921; also cited in Colenbrander
1919,543-57, esp. 544). With the aim of solidifying the Dutch monopoly, he
instigated severely repressive policies against the indigenous population of
the Spice Islands, culminating in the selective extermination and virtual
enslavement of the Bandanese people.26 Coen's projects were in a real sense
made possible by the dispersed sovereignty inherent in patrimonial political
structures, which effectively interposed layers of plausible deniability
between what he was doing and what the States-General and even the
Seventeen Gentlemen had to acknowledge or could always control. Ralph
Winwood, the English ambassador, noted that the VOC "is a body by
themselves, powerfull and mighty in this State, and will not acknowledge
the authority of the States generally more than shall be for their private
25
Extracts from resolutions of the States-General, in Algemeen Rijksarchief (ARA) 1.01.07
#1235, #1237, #1244, also testify to state support for the company's general goals.
26
Coen's third goal, bringing out Dutch settlers, to be supported with slave labor if neces-
sary, was not broadly implemented in the early modern period. See his plea to the Heren
XVII for young Dutch women {jonge meyskens) to populate the colony, also in the letter of
May 11,1620 (Colenbrander 1919,555).
profits"27 (letter to the Count of Salisbury, 31 January/10 February 1612, in

Clark and Eysinga 1940-1951,1:51-52).
The colonial interest was in command. For a brief time, it got a boost
from militant Protestantism and vocal hard-line Calvinist preachers, press-
ing for a complementary West Indian patrimonial project as a weapon
against the Spanish and the papacy. These religious militants, rallying
behind the banner of Prince Maurits, formed an important constituency
of the war party that toppled Grand Pensionary van Oldenbarnevelt and
argued for a more aggressive stance against Iberia. Enthusiasts such as the
Amsterdam merchant Willem Usselincx, a fiery Calvinist propagandist
and emigre from the southern Low Countries, wrote pamphlets urging
the formation of a West Indies Company and emphasizing that this pious
course of action also promised to be the lucrative thing to do. Usselincx
and his fellow agitators received critical support from Reynier Pauw, a
powerful Amsterdam burgomaster whose influence was at its peak when
the orthodox Calvinists (aka the Gomarists or Counter-Remonstrants)
triumphed at the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619.28
So, the West Indies Company (West Indische Compagnie, or WIC) was
chartered in 1621 and granted a monopoly on trade, transport, and prod-
uct sales in the Americas and West Africa and sovereign rights to make
treaties with non-European rulers for twenty-four years. It was conceived
as a politico-economic weapon aimed at Iberia, perhaps even more than
the VOC had been at its founding, with closer ties to the States-General,
which invested in it and named a representative to the board of directors.
The WIC's charter explicitly cited piracy as a company mission. Its five-
chambered organization and directorate of Nineteen Gentlemen (Heren
XIX) closely resembled the VOC's and were also dominated by
Amsterdam. As with the VOC, directors were named by their city govern-
ments (Goslinga 1971, 90-93; Menkman 1947, 42-46; van Dillen 1970,
27
For Coen's outrage at and ultimately successful opposition to die Seventeen Gentlemen's
efforts to conclude a truce with the English East India Company, see his letter in
Colenbrander (1919, 543-4).
28
Mosse (1970,176-81) summarizes the complicated religious dimensions of these struggles.
See van Dillen (1961, 153-54) regarding Reinier Pauw and the Remonstrant/Counter-
Remonstrant power balance in Amsterdam in the early 1620s.
29
Amsterdam was to pay four-ninths of the costs and receive the same proportion of
returns; Zeeland (Middelburg, Vlissingen, Veere, and Tholen) two-ninths; and die Maas
(Rotterdam, Delft, and Dordrecht), the Northern Quarter (Enkhuizen, Medemblik,
Hoorn, Alkmaar, Edam, and Monnikendam), and City and Country (Groningen and Friesland)
one-ninth each. The 1623 charter supplement stipulated that the magistrate of any town in
146-48).29 The structure of the patrimonial state, and its merchant-domi-

nated estatism, was reflected in the West Indies Company as well.
The WIC's capital of 7,108,161 guilders was greater than the VOC's,
reflecting the economic progress that the Netherlands had made since
1602. However, it took much longer (two years instead of two months) to
gather. The States-General was compelled to include the profitable Punta
de Araya, Venezuela, salt monopoly to promote share sales. The reason
for the lag in subscriptions is unclear. Perhaps investors were wary of the
strength of the Iberian Atlantic empire or of the religious fanaticism of
some company founders. It is clear that relatively few of Holland's leading
merchants invested, in spite of a concerted campaign by the States-
General and several provincial States and town councils that was aimed at
diverting investment to the West Indies venture. WIC capital ultimately
derived from somewhat different sources than the VOC's: the States-
General, inland towns, and the nonmerchant lower classes.30
Historians continue to debate the role of religion in the formation of
the West Indies Company, following the classic debate in which van
Hoboken (1959, i960) argues that Calvinism determined its formation and
policy and van Dillen (1961) emphasizes the company's overriding eco-
nomic goals.31 It seems to me that the "broad church" view is correct in
this instance and that both arguments can be reconciled because they con-
stituted one institutional nexus in the context of Dutch development. On
the one hand, the political importance of Protestantism peaked at the time
of the WIC's genesis. The triumph of the Counter-Remonstrant faction in
1618 reserved the right of the Dutch Reformed church to hold a position
of official privilege and to make final determination in all matters of doc-
trine. For the rest of the early modern era, the church retained a high-pro-
file semipublic role, especially in civic rituals and the administration of
charitable institutions. Thus Philip Gorski is correct in seeing the Calvinist
moment, once achieved and institutionalized under the headship of the
which there was no chamber but where 100,000 guilders had been subscribed could name a
director to an existing chamber. The Nineteen Gentlemen included eight from Amsterdam,
four from Zeeland, two each from the other chambers, and one from the States-General.
30 j j i e eighty-three leading shareholders of the Amsterdam chamber invested over 1 million
guilders, one-third of the city's total, but a high proportion of investment in that chamber
came from outside the city-, compared to the VOC. For a general account of the founding of
the WIC, see Goslinga (1971, 90-93)> Menkman (1947, 42-46), and van Dillen (1970,
146-49).
,:?1
The debate continues. Emmerys (1981) is a recent intervention.
Dutch Reformed Church, as definitive of the Dutch Republic and charac-

teristic of its institutions (Gorski 1993, 2003).
The Dutch Republic was not a theocracy, however. The Counter-
Remonstrants conceded sovereignty to the secular States-General from
the outset. Furthermore, the church lacked the capacity to define who
counted as a citizen—that is, who had corporate rights in a city (poorter-
schap) or other patrimonial corporations, including the chartered compa-
nies. The urban regents retained that power until the end of the Old
Regime.32 Finally, and most important, the hardline Protestants were
soon forced to give way: the Counter-Remonstrants triumphed in 1618,
but were themselves displaced by the secularists or Libertines
(Libertijnen) shortly thereafter. In Amsterdam, the Calvinist Reynier
Pauw was not coopted as burgomaster in 1622; it was his adversary, the
States-Party libertijn Andries Bicker, who became a council member in
that year and who rapidly climbed into the inner circle instead. (Bicker
became a burgomaster in 1627. The promotion of his faction also had a
popular context: from 1626, Amsterdam experienced a broad movement
against the Remonstrants, whose houses were attacked and plundered.)
Members of the famous Bicker family led the secular mercantile faction
that held the reins of power in Amsterdam and Holland for almost fifty
years.
Thus, Calvinism contributed to the establishment of both the union
and the West Indies Company, but Calvinists qua Calvinists stopped mak-
ing patrimonial policy less than a decade after their 1618 triumph. The
qualified institutional separation between church and state in the 1620s
was a significant step toward secularization at home, and it had impor-
tant—and positive, when it came to securing politico-economic hege-
mony—implications for Dutch mercantile capitalism abroad. In the
following years, the WIC mounted a series of ambitious attempts to link
the Americas, West Africa and the Netherlands in a colonial trading net-
work. The company relied on privateering, peaking as a pirate enterprise
in 1628-29 with the dramatic capture of Spain's annual Mexican silver
fleet—an exploit still celebrated in Dutch children's songs. The company's
period of greatest politico-economic success, post-1637, is also its most
32
Although poorterschap did become more transferable from city to city toward the end of
that era, and hence more abstract and generalized and more similar to modern notions of
citizenship, we need to look beyond Calvinism for the causes of that process—to increased
politico-economic integration, to responses to military tiireats from other countries, to
interurban elite marriage patterns, and to changing political cultures.
infamous, in which it linked captured territory and sugar plantations in

Brazil with sugar markets in the United Provinces and an expanded the
West African slave trade in the first of the Adantic triangular trades
(driehoekshandel). In 1640, 120 of the formerly Portuguese sugar planta-
tions were again producing sugar, this time for the Dutch. Renewed pro-
ductivity was built on the backs of over 23,000 slaves shipped from Elmina
and Sao Paulo (in Angola) to Brazil between 1636 and 1645.33
Whatever had been the initial impetus for incursions into the West
Indies, undoubtedly in part religious, and deeply so, the WIC's policies
soon shifted to a focus on politico-economic success, and both investors
and statesmen evaluated the value of company shares in those prosaic,
this-worldly terms. This exemplary process of social differentiation and
rationalization sprang from some summary executions and bloody fights,
as we have seen, and the underpinnings of the hard-won developmental
equilibrium derived from colonial repression and slavery as well as more
benign forms of politico-economic innovation at home. In this, too, was
Dutch patrimonialism a historical model for other modernizing state
elites.
Intercorporate Relations and Patrimonial Elite Struggle
Sovereign corporations were only gradually organized and subsumed

under state-to-state networks. When chartered companies did well, they
established a measure of political autonomy for themselves. Their capacity
to command substantial force and the cloudy definition and shifting loca-
tion of sovereignty complicated the relationship among companies and
between companies and their home states. In the early seventeenth cen-
tury, when the Dutch East Indies Company and the English East India
Company briefly contemplated merger, it was (and is) unclear what such a
step would have meant for the relationships among the jointly held colo-
nial territory, the companies, and the two home states. Conversely, when
the Dutch East and West Indies Companies came to blows, the future con-
figuration of the Dutch commercial/colonial system hung in the balance.
33
For this phase of WIC history, see Emmer (1972), van den Boogaart (1982, 116-27), and
van Dillen (1970,153—57> 160-61). Postma (1990) is the most thorough analysis of the Dutch
slave trade. Hall (1991) analyzes colonial Brazilian agriculture as a patrimonial political econ-
omy, from a neo-Weberian perspective. Also relevant is Stern's (1988) opening salvo in his
debate with Wallerstein.
The overall effect was to introduce important new contingencies into pat-
rimonial politics, and into metropolitan state formation.
The initial impetus for the struggle stemmed from the pressures of war,
which strained the Dutch trading system, damaging some trades and
encouraging competition among merchants for defense funds from the
state. As the contest with Spain dragged on, it became harder for carrying
traders to obtain salt for fish preservation and wool for the textile indus-
try. Naval attacks and privateering in the Baltic affected the availability of
the naval supplies that advantaged Dutch shipbuilders and thus affected
freight rates. The war also hurt merchants engaged in the essential trade
in grain (Christensen 1941, 377-78; den Haan 1977, 150). As early as the
1633 negotiations, the Amsterdam town council began instructing its
deputies in the Holland States to agree to Dutch withdrawal from Brazil.
Amsterdam merchants became increasingly vociferous in the cause of the
carrying trade. One hundred fifty-nine of the city's large-scale traders
lodged a protest in the States-General in 1641 regarding the diversion of
funds away from the defense of European trade, and they called loudly for
free—that is, noncompany—trade in the West Indies.
Why did the Amsterdam city council, once its staunchest promoter, lose
its enthusiasm for the West Indies Company? Part of the answer lies in the
faction that was uppermost in the vroedschap: the Bicker family and its
clients, who blended European carrying trade interests with an orientation
to East Indies expansion. After they came to the fore in the late 1620s, they
ruled "not only the seas and the Amsterdam exchange but also the Town
Hall" (Roorda 1964,124) for almost half a century thereafter via patronage
and marriage alliances, which embraced other influential merchant-regent
families. The mercantile holdings of the Bickers themselves spanned the
globe, consolidating a new level of unity of merchant capital, finance, and
government in Amsterdam. Gerrit, a town councillor from 1590 until his
death in 1604, served many local governmental functions. He was a
founder of the precompany The Far Lands Company and a founding
investor in the VOC, and he took part in a 1597 trading effort to America
and Peru and one to northern Russia. His sons continued the tradition of
far-flung involvements. Andries, vroedschap member from 1622 to his death
in 1652, was the mayor of Amsterdam many times over, overseer of the
Wisselbank, representative to the Admiralty and States-General, ambassa-
dor to the Swedish, Polish, and Brandenburg courts, and a trader in spices
and Russian furs. His brother Jacob was a VOC director from 1610 to 1641,
whereas Andries himself served from 1641 to 1652. The third son Jan was a
well-known merchant involved in Italian and Levant trades and shipbuild-

ing. The Bicker clan had also been an early supporter of the WIC, and
Gerrit's fourth son, Cornelis, was appointed a director in 1622. In 1629,
however, the Bickers sold their shares, disengaged themselves from the
company, and began competing against it as interlopers in Brazil-based
commerce. Thus, the Amsterdam city council's connection with the WIC
was attenuated after 1630, and the council strongly favored free trade to
Brazil, including the opening of the lucrative slave trade, for all Dutch
merchants.34
The accumulation strategies of the WIC were increasingly diverging
from those of the Amsterdam carrying traders and West Indies interlopers,
as expressed by delegations from these groups and the Amsterdam city
council. Now the East Indies Company turned against the WIC as well.
There had been prior strains and competition for military resources
between the companies. To give just one serious example, the WIC lost
Bahia, the capital of Brazil, to the Spanish only a year after capturing it in
1624 because WIC naval reinforcements were diverted by the States-
General to blockade the Iberian coast and protect VOC shipping
(Goslinga 1971, 148-52). But now the divergence was more marked. The
VOC, which was shipping over 1 million pounds a year of Chinese sugar
from its base in Formosa (Taiwan) by the 1630s, raced competition from
rising sugar production in Dutch Brazil. By the early 1640s, this competi-
tion was cutting into the VOC's trade (which surged again after the WIC's
ouster) (Harrison 1970, 659). The Seventeen Gentlemen had also stopped
opposing peace with Spain now that they were sufficiently established in
the East Indies to set their own conditions for compliance.35 Finally, the
VOC was faced with a proposal of merger raised by the WIC and sup-
ported by elements of the States-General—a proposal that the company
disliked and eventually eluded. It was in this context that the Seventeen
Gentlemen made their famous (and characteristically patrimonial) remark,
34
Long ago, Boxer (i957, 255-58), seconded by Goslinga (1971), noted that the Bickers*
actions undercut Amsterdam's support for the WIC. This is not to say, of course, that all
Amsterdam merchants followed the Bickers' lead and summarily abandoned the company;
some Amsterdam merchants actually increased their investments at that time. My point is,
rather, that the Bicker family's and Amsterdam vroedscbap's change of line influenced the
state's overall support for the WIC's commercial system. Chapter 3 takes up the Bicker fam-
ily qua family.
35
The Seventeen Gentlemen advised the States-General in 1644 and 1645 that, if peace was
to be made, Spain had to agree not to extend its forts and trade beyond current limits or to
take any Portuguese possessions (Israel 1982, 334-36).
or threat, that the East Indies belonged to the VOC, not to the States-
General, and could be sold for profit to the Spanish or to any other enemy
of the state.36
The drop that made the bucket overflow (to employ a well-worn
Dutch metaphor) was a rebellion by Portuguese colonists in Brazil. The
colonists protested the monopoly prices of imported European goods and
slaves and the falling prices of their own sugar and dyewood exports in
Europe by rising up against the company's temporarily reduced forces
and driving the WIC out of the capital in 1645. We can speculate, in a his-
torical counterfactual vein, that had the Nineteen Gentlemen's efforts to
encourage colonization paid off or had company policies vis-a-vis the per-
centage of surplus that was to remain in the sphere of production been
less grudging tensions within the Brazilian colonial elite would have been
eased and the revolt might have been defused or defeated.37 It was not,
however, and the WIC was forced to seek state subsidies and military sup-
port to regain its prize.
At this juncture the shift of the Amsterdam mercantile elite's support
away from company organization in the Atlantic zone proved decisive for
the fate of the WIC. The Amsterdam vroedschap and VOC directorate,
overlapping categories to be sure, sabotaged the WIC. For a decade after
1645, it seems likely that the company could have won back Brazil if it had
received a modicum of the economic and military support that the state
was capable of providing. Portugal was a puny sea power compared to the
United Provinces, and the Portuguese state was divided over what tack to
take with the colonists (Prestage 1925, 205; van de Haar 1961). The WIC
was thwarted not so much by the rebellion as by Amsterdam's and the
VOC's refusal to provide the resources to counter it—the company did
not receive the subsidy and armed support voted by the States-General
because of Amsterdam's, and Holland's, opposition (Israel 1982, 371-73;
van Dillen 1970,157). The VOC administered the coup de grace in 1653 by
refusing an offer from the Portuguese, backed by the WIC and the Dutch
36
The VOC's charter had expired in 1643, and renewal was held up by the WIC's efforts to
secure its position by Rising with the VOC, as well as by the demands of several towns that
they be allowed their own chambers in the company. The VOC agreed to admit representa-
tives from these towns to existing chambers, but staunchly opposed the merger (van Dam
1927-1929, 1: 43-72; van Dillen 1970,127; van Rees 1868, 209-10). For the WIC directors*
merger proposal, see the documents in ARA 1.04.02 #4652.
,7
From 1642, the WIC tried to foster Dutch emigration, but the number of Dutch agricul-
tural settlers remained only a few hundred. Most of die 3,000 in 1642 were merchants and
officials (van den Boogaart 1982,123-24).
States-General itself, to exchange some East Indies conquests of

Portuguese possessions for the WIC's Brazilian claims (Prestage 1925,
214-15). Thus, the Portuguese were able to oust the WIC from its last
outposts in Brazil in January 1654. After that date, the WIC was neither
an effective mercantile enterprise nor an instrument of war (van den
Boogaart 1982,134-44).38
Did the absolute burden of debt make it impossible for the Dutch state
to intervene in favor of either the WIC or a more broadly interpreted
Dutch Brazil? It is true that war costs were high.39 Yet in the 1660s the
state had no difficulty finding more subscribers for the loans it sought.
Furthermore, the Dutch paid the lowest interest rates on government
debt of any state, and that is the best measure of fiscal capacity7, because
for war the ability to raise capital quickly is key. It should also be pointed
out that the Amsterdam town council armed a fleet of 150 warships with
funds from the stock exchange, directed by the city regents, and used it in
the preliminaries to the first Anglo-Dutch War in 1652. The council was
also able to intervene aggressively in the war between Denmark and
Sweden (1656-59) to protect its northern trade and to mount an extensive
expedition to the west coast of Africa in 1664, precipitating the second
Anglo-Dutch War (Elias 1923, 139).4() It is therefore more reasonable to
draw the conclusion that the Amsterdam regents were capable of mount-
ing a defense of the WIC and Dutch Brazil, but chose not to in the face of
the more established mercantile, and to them more compelling, aims of
the European carrying trade and East Indies Company. The VOC direc-
tors in particular were able to make that decision stick because the States
General lacked any sovereign mechanism by which it could force
immediate compliance on its patrimonial corporations. If the pressures of
interstate war and colonial rebellion weighted the scales against the WIC,
it was Amsterdam and the VOC that tipped the balance.
If this counterfactual reasoning is correct, the western wing of Dutch
colonial empire need not have been lopped off at this juncture. The
38
The Dutch Republic renounced its claim to Brazil at the conclusion of the war with
Portugal in 1661.
39
As Marjolein *t Hart (1993) notes, the companies had been a key factor in driving up the
central public debt from 4.9 million guilders in 1617 to 13.2 million guilders in 1648 and
Holland's more important provincial debt from 1.5 million guilders in 1621 to the startling
figure of 130-40 million guilders in 1650.
40
In this war, it should be noted, the VOC also played its part. See the documents in ARA
1.04.02 #4723 regarding the contemporaneous squabbles between the VOC and the English
East India Company.
Netherlands could have defeated both the indigenous uprisings and

Portuguese force of arms had Dutch governance been different—whether
involving a different configuration of corporate interests in power at
home or, more dramatically, a unitary sovereign state. The Dutch empire
and its long-term bases of hegemony would then have assumed a differ-
ent form. Other causes might have intervened, of course, either then or at
a succeeding branch in the historical path. We cannot know how other
countries or companies would have regarded the defeat of the
Portuguese, for example; they might have responded with a military
coalition that crushed the Dutch. Other factors, such as the rise of
England's postpatrimonial state, might have had the same effect. My
argument does not logically invalidate other reasons for the weakening of
the western arm of Dutch colonialism. But it does suggest that both
exogenous and strictly economic explanations are incomplete. The patri-
monial state/corporate system engendered internal upheavals that caused
the first cracks to appear in the international commercial system organ-
ized around the Netherlands as an active entrepot trader.
Historicizing Hegemony
In spite of near universal agreement on Dutch global dominance in the

third quarter of the seventeenth century, onlookers and analysts then and
now have painted varying pictures of its basis (and therefore, as discussed
in chapter 5, the reasons for its decline). This debate mirrors some the
claims concerning the initial rise of the Netherlands. Dutch dominance
was a thing of economics, according to Fernand Braudel (1996), based on
the low-value bulk trades, and it began to stagnate and erode when the
Netherlands' hold over those trades slackened. The Dutch share of the
low-value bulk trades did indeed decline, even before 1650. Yet Boswell
and Misra (1995) show that the Netherlands continued to hold at least a
two-to-one ratio in global trade over its nearest competitor until sometime
during the 1670s. Their measure of the most important global trades, cal-
culated not in cargo values but in terms of number of ship passages (Baltic
and Asian passages; Spanish Seville-Atlantic passages; and numbers of
slaves, sugar, and tobacco converted to ship passages) and weighted
toward the larger numbers of ships widi comparatively low-value cargoes
in the Baltic trades, actually understates the importance of the Asian and
American branches of commerce and hence the strength of the Dutch
position. The same long-distance rich trades that fueled the Netherlands'
rise to world commercial/colonial dominance helped sustain that position
(see Boswell and Misra 1995; Boswell, Misra, and Brueggemann 1991; Israel
1989; Misra and Boswell 1993). Jonathan Israel has reassessed the evidence
concerning the qualitative relations among the intra-European carrying
trade, long-distance trades, industry and finance from mid-century
onward, drawing our attention to the synergy among all four rich trades,
the Mediterranean, Russian, Atlantic, and Pacific, as the crucial source of
continuing Dutch dominance. 41 This fruitful relationship was assisted by
other countries' emergence from the protracted Thirty Years War and the
crisis of the long sixteenth century (furnishing new overseas markets); by
renewed and novel developments in Dutch textile and other manufactur-
ing industries, such as shipbuilding, paper, tobacco, finishing colonial
products, sail canvas, pottery, diamonds, and others; and by the
Netherlands' continuing capacity to attract international flows of specie.42
Why didn't the WIC's fate destroy the Dutch position? The patrimo-
nial state and its corporate configuration had restructured the linkages
between overseas trade and colonial production in the Atlantic territories,
specifically plantation agriculture based on slavery. In chapter 5, I argue
that this restructuring did affect the Netherlands' ability to sustain both
that trading system and the hegemonic moment. Briefly, the loss of Brazil
deprived the Dutch of an agricultural zone for settler plantations that
could have matched the eventual production levels of the English and
French possessions and served as a politically secure home market, thus
cushioning economic reverses for Dutch merchants when other metro-
politan countries began to enforce increasingly protectionist measures.
The comparatively poor economic performance, and eventual failure, of
their truncated plantation holdings undercut the Dutch share in the
41
Less is more, as the saying goes: "On less than a hundred ships, the Dutch brought in
each year some fifty million guilders' worth of riches from Ratavia, Cadiz, Smyrna, and
Archangel. After 1647 the four were in a crucial sense a collectivity. The revived Dutch
Smyrna and Cadiz trades, as we have seen, nourished each other; but neither could survive
without the spices and pepper which figured so largely in Dutch exports to Italy, North
Africa, the Levant, Spain, and Spanish America. The ultimate proceeds of Dutch success in
Ceylon, for example, came mainly from Spanish America. Rut the Dutch East India trade, in
turn, certainly could not have manifested the dynamism it did without the proceeds of post-
1647 Dutch enterprise in the Mediterranean and the Spanish Indies" (Israel 1989, 259).
42
For the crisis of the long sixteenth century, the causes of which remain obscure to this
date, see the collection of essays edited by Aston (1965) and Schoffer (1987, 27-44). The bulk
of the foregoing paragraph is drawn from Israel's superb account of the 1650-72 period
(Israel 1989,197-291).
Atlantic multilateral trade.43 Perhaps more important for future domestic

politico economic development, the ties between the planters and colo-
nial-interloping and other independent traders were abrogated. These ties
had grown up in Brazil within the shell of the WIC, and the ill turn in the
company's fortunes permanently disrupted them.44 As Robert Brenner
(I993> 159-66, chap. 12) has shown, analogous linkages became a critical
basis for English commercial expansion in the Atlantic zone. Atlantic
streams of long-distance commerce nevertheless infused the Dutch com-
mercial/colonial system with a continuing vitality during the seventeenth
century. Brazil was lost, but the Netherlands managed to cobble together
several Caribbean islands and parts of the Guiana coast. The Dutch West
Indies Company was reconstituted in a more limited way, becoming the
Second (Tweede) WIC, and it retained rights (until the 1730s) to supply
the remaining Dutch colonies with slaves.45 England wrested New
Amsterdam (New York) from the Netherlands in i664> but three years
later, at the signing of the Peace of Breda, rendered up Surinam, St.
Eustatius, and Saba. At die time, many observers thought that the Dutch
had finagled the better deal.
In the Pacific, the 1650 General Instruction (Genemal Instructie)46
from the VOC directors to central Asian headquarters in Batavia codified
the strategic and organizational principles that would form the linchpin of
Dutch colonialism for the next centurv. Where the VOC had made con-
quests or signed monopoly contracts with Asian rulers, the company was
to continue restricting the supply of key commodities to keep their sale
prices high. In the Spice Islands, the core of VOC territory, this strategy
entailed the continuation of harsh policies regulating the involvement of
43
For the Dutch, see Emmer (1982, 150-55). Postma (1990, chap. 12) reviews the final years
of the Dutch slave trade. For the contemporaneous expansion of French colonial trade, see
Boulle (1972, 71-74) and Butel (1990). Wilson (T965, 264, 271-72) discusses the slippage of
the Netherlands' relative position vis-a-vis England in the Atlantic during die eighteenth
century.
44
For these linkages, see van Dillen (1970, 153-55). Merchant supply of slaves and die labor
processes characteristic of plantation slave economies were closely entwined, because
extending cultivation by means of adding more slaves was the prevalent form of expansion,
as shown by van Zanden's figures on the relationship between numbers of slaves and devel-
opment of plantation agriculture in Dutch Surinam (1991, chap. 5).
45
After that, it became a "body without a soul" (Emmer 1981, 82). Emmer's fine article
argues that die WIC's post-i64os turn away from making war was a rational adaptation for
the company (95). I adopt a different position, arguing that the "rationality" and outcome
of the transformation must be evaluated with respect to the entire Dutch trading system and
not simply to the WIC itself.
46
See van der Chijs (1885-1988,10:135-57) for a copy of this document.
Asian merchants and rulers, eliminating other European contenders, and

limiting the production of indigenous producers. The company swept
Asian traders out of some areas, such as the Java Sea and Ceylon coast,
and redesigned trade patterns according to company dictates in others. In
what would prove a crucial move, the VOC successfully banned private
trade by Dutch merchants in commodities of concern to the company.
Last, the VOC destroyed what it considered excess trees and converted
direct producers into sharecroppers and, on occasion, virtual slaves. These
policies were undoubtedly effective. By the 1660s, the company con-
trolled the Europe-Asia trade in spices and dominated the relevant coun-
try (intra-Asian) trade. These achievements underlay the huge increase in
the quantity of VOC profits during this period. Funds were pouring back
into company coffers, and the VOC was often paying a io-pcrcent-plus
annual dividend to shareholders and passing along money to the state,
such as the 1.5 million guilders it paid the States-General in 1647 for the
renewal of its charter until 1672 (de Korte 1984, 6). 47
Given this cornucopia of goods and guilders, it is tempting to character-
ize Dutch supremacy in purely economic terms, as Immanuel Wallerstein
(1974-1989) suggests, locating the sources of Dutch dominance (and hege-
mony in general) in simultaneous predominance over world agro-indus-
trial production, trade, and finance. Boswell and Misra (1995) opt for the
domination of leading economic sectors, which again in this period meant
commerce. Others have pointed to these types of economic supremacy
plus the capacity to wield force in the last instance, to ward off national
challengers.48 This seems true enough, as far as it goes. Yet all these argu-
ments assume a tidy institutional division between economy and state—an
anachronistic assumption about power and profit that does not hold in the
early modern European world. Patrimonial systems and the resources that
flowed through them were organized in a different way. Relations offeree
and fraud were constitutive of each step in the overall patrimonial chain as
47
In 1621, it had sixty-seven ships in the Indies seas; in 1664, over 140 ships and 25,000 men on
its payroll. For the general increase in profits, see Gaastra (1982,119, table 11). The VOC had
consolidated its hold rurdier by the 1680s. From its center at Batavia, it traded in Indonesian
spices; Chinese, Persian, and Indian silks; Japanese copper; Indian sugar; and other commodi-
ties. See Arasaratnam (1987, 124); Furber (1976, 42-64, 268-72), and Gaastra (1982, 37-52,
104-5, 109-18). The company also founded the first colony in South Africa, at the Cape of
Good Hope, in 1652. Boxer (1965,273-301) provides an English-language summary.
48
For example, Hopkins et al. define hegemony as that circumstance when "no second
power or combination of second powers seems capable of challenging effectively the eco-
nomic supremacy of the strongest core power" (1982,52).
corporate actors tried to insist that resources pass through a restricted set
of nodes or paths. Those resources were multivocal or multiplex and were
distributed over many corporate bodies and parcellized sovereign seg-
ments, and this posed especially tricky problems of system integration. If
the federation were to work as an economic ensemble, the individual
nodes had to extract and pool enough surplus to reproduce the corporate
system and to maintain or expand its capacities. They also needed to
muster the collective military force needed to plausibly contest claims to
trade and territory. The relevant resources were also political and mili-
tary—involving capacities to deploy sovereign power. We can call a patri-
monial power hegemonic when it regulated the flow of resources among
all key corporations—not just its own—and when no second power or
combination of powers could remove it, substitute for it, or flourish with-
out it. The Netherlands was the first power to coordinate and control the
flow of resources on the world level in these network terms.
The presence of multiple centers of sovereignty only partially regulated
by overarching norms or a central power introduced distinctive pressures,
as we have seen, both for the Dutch elite and for the nascent system. But
they also presented inviting opportunities, in the form of network open-
ings and, in Ronald Burt's (1992) sense of the term, structural holes or
gaps between other, nonredundant nodes. Opportunity is one side of a
successful competitive bid. The other side is entrepreneurial ability—
which in the early modern world of early modern commerce included the
capacity to direct force, or the credible threat offeree, against recalcitrant
producers and competitors. Chartered companies, like other powerful
corporate bodies, joined towns, provinces, and other corporations in
jockeying for position and struggling to define their roles within an emer-
gent structured totality. The presence of multiple centers of sovereignty
only semiregulated by overarching norms or a central power introduced
distinctive pressures., as we have seen, both for the Dutch elite and for the
nascent network as a whole. The men who built the Dutch state and com-
mercial/colonial empire in the Golden Age defused competition from
France and England, both by judiciously applying violence and by making
the Dutch entrepot necessary to their respective projects. But for any pat-
rimonial politico-economic system to be successful a state's spin-off cor-
porations and companies need not only to be effective against other states
and their corporations, but also to work in tandem with one another and
with their home state. This is a difficult and delicate equilibrium to
achieve and maintain. It was achieved in the Netherlands, but at the
expense of the long-term prospects of the western arm of Dutch

40
empire.
State Formation at the Apex
The Golden Age seemed at its most lustrous at the midpoint of the seven-
teenth century. The Eighty Years War with Spain finally concluded with
the Peace of Minister (1647-48), a resounding victory for David over
Goliath. The year 1650 marked Stadholder Willem IPs failed coup and
untimely death, followed by the regents' self-servingly named Era of True
Freedom, the First Stadholderless Period (1650-72), in which the
Amsterdam merchant-regent elite guided policy jointly with Grand
Pensionary Johan de Witt. The stadholder was subordinated to the estates,
the power of the would-be patrimonial monarch disciplined for the
moment. The levers of rule were in the hands of the provincial States and
their constituent regencies. All this was good for business. Managed trade
and the deployment of patrimonial power were drawing vast resources into
the Dutch entrepot, and these resources included slaves, money, and even
land—although territorial expansion was supposedly frowned on in repub-
lican ideologies.50 In fact, the very brilliance of Dutch politico-economic
49
As I have argued extensively elsewhere, this macrohistorical institutionalist approach con-
trasts with world-systems analysis (see Adams 1994b). World-systems theory stresses the nec-
essary functionality of interstate competition for the preservation of the world system, thus
failing to grasp the genuine impact of patrimonial corporations and segmented sovereignty
on both the matrix and the states that were evolving within it. For example, Hopkins writes
of the system, "What marks it is this: the alignments or sides are so formed on each occasion
('balance of power') as to reproduce, as the outcome of conflict, the necessary condition for
the state-system to continue to operate, namely, an array of interrelated states no one of
which can mobilize the force and allies needed to subjugate all the others (thus preserving
the development of the modern world as a world-economy by blocking its conversion into a
world-empire)" (Hopkins et al. 1982, 24-25). So tar, however, world-systems writings have
failed to specify the mechanisms that guarantee this state of affairs.
50
In general, the United Provinces were a magnet for skilled labor during the first century
after the revolt. The population soared from 1 million in 1500, t» 1.5 million in 1600, and 1.9
million in 1650, a pace unmatched elsewhere in western Europe. Amsterdam attracted the
largest relative influx of Dutch and foreign immigrants: from 15,500 inhabitants in 151+, it
rocketed to 105,000 in 1622 and 200,000 in 1660-70 (all figures are approximate). The city's
appetite tor labor power was such that it fell prey to serious labor shortages throughout this
period. Regarding labor, see van Zanden (1991, chap. 3). Schoffer (1988b, 172-78) sums up
seventeenth-century Dutch population patterns. Boogman (1979) discusses Holland's
predilection tor territorial contraction, including that province's opposition to the Prince of
Orange's plan to conquer the last corner of the province of Gelderland in 1647. But it would
be closer to the truth to say there was territorial contraction in some areas but expansion in
success made the Netherlands an enviable and emulable object. Other

countries' merchants and states were soon eagerly copying the instruments
of its achievement— its modes of taxation, shipbuilding, draining, and
poldering; the triangular trade; its banking system; and so forth—and
drafting Dutch experts to help them do so. The threat to the Dutch hege-
monic position was steadily growing. Yet as late as the Second Anglo-
Dutch War (1665-67), as Jonathan Israel (1989) points out, Dutch
commerce could not be displaced, even by massive, disproportionate,
English firepower.
The percentage of total Dutch profits and, more generally, resources
that accrued to shareholders via privileged corporations such as the East
Indies Company and that which went to merchants, manufacturers, and
farmers qua individual entrepreneurs we will never know, because this era
predated balance sheets that systematically tallied organizational profits
and losses. We do know that the regents' positions in the corporate state
were key to obtaining and controlling those riches. "Everyone knows that
the quickest way to get rich is to get into the government and that is the
reason that men pay to get in," wrote the Dutch pamphleteer Claudius
Civilis in 1747 (quoted in de Jong 1985, 38). Patrimonial offices served as a
direct source of economic resources: from their privileged positions, the
regent patriciate drew fixed rents and intermittent windfalls, such as the
sheriff's (schout) percentage of the fines he imposed and the VOC direc-
tor's percentage take of cargo returns. 51 The impressively increasing
amounts bequeathed in regents' wills indicate that over time the mer-
chant-regent elite was considerably enriched as well as empowered. More
fraught is the question of how members of the elite felt about their good
fortune. The long-standing historical interpretation of patrimonial liber-
ties and the connection between liberty and property included the possi-
bility of enriching oneself, but, as Simon Schama (1987) shows, "the
embarrassment of riches" was a characteristic early modern Dutch trope.
Unease about self-created accumulation was pervasive, and many mem-
bers of the elite felt impelled to try to legitimate it, whether religiously,
familially, or both.
others. Available land increased both via the regent-controlled drainage boards (waterschap-
pen) that targeted vast tracts of marshland suitable for improvement and, crucially, by means
of colonial land grabs.
51
For the schout, see Smit (1977) and Vries (1977, 330). See also van Deursen (1964-1965,
164-165) regarding profits from offices.
Beyond serving as a direct source of resources, state offices and privi-

leges were the prime vehicle for broad control over the conditions of
making and keeping money and over economic affairs generally, just as
they were for other European patrimonial elites. The Dutch regents, who
were investing over half their fortunes in state bonds by the end of the
seventeenth century, also used those institutional positions to decide the
interest rates that their loans would command. 52 Their investments in the
provincial, municipal, and other local corporate debt grew apace. The
growth of voluntary subscriptions to the debt, in a European context in
which debts were typically coerced, and the favorable terms on which
Dutch government bonds traded were sure signs of investor confidence.
In part, as Marjolein 't Hart notes in her study of the fiscal system of the
United Provinces during the eighty-year revolt, this pattern must be
explained by the fact that the chief investors were magistrates and politi-
cians themselves. "They were close enough to their local receiver with
whom they had contracted loans. At times, they were urged to invest by
their political leaders so as to stimulate other buyers. The federal structure
implied also a large degree of local political control. Other secure invest-
ments were found in land and houses, but already by 1700 the capital
invested in government bonds exceeded all other" ( 't Hart 1993,178). In
many cases, the magistrates and politicians Avere not merely close to the
local receivers—they were the receivers. The loans allowed the regents to
secure their incomes, encouraged them to agree on new taxes, and fed the
growing debt of cities and provinces, anchoring a "financial revolu-
tion"—to borrow James Tracy's (1985) apt term—at those levels and con-
solidating the corporate state.53
The burgeoning debt dovetailed with merchant-regents* consolidated
control over commercial/colonial policy. As the fiscal role of the
52
Riley (1980, 68-82) is a helpful English-language source on how the Dutch patricians
structured the terms of their own loans to the state.
53
See Tracy (1985) and Riley (1980, 68-82). 't Hart (i993> 161-78) discusses the provincial
financial revolution and analyzes trends in loan subscriptions to the receiver general of the
union, the provincial receiver of Holland, and the city receivers of Amsterdam and
Rotterdam. She finds that the trend was toward decentralization. "Amsterdam's mean had
been 2,300 guilders in 1628 and 3,600 guilders in 1650, whereas Rotterdam's mean jumped
from 1,000 to 1,900 in the same period. By comparison, the subscriptions of the receiver gen-
eral of Holland increased only from 2,300 to 2,500 on average from 1628 to 1650. The central
(Union) receiver attracted less as compared to the regional receiver, and the latter again less
as compared to local units (the city receivers). The Hague was of importance, and remained
so, but power and resources seem to have increased at other centres in Holland at a much
raster rate, at least in Amsterdam and in Rotterdam" ('t Hart 1993,177).
provinces became if anything even more important after the war with
Spain resumed in the 1620s ('t Hart 1993), their policy-making role was
also enhanced. Dutch towns continued to pursue mercantilist initiatives
on their own account and, although many were relatively small-scale, a
few, such as Amsterdam's, had far-reaching consequences. These initia-
tives might involve a city's laying claim to restrictive manufacturing and
staple rights.54 Some of the larger and more influential towns established
enduring corporate bodies that were charged with collecting money and
mustering arms to defend trade deemed important to that particular
area.55 These activities supplemented those of the five admiralty boards,
which were nominally provincial colleges but were dominated by
Amsterdam and the other cities in which they were seated and which
floated their own policies and public debts ( 't Hart 1992,172-73).
The burgeoning debt also encouraged the Dutch disposition toward
seeking and creating locally and provincially based privilege. The mer-
chant-regents were more closely tied to state finance and metamorphosed
into a rentier class.56 Although Amsterdam councillors and burgomasters
invested a negligible amount in state bonds in 1600, a century later they
were placing fully half of their wealth in bonds, mainly issued on
Holland's public debt. Thirty-two percent of their investments was in
stock, 12 percent in houses, and 6 percent in land (Burke 1974,58). The
regent elites of other towns for which information is available evince sim-
ilar characteristics, with some variation according to the position of the
34
Towns often succeeded in restricting choice industries and markets to their hinterlands,
where these activities could be protected and supported but also taxed and regulated within
a traditional corporate guild structure. The governing regents further extended traditional
controls via the local drainage boards (waterschappen) that maintained the dikes and water-
ways and drained marshland. For a general account, see Raadschelders (1990).
55
Amsterdam in particular proved able to assemble sponsors for large-scale ad hoc military
responses to perceived threats to its maritime trade, as we have seen. For a general account,
see Bijl (1951). Amsterdam could also draw on loans from investors, who drew on their own
fluids, accumulated via corporate bodies such as the VOC, as well as on loans from the
municipal bank (Bank van Leeninge), the local stock exchange, and the first and most
important public bank, the Amsterdamse Wisselbank. The Wisselbank, founded in 1609, was
not legally part of the state, but it loaned large sums to the VOC, the town of Amsterdam,
the Holland States, and the stadholder during the seventeenth century. The bank undertook
these loans in spite of its charter, which forbade lending. The bank served as a model tor
similar institutions in Middelburg (1616), Delft (1621), and Rotterdam (1635), and also
abroad, especially in England.
56
This claim has been sustained by Roorda (1964) and van Dijk and Roorda (1971,1979) on
the basis of the data available in two famous prosopographies, Elias (1963 [1903-1905]) and
de Vos (1931).
town in the regional division of labor.57 The Amsterdam vroedschap regis-

tered a general shift in the percentage of councillors who had no recorded
occupation (who are conventionally assumed to live off their rents) and
who owned a country seat: from 33 percent sans occupation and 10 per-
cent cum seat in 1618-50 to 66 and 41 percent, respectively, in 1650-72.58
These numbers fluctuated, as we see in chapter 5 (see table on page 159),
but they never returned to their original low levels.
The shift toward rentier status and the formal monopolization of urban
office-holding were related tendencies. The most secure, if not the most
profitable, way for a regent to invest his capital was in the state, which the
regents dominated in the seventeenth century, despite the relatively rare
incursions of the stadholders. These tendencies were replicated in the
VOC board of directors, although there were proportionately more mer-
chants and manufacturers in the VOC directorship than in the town
council at large. Virtually all the directors of the Amsterdam chamber had
been merchants during the VOC's inaugural years. But by 1748-95, dur-
ing which time seventy-seven men served as directors (and 82 percent of
them were mayors, aldermen, or on the town council), twenty-three (30
percent) were merchants and manufacturers, and thirty-eight (49 per-
cent) had no recorded occupation and were almost certainly rentiers. At
least fifty-two (68 percent) owned a country seat. This same shift was
reflected in the other chambers, for example, Rotterdam, which remained
in the hands of merchants until about 1675 (Kors 1988).
Many commentators, then and now, have emphasized the parcelliza-
tion of seventeenth-century Netherlands. The many strong urban oli-
garchies, coupled with commercialization, notes Charles Tilly, made for a
federation of "largely autonomous city-states, and constant negotiation
among them over state policy" (1990, 30). This segmentation was rein-
forced by the cosy relationship between the institutions of state finance
and regent power. Thus, as Marjolein 't Hart puts it,
57
Of the fortunes of Leiden regents from 1700 to 1780, for example, Prak (1985, 117) shows
that more than 62 percent was invested in bonds (54 percent in Holland obligaties alone) and
less than 1 percent in trade or production. Similar figures obtain for the somewhat smaller
circle of regents who sat on the town council. By contrast, Leiden merchants and manufac-
turers invested 22.2 percent of their capital in trade or production and 20 percent in oblia-
aties. See Kooijmans (1985, 100) and de Jong (1985, 109) regarding analogous patterns
among the regent elites of Hoorn and Gouda, respectively.
58
Based on information in Elias (1963 [1903-1905], 778-1030) and Burke (1974, 106).
Provincial and local bureaucracies extended themselves as new demands

were made on military and fiscal resources. Centralization of die state was
hampered by the fact that local bureaucracies simply paid better. They could
even outbid the centre in status and political influence, at least in the larger
urban areas. Moreover, the state bureaucracy was often not superior to semi-
private undertakings. Attempts to increase central control were of no avail.
(i993,22i)
And these are excellent points. The underlying corporatism remained

and, as I have shown, systematically shaped the construction of the Dutch
empire and the style of merchant capital that prevailed. The massive influx
of commercial resources that ensued did not entice the governing elite in
the Dutch Golden Age into efforts to form a more centralized, integrated
state: the resources tunneling into the Dutch political economy were
largely deployed in ways that reinforced existing social structures. The
sovereign prerogatives of the provincial States were shored up. The urban
regencies maintained their autonomy, as did the important collegial bod-
ies that they had formed, particularly the admiralty boards and the char-
tered companies. The sheer growth of the overlapping administrative
apparatuses at these levels far outstripped the snail's pace at which the
putative center expanded. The regents themselves gravitated away from
active trade and manufacturing and toward the security of rentiership,
drawing their revenues via the corporate state.
Yet this segmented organizational structure was linked and coordinated
with enough consistency to form a patrimonial institutional center—and
that this was a reason whv the United Provinces of the Netherlands were
not simply viable but wildly successful, in fact hegemonic. That hegemonic
position was replicated on a smaller scale by the province of Holland's posi-
tion within die Netherlands, whereas Holland's place was itself under-
pinned by Amsterdam's centrality within that province. Among the reasons
for the success of the Dutch state in the seventeenth-century Golden Age,
therefore, we must include the weight it assigned to merchant capitalist
voices and the devolution of sovereignty onto towns and provinces with the
ability to support long-distance mercantile and colonial projects. Governing
coalitions had a high degree of control over the domestic and international
political conditions for long-distance trade in a global context in which the
organization of coerced exchange was the paramount ingredient of success.
Thus, the Netherlands was able to construct a nodal position in the global
commercial/colonial network, one in which sovereignty was a historically
fluid concept not considered the necessary accompaniment of a territorial
nation-state. Testimony to both facts—Dutch supremacy and the ongo-

ing fluidity of sovereignty—can be found in the extraordinary effort of
England's Commonwealth government to ally with and, if some groups
had had their way, unify with the Netherlands in a single suprastate. The
negotiations between the two countries, initiated by England in 1650,
broke off soon enough in 1651. The Dutch ultimately refused any pro-
posed political alliance, and England, balked of its goal, soon adopted a
more belligerent stance. But for a time, as we see in chapter 4, which
takes up the English side, the prospect of some kind of politico-economic
merger was seriously considered.
The Amsterdam ruling elite was itself grouped around a core family
clique in this period and, as we see in the next chapter, patriarchy was one
of the key principles on which the shifting sovereign center was consti-
tuted and defended. But which father-ruler counted, now that the
Habsburg uber-rulers were out of the way: the regents, the stadholders,
the sons of the House of Orange, or all of these? This was a site of vigor-
ous elite struggle throughout the Republic's two-hundred-year history.
And how did this familial dimension articulate with, and perhaps help rec-
oncile, the many candidate reformulations of sovereignty, as in the hands
of monarchs, descended from God, or (post-Reformation) authorizing
foundations of individual action? Unpacking these conflicts, contradic-
tions, and surprising resolutions will help us make sense of the complexi-
ties of patrimonial dynamics in France and England as well.
3
The Familial State and

the Rise of the Netherlands
I n chapter 2,1 examine some developmental consequences of the ubiqui-

tous marriage of profit and power in the Dutch Golden Age. This chap-
ter highlights others, equally important, by homing in on the familial
element of rale. It is the flip side of the argument for the importance of the
patrimonial institutional nexus in shaping the early modern world. But
how precisely did this aspect of rule matter in the remarkable ascent of the
Netherlands to the status of hegemonic power in the early seventeenth
century? And how did that come to matter, in turn, for the specifically
familial character of the state? In this chapter, I argue that the merchant-
regents and the stadholders—crucially invested and empowered by notions
and practices of patriarchal patrimonial honor—struggled among them-
selves for the status of center within the emergent state. The usual popular-
historical image of the Dutch is of men of peace, or at least merchants
minding their own business—but that is a pale shadow of the familial
drama, complete with untimely deaths, armed confrontations, and judicial
and political struggles.
Like other elite family heads, landed or mercantile, petty squires, mon-
archs, or their own stadholders, Dutch regents were stirred by visions of
their own ascendant lineages and by the honored paternal position that
linked together intergenerational relationships. Corporate elites depended
on patrimonial privileges for wealth and political power, and elites pursued
those positions avidly in early modern Europe—a practice known as the
hunt for office" (ambtsbejag) or "cooperage" (kuiperij) familiarly,
machinations") in the Netherlands. The patrilineage—descending
diachronically from a founding father and persisting in the form of a single
line (when each generation designated one male child as heir) or branches
75
(when several male children were chosen)—was the family principle that
these men had in mind. Paulus Teding van Berkhout (1609-72), a notable
member of the patriciate in The Hague, characteristically reminded his
children that they formed only "a link in a growing chain" of Teding van
Berkhout generations and that they should care for the wealth and posses
sions intended not only for their pleasure but for the family's descendants
[nageslacht), those men whose name he bore, and who would bear his
name in turn.1 The father-son relationship was the dominant role-yielding
tie in Dutch politics and a compelling symbol for patrimonial elites.
The pervasive early modern impulse to identify with and promote the
envisioned future of one's patrilineage is the point of departure for this
chapter, but my argument continues to incorporate the state and property
as well. As corporate elites acquired pieces of the nascent state for their lin-
eal descendants, these privileges became relatively immobile family assets,
at times even less readily divisible than land. Heritable offices and rentes
functioned as lineage property as well as a kind of property in politics in
the Netherlands as well as other Old Regime European societies (see chap-
ter 4). The overriding importance of family privilege promoted explosive
intergenerational conflicts and creative interfamily negotiation with respect
to the state and its fruits. Precisely what was passed down from father to
son was crucial for political development, as well as for the lives of the cor-
porate elites involved.
Family and kin also figured as a set of concentric circles for medieval and
early modern European elites, the Dutch included, with the conjugal fam-
ily at the core. Arrayed around the nucleus were diminishing degrees of
kin, reckoned through both the male and female lines of descent and
through ramified marriage ties and making up a kin group that constituted
the synchronic side of kinship.2 The Dutch elite reckoned the degrees of
kin group membership elastically, but very widely in matters of patrimonial
patronage. Office-seekers stamped their letters to Jacob van Citters, mayor
of Middelburg, with his own family tree, indicating the relationship of the
1
The founding father may have been notional, even entirely fictional, but it was u a fiction
that was a necessity if the ideal of family endurance was to be realized in practice" (Stone
and Stone 1986, 91). Teding van Berkhout is cited in Schmidt (1987, 133). Note that this
strand of my argument expands on Adams (1994a).
2
Andrejs Plakans juxtaposes the kin group to the lineage, that "diachronic face" of kinship.
See Plakans (1984, 213). On the general point, see Davis (1977, 87-114). There is some evi-
dence that the Dutch placed particular emphasis on aunts, uncles, and first cousins; see Haks
(1985, chap. 2). It is very likely, however, that Haks underestimates the extent of contact with
other relatives for the Dutch patriciate and aristocracy.
The Rise of the Netherlands 77
petitioner to the mayor up to the sixth degree. Some regents recognized as

kin people up to eight degrees removed. The Amsterdam regent Johan de
Witt called these distant family members cousins and was regularly
solicited by them as a go-between in their search for office and privilege.3
Even when kin networks were not institutionalized in co-resident house-
holds, as they were in some parts of Europe (e.g., the medieval Italian city-
states), they could function as cohesive groups with important macrolevel
political consequences.
In this chapter, I begin to assess how family dynamics and attendant
visions of paternity andfilialitywere implicated in the development of pat-
rimonial institutions and politics. I highlight the elite family relationships
and practices that accompanied the ascendancy of the Netherlands in the
seventeenth century and show how relationships among elite family heads
concerned with the position of their heirs reproduced the estatist patrimo-
nial system and hence, for a time, the mercantile empire. Thus, this chapter
continues to investigate the hypothesis that a distinctive patrimonial insti-
tutional configuration—linking a merchant capitalist class, an estatist state,
and the elite patriarchal families—was a central factor in the formation of a
peculiar national center and the spectacular ascent of the Dutch in the
Golden Age.
The Seesaw of Sovereignty and the House of Orange
The stadholderate and the House of Orange-Nassau formed one wing of

the Dutch familial state. The limits of sovereignty that the princes of
Orange were to enjoy and their disputed dynastic entitlement to a unitary
stadholderate—and perhaps, someday, a crown—were issues of fundamen-
tal principle debated at intervals throughout the Golden Age and never
definitively settled. How could they be? For starters, the entanglement of
the House of Orange and the several provincial stadholderates had deep
historical roots. The founding father of the republic, Willem of Orange,
hailed from a family of illustrious imperial servants. His uncle and immedi-
ate predecessor, a Nassau scion who had inherited the principality of
Orange in southern France, served as one of the emperor's stadholders as
3
Van Citters answered these letters, recognizing the claim as a mutual obligation (Coumans
1984, 103). Haks studies the correspondence of three regents, including those whom they
called "family." (De Witt's letters refer to about eighty-five people as "family.") See Haks
(1985,48-52).
well as lord of his own Nassau domains in Brabant, near Brussels. When
Willem the Silent succeeded him in 1544 as Prince of Orange and head of
the Nassau dynasty, he also inherited a tacit family claim to the joint stad-
holderate of Holland and Zeeland.
The position came with feudal and familial strings attached. Willem was
bound to serve a superordinate dynasty, the Habsburgs, who themselves
had come by the Low Countries as part of a family package deal. Much of
the Low Countries had belonged to the dukes of Burgundy (who were
also counts of Flanders), forming part of their dynastic possessions, and
when the last representative of the Burgundian line was absorbed into the
Habsburg family, the Low Countries came along willy-nilly. After the last
national prince of the Low Countries, Philip the Handsome, king of
Castile, died in 1506, to be succeeded by Emperor Charles V and then
Philip II, there were flurries of pamphlets bearing witness to the growing
uneasiness with which some Hollanders viewed the step-by-step change
from dvnastic rule bv a monarch who was in some sense "their own" to
one who was foreign and who moreover ruled his growing northern
European dynastic possessions in absentia through appointed caretakers—
through female relatives to boot. By virtue of family background and his
stellar role in the revolt, Willem was an acceptable candidate for stadholder
or ruler after the Habsburgs had been ousted. Widely hailed as Vader
Vaderlands ("Father of the Fatherland"), he was nevertheless content to
be the "first servant of the state" and lay his claim to the provincial stad-
holderates. Orange-Nassau and the stadholderates became as closely iden-
tified with one another as any European royal family and crown.4
The charismatic and organizational role of the House of Orange was key
to the history of the Dutch Republic in the Golden Age, including its very
survival as an independent state. The prestige of Orange-Nassau rallied
supporters and troops in the war of independence against Spain and simul-
taneously shored up the prince's position, not only as stadholder but also
as titular leader of the Dutch armv.5 Over the course of the seventeenth
century, the House of Orange forged marital and political connections to
European royal houses, which looked down on the regents as jumped-up
4
The ideological assimilation of prince (vorst) to father (vader) is explicit in such key texts as
the Plakkaat van Verlatinge and the "True Warning to all Worthy Men of Antwerp, 1581"
(Kossman and Mellink 1974). See also the pamphlets collected in Geurts (1978 [1956]).
Geurts does not discuss the familial aspect of legitimation, but the pamphlets illustrate it
nevertheless.
5
See Poelhekke (1978,151-53) and Rowen (1988,137).
commoners of lowly pedigree and doubted their claims to legitimacy and

from which the princes of Orange derived domestic prestige and borrowed
political capacities, including at times troops and arms, which bolstered
their dynastic position at home as well as abroad.
But even the most ambitious members of the House of Orange failed to
consolidate an absolutist position during the Golden Age, not simply
because the Dutch economy depended on trade, as is often asserted, but
also for family reasons. First, the ebb and flow of Orangist dynastic power
stemmed from the inevitably idiosyncratic demographic rhythms of a sin-
gle family's life. Births and deaths were awkwardly timed, and numbers of
male children were paltry if interpreted as stepping-stones to the consoli-
dation of state power. Most problematical for Orangists was Willem IPs
untimely death in 1650. Coupled with the long minority of his posthu-
mously born male heir, it kicked off the halcyon days of the republican
regents' First Stadholderless Period (1650-72). Demography, mediated
through a patriarchal family structure and rules of lineal succession,
favored the consolidation of estatist patrimonialism during the seventeenth
century and inhibited Orangist regents from making a credible case for
wider dynastic prerogatives that might have promoted their own and the
princes' power at home.
Still, that power remained significant, even in abeyance. It was institu-
tionally enhanced by the massive mobilization that the revolt and Eighty
Years War against the Spanish behemoth imposed on the tiny Netherlands.
War-making grows states, as Charles Tilly (1990), Michael Mann (1980),
and others have repeatedly pointed out, but it is also likely to accentuate
the peculiarities of patrimonial power—familialism and corporate segmen-
tation, coexisting with institutional innovation. The exigencies of war-
making actually strengthened the dynastic identification of state power
with the House of Orange-Nassau and transformed the stadholder into
"part warlord, part commissioned officer," as Simon Schama puts it, in
contrast to a peacetime role that was "presidential-patriarchal, rather than
royal-governmental" (1987, 67). The pressures of war enabled Willem Ps
immediate successor Maurits (d. 1625) to spearhead a centralizing, bureau -
cratizing military revolution. Local corporate powers were also shored up,
not only, as I argue in chapter 2, because war spurred the development of
local and provincial forms of taxation and credit, as well as the role of the
chartered companies, but because war offered certain regent ruling fami-
lies the opportunities for their own advancement. So war grows states—
just not necessarily modern ones.
During the Twelve-Year Truce (1609-21), a regent faction of Orange

political complexion and strict Counter-Remonstrant Calvinist sympathies
grouped themselves around Maurits. Recall that this Orangist faction
vociferously opposed the States party's (aka Libertijn) tendency to gravi-
tate toward Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the long-time grand pensionary of
Holland and defender of a patrician republic in which the province of
Holland could exercise its leading role unmolested by any stadholder's
absolutist ambitions. The war faction also pushed for an expanded sover-
eign role for the House of Orange-Nassau as part and parcel of a program
that included resuming war against Catholic Spain and stepping up moral
regulation of the patriciate and plebs on the home front. With its help,
Maurits carried off a coup d'etat in 1618, subjected Grand Pensionary van
Oldenbarnevelt to a show trial and had him put to death, and sought to
inaugurate a new political order. A key part of his plan involved purging
the Holland town councils of States party men, replacing them with his
own regent supporters in order to produce a States-General that would be
more receptive to his more bellicose foreign policy aims (Israel 1995, 460).
In the immediate aftermath of the coup, the triumph of the war party, the
consolidation of Calvinism, and the dynastic glorification of the House of
Orange-Nassau seemed to be complete.
But it was not to be. Orange demographics was one familial factor that
checked Orange dynasticism; and regent dynasticism was another. Family
and kin group were for the regents not only a fundamental way of making
sense of the world and a wellspring of emotional bonds and normative
claims, but also a source of coalitional organization, a set of potential net-
works that could be activated in service of politico-military moves or
alliances.
Patriarchy, Privilege, and the Merchant-Regent Elite
After the merchant bourgeoisie acceded to state power in the Netherlands

and emerged as ruling regents, presumptive rights to state office and polit-
ical privilege became as important as shares in an enterprise or a position in
a firm and an increasingly central component of the inheritance at stake.
One implication of chapter 2 is that corporate privilege is essential to a
position atop the social pyramid in any social setting where patrimonial
prerogatives are the main routes along which money, power, and prestige
diffuse. Conveying access to privilege to the next generation becomes an
The Rise of the Netherlands Si
urgent matter in these situations, synonymous with the social reproduction

of the family itself. As privilege became more important for patrimonial
elites throughout Europe, including the Netherlands, elite families sought
to convey it as lineage property.
Viewed from an individual family's perspective, first of all, there were
several ways in which to accomplish this, that is, ways in which a family
could ensure that its son and heir acceded to a position of privilege while
conserving his status as a representative of the patrilineage. The family
could buy an office or privilege. Venal office-holding was a socially
respectable way for a family to purify wealth that had originated in trade,
and when offices that ennobled the family over the course of several gener-
ations were available they were avidly pursued. Families often bought
offices in conjunction with annuities, which were paid out over time in
exchange for the alienation of money, houses, or land and which offered
relatively low but very secure returns. In early modern France, these forms
of wealth became lineage property (propres), which, like land, were
thought to "belong corporately to the successive generations of the line-
age, so that the individual's right to dispose of them by gifts or in testa-
ments was limited" (Giesey 1977, 272). Even high offices were bought and
conveyed by deed of inheritance after a 1604 edict (the paulette). Likewise,
in England, the traffic in privilege permeated the state at every level and
sector by the 1620s and 1630s.6
But the family solution of venality was not always possible in a patrimo-
nial political economy. Most high offices in the United Provinces could
not legally be direcdy bought and sold, or even juridically inherited,
although elites did purchase lesser but i iterative state offices for their prog-
eny, such as the venal postmasterships commonly bought for male chil-
dren.7 The dearth of venal pickings was pardy a heritage of the rebellious
regents' struggles to capture the nascent state during the Dutch Revolt.
More often, Dutch families followed a second path, nepotism. Family
heads had prospective heirs appointed to nonvenal offices, in many cases
simply appointing them themselves. These offices lay at the outset of con-
ventionally understood career paths, culminating in a directorship of a
6
See Aylmer (196T) regarding family inheritance and venal office-holding in England.
Regarding ennobling offices in France, see Bien (1974), Lachmann and Adams (1988), and
Mousnier (1971 [1945]). Chapters 4 and 6 discuss the French and English cases in more detail.
7
In die Netherlands, such offices, which were often bought for very young children (Porta
i975> 139), might also carry with them continuing charges due anodier family's dependents
(Elias 1937,116).
privileged corporate body, a seat on the town council, or even access to its
inner circle, the mayoralty. If all went well, an heir would eventually either
ascend into the regency or (if his father were already a regent) replace him
as the family head and its political representative. Nine of the first seven-
teen mayors installed in newly independent Amsterdam from 1578 to 1590
were eventually succeeded by sons and/or sons-in-law (making thirteen
successors in all).8 These processes ensured that the chartered company
directorships that were so important in early imperial drives quickly
became exclusive family preserves. Fully two-thirds of the East Indies
Company directors in the Rotterdam chamber stood in relation of son,
father, or grandfather to one another (Kors 1988,16). Where English and
French company merchants were struggling to cope with the unpre-
dictable interventions of monarchs and seigneurial dependents of the
monarch's "patrimonial group," to borrow Robert Brenner's (1993)
phrase, control over the Dutch chartered company boards landed squarely
in the laps of the ruling city burgomasters' family factions—much to the
companies' initial commercial benefit.
For much of this period, such blatant nepotism was deemed perfectly
acceptable. The eighteenth-century diarist who commented uncritically
that Mayor Bicker of Amsterdam had earmarked the sinecure of ven-
Aumuster van scbepen en koopmanschappen, "worth 6000 guilders a year,"
for his fourteen-year-old son Henrik (quoted in van Nierop [1939, 220])
appears to have been typical.9 There were limits beyond which these prac-
tices were considered inappropriate, and some regents grumbled when oth-
ers optimistically earmarked empty state offices for babies—or sons not yet
born, even yet to be conceived—a practice that gave rise to amusing (to us)
contrasts between offices of stature and infant occupants who fell far short
of even the most minimal ceremonial demands, opening gaps in state func-
tioning. Families could claim their prerogative to employ a temporary adult
substitute to hold onto a privileged place for their offspring, plugging the
most serious political gaps, but when those substitutes began hiring substi-
tutes, all eager to gain a foothold in the state apparatus, a whole range of
8
More broadly, only nine among the first thirty-six Amsterdam vroedscbap members who
had available male descendants or relatives were not succeeded by them at their deaths. For
the information on the Amsterdam mayors and town council, see Elias (1963 [1903-1905],
xlii, table VII).
9
However, de Jongste (1984, 85) opines that Haarlem's thirteen-year-old Justus Witte van
Valkenburg and his seven-year-old brother Mattheus Willem could not have become the
proud possessors of local government secretariats without their father's status as one of the
town's most eminent and influential burgomasters.
new agency problems were inevitably created. Until Enlightenment ideas of

merit became popular in the eighteenth century, however, nepotism
remained an expectation shared by both the givers and receivers of privi-
lege, and one that contemporaries acknowledged and approved.10
Political privilege was highly desirable and relatively scarce. In the
Netherlands, where town charters limited the number of immediate family
members that could sit on the local town council (and especially those
who could become burgomasters), the ways that regent families conveyed
possessions identified with the patrilineage came to resemble the accepted
ways in which gentry and nobles passed down landed demesnes and
seigneuries (ambachten). The prime family properties went to the eldest
son, and other goods and seigneuries descended to the younger sons in
preference to the daughters. 11 Higher offices were reserved for the eldest
sons, and younger sons assumed the roles of supporter and understudy
(for should the elder die, the younger might be expected to take his place
in an instant). The eldest son symbolically represented the family, received
the key patrimonial offices, and was therefore more likely to be able to
marry and sire children. This outcome, instancing the "three Ps" of prefer-
ential patriarchal par ability, was a family ideal and became statistically more
likely among the elite over the course of the Republic's two centuries.12
For elite family heads trying to construct or maintain a functioning patri-
lineage, a project that involved linking together at least three generations of
males, inheritance practices were a limiting factor.13 Dutch inheritance law in
principle offered younger sons more than English law did, and Dutch
women's property rights were in general better than those of their English
and French counterparts: women could inherit seigneuries, although it was
10
See Terpstra in Bruijn (1970). For sinecures> see Swart (1980 [1949], 73-74).
1
* This was the general tendency in the division of family lands, as Sherrin Marshall's study
of the Utrecht gentry exemplifies (1987, chap. 6, esp. 106-7).
12
Preferential partibility was a compromise between keeping land/office/business intact by
naming only one legatee and providing all children with a piece of the pie; see Berkner and
Mendels (1978, 213-14). The patriarchal component was equally important: the modal shape
of the patrician office genealogy also tended to follow the strict conjugal patriline, and fami-
lies sought to adhere to that norm. Sons did better than daughters, and older children better
than younger. Eldest sons and daughters were therefore more likely than their younger sib-
lings to have the wherewithal to marry. In Gouda before 1750, about two-thirds of eldest
sons married, while about one-half of younger sons remained single (de Jong 1985,148-49).
In the eighteenth-century Hoorn patriciate, 79 percent of eldest sons and 89 percent of eld-
est daughters married, in contrast to 67 percent of all adult sons and 84 percent of all adult
daughters (Kooijmans 1985,128).
13
For the beliefs about the importance of the patrilineage in early modern western Europe
that were inscribed in inheritance practices, see the papers in Laslett and Wall (1972).
not an arrangement families preferred. But Dutch women were proscribed

from holding and therefore inheriting the right to exercise high state offices,
all the way up to and including the stadliolderate, although they could
"own" the right to sell or give some offices to a man, just as in France.14
Given the structure of descent and a patriarchal gender order, therefore,
elites in the early modern Netherlands put a premium on having sons.
For a man or his family, the successfully achieved social fiction of an
unbroken line of honorable, preferably patrilineal, descent was what
counted in establishing enduring claims to politico-economic privilege.
First, elite families were never prisoners of demography in any simple
sense—social structure and culture always intervened. Although a family
might have too many boys relative to its prospects of privilege, the family
could juggle second sons and their juniors in ways that disposed of them as
rivals while keeping them in reserve as potential substitutes. Sometimes
this delicate dance went awry within Dutch regent families, leading a
younger son to contest his ambiguous position and leaving a legal trail.
Among the Gevers of eighteenth-century Rotterdam, for example, one
younger son who had temporarily filled the council seat of his bankrupt
older sibling—a ne'er-do-well gambler and family disgrace—tried to hang
onto that seat when the prodigal son returned from the East Indies after
an eleven-year sojourn ordered by his father.15 Such a family fracas rarely
went public, however, in part because of alternative corporate opportuni-
ties within the system. Other, predominantly Catholic, countries had
monasteries, but the Dutch had multiple towns in which a rich boy could
make his way, the fallback of world trade, and the colonies, ever-hungry for
men.16 It was a more challenging practical problem for a family when the
vagaries of biological reproduction and individual survival dictated that no
sons were forthcoming or left living at the age of majority, which was
twenty-five in the Netherlands.17 There was room for family flexibility in
14
Eor France, see Giesey (i977, 283). Dutch women's property rights also varied regionally;
see Carter (1974, 94-127), de Blecourt (1950, 72-88), and Gibson (1989).
15
The legal documents for the Gevers case reside in Algemeen Rijksarchief Den Haag
2.21.070.
16
Regarding younger sons' marriages into regent patrilines in other towns and their status
as potential heirs to high c nee through an alternative family route, see van der Bijl (1981).
In England, after 1650, the aristocracy had high nuptiality rates because strict settlement
made provision for children and because there were career opportunities for younger sons.
In France, by contrast, younger sons frequently died unmarried. See O'Day (1994,67).
17
This was a relatively frequent outcome in medieval and early modern Europe. See
Rosenrhal (1991) on fifteenth-century England and Sherrin Marshall (1987) on the early
modern Dutch gentry. Sherrin Marshall notes that about one-half of the 35 percent in
designating successors. When deprived of a son or endowed with sons

gone bad, family heads turned to grandsons, nephews, sons-in-law, and
relatives by previous marriages to fill the gap, although who was chosen
first, and in what order substitutes were selected, might vary.
Second, what mattered was not whether man and family actually were
in any real sense honorable but whether they were perceived to be or have
something that entitled them to being treated honorably. "On the one
side is the bearer, who has something about him that gives him a right to
respect," as Stewart (1994) puts it, "and on the other is the world, which
has a duty to treat the bearer with respect" (21). So a Dutch social climber
could lie and cheat his way to lineage honor by doctoring his family's
genealogy to make his political pedigrees look more continuous and
impressive than they really were. At least one wrathful Amsterdam regent
set out to expose the worst offenders, genealogical correctives in hand,
but he was not able to extirpate the general practice, which was taken seri-
ously enough to merit prison sentences. The rewards were enough to
entice men to try, and some succeeded brilliantly.18 Perhaps even more
revelatory were the collectively sanctioned instances of social subterfuge.
Stone and Stone (1986) document what is surely one of the limit cases
among the indirect heirs of the English landed elite, some of whom were
compelled to drop or hyphenate their own family names and adopt the
patrilineal moniker as a condition of inheritance—a practice that made for
some hilariously unwieldy titles ("a classic modern example is Reginald
Aylmer Ranfurlv Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax"), but enabled families to
unobtrusively assimilate outsiders while preserving the fiction of enduring
patrilineal genealogy (Stone and Stone 1986, 87, chap. 4). Contenders for
the royal purple in various European countries had been symbolically
manipulating their political genealogies more or less successfully for cen-
turies, with the help of tame clerics and other ideologists whose job it was
to elide any embarrassing genealogical gaps and shore up familial political
Utrecht gentry families who died before reaching maturity died in dieir first year; another 17
percent died before age twenty-one (1987, 72). Thrupp's classic work on the merchant class
of medieval London shows that of 805 families between 1288 and 1527, 286 had no heirs in
the direct male line (1948, 200). Thrupp argues that three generations was the maximum for
London merchant families' continuity (chap. 5). (Note, however, that this generalization is
partly an artifact of Thrupp's having defined families who became country gentry as coming
to an end. Those patrilineages did not end; they merely migrated upward in the social scale.)
18
That regent's—Schaep's—anger is recounted by Elias (1963 [1903-1905], lxxxii). Schaep's
genealogical correctives are available in the Bicker family papers of the Amsterdam
Gemeente Archief.
legitimacy.19 My point is that these practices extended far beyond, and

below, the august level of kings, queens, or even stadholders and that they
were the province of merchants as well as landed elites. They also indicate
the social salience of patrilineal discourses and their loose moorings in
actual biological descent. They could be detached and deployed cre-
atively, within the boundaries imposed by available kin, normatively pat-
terned preferences, and the acquiescence of the other elite families, both
rivals and supporters, that were always looking on.
A family's capacity to perpetuate its patriline by installing or maintaining
its lineal representatives in the sanctum of high office rested on its alliances
with other family lineages as well as its manipulations of descent. "Men fre-
quently regarded marriage in terms of what it would do for their line,'''
concludes Sherrin Marshall (1987, 51), with respect to the early modern
Dutch landed gentry; the same was true of urban patriciates in the United
Provinces and elsewhere in Europe. 20 Thus, patrimonial family heads who
wanted to install or maintain their families in high office practiced the
"politics of marriage" (htnvelijkspolitiek)y trying to marry well and to
marry their children well. Marriage created a web of instant political sup-
porters. It gave a family claims on the allied family's patrimonial privileges
and offices (which could, in the case of lesser offices and shares in privi-
leged enterprises, be directly acquired via dowries). As one Dutch regent
joked, "My little niece carries a place on the city council under her skirt"
(van Rijn 1986, 44-). Finally, the right alliance, sealed by an appropriately
extravagant wedding, added polish to family political prestige, as so many
of the flowery wedding odes and songs that were published and preserved
in Dutch family archives attest.21 These factors were particularly important
to families who could not purchase top offices directly. Their capacity to
19
Lineal claims to the throne were symbolically manipulated, sometimes successfully, some-
times not. Beaune (1991) makes this argument in great detail tor late-medieval France. See
also chapter 4.
20
See also the articles collected in Aalbers and Prak (1987).
21
See for example the wedding odes marking the 1608 alliance of Jacob Bicker and Anna
Roelofs or the 1745 wedding of Hendrik Bicker and Clara Dedel (Amsterdam Gemeente
Archicf [AGA] PA 195 #74, #124). Wedding rituals became so overblown that some town
governments tried to pass sumptuary laws restricting the festivities. "In 1655, when Dr. Tulp
and Burgeineester Bontemantel succeeded in pushing through Amsterdam's law against
extravagant wedding feasts, the measure was enacted against a background of an appalling
visitation of the plague and a serious trade depression brought on by defeats and blockades
in the naval war against England. Even then, the law was less draconian than might have
been the case, limiting celebrations to fifty guests and a duration of two days!" (Schama
1987,186). See also Kooijmans (1985,125-26).
set their lineal successors' feet firmly on the lower rungs of the ladder of
political privilege depended on the tacit approval, and the helping hands,
of other families in power.22
Not surprisingly, elite families in the Netherlands kept careful genealogi-
cal records, not only of their own pedigrees but of other families with
which they had intermarried and sometimes of those with which intermar-
riage was considered plausible. The powerful Backer family researched or
collected the genealogies of 320 other Amsterdam regent families, many of
which were related by marriage to the Backers, as well as drawing up huge
chronological lists of Amsterdam families that had boasted one or more
burgomasters from 1343 to 1727 (Amsterdam Gemeente Archief [AGA]
PA172, #40-45,104). As far as these amateur Dutch genealogists were con-
cerned, other families were categorized and evaluated as good lineages and
marital prospects on the basis of the temporal depth and continuity of the
representation of their male members in patrician offices and, if they were
gentry or nobility, landed estates—even more than according to religious
and political sympathies. This favored strong tendencies toward endogamy
within social strata.2-3
A prospective family head who thought well of himself and his political
pedigree might marry within his own kin group. Cousin marriage was
common in regent families. u O you of one name, of one allied blood . . .
Happy Hasselaars!" one bombastic poet enthused, addressing Amsterdam's
Gerhard Hasselaar and Suzanne Elisabeth Hasselaar on the occasion of their
high-profile marriage (AGA 292 #21).24 Yet in the Netherlands, as elsewhere
in Europe, this tendency was checked by elaborate incest prohibitions that
were legally codified and enforced by informal community and religious
22
For specific case studies attesting to these functions of marriage for regent families, see,
among others, de Jong (1985) on Gouda, Kooijmans (1985) on Hoorn, de Lange (1972,
IT
9~57) on Medemblik, Porta (1975) on Amsterdam, and Prak (1985) on Leiden. See also
Moreau (1978) on the Liege patricians.
23
Endogamy within social strata was prescribed. Among the Dutch nobility, 90.7 percent of
the marriages contracted by the members of the Holland Ridderschap and their children
from 1500 to 1650 were with other nobles and 9.3 percent outside the nobility. (Nearly one-
half of all exogamous marriages were contracted by only two families.) Endogamous mar-
riage was the norm for the Holland Ridderschap in the eighteenth century as well. See van
Nierop (1993, chap. 4) and Aalbers (1978, 412-45).
24
The ode, which is in French, goes on to praise Gerhard's future glory in state office, and
rises to a pitch of enthusiasm about the clannish marriage and its prospective descendants:
"Cest PExemple vivant de ceux de votre Race: / II vous est le plus cher; c'est le plus grand
de tous; / Et vous allez montrer le chemin qu'il vous trace / A ceux qui vont naitre de
vous" (AGA 292 #21).
sanctions. Marriage was a domain governed by a complex interplay among

local custom and canonical, Christian, and civil law "saturated with pre-
scriptions . . . centered on legitimate alliance" (Foucault 1978, 37-38).
During the Dutch Revolt, city regents and town fathers passed an ordi-
nance that enumerated six "forbidden degrees" of sexual and marital rela-
tions, embracing both certain blood relatives (parents and children;
grandparents and grandchildren, and so forth; brothers and sisters;
aunts/uncles and their nieces/nephews or the latter's children) and the
blood relatives of deceased spouses. (Marriages between the half-sisters
and half-brothers of deceased spouses did take place, although they were
controversial.) Equally important, the ordinance was hammered home by
documents that restated its basic principles with respect to proscribed
appointments to corporate privileges and offices, including the chartered
companies.25
Alliances with other lineages are crucial in many societies and situations.
The anthropological analogy between gift exchange and the traffic in
women, developed by Marcel Mauss (1990 [1925]) and Claude Levi-Strauss
(1969 [1949]), describes an ideal-typical system of generalized exchange of
women among kin groups, claiming that it functions as a medium by
which the families concerned cement past politico-economic alliances and
commit themselves to present and future connections. This is a useful anal-
ogy for students of patrimonial systems if we are careful to incorporate two
features: social variabilty and attempts at regulation. First, the degree to
which elite women were actually swapped was a variable rather than con-
stant feature. In the Greater Netherlands, which embraced the early mod-
ern colonial territories as well as the metropolitan home base, the Dutch
East Indies lay at one end of the continuum. There upper-crust colonists
arranged alliances as a matter of course for their daughters, who were mar-
ried off in their early teens and consigned to semiseclusion, and thereby
25
Key documents include the States-General's Publicatie (May 13, 1594); its Resolution of
September 30, 1666, dealing with state offices ("00k Specialijk plaats heeft met relatie tot
Ampten"); the Third Article of the VOC Charter (1622); and the 1623 Begrip bijhet Oude
Octrooi van de West Indische Compajynie. (The Ordonnantie remained in force throughout
the early modern period, but requests tor dispensation from its restrictions were more gen-
erously granted in the later eighteenth century.) These documents are available in the
Algemeen Rijksarchief den Haag. For cousin marriage, see Kooijmans (1985, 125). For the
forbidden degrees in the Netherlands, see van Appeldoorn (1925, esp. 161). In spite of their
proscription in the Ordonnantie, marriages with dead spouses' siblings did take place in the
Dutch Republic, although such marriages were legally vulnerable; Haks (1985, chap. 2) cites
a case in which a couple with seven children was belatedly convicted of incest.
they consolidated the support of the political contemporaries who became

their sons-in-law (Taylor 1983). In the Netherlands, on the other hand, the
marriage system more closely approximated free-choice marriage,
although the outer boundaries of choice were delimited by family needs
and family judgments of the candidate's status.
Second, when de facto or de jure family possession of state sovereignty
and politico-economic resources was at issue, we can expect variability to be
bounded by attempts at regulation. In the Netherlands, these ranged from
the informal, in which parents and conventionally designated members of
the kin group sponsored social activities at which eligible marriage candi-
dates were scrutinized, to the formal, in which complex and protracted
negotiations between family heads considering whether to consent to an
alliance culminated in detailed contingency planning and contracts.26 And
when regent families felt their position to be vulnerable, certain types of
marriages were strongly encouraged, even arranged: the judicious gift of a
daughter could assuage a family's politico-economic shortfalls.27 For exam-
ple, the prominent Amsterdam regent Corver married his daughter Maria
Margaretha to his enemy Nicolaas Geelvinck as a peace offering in order to
entice Geelvinck into the Corverite faction. Maria was a rich prize, well-
dowered and seventeen years younger than Geelvinck, who was a widower
with five children, and the offering was duly accepted (Porta 1975,157-58).
An arranged marriage buttressed a family's shaky political dominance by
attracting a prospective son-in-law into its factional camp.
On the rare occasions when daughters or sons flouted these norma-
tive constraints, there were real consequences. Families fought per-
ceived mesalliances by chiding and then, if necessary, socially ostracizing
or disinheriting the guilty parties. 28 Fathers retained legal veto rights
26
For some of these contingency-planning documents among the Amsterdam patriciate, see
the documents collected in AGA 195, #60, #61, #66, #73, #79. See also Haks (1985, chap. 4),
who notes that parental pressure on couples was much greater in upper-class brackets, mak-
ing elopement more common.
27
Schmidt's (1986) work on the Teding van Berkhout family suggests that when the heads
of regent families were in dire financial straits, their daughters were more frequently married
off to wealthy but lower-status merchants.
28
The question of mesalliance is a complicated one. Some mesalliances were tolerated
among early modern European elites, but only under certain conditions, principally when
money sweetened the pill. Noblemen and regents alike married rich commoner women who
brought land, offices, and other possessions into die marriage (Forster 1980). However,
diese mesalliances were themselves hedged about with convention, particularly when it came
to an in-marrying, lower-status male's relationship to an established elite family's office and
privilege. Established practices existed that could cleanse the stain of humble origins from the
over their children's choice of spouse until 1809, just after the collapse
of the Old Regime. Those veto rights were enforced in the last instance
by the patrimonial state, in particular by the magistracy. A vivid illustra-
tion of this point can be drawn from the rich history of the Bicker clan.
In 1650, the Amsterdam burgomaster Andries Bicker, who had refused
his consent to the proposed marriage of his 26-year-old son Gerard to
Alida Koninks on the grounds that the Koninks' social status was too far
below the Bickers', brought a case against his defiant son before the
magistrates of the Hoge Raad, who decided in the father's favor. Gerard
and Alida finally married six years later, but only after both Bicker par-
ents were dead and after Gerard had persuaded the Raad to reverse its
decision, in loco lineagensis, so to speak (Smidt and Gall 1985, 37-39). In
this transposed Romeo and Juliet tale, the parents rather than the lovers
die while the patrilineage itself lives on, at the behest of the united fam-
ilies of the corporate state. Some couples concealed clandestine unions
for years for fear of such reprisals.29 The larger point is that societal
sanctions marked the limits laid down by the corporate patrilineages. I
am insisting on this point because of the pervasive image of the Dutch
early modern family-household as one that was escaping the vicissitudes
of archaic father rule. In his elegant analysis of early modern Dutch
mentalitesy for example, Simon Schama has argued that "'the notion of
the male's lordship over his wife and house," while important, was
"qualified by the understanding that a strong household required a
strong mistress and that it was not best served by a regime of patriarchal
enforcement." Overall, he insists, conjugal relations among the Dutch
middling strata, and to some extent regents, partook of a kind oi^burg-
erlijk consensus about marriage and the relation between the sexes"
that uneasily merged the "apparently irreconcilable imperatives" of "the
humanist and the Calvinist" (Schama 1987, 420; see also chap. 6 of this
sullied family. An important one was generational lag in incorporation. By virtue of his mar-
riage, the new son-in-law could occupy a subaltern office in the Dutch state; his son in turn
could take his place among the regency. See Kooijmans (1985,122-25), S. Marshall (1987, 37),
Schama (1987, 441-45), and van Nierop's (1993) analysis of endogamy and misalliances.
29
One poignant tale of mesalliance and concealed liaison is "Dirk's Secret" (Merens 1957,
227-32). In France, parents who wished to punish disobedient minor children who had
eloped or contracted a mesalliance could have the union declared legally clandestine. Parents
could (and did) put the son or daughter into a prison or convent with state-issued Icttres de
cachet, whereas the partner of a daughter who eloped or was abducted became liable to the
death penalty if the parents did not belatedly agree to consent to the marriage. Whether the
daughter herself had consented or not was deemed irrelevant. See Gibson (1989, chap. 3).
book). When it comes to the regent elite, in my view, this qualification

was strongly qualified, in turn, both by the exigencies of the patrilin-
eage and, ironically, by that very bourgeois separation of the regents'
family-households from the theater of public power that attenuated the
publicity of certain aspects of Dutch regent lives. That separation
diminished women's macropolitical role, particularly in comparison to
courtly contexts. There women held major royal family-household, and
hence political, offices in their own right. Regent women controlled a
few fourth-string political offices, but were at most very minor players
in high politics.
Historians have begun to explore how women's understandings of fam-
ily and lineage differed from dominant male institutionalized interpreta-
tions in western Europe. 30 Some elite women in patrimonial societies
appear to stress the patrilineage less than men did, to rely on a more com-
plex notion of practical kinship, although the evidence either pro or con is
sparse on these points. It should not surprise us that women might have
seen things differendy from men, even though they were enclosed in the
same dominant patricentric meaning system, because they were positioned
differently within that symbolic space. Women also faced conflicting calls
on their allegiances when they left their natal lineages and joined others at
marriage. Thus Dutch gentry women often identified with and continued
contact with their families of origin, their husbands' lineages, and their
new conjugal families and their descendants—those children to whom they
had given birth and their children's children (S. Marshall 1987, 50-51).
When were these cross-cutting ties experienced as a dense web of support
and when as a source of troublesome cross-pressures? To what extent were
Dutch and other patrimonial elite women able to use these ties as a ful-
crum for informal political action, or a personal resource, and to what
extent did they find them immobilizing? These questions are fascinating,
but at this moment we know too little about the women's (much less chil-
dren's) point of view to answer them.
If we know so little, then, is it reasonable to examine the rules of repro-
duction of a patriarchal patrimonial system without attending to the con-
ditions of consent and the responses of its subaltern members? I think
that it is, as a first approximation, just as one must at times treat the met-
ropolitan and colonial peasant agrarian foundation of early modern
European structures of rule as an input (and no more) for purposes of
30
Wolf (n.d.) deals centrally with this issue.
analysis of the metropole, and vice versa. We should still keep in mind
that women—elite women and their lower-class servants as an ensem-
ble—did much of the work of daily and especially generational reproduc-
tion that kept the patriarchal patrilineal system on an even keel. Precisely
because of this essential practical role, however, elite women's interpreta-
tions and autonomous orientations mattered less than men's for out-
comes in high patrimonial politics, even in courtly contexts, where (as we
see in chapter 4) the centrality of the royal family-household and the pres-
ence of aristocratic salon cultures opened more political space for women
than in estatist arrangements. Women's work was a precondition of male
family heads' capacity to act on their version of patriarchal family values,
mortgaging their own and their family's futures for a dynastic vision and
trying to use the state to that end.
Family Strategies and Family Status
From the perspective of a single regent family, as in other European patri-

monial elites (including royals), the two practices of marriage and inheri-
tance were interdependent. If each wedding and inheritance settlement
represented the playing of a card in the family's hand, to borrow Pierre
Bourdieu's utilitarian metaphor, each move in the game depended both on
the hand that had been dealt and the family's skill in playing it (Bourdicu
1990 [1980], 148). The family's hand was played with an eye to a collective
intergenerational career path. First, the temporal horizons within which
actors made decisions extended beyond any one individual's life
expectancy, and the moves of the players, or family heads, make sense only
if we keep this in mind. The hand was conceived by the players as reaching
fruition over several generations of politico-economic accumulation and
alliances. Second, the game involved various degrees of coordination and
sacrifice from different family and kin group members who were joined in
a common lineal fate. But did regent families strateglze? The Oxford
English Dictionary defines strategy as the prerogative of a commander,
"the art of projecting and directing the larger military movements and
operations of a campaign," a definition that reveals the military roots of
the concept. In its broadest sense, a strategy implies an actor or actors tak-
ing premeditated steps toward a consciously or unconsciously visualized
goal. Such strategies were pursued by family members and, the strategies
evolved and deepened because of the interplay between families and states
over the course of two centuries of patrimonial politics.31
The major players in this game were men, particularly male family
heads, who represented their families in the patriarchal patrimonial game.
Women played as temporary substitutes for men, holding the cards on
behalf of the lineage until the next likely man came along; the social
power of widows in early modern Europe derived from their position as
agents of the patrilineage. Children were the most important cards and
could be the ace in the hole.32 But those wielding power, the male family
heads, were constrained in several ways. Fathers' and sons' capacities to
dispose of family property were legally circumscribed in favor of certain
descendants, and the kin group sanctions directed at mesalliances
included those contracted by the head of the family himself (Haks 1985;
van Appeldoorn 1925). They were also restricted by the actions of other
peer patrilineages, an external constraint partly deriving from scarcity of
privilege. Civic charters limited the family members that could simultane-
ously sit on city councils, admiralty boards, and VOC directorates or
simultaneously be burgomasters. Although enterprising ruling regents
tried to stretch these limits in various ways, hotly contested legal cases
took issue with attempts by regents in power to recruit into the VOC
boards kin who were arguably too closely related to them. The idiom of
kinship became sharply politicized when family heads tried to use it to
stake contested claims to scarce political privileges.33
31
Some historians and social scientists think of family strategies as necessarily mounted by a
family group; others believe that the concept should incorporate individuals as authors of a
strategic course of action, as long as it is directed toward collective familial goals. I am provi-
sionally accepting both senses.
32 w h e n widows w h o held land or office prerogatives remarried and died, they posed potential
contradictions for the patrilineage and patriarchy. T h e new husband m i g h t claim the patriar-
chal right t o manage her estate while her sons from her first marriage, t o w h o m her property
reverted, disagreed. For varying degrees of widow's control over children, dower property, and
patrimony, see Danneel ( 1 9 8 9 , 9 9 - i n ) , Hanawalt (1992), and Klapisch-Zuber (1985).
33
Legal records deposited in the VOC archives (1.04.02 #4659), in the Algemeen
Rijksarchief Den Haag, contain pertinent cases. In his 1765 case against Messrs. van der
Burch and his uncle van Belvis, Jan Bouwens of Delft argued that van der Burch should not
have been nominated for a directorship in the Delft chamber of the company because the
nominee's mother was the sister of the wife of van Belvis, who was already a Delft director.
The defense conceded that the VOC charter did not allow an uncle and nephew to serve
simultaneously as directors in the same VOC chamber, but contended that the family tie
between this particular uncle and nephew was not a proscribed relationship because van den
Burch's mother was dead and because the sisters in question were actually half-sisters
{Susters van halve Bedde). The response also pointed out that die complainant had wanted
In their analysis of the elite of medieval Florence, a city-state and patri-

monial context that is in some respects comparable to early modern
Amsterdam, John Padgett and Christoper Ansell (1993) argue that family
heads did not usually pursue grand strategic plans. Actors engaged in
"contextual improvisation" favored by localized, heterogeneous, and
ambiguous structural situations. When a dominant Florentine
Renaissance lord awarded his daughters to other status superiors or to
grateful clients that lord was probably not seeking to consolidate his
"control, in transitive patrimonial fashion, through circumventing the
autonomy of his lieutenants with further marriages of his daughters to the
lieutenants of his lieutenants," although "he will almost certainly react
negatively to attempts by his lieutenants to establish ties to other rival . . .
lords." 34 This is the realm of tactics (the OED's "art of handling forces in
battle or in the immediate presence of the enemy"), more situationally
specific than grand strategy.
But as they undertook similar tactics, patrimonial family heads did make
strategic plans to advance family fortunes, which became increasingly tied
up with their capacity to make effective claims to monopoly niches in the
state. En route, they foregrounded the honored, sovereign role of the
male progenitor. They represented themselves as part of patriarchal patri-
lineages, and their public identities as bound up with the long time hori-
zons of their historical genealogies. The vertical aspect of family that
Arland Thornton, Mayfair Yang, and Thomas Fricke (1994) call the
"ancestral chain" had its counterpart among the western European elite.35
So, family heads spoke on behalf of the fantasized urgings of ancestors and
progeny, in addition to responding to the allowable demands of living rel-
atives who wanted a hand up—these retained both their normative force
and imaginative lure many degrees and generations removed.
the directorship tor himself and was not the disinterested party he claimed to be. Bouwens
made an impassioned comeback, but he lost the case; van der Burch was admitted to the
directorship, although he stood in the third degree of affinity to van Belvis. Bouwens
appealed to the tact that one key document, the 1623 Begrip bij net Oude Octrooi van de
WIC, specifically mentions that both full and half-blood relatives are covered, but his oppo-
nents pointed to the 1594 States-General ruling, which referred only to full brothers and sis-
ters. A 1685 case, regarding Nicolaes Coningh, a former mayor nominated for a directorship
of die VOC's Hoorn chamber, followed a similar course. Coningh was also linked via a half-
sister to a sitting director.
34
This citation is from page 46 of the longer, unpublished manuscript version of Padgett
and Ansell (1993), available on request from the authors.
** Their concept of "ancestral chains" was developed in the context of Taiwan.
The symbolic links among paternity, lineage, and sovereignty in the early
modern Netherlands were elaborated in several remarkable semiliterary and
painterly genres. What we might call office genealogies, studded with con-
ventional henorifics, are lovingly preserved in many regent family archives.
The Bicker family archive in Amsterdam holds an exemplary document, tes-
tifying to the author Hendrik Bicker's public pride in his family's patrician
status. Headed "Fourteen Generations Beginning with . . . , " it spans a 250-
year period from the 1400s to the 1680s, listing each Bicker male, his offices
and privileges, the names of his wife or wives, and his sons who also held
positions, culminating with Hendrik himself, at that time an Oud-Schepen (a
member of the magistracy). The document was to be passed down to
Hendrik's sons, to be continued by future generations. The Bickers' is a
detailed example, but there is nothing unusual about such records. 36 Their
presence testifies to the existence of an idiom in which men formally
recounted the intersection of generations of paternity and state office,
emphasizing their axial position as a link between past and future.
Families also bequeathed patrimonial poems, composed and ceremonially
read to mark significant family/office transitions, such as a son's accession
to an important position or a patriarch's death with his burgermasterly
boots on.37 Along with the verses and office genealogies came other items
symbolizing the patriline's specifically patrimonial continuity, such as coats
of arms, sometimes drawn or painted in different versions by the family
head himself, and family portraits embellished with emblems of regency
and rule. Such "beloved objects" (dierbare voorwerperif* were not unique
to the seventeenth-century Netherlands, of course. In fact Dutch politico-
literarv forms linked stock svmbols that were characteristic of earlv modern
36
The Bicker document can be found in the AGA PA 195, #36. Later additions extend the
line to T772. Another especially rich example, drawn up by B. Huydecoper, relates the
chronology of high offices filled by generations of Huydecoper men in Amsterdam from
1578 to 1749 (Algemeen Rijksarchief Utrecht 67, #4). Regarding gentry genealogies in the
Netherlands, see S. Marshall (1987, 2-3).
37
Exemplary poems include those marking Jan Bernd Bicker's appointment to various
offices (AGA PA 195, #100, #166, #284), that celebrating Gerrit Corver's maiden appoint-
ment as burgomaster (Porta 1975, 137), and those dealing with the burgomastership and
death ofWillem Backer (AGA PA 172, #70).
38 "Beloved objects" of diis sort were passed down die patriline as were the house and the
largest portion of money. Regarding the significance of family archives and treasured objects
for intrafarnily meaning systems from the early modern period up through the nineteenth
century, see Nicolai (1992). Also see Prak (1985,196-97) and Backer's assemblage of coats of
arms (AGA PA 172,50-55). For sharply divergent approaches to Golden Age Dutch painting, see
Alpers (1983), Schama (1987), and the essays in Freedberg and de Vries (1991).
European elite hagiographies: family line, alliance, honor, state, Vaderland,

God, war, manhood, antiquity, paternal authority, and maternal fecundity.
But there was a difference. The self-promotions of the Dutch elite con-
trasted with those of continental ruling elites in their unashamed connec-
tion of these desirables with a celebration of oceangoing commerce. Trade
was glory, not shame, in the Dutch Golden Age.39
Some regent fathers also penned documents expressly for their chil-
dren, and especially their sons, with an eye to their future service to the
Republic. These patrician pedagogies, such as Paulus Teding van
Berkhout's 150-page Memorie (cited in Schmidt 1986, 56-64), testify to a
sense of the crucial formative importance of childhood. The Memorie
dilates on the importance of family, piety, and public-spiritedness, draw-
ing close parallels among careful regent governance, God's rule, and the
ideal workings of a patriarchal household. We do not know whether the
celebration of the patriline in such family documents, and the cautionary
moral tales underlining its fragility, caused children to embrace these
views and sentiments as their own. Teding van Berkhout himself never
assumed that his children would necessarily follow his instructions, much
less take his admonitions to heart. He was fully alive to the possibility that
they might not, and thus he warned that not obeying him would set the
family on a downward path, toward spiritual malaise and politico-eco-
nomic disgrace.40 We do know that regent parents stressed the impor-
tance of political socialization, particularly for sons, and more so that
parental expectations and strategic interventions, inflected with notions
of civic and religious duty, coexisted with deep affection for children but
also fears of their sinful corruptibility.41
These are impulses and vocabularies that we moderns, we post-
Victorians, are more likely to think of as mutually exclusive. But, first,
the deep commitment to patrilineage should not be confused with our
39
The Dutch were connected with these elements by others as wdl, although the adulation was
missing. "Hostile caricatures sometimes showed [the Dutch] as frogs washed away in a flood of
gin, while one of Cruikshank's nastiest productions in 1794 set buxom Dutch juffers in line,
stretching out to sea like a human breakwater, downing torrents of gin, which in their turn
become flushed away into the tide" (Schama 1987,190).
40
See also Schama (1987, chap. 2); Rosenthal (i99i> chap.i). Teding van Berkhout and other
regents may have patterned their memoirs partly on prescriptive pronouncements by popular
moralists, such the sanctimonious regent sage "Father" Jacob Cats, who were widely influential.
41
De Jong (1987) covers material on regent childhood. Schama's discussion of the children
of the Dutch burgerij marvellously captures parental ambivalence (1987, chap. 7). Two use-
ful review essays that deal with parent-child relations are Clerkx (1985) and Noordman and
van Setten (1985,140-62).
own notions of romantic or altruistic love. We should not sentimentalize

early modern European elite family life, just as we should challenge one-
dimensional utilitarian accounts in which children are characterized as
mere pawns in family projects. Neither the romantic nor the rational-
choice perspective can capture the institutionalized power relations
within the family or the systematic integration of affective and strategic
impulses. Yet those desires were both socially reconcilable and frankly
acknowledged in patrimonial regimes that functioned under the sign of
patriarchal identity and patrilineal power. Second, as we begin to see
here, patriarchal honor was neither a vanishing feudal dream nor an
accompaniment of landed estates. Notions of honor in patrimonial con-
texts increasingly merged two traditional hierarchical vocabularies of sta-
tus prevalent among elites in early modern Europe, one stressing the
accumulated weight of state service and the other, the aristocracy of
blood, symbolized by the panoplies of robe and sword, respectively.42
Messages about the honor of the patrilineage and the value of a man's
place in it became thoroughly hybrid as expressed pride in the patrilin-
eage and hopes for its future prospects became identified with
respectable representation in government offices and monopolies;
regents began to emphasize inherited genealogies of privilege rather
than either mercantile prowess or a strict aristocracy of blood. Even the
princes of the House of Orange presented themselves as state officers, as
stadholders (literally, "stateholders") for the Habsburg crown and then
for the Dutch regent elite. Conversely, the hold that family heads had
over state offices infused state service itself with notions of patrilineal
inheritance. For men in the regency, and even those in the shrinking aris-
tocracy, their own patriarchal honor, patrilineal position, and patrimonial
privilege (and thus their piece of state sovereignty) were increasingly
mutually implicated.
42
As Ford (i953> 7) puts it, "The conception of two separate hierarchies, one of grandeur,
the other of power, has been invoked repeatedly since its emergence in the complaints of
noblemen under the ancien regime." In the Dutch hierarchy of public honor, these twin
peaks were originally claimed by regent families (with burgomasters at the apex) and the
aristocracy (the pinnacle being, of course, the princely House of Orange). In the
Netherlands, "More important than the threefold scheme of orders was the distinction
between those who worked with their hands, which was regarded as not honorable, and
those who drew their income from property or offices'* (van Nierop 1993, 21). For the
medieval period, see van Uyten (1972).
Family Regimes, the House of 0%*ange,

and the Struggle for the Center
Dutch regents went to great lengths in their quest to amass the limited
number of top privileges for their families and allies and to gain control of
the right of disposition over lesser ones for clients and clients' families.
Some maneuvered close but not traditionally proscribed family members
(such as sons-in-law) onto local state bodies. Others simply went ahead
and appointed their proscribed relatives in violation of custom. An intem-
perate 1736 letter to the Holland Raad van State from Balthasar
Huydecoper called attention to attempts by the Texel regents to do just
that. Huydecoper accused them of appointing excess magistrates in order
to incorporate family members, and he pointed out in no uncertain terms
that they were violating the town's 1509 charter.43 In Gorinchem, burgo-
masters Dionysis van Schuylenburch and Caspar van Hoey tried to get
their sons on the council before they themselves stepped off (Jorissen 1887,
38-39). Still other regents tried to squeeze in relatives of questionable
proximity, such as half-brothers. By such means, fair or foul, a single family
or kin group might easily gain control of the key offices in smaller corpo-
rate enclaves.44 The memoirs of burgomaster Diderik van Bleysvvijk reveal,
for example, that the van Hoey family effectively ruled the town of
Gorinchem for years simply because the family patriarch, two of his sons-
in-law, and his nephew outweighed others in the small ruling group
(Jorissen 1887, 44). Charters regulating how many family members could
sit simultaneously made it more difficult for a single family or kin group to
exercize control so blatantly in larger corporate settings. But individual
regent family networks also coalesced into clannish ruling blocs in settings
as important as the Amsterdam city council.45 The regents themselves
spoke of a family regime (familieregering) when a corporate body such as
a city council or chartered company board was enduringly dominated by a
certain kin group. Small exclusive groups of people with common inter-
ests—cliques—are potentially "initiating nuclei," key to organizational
43
As a consequence, Huydecoper seems to have made himself very unpopular. For the rele-
vant documents, see Algemeen Rijksarchief Utrecht 67, #377-
44
This pattern continued in the eighteenth century. In the town of Zutphen in 1747, six of
the twelve city aldermen (scbepenen) belonged to one family group; in Hoorn, the
Breedhoffs held all the principal magistracies and postmastership for three generations
(Schama 1977,50-52).
45
In these situations, as Mark Mizruchi (1992, 65) notes with respect to modern-day corpo-
rate interlocks, processes ofcooptation and infiltration may be happening simultaneously.
dynamism (Dalton 1959, chap. 3). Family regimes were poised to have a
substantial impact on state policy and institution building.
The Bicker-de Graeff grouping emerged as the most formidable family
contenders in the decades following the revolt. Firmly ensconced in the
town council and East Indies Company directorate by the 1620s, as we
have seen, this fraction was instrumental in shifting Dutch state policy
more in line with their own politico-economic goals, that is, toward those
of long-distance European carrying traders and East Indies Company
directors and away from those of the West Indies Company and regulated
trade in the Americas. The Bicker faction stood for the politico-economic
self-determination of Amsterdam's large-scale merchant capitalists. It also
spearheaded the political opposition to the stadholder's political programs.
The weight of Amsterdam in the Union was so great that, without its
long-term support, stadholder ambitions were inevitably rudely qualified.
But the Bickers were also for the Bickers, and the family at the core of
the faction maintained its influence for decades by familial means. Gerrit
Bicker's position in the vroedschap and as an East Indies Company
founder enabled him to launch his sons' politico-economic careers, and
they in turn favored their sons, nephews, and grandsons. Andries Bicker,
eldest son of Gerrit, headed the city council for many years and was prin-
cipally backed by his three brothers Jacob, Cornelis, and Jan; his uncle
Jacob de Graeff; and Jacob's son Cornelis. Gerrit's brother Jacob Bicker's
grandson Roelof, and Andries' daughter Alida's husband Jacob Bicker
(Roelof's brother) were also key players. At one time, seven family mem-
bers sat in the Amsterdam government simultaneously. The Bickers' mar-
riages further deepened and broadened their ties in Amsterdam. Some of
these alliances were close: Jacob de Graeff's daughters Agniet and
Christina married their cousins Jan and Jacob Bicker; another son Dirck
de Graeff wed Eva Bicker, Roelof's sister; and vet another son Andries
married Cornelis Bicker's daughter Elisabeth. The Bickers' marital
alliances also branched out to include other influential merchant-regent
families, and creeping endogamy tended to dissolve the boundaries
among those families as well. Gerrit Bicker's daughter (and Andries
Bicker's sister) Dieuwertge married the merchant Jan van Hellemont, and
one of their sons, Gerard, in turn married Margaretha Bicker van Swieten,
the daughter of Cornelis Bicker and Aertge Witsen, herself a daughter of
the renowned grain merchant and Baltic trader Gerrit Witsen. The Bicker-
Witsen alliance was in turn linked by marriage to other illustrious merchant-
regent families, including the Reynst and van Beuningen families. The
ioo T H E FAMILIAL STATE
ramifying relationships are so dense and involuted that they cannot be

clearly captured in a conventional family tree.
In each Dutch corporate enclave during the Golden Age, the ruling
regent clique commanded the central offices, especially the mayoralties,
and attempted rule along the lines of medieval Italian oligarchies—the
clique disposed of petitioners' "honor-claims" to cooption to power
and participation in structures of privilege. This prerogative lies at the
heart of all patrimonial power, as well as variations in that form of
power that depend on the character of the central ruler or elite clique
that dispenses privilege and the mechanisms of rule that are deployed.
Padgett and Ansell (1993) have analyzed the network centrality of key
families in corporate family regimes, focusing on oligarchic rule in
medieval Florence. Their work brilliantly illuminates some of the mech-
anisms by which patrimonial elite clans established and maintained cen-
tral political positions. The Medici, in particular, manipulated the
Florentine elite by means of complementary marriages and economic
exchanges that spanned gaps in the overall elite network but kept rele-
vant elite family groups apart from one another and dependent on
Medici mediation.
The Bickers made a similar push, but more ambitiously than did the
Medici, extending their family tentacles far beyond Amsterdam. Jan
Bicker's daughter Wendela married Johan de Witt, the masterly grand
pensionary of Holland who, along with the Amsterdam regents, directed
Dutch commercial and colonial policy during the First Stadholderless
Period (1650-72), and the Bickers systematically called on de Witt for sup-
port—as well as on other patrimonial elites in early modern Europe—
both politically and familially.46 Many regents in other cities followed the
political lead of the First Family of Amsterdam; some dubbed themselves
a uBicker League." Joost van den Vondel, the greatest Dutch poet of the
Golden Age, imagined the Bickers' flag flying over richly laden ships,
dominating the great ocean and gathering in the world's golden treasure
"to sleep in Holland's bosom." 47 Dutch dynastic officialdom favored the
46
Beyond claims to privilege and promotion, the famiiy claims extended to the clan's suc-
cessful effort to squelch one son's proposed Romeo-and-]uH"t alliance with a Pauw girl in
1669. De Witt's help in preventing the marriage was solicited. See Elias (1963 [1903-1905],
423). Of course, de Witt made reciprocal demands as weli; see Haks (1985, 48-52).
47 ("Ter Bruilofte van den E. Heere Joan de Witt, Raet pensionarisvm den Lande van Hallant en
Westvriestandt, en de Ed. JofFer Wendela Blickers," in Digitate Bibliotheck voor de Ncdtrlandse
Lettcren, p. 842. http://www.dbnl.org/ telest/vonGolde\ve05/vanOr/dewesOS_ 0202.htm).
"Zoo wijt als Bickers vlagh den grooten Oceaen / Beschaduwde, en d<x>rsnee met ryck
explosive development of merchant capitalism on a global scale, particu-

larly in a form that looked toward Europe and the east for its politically
secured profits. Yet the Bickers and de Graeffs, or any other regent family
regime, failed to manage Medici-style centralization during the Golden
Age. In part, this flowed from the fact that they faced a larger and more
challenging organizational field, composed of the stadholders and the
many contending urban, provincial, and now also colonial governments
and institutions. Creating and sustaining a hegemonic front was much
more difficult. There was, in addition, a specifically familial dimension:
their exclusionary practices shut out rival elite families from the com-
manding heights of patrimonial power without either finishing them off
or reconciling them to their ouster.48
Cyclical family feuds were common in corporate contexts because,
although each regent applauded nepotism in principle, each was bound to
resist it when those in power left his own family and clan systematically
out in the cold. Such feuds were already an old story in the early modern
period; historians had been recording them for centuries, long before
Shakespeare immortalized Verona's Montagues and Capulets.49 But in
the Netherlands the in-fighting was dramatized and inflamed by the enor-
mous stakes involved in Dutch global hegemony. The Bicker regime itself
unrolled against a backdrop of rivalry with the zealous Calvinist colonial
merchant Reynier Pauw and his sons' and grandsons' faction. Hostilities
flared in a dramatic scene on the steps of Amsterdam's City Hall in 1651
when Reynier Pauw (grandson and namesake of the first Reynier), deeply
resentful of the Bickers' political maneuvers, drew his rapier and tried to
muscle his way past Mayor Cornelis de Graeff into the burgomasters'
gelade schepen, / Die 's weerelts gouden oegst in Hollants boezem slepen" (Vondel). Of
course, familial regimes inspired poetic vilification as well. Thus this excerpt from an anony-
mous mid-century production: "Bicker . . . Socht ghy soo een Souvereyn/Van ons
Vaderlandt te syn?" (by this does he seek to be sovereign of our Fatherland?). The poem
refers to the rumor that the Bickers would try to lead an English force against Stadholder
Willem II. See Elias (1963 [1903-1905], lxxxvii).
48
A particularly inventive tactic involved nominating rivals for nominally higher offices, such as
overseas ambassadorships. Kicking one's opponents upstairs, so to speak, gave them highly vis-
ible public roles while removing them as threats to the persistence of specific family regimes.
For example, the Bicker brothers repeatedly sought to remove die cantankerous Adriaen Pauw
from local politics in 1627 in this way and were ultimately successful—although they reckoned
without Pauw's troublesome descendants (Elias 1963 [1903-1905], lxxvii).
49
Ibn Khaldun, writing in the fourteenth century, discusses the impact of dynastic struggles
on some aspects of politics (1969,133-42).
inner sanctum.50 Family rivalries continued to shake key patrimonial sites,

even as the dense multilateral relationships among those in power under-
girded the relative unanimity of interest and capacity of the Amsterdam
and other Dutch city councils.51
Such instability left the door open for interventions from other con-
tending sovereign centers. Amsterdam was not an autonomous city-state
in the Florentine manner but, rather, one of many corporate bodies
within seven uneasily linked provinces; now extending beyond to the
colonies. Each city's regents were sometimes forced to acknowledge,
however grudgingly, the directives of the States and stadholders, which
could ignite or sway local regent family feuds. Sometimes family factions
actively solicited those interventions, calling on the stadholders or the
States' representatives, including the Holland grand pensionary, as poten-
tial allies. Regents on the outs could sometimes gain enough outside sup-
port to topple ruling family regimes, break into local government circles,
and form new family regimes in their stead. These overturnings (omwcn-
telitigen) climaxed the cyclical alterations of power—they were family rev-
olutions in the cyclical Old Regime sense of the term. More than one
canny stadholder was able to use these conflicts to his own advantage.
The stadholders and their lieutenants, drawing on the noble dynasties of
Bentinck, van Heeckeren, or the Schimmelpenninck van der Oye for the
top posts at their disposal in the military, church, and judicial hierarchies,
as well as regents sympathetic to the Orangist cause, were themselves
building up counter-family regimes with the offices and privileges under
their jurisdiction.52 Local state power shifted back and forth between
Orangist patriciate families, which favored the most generous interpreta-
tions of the stadholders' dynastic rights to sovereignty, and the States
party regents, intent on questioning the stadholders' familial legitimacy
and resisting their influence.03
These dynastic struggles came to a head precisely at mid-century, in
1650, when Willem II brought to bear his own prestige against Holland's
and tried to scotch wartime negotiations with the Spanish. He was not
50
For the rivalry between the Bickers and Pauws, see Elias (1923, esp. Ixxvii-lxxx).
51
The density of intraclan ties, and the normative solidarities they evoked, were both important.
Regarding the density of ties as a definition of cohesion, see Mizruchi (1992,40-42).
52
Gabriels deals with the stadholders' creation of patronage (1989,145-68, 202-22,330, 361).
53
This latter trend was pervasive, but it is most carefully documented for Middelburg, in
Zeeland, by van der Bijl (1981). See also Schama (1977, 76-77) and S. Marshall (1987, chap. 3)
regarding the more aristocratic officialdom.
able to block the peace but merely delayed the war's end, in part because
the States of Holland would not confirm him in his office as stadholder
until the treaty had been concluded. "It was a warning that the implicit
dynasticism of the survivance must not be strained too hard," as Rowen
(1988) says, "that he could not make policy on his own and impose it upon
the States if they balked" (83). Willem II then attempted a coup d'etat
against the Amsterdam merchant-regents. But his premature death from
smallpox brought his counterorganizing to an end; his death ushered in
what became known as the First Stadholderless Period, the regents' cele-
brated Era of True Freedom. The dominant regent family regimes had
thrust a spoke into the plans of those with wider dynastic ambitions on
behalf of the House of Orange. They were decisively helped by the
vagaries of Orange family demographics (including Willem Ill's long
minority) and the political rules of lineal descent. The dominant regent
family regimes rushed to consolidate their positions, conspiring to further
limit Orangist power. In 1654, in a particularly bold move, the regents reg-
istered an Act of Exclusion barring members of the House of Orange from
assuming Holland's stadholderate. One of the few, lonely Orangist voices
was the town of Leiden, which recorded its hope that "eventually the
newly born Prince will serve the Republic in the same functions as had
been conferred respectively on his father, grandfather, great-uncle and
great-grandfather, in their lives" (Israel 1995, 703). But the proponents of
exclusion won the day.
The arguments in favor of exclusion and against Orange dynasticism
now seem more than a little ironic. Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt's
Deduction (1654)—a key propaganda piece written in hopes of swaying
regent holdouts to his anti-Orange position—insisted that "everyone
should realize that, according to the judgement of all political writers of
sound mind, high positions cannot be assigned, in a republic, to those
whose ancestors held these posts, without considerable peril to freedom"
(quoted in Israel 1995, 725-26). De Witt held up the Medici as a negative
exemplar and argued that what he called the "hereditary principle" would
destroy the Dutch just as it had ruined the Florentine republic. In declar-
ing himself at odds with the grounding assumptions that legitimated the
regents' position, de Witt helped create an emergent international coun-
terdiscourse against patriarchy in politics. De Witt seems not to have
noticed—or more likely, as a brilliant politician in service of a better bar-
gaining position, publicly admitted—that the regents had become as
dynastically disposed as the stadholders.
Family, Hegemony, and Patrimonial

Politics in the Golden Age Netherlands
The Dutch state was not "the first modern state"—and its creaky antiquity
was one secret of its success in the seventeenth century. When the leading
Dutch merchants secured their families in the multiple nodes of power
during the protracted founding moment of the Dutch Revolt and Eighty
Years War, the way was opened for the family coalitions that controlled the
state to have a decisive say over future political arrangements and policy.
Chapter 2 discusses the mercantile, Protestantizing (but not theocratic)
bent of that policy. These same coalitions also forwarded the goals of par-
ticular lineages and kin groups in the context of a federated political body,
staking claims to its corporate parts on behalf of family members and
clients and anchoring them there. The process of patrimonial state forma-
tion can be seen as a process of tying together nodes in a single cartel or
network. But family dynamics determined who could do the tying, how
successful they would be, and whether they could go on to consolidate a
stable institutional center. The multiple sovereign centers in the
Netherlands were each colonized by elite family heads bent on pursuing
patriarchal projects that were part and parcel of their families' survival as
players in patrimonial systems. Those who did not did not succeed. As the
winners crystallized into family regimes and were, in turn, confirmed by
the success of their institutional grab, these men were able to raise substan-
tial barriers to centralizing moves—whether stadholderian ambitions to a
grander sovereign role or to the lateral expansion of a single regent family
regime such as the Bickers'—and the regents and stadholders also checked
one another. The energies of the Dutch regents and the critical failure of
the House of Orange set the family seal on the localized status quo, mak-
ing it less likely that lateral moves could promote political centralization in
a republican context.
From the crucible of the Dutch Revolt, therefore, sprung a unique
three-way articulation linking elite family dynasties, a vigorous merchant
bourgeoisie, and an estatist patrimonial state. This chapter has generally
argued that bringing in the conceptual component family elucidates what
theorists of state formation have previously treated as purely politico-eco-
nomic patterns and problems. The stadholders' dynastic dreams took a
backseat to the merchant-regents' during the Golden Age, and this subor-
dination enabled the rise of the Netherlands as the hegemonic trading
state. Dutch hegemony is an instance of a particular form of the familial
state in action. Two important familial "buts" intrude here, which the
foregoing discussion has, I hope, clarified. First, in a cultural context in
which patrilineal kingship was widely viewed as legitimate, the ineradicable
aura of the House of Orange made the Era of True Freedom vulnerable to
crisis and reversal. Certainly other European monarchs remained uncon-
vinced of the regents' political legitimacy even as they, the monarchs, per-
force had political dealings with them. But this was also true within the
Netherlands itself, where the House of Orange had its elite supporters as
well as a passionate popular following. Thus, the Act of Exclusion that
barred the House of Orange from Holland's stadholderate was readily
overturned in the disaster year (Rampjaar) of 1672, in the teeth of an
attempted French invasion and domestic political crisis, when the stad-
holderate was restored to the House of Orange with the accession of
Willem III. Second, as political privilege and state investment became
increasingly essential to the reproduction of regent family fortunes, the
regents began moving out of trade. Amsterdam had just passed the mid-
century mark when a movement within its East Indies Company chamber
began arguing that "new men" (working merchants who were not rela-
tives of ruling regents) should be coopted into vacant company director-
ships, in part because directors' expertise in commerce was slipping.54 The
movement failed to garner lasting support. What may be surprising is that
it should already have been necessary. It was a sign of things to come.
54
See the account recorded by Bontemantel (1897,142-47), an observant contemporary.
4
Patrimonial Problems, Familial

States, and Chartered Companies
in Seventeenth-Century Europe
D id Our Golden Age Fall during a Period of Crisis'? wonders Schoffer

(1964) in the title of a celebrated (and rather insularly named) essay
about the early modern Netherlands. Schoffer observes that the era of
fabled Dutch prosperity coincided with bad times, even rampant depres-
sion and immiseration, in other regions of western Europe. The debate
over why these areas were stagnating or suffering goes on, as it has for
decades, particularly since Eric Hobsbawm suggested that the European
economy underwent a "general crisis" during the seventeenth century,
which he characterizes as "the last phase of the general transition from a
feudal to a capitalist economy" (1965 [1954], 5). The "general crisis" for-
mulation may be a handy descriptive term for an impressive array of prob-
lems, but as it stands it is too sweeping and economistic to capture the
regional unevenness of crisis in early modern Europe, including the pros-
perity and ascendancy of the Netherlands. The preceding chapters have
argued that Dutch hegemony depended on both domestic patrimonial
politics, not simply the vicissitudes of modes of economic production,
and on relative position in the network of European states with which the
Dutch were both contending and collaborating. This chapter makes a
parallel claim that varied forms of patrimonial state, taken both on their
own terms and as situated within the worldwide commercial/colonial
network dominated by the Dutch, shaped historical developments in
France and England. Patrimonial politics gave rise to key symptoms in the
catalogue of disaster that we think of as "general crisis," including the
strains that issued in the seventeenth-century upheavals of the French
Fronde and English Revolutions. This too redounded on the position of
the Netherlands in the emergent global formation.
106
Seventeenth-Century Europe 107
In order to sustain these claims, I use the concepts and mechanisms

elaborated thus far to link Dutch dynamics to the more familiar French
and English stories of seventeenth-century European political develop-
ment. At first glance, neither resembles the Netherlands politically, and
both look very different from one another. France inclined toward aristo-
cratic absolutism, and England was ruled by a plurality of elites in a mixed
monarchical/estatist system. If anything, this bald characterization
underplays the political distinctions among the three sites. In all three,
however, the vexed relationship between monarchs or would-be mon-
archs and the ruling elites revolved around claims to legitimate patriarchal
rule. Furthermore, certain family lineages became embedded in these
states as part and parcel of these dynastic dynamics, and the resulting
character of patrimonial power shaped leading-edge state-supported com-
mercial and colonial projects. The varied fortunes of state-sponsored
commercial and colonial projects in France and England register funda-
mental similarities in the political processes linking state, family, and class
in institutions and practices. Precisely because of these formal resem-
blances, we can also trace the marked differences in the content of these
processes and in how they worked themselves out. The particular con-
tours of early efforts at imperial dominion reflect the varying nature of
early modern states in formation. These factors also illuminate why other
countries' state-sponsored commercial/colonial projects did not thrive as
the Netherlands' did in the earlv seventeenth centurv.
These states and their spinoff sovereign corporations also had their own
emergent properties as they faced one another in irregularly interdepen-
dent relationships in a mutable field in which the basic parameters of sov-
ereignty were just crystallizing. They exchanged and collaborated,
competed over trade and colonies, fought one another, and occasionally
learned by each other's example. Each intercorporate and interstate rela-
tionship could be a model for imitation, a resource, or a constraint affect-
ing the country and state under consideration. My focus here continues
to be on the impact of these dynamics on state formation at home in met-
ropolitan Europe, where these commercial/colonial projects certainly
made a developmental difference in this period, whether or not they were
accounted successful. My overall argument is that the burgeoning proj-
ects and relationships among the various territorially based corporate
elites and monarchs were both formed by and actively transformed the
institutionalization of elite dynasties and assumptions about patriarchal
rule at home.
io8 THE FAMILIAL STATE
The French State
Archomanie was the French counterpart of the Dutch elite's appetite for
office and privilege. It was fueled to raging proportions by the crown's
1604 measure, the paitlettey which inaugurated an annual fee paid by
incumbent officeholders in return for the crown's recognizing their right
to resell or, crucially, bequeath offices to a son or nephew (Mousnier 1971
[1945]). For investors—mainly provincial aristocrats and merchant family
heads bent on acquiring noble status—buying state offices represented
part of a multigenerational commitment to honorable family survival and
prestigious advancement.1 The dynastic dimension was all important. Not
only did the trappings of office and corporate privilege (monetary, judi-
cial, and honorific) mime the hereditary fiefdoms properly belonging to
patrilineages of landed male aristocracy rather than the bourgeoisie (Ford
1953, 27-29, 124-46), but ennobling offices often conferred their mantle
only after family representatives had occupied them for several genera-
tions. Amassing lineage assets involved the living sacrifice on behalf of
those imagined future descendants and the patrilineage that they would
continue.2
Ambitious families assembled offices and a portfolio of rentes by mar-
riage as well as inheritance, although this form of property remained line-
age property, held only in usufruct by husbands before the birth of
legitimate children consolidated the couple.3 This and other allied forms
of "proprietary wealth," with their relatively low rates of return but high
predictability and prestige, absorbed up to 80 percent of the private assets
in Old Regime France, according to George V. Taylor's well-known
1
Crown officials in the provinces were overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of the aristoc-
racy—the segment of the elite that could best afford the steep price of a desirable office
(Dew? Id 1980, 69-112; Kettering 1978, 13-50; Parker 1980,59-65; Tait 1977,1-20).
2
"The insatiable thirst for offices was dubbed archomanie in a memorable chapter of
Loyseau's Offices in 1610, and was satirized by Ponchartrain a century later when he quipped
to Louis XIV that every time the king created an office God created a fool to buy it" (Giesey
1977, 284). Ralph Giesey's marvellous article provides a general picture of the relationship
between privilege and the accumulation of family assets.
3
"A royal office was property, and during the interminable financial negotiations that elite
families conducted prior to the marriages of their children, the value of the office was assessed
(as if it were a house, bonds, or farmland) and entered into the calculation of the total wealth
the young couple could expect to inherit. On the average, offices made up 24 percent of the
total wealth of a judge in die Parlement" (Ranum 199?, 71). Sarah Hanley points out that
women were not mere ciphers under this patriarchal office-holding system. They could obtain
honor by sheer "reproductive success," of course, but also by "securing the family capital
incorporated in the new household under construction" (Hanley 1989, 23).
typology (1964, 1967). It was also crucial, from the families' perspective,
that hereditary offices had an authoritative component that gilded the
family name with the perquisites of public power (see Giesey 1977, 283).
For a family that was adept (or just lucky) such as the "plausibly typical"
Saulx-Tavanes studied by Robert Forster (1971), the accumulation of
hereditary honors entailed a twofold undertaking: a pilgrims' progress
upward in social status, wealth, and power and a movement from the
periphery to the central node in the governance network, embodied in
the court of Versailles, the vast stone chrvsalis from which burst the
mature Sun King Louis XIV's dazzling rule.4
The hereditary promise of the paulette brought power, prestige, and
money to elite family heads and their lineages, but it bore fruit for the
crown as well. Sales of privilege surpassed loans as the major source of
extraordinary royal revenues in the early seventeenth century (Parker
1983,13-39). By 1633, one-half of all royal revenues were derived from the
traffic in offices (Treasure 1967,54). Politically it proved a godsend for the
new Bourbon king, Henri IV, who was founding a royal dynasty in the
wake of forty years of bloody civil war among three magnate lineages in
the Wars of Religion. Henri's position, which was promising but shaky,
depended on a troubled relationship with the leading regional magnate
families who held the twelve governorships of France (analogues of the
Dutch stadholderates) and who acted as autonomous powers in certain
areas. Henri's rule also rested on the multiplying local sovereign provin-
cial courts (the Parlements), and on the urban corporations and regional
estates that were especially strong in other areas. The Bourbons depended
on this congeries of corporate powers in the early seventeenth century,
but they also felt themselves to be hemmed in. With the symbolic and
material weight of hereditary privilege as bait, the crown could wean
magistrates who purchased seats in provincial Parlements away from rival
magnate family clienteles; these arenas became a locus of alternative aris-
tocratic organization to the magnates and the focus of the Bourbon
crown's reconstituted patron-client chains used to ratify royal decrees.5
4
Robert Forster's (1971) study of the Saulx-Tavanes traces the fortunes of a great noble fam-
ily that migrated from its estates in Burgundy to Louis's court, where it successfully angled
for ever-richer and more honorific privileges and marriages and managed its old estates from
afar.
5
This was less successful in the pays d'etat; see Hurt (1976). AS Bergin (1982) shows, die
crown engaged in similar actions with respect to the Catholic Church.
no T H E FAMILIAL STATE
A countervailing system of nonvenal servants, the intendants, was also

institutionalized by the crown and charged with collecting taxes and dis-
tributing crown patronage in each province. The record of success was
mixed. Royal revenues did increase—direct taxes rose from 36 million
livres in 1635 to 72.6 million in 1643 (Parker 1983, 64)—and the monarch's
authority grew7 at the expense of the magnates and provincial estates.6 But
the crown's moves toward bureaucratic practices ended by articulating
with, rather than displacing, elite families' lineage property in the state.
The intendants themselves emerged from the pool of venal officers, and
they relied on networks of such officers and their families to fulfill their
duties. As Richard Lachmann and I have argued elsewhere (1988,150-52),
this system demonstrated impressive integrative power. Thus, while the
yen for family privilege dovetailed with a locally and provinciallv based
estatism in the Netherlands, as we have seen, it was harnessed to centraliz-
ing absolutist state building in France, concentrating power in the hands
of the crown and its clients rather than that of autonomous towns or
provincial magnates. One familially driven contrast with the Netherlands,
therefore, was the growing role that the French crown, and by extension
the court, was equipped to play in the political economy of patrimonial
state formation and imperial colonial projects.
The royal authority in which members of the elite longed to participate
was frankly patriarchal. At the sacred center of the court, increasingly the
major theater in which state power was enacted, resided the body of the
father-king, and all its doings from birth to death (and indeed even after-
ward) were invested with significance for sovereignty.7 One line of prox-
imity to sovereign power was signified by household offices that enabled
intimate contact with that sacred body. Another lay in the singularity of
the royal family and its enclosure within the courtly space, rendering the
entire royal family-household a crucial site for the performance of power.
The Dutch stadholders from the House of Orange projected the same
sense of singularity and publicity, as we have seen, but in humbler fashion
because political power in early-seventeenth-century Netherlands was
6
It is probably also true that such regular spatial circuits fostered national identity as
Benedict Anderson (1983, 55-56) suggests. The crown cum court was the solar center from
which the crown's agents radiated outward and to which they periodically returned and the
node to and from which resources traveled, to be dispensed by the crown to various projects
and dependents. No doubt such regular spatial circuits also lent the budding national imag-
inary a family name—in this case, Bourbon.
7
See the famous passage in which Gianfranco Poggi characterizes the daily and generational
round of the monarch in the absolutist theater (1978, 68-69).
Seventeenth-Century Europe m
concentrated in the provincial estates at whose behest the stadholders

served. One upshot of the court's prominence was the heightened sym-
bolic role of the queen consort as the guarantor of the royal dynasty and
the separate stream of clients associated with her and her children's
households. This marked public role for elite women—even in France,
where unlike England women were barred from succeeding to the throne
under the Salic Law—was largely lacking in estatist contexts like the
Netherlands.
Crown policy rested on patriarchal dynastic legitimation and hereditary
office-holding, and it was also constrained by them. Both familial streams
ran together in 1647 when the lapse of the royal paulette legislation
(which came up for renewal every nine years) coincided with the royal
succession crisis posed by Louis XIV's extended minority. The queen-
mother's regency bridged the hiatus in the male lineage and stabilized
state power, but also marked a serious lapse in crown authority over elites.
Female regencies always did, and not all incumbents were able to rise to
the challenge. At the same time, as Sharon Kettering (1978) has shown,
the crown's tendency to oversell offices8 and erode their heritability
incited the ire of current officeholders, who saw their families' intergener-
ational expectations threatened. The stage was set for a turbulent crown-
officeholder confrontation, which exploded in the Fronde (Ranum 1993,
70-72). Officeholders were wooed by both sides in what was in part, as
Charles Tilly notes, "a titanic, shifting struggle among magnates and the
crown for dynastic power" (1993, 159-61). The Fronde created a revolu-
tionary situation from which the crown ultimately recovered, but the
price of victory was the appeasement of the elite and crown guarantees of
support for the familial-corporate base of officeholders inside the central-
izing state. These guarantees were likely to strengthen the fiscal and polit-
ical interdependence of crown and elite. By dangling the prospect of
intergenerational family privileges and prestige in front of potential
investors, the crown could lure them into putting money into areas that
supplied funds (particularly corporate monopolies) and committing polit-
ical support to an absolutist organization of which they were increasingly
a corporate component. This patrimonial mobilization of power and
8
By "oversell offices" I mean that the crown sold multiple offices with authority over the
same or overlapping domains and hence competing claims to the same powers and
resources. William Beik (1985) has argued that these overlapping offices actually strength-
ened the crown in the long run because the contending officials persistently appealed to the
king to ratify their powers and claims.
ii2 THE FAMILIAL STATE
resources constituted a potential basis of dynastically motivated and legit-

imated projects of territorial expansion and war-making in France and
beyond its borders. 9
Corporate property and investment in the state was fortified, intention-
ally or not, by an extensive body of legal decisions regulating family patri-
mony and sexuality that officeholders formulated in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Sarah Haniey (1989) has traced the outcome of
these decisions. Her "Family-State compact" nicely summarizes the sig-
nificant changes in marriage, reproductive customs, and inheritance.10
This was not a compact or a pact in an explicit sense, I hasten to add (see
chapters 5 and 6), but rather functionally interlocked sets of policies and
practices that would enable future formal deals and compacts. Major
changes include laws that regulated alliances in the interest of the persist-
ence and stability of patriarchal families and lineages; edicts against clan-
destine marriages, pregnancies, and births; tax exemptions for large
families; provisions buttressing lineage property and corporate assets; and
arrangements for marital separation that favored husband over wife while
seeking to respect the logic of lineage and corporate fcmily assets. Haniey
persuasively argues that these judicial interventions allowed family heads
greater policing powers with respect to their own families and offered a
modular family vision of resource disposition and political authority avail-
able for broader state legitimation. In this chapter, I discuss the political
arrangements that enabled such a tacit modus vivendi among the group of
ruling patriarchs, including state elites and monarch. Chapter 6 explores
the impact of the emerging sociocultural relationships among the male
family heads embedded in the centralizing state apparatus, arguing that
they made possible explicit and collective intertamily mobility projects
with respect to patrimonial power. They also laid the groundwork for an
alternative conception of male honor based not on the identification of
family name and landed territory but on intergenerational office genealo-
gies under the sponsorship of king and crown.
In seventeenth-century France, then, the situation that obtained in
Golden Age Dutch politics was virtually reversed. Recall that the Dutch
stadholders were disciplined to a secondary position as servants of the
9
As Ramford (1956, 204) argues, many ancien regime treaty provisions show the French
crown's pursuit of dynastic and territorial advantage at the expense of either economic ends
or broader political strategies.
10
For the organizational cohesiveness of parlementary elites after the Fronde, see Hamscher
(1976).
Dutch state. European trading and Asian company merchant families in

the Netherlands became a dominant and internally unified elite, displac-
ing the vestigial seigneurial aristocracy, fighting off lower-level guild
power, and tightening its grasp on estatist patrimonial politics. In France,
virtually the opposite balance of forces prevailed. The crown subordi-
nated the powers of the independent magnates and estates—the national
Estates-General met in 1614 for the last time before the French
Revolution—whereas agrarian seigneurial family heads and some mer-
chant capitalists who had surrendered active trade bought their way into
the patrimonial bureaucracy. In both cases, elite familial bases of organiza-
tion and identity were incorporated into the constitutive foundations of
each state. The seventeenth-century French state remained an engine of
extraction of surplus from the peasantry and redistribution to the
seigneurial aristocracy,11 but it was by the same token an increasingly
important vehicle for the dynastic ambitions of monarchical and elite fam-
ilv heads.
These dynastic ambitions and the specific dynamics of familial state for-
mation in France undermined state-sponsored commercial/colonial proj-
ects during the seventeenth century, in turn reshaping patterns of
metropolitan political development. In the next section, I contend that
the state's mode of organizing and intervening in monopoly colonial
companies enriched venal officeholders and strengthened the political
hand of the bulk of state financiers. It gave officeholder families an
increased stake in the patrimonial state rather than in independent trade
or manufacturing.
Commercial/Colonial Projects in Seventeenth-Century

France: Consequence and Cause
The abysmally low level of merchant self-organization, which predated the
seventeenth-century expansion of lineage property in the state, may seem a
sufficient cause of the resounding failure of the earliest French counterparts
of the Dutch East and West Indies companies. Certainly it was a contribut-
ing factor. The beleaguered merchant capitalists of early-seventeenth-cen-
tury France were surrounded by pervasive seigneurial relations (although
there was regional variation, as we would expect in a country with France's
11
For a classic version of the politico-economic argument, see Perry Anderson (1974a, 97-98).
Goubert (1966) estimates that the nobility (at most 2 percent of the population) received 20-30
percent of national income during the seventeenth century. See in general Goubert (1966,38—51).
ii4 THE FAMILIAL STATE
large size and population—20 million by mid-century, some ten times more
than England and twenty times more than the Netherlands) (Goubert 1966,
34-37). Nor was the interlocked system of seigneurie and peasant village
community giving way during this period, either to a reconsolidation of
noble demesnes, as occurred in the second serfdom in Eastern Europe, or
in favor of agrarian capitalist relations, which were emerging in the
Netherlands and England in the sixteenth century.12 Seigneurial rents and
crushing state taxes continued to undermine agrarian productivity, stran-
gling commercial outlets by cutting down on domestic demand. 13 The
development of interregional markets in the seventeenth century was also
hampered by poor communications among the vast inland tracts, to which
there was no real analogue in the Netherlands or England, and by myriad
seigneurial tolls on the waterways and at town and provincial borders
(Heckscher 1955 [1931]). As LeGoff (1981) has shown, there was no national
market in France in the seventeenth century. France lagged in commercial
shipping at the outset of the seventeenth century, with a dearth of sailors
and many fewer, smaller ships than the Netherlands (Fagniez 1881, 24-27).
A deep dependence on the Dutch entrepot and Dutch shippers followed
from, and reproduced, this situation.
The earliest eastbound colonial ventures turned out badly, in part
because of these related features—Dutch dominance, the constraints
imposed by an agrarian seigneurial system, and low merchant self-organiza-
tion. In 1604, a company organized in declared imitation of the Dutch
12
In the Parisian and northern region, the seigneurie continued to organize social life in mid-
century (Jacquart 1974, 409-44; Venard 1957)- Seigneurs in the northern province of Brittany
still lived off feudal rights such as "the corvces, statutory labour laid down by custom, extremely
high lods ct vcnteSy and general, swingeing Hour-milling rights over the Vassals'" (Goubert
1969, 85). In Burgundy province in central France, as Saint-Jacob (i960) has shown, the
seigneurial system was one of the harshest in the country; it was still in force in the eighteenth
century. In the south, village peasant communities traditionally occupied a more privileged
position vis-a-vis the seigneurs than in other areas of France (see for example Baehrel 1961,
397-401,410-31). Yet even there, in the province of Languedoc, from 1600 until the end of the
period under examination, rentier landlords benefitted from the agricultaral rents that climbed
with the growing population in a rigid land tenure system, giving rise to subsistence crises in
1629-30, 1645-46 and 1651-53, followed by a period of absolute economic decline that lasted
until the 1720s (Beik 1985, 39-42; le Roy Ladurie 1966). Subsistence crises, symptoms of agrar-
ian rigidity from which England and the Netherlands were exempt in the eighteenth century,
afflicted France until the Revolution (Lefebvre 1973 [1932]).
13
Slicher van Bath (1963) notes that the ratio of yield harvested to seed in France was less
than 4:1 in the early seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, while the ratio in England
rose from 6:1 in the early seventeenth to 10:1 in the late eighteenth. Regarding Old Regime
agrarian relations in general, see Aston and Philpin (1985).
VOC, with the aid of Dutch capital and expertise, sought and received from
the king monopoly privileges and the permission to call itself France's
Compagnie des Indes Orientales (the first of seven or eight, depending on
how we count them, during the Old Regime). The association failed to
gather adequate domestic capital and, six years later, had never sent a single
ship. In 1610, the Dutch state protested the company's existence, and the
crown responded by terminating it. Abortive efforts in 1611 and 1615 also
quickly stalled. By 1619, the only French in Asian waters were independent
pirates. The company, which had depended on Dutch economic inputs and
guidance for a project that was set to compete with the Dutch, was a con-
tradictory enterprise from the first and doomed to fail.14
The evolving state also structured the idiosyncratic rhythm, a kind of
systole/diastole, of the periods of impressive progress alternating with
renewed inertia in French commercial and colonial history of the seven-
teenth century. The patterns of association are clear. What a distance
there was from the time of Henri IV, circa 1600, when the navy consisted
of only fourteen boats that did not even belong to the state but were
rented from individuals by the year (Fagniez 1881, 30) to the grand com-
mercial/colonial plans of Louis XIII's minister Richelieu a mere few
decades later! Richelieu, state builder par excellence, expanded the navy
and abolished the independent corporate offices of the admirals of
France, Bretagne, Guyenne, and the Levant as a by-product of his (fruit-
less) attempts to divert precious metals from Spain to France, and he
brought the admiralty under the aegis of the crown. This hard-won move
centralized the organization of the French navy, at least in contrast to the
Dutch system, which continued to disperse naval oversight over five sepa-
rate admiralty boards that put local interests first. After Richelieu's death,
however, the navy declined and ship construction virtually stopped: by
1660 the navy again had only about twenty ships and not all were service-
able (Parker 1983, 79-80). 15 Yet by the late seventeenth century, the navy
was again flourishing. This off and on, "now you see it, now you don't,"
pattern was marked under the Sun King Louis XIV.
14
For the history of these efforts, see Fagniez (1881, 16-7) and Pigeonneau (1897, 344~45,
358-59).
15
The merchant fleet was also in bad shape: in his Le commerce honorable (16+6), Jean Eon
estimated that France had 600 ships to Holland's 10,000 (Parker 1983, 79-80). Regarding
Richelieu's commercial/colonial politics, see also Charliat (1931, 16-20) and la Ronciere
(1899-1920, 4: 558-80).
n6 T H E FAMILIAL STATE
This pattern is only explicable, it seems to me, if we keep in mind the

dynastic current in the French crown, particularly as it flowed through
two institutional conduits. First, of course, was the monarchy, with its
legacy of Bourbon family glory linked to state territorial aggrandizement.
Whether or not family actually impelled imperial strivings (and I think
that it did), it was at minimum a means by which resources were mobi-
lized and a symbolic language in which claims were expressed and com-
municated. 16 At certain historical conjunctures, the monarchs' dynastic
territorial aims coincided with their ministers' more prosaic politico-eco-
nomic mandates; then mercantilist projects were awash in crown fiscal
and military support. When they diverged, and, for example, Louis XIV
ordered his emissaries to "tralter en roiy non en marc/iand" support was
likely to disappear and the enterprises to be abandoned. From the point
of view of large-scale merchant capitalists, particularly those with designs
on the lucrative overseas routes operated by Dutch traders, the monarch's
policies remained unpredictable—unevenly inclined toward traditional
dynasticism as well as the occasional concession and institutional and ide-
ological innovation.
The second conduit was crown officers' family rent-seeking. The com-
panies became avenues by which an officeholder could pick the pockets of
merchants for his own family's lineage advancement whenever the crown
compelled merchants to invest in companies with poor prospects, which
they would otherwise have happily ignored. This channel was not the
only one in the state that drained off the trickle of mercantile profit into
lineage property, but it was of a piece with other mechanisms by which
both mercantile profit and large-scale merchants themselves were chan-
nelled into intergenerational seigneurial structures and away from trade.
The merchants who used their accumulated wealth to buv offices that
conferred nobility on their descendants also had to surrender active trade
in order to qualify for their rosy future as rentiers, or they risked legal
derogation and the loss of status honor that accompanied it.
Because I am especially interested in the ways in which these processes
contributed to the underdevelopment of merchant capital, it makes sense
to focus on the brief period under Louis XIV when a window of opportu-
nity for an Asian company was opened during the latter years of the
16
It was also a means by which political moves were assessed. Commentators in other coun-
tries roundly chastised Louis XIV for attempting to substitute the Bourbons for the declin-
ing Habsburg family as Europe's new imperial dynasty, the Universal Monarchy (Pincus
1999).
Dutch Golden Age. This enables me to make the strongest possible case
against my argument that the seigneurial character of the French familial
state placed limits on its commercial/colonial projects. The eight-year
period, from 1664 to 1672, witnessed a whirlwind of mercantilist activity:
Louis XIV's chief minister Colbert advanced a series of sweeping meas-
ures that supported participation in overseas trade, including according
bonuses for maritime construction, relaxing the rules on derogation and
thus allowing nobles to trade without losing their juridically privileged
status, and further rationalizing and expanding the navy. Four chartered
companies were to be the cynosure of Colbert's mercantilist oeuvre, in
keeping with his obsession with replacing Dutch with French hege-
mony.17 If there were ever a time when the commercial/colonial ambi-
tions of the seventeenth-century French state strained at their seigneurial
bonds, this was it.
An edict of 1664 chartered the Compagnie Royale des Indes Orientales
and endowed it with a fifty-year monopoly on trade east of the Cape of
Good Hope. Because there was no existing French mercantile infrastruc-
ture in Asia, the nominal capital was fixed at 15,000,000 livres, making it
by far the largest economic undertaking of the regime. The king sub-
scribed 3,000,000 livres interest free, from which any losses would first be
deducted, furnished some materials at cost price, and promised bonuses
for selected exports and imports (Bonnassieux 1892, 261). Despite these
impressive advantages, capital was not readily forthcoming. Colbert led a
vast propaganda effort, which included mailing circulars to prospective
subscribers, replete with exaggerated claims about the company's
prospects. He pressured estates, Parlements, and town governments to
ante up, threatening the loss of the king's favor and withdrawal of their
constitutive corporate privileges. Nevertheless, not even the first third of
the capital was ever fully paid (Chailley-Bert 1898, 72-73; Bonnassieux
1892, 263-64). The principal sources were the crown and venal officers.
The king accounted for about 45 percent or more, the royal family and
immediate court 9 percent, and the officeholders 20 percent of the final
17
Colbert's letters leave absolutely no doubt that the companies were his creatures. See
especially the letters collected in Colbert (1861-1882, 2: p. 2,428, 488,530,597, 625, 800-802;
3: p. 2, 472-76, 483-87). Asher (1960, 92) deals with naval rationalization and Boissonade
(1922,18-19) with the subsidies for maritime construction and waiver of derogation. In keep-
ing with orthodox mercantilist positions, on which Henri See (n.d.) is helpful, Colbert
believed the amount of world commerce to be fixed and constant, so that enriching oneself
meant forcibly taking from other states, particularly the Netherlands.
n8 T H E FAMILIAL STATE
total of 8 million livres. Independent merchants offered 17 percent,

grudgingly, and after state coercion. 18 Colbert arranged the election of a
picked slate of nine shareholder-directors and dictated the policy of the
company from the outset, as he did with the crown's other companies
(Boucher 1983, 449). The few merchants who were involved in the com-
pany withdrew or were pushed out of managerial roles.
The company's financial transactions and policy decisions were increas-
ingly controlled by Colbert's clientele of eighty-some financiers and rev-
enue farmers, the majority of whom were venal officers (83 percent) and
nobles by birth and ennobling office (84 percent) (Dessert and Journet
1975, 1323-25). Colbert refused to draw on his rival Fouquet's family and
clientele, which while quite understandable from the perspective of power
politics deprived him of their greater expertise in colonial matters (Boucher
1983,448). Furthermore, according to Dessert and Journet, the Colbertian
clientele "were accustomed to making short-term loans that rapidly culled
large sums, that is: to a form of economic command that has nothing in
common with a trade in which profits are neither rapid nor assured, and for
which they had basically no inclination" (i975> 1327, my translation). Taking
into account the rigors of international competition, Dessert and Journet
attribute the failure of France's great commercial companies to the finan-
ciers, "who were more inclined to devour capital than to assure it a careful
and uncertain productivity" (1327). These men were withdrawing capital
from commerce and reinvesting it in land, state debt, offices, and rentes, to
be sure, but not with an eye to simply "devouring" it. The lesser venal offi-
cers in particular were trading off part of their potential income in return
for future family social position: they were attempting to assure the certain,
slow, and passive productivity that they thought best suited to Old Regime
French family fortunes. Otherwise, Dessert and Journet's capsule descrip-
tion is apt. The officeholders who dominated the directorates of the seven-
teenth-century chartered companies were more concerned with the fates of
their lineage property than with the companies' commercial prospects.19
18
Business confidence in crown initiatives, already low, had not been improved by Colbert's
attempt to shift the blame for the state bankruptcy of 1665-69 by judicial pursuit of state
creditors. The rounded figures are based on Dessert (1984,508).
,v
Other factors which might have alleviated the tendency to treat state offices as family enti-
tlements were absent: there was no public exchequer to which officers and holders of privi-
lege owed responsibility, and no wider, active political nation that could pressure its
"servants" to observe norms of conduct. Furthermore, the French state lacked formal
mechanisms by which the particularistic input of active merchants might have been system-
atically solicited. French merchants did not have a role in defining naval policy and lacked a
Not surprisingly, the Compagnie des Indes quickly found itself in eco-
nomic hot water—a situation exacerbated by ignorant and disastrous pol-
icy decisions, such as the unsuccessful attempts to colonize Madagascar,
ill-suited for the purpose, and convert it into an entrepot that would rival
Dutch Batavia.20 The first two fleets, which sailed to Madagascar in 1665
and to Asia in 1666, exhausted most of the company's ready capital and
brought little return for what was accounted to be an unnecessarily high
cost of over 2.5 million livres (Pauliat 1886, 143-56, 210-55). From 1668,
when the company tried to extend its operations in Asia, it grappled with
opposition from the Dutch, as well as with its own inexperience on prices
and routes. Colbert himself cited problems with infighting over prece-
dence and the mistake of sending costly fleets to Asia without establishing
an adequate infrastructure to receive them. By 1671, the company was 6
million livres in debt. Although the crown pumped in money and
resources on several occasions, the company never became profitable
(Bonnassieux 1892, 267-73). From 1675 to 1684, the company sent only
fourteen ships to Asia. Independent merchants protested in 1681 and 1682,
contending that the company was a dog in the manger, monopolizing
Asian trade without carrying it out itself. At Colbert's death in 1683, the
company had lost almost all the Asian infrastructure it had painfully accu-
mulated (Cordier 1976 [1906], 242-49,249-55; Weber 1904,172-74).
It was possible for Colbert to mount this unprecedented mercantile
and colonial effort because it took place when Louis XIV's bellicose poli-
cies of dynastic territorial expansion in Europe coincided with Colbert's
mercantilist vision. Particularly, as France prepared for war against the
Dutch from 1668 to 1671, the crown infused resources into the anti-Dutch
company. From early 1671, however, a conflict developed among Louis's
advisors, and that disagreement issued in defeat for Colbert's plans. "For
all his genius, all his hours of tedious bureaucratic work in Paris and
Sceaux, his supreme organizational efforts, not to mention his extreme
good fortune in the timing of the mercantile offensive against the Dutch,
Colbert was never able to overcome the societal constraints imposed
upon him and his economic reforms by this fundamental reality of
Bourbon absolutism and the structures of the early modern French state"
national chamber of commerce until the nineteenth century. For the lack of consultation see
Deyon (1969,31-32) and Picavet (1930, 283-87).
20
Cordier (1976 [1906], 166-67) describes the ill-fated Madagascar effort. Boucher (1983,
448-49), Dermigney (1970, 461), and Weber (1904,192) discuss the sorry fate of merchants
in the governing coalition.
(Ames 1996,190). No real reinforcements were sent to Asia from 1671 to

1673; France's vaunted Persian Squadron was defeated. The French crown
continued to focus on the army and, as Glenn Ames (1996,147-91) shows,
to bypass the defense of colonial trade for Louis XIV's visions of specific
dynastic territorial gains in Europe. The advantageous competitive posi-
tion that the Dutch state/company duo had already secured in the East
Indies, the hereditary entrenchment of venal officeholders in state corpo-
rate enterprise, and the overriding dynastic territorial politics of the
French crown limited the imperial project. 21
Westward-looking projects fared little better in the early seventeenth cen-
tury. Exploiting opportunities in the West Indies presented problems that
differed from those posed by grabbing a piece of well-established trading
patterns in India or Indonesia. Nevertheless the crown's projects evinced
many problems of the same pattern. Both Henri IV and subsequently
Richelieu founded many Atlantic monopoly companies, although the
Thirty Years War drained away crown resources that would have been
directed toward the companies' continuing support. In a fatal misstep, the
crown sought to establish firm control over the companies by excluding or
restricting existing merchant communities. Many companies were also bur-
dened with complex and expensive crown prescriptions for and restrictions
on religious observances (Chailley-Bert 1898, 31). Most organizations disap-
peared quickly, therefore, and were not successful as profit-making or colo-
nizing enterprises. Richelieu's Compagnie de Saint-Christophe, for
example, designed to monopolize a portion of commerce in the Antilles,
abandoned the French colonists that it had planted there, leaving them
high and dry for a prolonged period without food or supplies; Dutch mer-
chants eagerly stepped in to fill the market niche (Servant 1913). Richelieu's
Compagnie du Morbihan took seven years to land only forty French
colonists in Canada. The Compagnie des Cent Associes de la Nouvelle
France that replaced the Morbihan Company in 1627 was more successful
than its predecessor, in spite of intestinal strife and Dutch interloping—
probably because merchants had somewhat more of a voice in its making
(Bonnassieux 1892, 353; Cordier 1976 [1906]).
21
The economic impact of the war on the French state concentrated capital in the hands of
the officeholder/financiers (Charliat 1931,51). After 1683, until the end of Louis XIV's reign
in 1715, the reorganized company was even more closely knit to the crown, which intervened
incessantly and inexpertly in its affairs (Weber 1904, 214-15). This and other Compagnies des
Indes Orientales never turned a profit, and they did not succeed in becoming protection-
producing enterprises.
The fate of Colbert's West Indies Company (Compagnie des Indes

Occidentales), commissioned in 1664, was at first glance as disastrous as
its many westward-oriented predecessors. The company recapitulated the
arrangements of its East Indies twin, including the dearth of merchants
and overstock of royal officier administrators. Almost all of the funds sub-
m
scribed came from the king or his revenue farmers and officials, acting in
the great majority of cases at Colbert's behest. 22 Plus ga channel The
extensive sovereign rights, which included the right to declare war and
make treaties with non-European sovereigns and to dispose of lands,
goods and forts to foreign powers, remained a dead letter. On its own
terms, and with respect to its mandate, the Compagnie des Indes
Occidentales was an unmitigated failure: it failed to supply French
planters and provoked rebellion on Martinique, ending deeply in debt by
the end of 1665, only one year after its formation; the company's directors
abdicated their monopoly in 1666 (Minis 1912, 83-122,138-39). By doing
great military damage to Dutch trade and reducing Dutch competition,
however, the company's brief life unwittingly opened a space for French
private traders. Emanating from the ports of Nantes, Bordeaux, and La
Rochelle, they more than filled the gap left by the company; the number
of private ships bound for the West Indies jumped from three or four in
1662 to 60 in 1670, 89 in 1672, 131 in 1674, and 205 in 1683 (Minis 1912,
180-81, 236). The short-lived activities of the failed Atlantic company ulti-
mately enabled independent merchant capitalists to expand westward in
the eighteenth century into a new and more interventionist colonialism
based on plantation slavery and a recognizably more modern type of pri-
vate—but state-defended—trade.23
Overall, the crown's construction of and subsequent dealings with com-
mercial/colonial corporations had two important consequences for those
corporations. First, they gave officeholder family heads a stake in accumu-
lating privilege at the expense of their prospects in independent trade or
manufacturing, even enabling those officeholders to use those privileges to
accumulate rents at the expense of the corporations themselves. Thus they
buttressed the three types of heritable politico-economic privilege that
22
Only "very insignificant sums" were on offer from merchants. For the composition of the
directorship and subscribers, see Minis (1912, 74-80). The funds also came in slowly. "If the
books of the company had been closed on the first of September, as provided by the letters
patent, the company, whose task was the commercial conquest of a hemisphere, would have
had at its disposal about enough money to pay a first-class clerk" (78).
23
Regarding this aspect of the company's impact, see Mims (1912, 338-39).
underpinned Old Regime fortunes—venal office, seigneurial domain, and

state monopoly—even to the extent of being direcdy destructive of alter-
native modes of accumulation and exercise of power.24 On the other hand,
some of the crown-dominated corporations did open the way—however
unintentionally, and often by virtue of their failure—to expanding private
enterprise and weakening the role of heritable privilege in the projection of
power overseas. This ironic state of affairs, explored in chapter 6, came to
fruition in the eighteenth century.
The English State
As landed magnate lineages were jousting in late-sixteenth- and early-sev-

enteenth-century Bourbon France, England's Tudor and Stuart mon-
archs were contending with their own restive magnates. Magnate
families—armed, restless, and reactionary—held substantial local pieces of
state power as a feudal heritage.25 The English Reformation, with its close
identification of monarch and Providence and its pillaging of the wealth
of the Roman church, made the possession of this heritage conditional on
obedience to the crown. Thus by 1620 or so, as Lawrence Stone has
shown, these magnate families had been wooed and incompletely inte-
grated into court patronage networks, leaving the gentry, greatly
expanded in numbers during the century after 1540, in charge of an
increasing percentage of land and of the fisc, judiciary, and administration
in the localities (Stone 1965, 199-270; see also Stone and Stone 1986,
258-60, 269-70; Strayer 1970, 36-48). The crown relied on these unpaid
notables to carry out administrative tasks as justices of the peace rather
than developing an extensive body of local state officers, venal or other-
wise, and this certainly affected the development of the English monarchy
and the peculiarities of patrimonial relations.
Over the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, therefore, the
crown faced few challenges from provincial magnates. Thus, to some it
has appeared that England was developing along an absolutist path, as
24
See Bamford (1988) for a helpful discussion of those types of Old Regime property.
25
Great family-households such as the Nevilles' played lineage politics, issuing in the
Pilgrimage of Grace and, some have irgued, the Northern Rising of 1569. See James (1974)
regarding the Nevilles and the Northern Rising, as well as the more general phenomenon of
long-range lineage planning undertaken by elite families engaged in the pursuit of politico-
economic privilege.
France was, but one smoothed for the crown bv the fact that the elite was
not collectively organized in resistant local or provincial estates, as it was
in France or the Netherlands. But things were not quite so simple. The
predominance of unpaid notables in local administration was one salient
difference (Sayer 1992). The crown also faced the High Court of
Parliament, the precociously national estatist body that assembled mag-
nates, gentry, and urban merchants. An uneasily collaborative relationship
between Parliament and crown subsisted, dating back to as early as 1300,
when Parliament had begun to assert the important right to consent to
taxes on behalf of the political nation. As the old family and patronage ties
through which magnates operated were superseded, crown and
Parliament were simultaneously strengthened and subjected to stepped-
up demands from expanding constituencies, one particularly disruptive
constituency being Puritanism. New patron-client chains connecting cen-
tralizing magnates with peripheral gentry were linked together, as Peter
Bearman's (1993) study of Norfolk shows, so that local gentry increasingly
looked toward court-based elites to gain leverage in pursuing their own
politico-economic—and, I would add, familial—goals and strategies. One
upshot of this was a feistier Parliament.
What of the crown's role? Patrimonial privilege was the bait that the
crown offered its magnates and gentry, and in this sense the placatory
moves of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs closely paralleled those of the
early-seventeenth-century French monarchs. Queen Elizabeth I
(1558-1603) issued patrimonial exemptions and monopolies, conferred
knighthoods, and created offices. Elizabeth had experienced specific pres-
sures from some members of the elite who perceived female rulers, rather
than rulers' consorts, as less legitimate. Following the lead of her father
Henry VIII (1509-47), Elizabeth could keep selling or handing out the
diminishing stock of land seized from the Catholic church to solidify
patronage networks as well as to raise funds for her military adventures
(Anderson 1974a, 122-30). Elizabeth had a signal advantage in garnering
elite support, although she was notoriously close-fisted when it came to
the most important pieces of political privilege; she was scrupulous about
maintaining the honor of traditional hierarchies. Perhaps she had to be, if
she were to maintain her position. Her sex opened the way to mimetic
charges of state weakness, and members of the elite worried first of all
about political effeminacy and instability and later about the succession:
the queen's foreign suitors, her age and declining fertility, and her child-
lessness. The proposed French marital and political alliance in particular,
Linda Gregersen notes, was widely portrayed as a mark of "dangerous

effeminization: insinuating its way into England through the (female)
body of the English monarch, French degeneracy threatens to impair
English manhood" (Gregersen 1995, 23). Elizabeth responded with words
and deeds, by ruthlessly cutting off sedition and by elaborating the dis-
course of patriarchy, which she helped to conjoin with a fresh vision of
England as the Providential nation. "I know I have the body of a weak
and feeble woman," she said in her famous speech on the occasion of the
threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada, "but I have the heart and
stomach of a king, and of a king of England too . . ." (Elizabeth I of
England [1993 (1588)])26
Elizabeth's successor James I (1603-25) was a talented familial ideolo-
gist as well, although the absolutist theories of paternal kingly rule that he
enunciated in his many tracts and speeches put him at odds with English
parliamentarians who hoped for more limited forms of governance.27
James was less resourceful than Elizabeth, in all senses of the word.
Lacking the queen's bounty in land and besieged by pent-up demand and
a larger court, he responded by virtually "putting up for auction the
machinery of government itself (Hurstfield 1973, 312). The full reasons
for James's profligacy have long been debated, but clearly one important
factor was the shaky familial legitimation of the crown. "Dynastic
roulette" had unified the crowns of England and Scotland in 1603, as
John Morrill (i993,1-6) has observed, amplifying tensions among elites
and creating interkingdom dynamics that were exacerbated by the quirks
of the Stuart monarchs (important in a situation in which patrimonial
monarchs had personal jurisdiction over state issues and personal power to
appoint councillors, judges, and bishops). This meant in the first instance
that because James was vulnerable in England as an outsider and the hope-
ful founder of a new royal dynasty, he was obliged to drum up support for
himself and future Stuarts while the crown's independent resources were
dwindling fast. The crown was relatively poor, and the tacit promise of the
sixteenth-century Reformation—the promise of elite alliance with the
crown secured with the distribution of pattimonies—could not be indefi-
nitely extended. James's largesse with honors and tides rewarded relatives
and clients, seduced enemies, and pacified some magnates by playing them
off against one another, sometimes astutely, sometimes clumsily. The U'affic
26
Adams (2005) discusses Elizabeth's brilliant manipulation of the signifiers of masculinity
and kingship in more detail.
27
For James' patriarchal pronouncements, see Ng (2001, chap. 1).
in privilege and office was pervasive by the 1620s and 1630s. Virtually every
office could be bought, whether from the previous occupant, the crown,
crown favorites who sold crown patronage, or officeholders who were enti-
tled to dispose of offices under their jurisdiction (Trevor-Roper 1953;
Williams 1979). The crown benefitted from these practices in a short-term
monetary sense, and even from a short-run political standpoint, because
privilege tended to redistribute power and wealth to the monarch's depend-
ent followers, the patrimonial group. In the longer run, however, this strat-
egy was costly and politically risky.28 It also debased the currency of honor
itself, and desacralized the bond between the father-ruler and his subjects.
The few families that achieved a rewarded position at court were in an
unparalleled position to build their dynastic position. The potential rewards
were staggering. The trajectory of the Cecils (Earls of Salisbury) and other
like families vividly illustrates the alluring possibilities and the risks to wealth,
prestige, and power encountered at the apex of state power in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries.29 Just as in France, however, families faced risks
endemic to a patrimonial political milieu. They might suffer demographic
reverses or ruin themselves in the process of bidding for favor, wasting the
family patrimony in the lavish lifestyle required at court. They might fall prey
to rivals. Instability of elite position in the patrimonial group was inherent in
any system in which the ruler could in theory withdraw or transfer favor at
any time. But seekers after privilege under the early Stuarts faced an espe-
cially fluid and insecure environment for family and personal advancement.
James and his unfortunate successor Charles I (1625-42) pursued some
domestic and international dynastic goals, particularly those involved in for-
warding Charles's marriage, the controversial Spanish Match, that alienated
the state-based elite by weakening the identification of crown and
Protestantism (Cogswell 1989). Furthermore, factional conflict was fed by
the Stuarts' extravagant handout of privilege, which was not only expensive
but also violated norms governing patterns of distribution among families.
And such conflict, in turn, pressured the crown to offer more and still more.
28
By die 1630s, Aylmer (1961, 246-49) informs us, sales of monopolies on salt, coal, soap,
and other basic commodities raised £80,000 a year for die crown, and £200,000-300,000 a
year for monopolists. The government may have been subsidized by 30-40 percent
(£250,000-400,000 annually) via payments by "the public" to holders of privileges, but the
crown probably paid out as much in perquisites (£340,000-360,000 a year in the mid-
1630s).
29
See Lawrence Stone (1973) for the history of the Cecils and other families. See also
Aylmer's (1961, 283-433) classic study of die civil service of Charles I.
Yet one feature that made the English state different from many of its
continental counterparts, including France and the Netherlands, was that
there were relatively few offices and patrimonial perquisites to be had.
The English state was more than proportionally smaller than the French
or Dutch state: there were about 1,200 crown officers in the Elizabethan
period, or one officer for every 4,000 inhabitants, compared to 40,000 or
one for every 400 in contemporary France and about 1,500 or one for
every 1,000 in the tiny Netherlands. That scarcity did not abate the com-
petition; Jack Goldstone persuasively argues that it may even have
increased it in the early seventeenth century (1991,117-25). But the state
was too small to offer the possibility of a secure family niche to a signifi-
cant proportion of the elite, and fewer elite families developed an endur-
ing stake in it. 30 By 1640, as Lawrence Stone remarks, "the Court had
contrived to arouse the same resentments as those of the Continent, but
had failed to create a vested interest large enough to protect it against the
legion of its enemies" (1965, 77-78). The distinction between those who
had access to crown resources and those who did not proved important in
the period leading up to the English Revolution.
Most of the perquisites that were on offer were claimed by the landed
elite—the closely entwined and familially linked magnate and gentry group-
ings. Landowners made up 68 percent of central state officials during the
reign of Charles I and merchants, manufacturers, and financiers 13 percent
(8-9 percent, if we include only those who were not also landowners)
(Aylmer 1961, 279). At first glance, then, the English situation seems to
recapitulate that of Old Regime France. But these percentages overstate the
similarity in two ways. First, the landowners in question differed from their
French counterparts. English landlords were surrendering—and being
forced off—the prop of patrimonial privilege and becoming dependent on
agrarian capitalist forms of accumulation (see Gould 1987, chap. 4).
Whether landlords or the tenants on which they depended were driven to
accumulate capital because of economic competition, family preservation,
Protestantism, or some combination, both magnates and gentry increas-
ingly enjoyed nonstatist alternatives that landholding seigneurs in the early-
seventeenth-century French political economy largely lacked. Some English
landlords actually began to struggle against the extension or restitution of
privileges, as Christopher Hill (1963) shows in a classic study: those who
30
See MacCaffrey (1961, 108). Note that the English figure excludes justices of the peace,
who carried out official roles, but their inclusion would not significantly change the point.
bought or held the church lands, rights, and privileges that had been trans-
ferred by the crown tried to protect their newly acquired property from the
monarchs' or church hierarchy's attempt to reassert patrimonial rights.
Richard Lachmann (1987, 100-141) has shown that these elite-based con-
flicts reconstituted the agrarian political economy, spurring the transition to
capitalism over the course of the late sixteendi and early seventeenth cen-
turies. A starker contrast with France is hard to imagine.
Commercial/Colonial Projects of the

Early Seventeenth Century
The second major difference with France, and one particularly important
for my purposes, is that English merchants were strongly represented in
key areas of the patrimonial state. The handout of political privilege that
divided the patrimonial haves from the have-nots included chartering
large-scale commercial companies, by which mechanism the Tudor and
Stuart monarchs made mercantile and colonial policy and drew revenues
at one remove by selectively delegating or withdrawing corporate privi-
leges to favored groups. These groups accumulated tremendous power as
a consequence, and they served as relatively autonomous arms of the
state. Unlike France, self-organized merchant groups made and sustained
autonomous demands on the crown. In the 1590s, for example, when var-
ious individual merchants and groups of merchants organized independ-
ently of the crown were undertaking voyages to the East, the merchants
organized in the Levant Company began pressing the crown to include
routes to the east in their renewed charter. Like the Netherlands, then,
merchants left their imprint on company institutions and practices.
The East India Company (EIC) was founded in 1599 and officially char-
tered by Queen Elizabeth in 1600. The charter, which was to run for fif-
teen years, granted the company monopoly status east of the Cape of
Good Hope, as well as exemptions from the extant ban on exporting bul-
lion and from certain customs duties.31 The EIC was launched with a
stock of £68,373, compared to the £550,000 the Dutch East Indies
Company had (Furber 1976, 38). The EIC was initially a more modest
venture than the VOC, but a substantial £2,900,000 was invested in it
from 1599 to 1630 (Scott 1910-1912, 3: 465). The institutional structure
that evolved linking the factors abroad to the directors at home also dif-
31
See Carr (1913). Chaudhuri (1965,1981) records die history of the EIC's genesis.
fered from the VOC's. It was more centralized at home, consisting of a

body of twenty-four directors, elected annually by the General Court of
shareholders; the EIC was even more a London company than the VOC
was an Amsterdam one. But the English company was not yet a perma-
nent organization; technically, it was renewed from voyage to voyage.32
Merchants invested voluntarily rather than under duress, as in Colbert's
ill-fated company. Levant Company merchants provided one-fourth to one-
third of the first, third, and fourth joint stocks. And in what must have
seemed the best of all possible worlds, they were able to resist gentry
involvement in driving the trade while drawing on the gentry's passive
investments. Seventeen percent of the 1,261 members from 1699 to 1630
were gentry (Rabb 1967, 70, 78-79). When the crown suggested to the EIC
that it employ a certain member of the gentry in an important capacity in its
first voyage, the leaders flady stated that they wished "not to employ any
gentleman in any place of charge," and "to sort dieire business with men of
their own qualitye, lest the suspicion of employmt of gentlemen being
taken hold uppon by the generalitie, do dryve a great number of the adven-
turers to withdraw their contributions" (quoted in Mill 1858,16). The direc-
tors tried very hard—successfully, as it turned out—to persuade James I not
to invest in the company (Chaudhuri 1965, 38-56).
By the 1630s, as Robert Brenner's (1993) exhaustive study of London's
overseas traders demonstrates, they had further strengthened their con-
trol over this trade; by 1640, the Levant-East India group constituted the
major source of merchant-class personnel in the City of London's key
political positions, notably the aldermanic court, which closely resem-
bled the Amsterdam city council in its structure and relationship to the
merchant community. (There was no analogous merchant-dominated
body in early-seventeenth-century France, and this is certainly a sympto-
matic gap.) This fraction drew into their political ambit leading mer-
chants from other companies, such as the declining but still powerful
Merchant Adventurers, on which basis they joindy resisted the entry of
crown clients and of tradesmen and merchants involved in the open
trades of Spain and the Americas as interlopers into their commerce. 33
32
Abroad, the EIC was less centralized than the VOC, settling on three presidencies instead
of a single entrepot and governor-generalship. Here again, the EIC was slower to get off the
ground: the chief factors at Surat and Bantam were made the first presidents in 1618, nine
years after the appointment of the Dutch governor-general. See Furber (1976, 42, 191-93).
33
See Brenner and the references therein (1993, 21-23) on the founding of the EIC and on
the ascendancy of the Levant Company-East India Company directors (chap. 2).
Brenner also shows that the dense, ramifying kinship networks based on
inheritance and intermarriage solidified the Levant-East India Company
traders' government-sponsored control over the trade (and probably vice
versa) and enabled them to gain control of London's city government
(Brenner 1993, 61-73, 89-90). As the power of England's overseas com-
pany traders grew, they gained control of the customs farm—that is, the
privilege of customs collection and the most important branch of what
was nominally the crown's revenue administration. James I leased the
customs farm to merchant syndicates, whose representatives gained the
king's favor (for a price) via the sponsorship of his court favorites. The
company merchants handled the customs (and the profits) in exchange
for offering regular cash supplements and desperately needed credit to
the crown. 34 The customs farm generated almost three times as much as
crown lands in 1621, after more than doubling in the first eighteen years
of James' rule (Hill 1961, 52-53). Overseas company merchants thus con-
trolled the largest single source of state revenue and also became the
crown's chief creditors in the City of London (Dietz 1957). The
Levant-East India merchants were firmly ensconced in the state and, as
Ashton (i960) shows, proved to be a crucial source of support for the
beleaguered crown in the 1620s to 1630s.
The company merchants' privileged position did not protect them from
the crown waywardness inscribed in patrimonial arrangements; in fact,
quite the opposite was the case. Crown patronage and exercise of royal pre-
rogative was essential to the reproduction of the company merchants' posi-
tion, but always remained dangerously unpredictable as a support,
particularly, as has been previously noted, under the Stuarts. James I
licensed rival traders (for a fee) to the East Indies in 1604 and 1617, against
the charter the crown itself had given the EIC, and the EIC was forced to
compensate the new contenders (and thus indirectly the crown) to resecure
its monopoly. Similarly, Charles I authorized Sir William Courteen to set up
a rival company in 1632 to trade to Goa, Malabar, China, and Japan. The
struggle between the EIC and the Courteen company lasted for several
years, severely weakening the EIC abroad (Hill 1961, 37-42). For example,
the king seized the company's stock of pepper in 1641 when he was short of
34 "Farming was variously attractive. It guaranteed fixed sums of revenue instead of an

unpredictable flow; it gave courtiers an opportunity for manipulation and bribery when
arranging the lease—thus, the earl of Salisbury received £6,000 from the successful syndi-
cate in 1604; and most important of all, the customs farmers could be coerced into provid-
ing credit, the most urgent need of all governments" (Hirst 1986, 29).
130 T H E FAMILI AL STATE
funds, depriving the company of about £30,000, which was never repaid
(Hannay 1926, 186-87). Nevertheless, as Brenner (1993) reminds us, the
EIC finally sided with the crown in the Civil War. Did it have a real choice?
The tug-of-war between king and Parliament over commercial and colonial
policy, a major cleavage in early-seventeenth-century England, centered on
the legality of privileged monopoly companies and on the deployment of
naval power. Parliament came out on the wrong side of both of these issues,
seen from the EIC's partisan point of view. By the 1620s, Parliament had
evolved an oppositional stance with respect to crown dissemination of
offices and privileges and to the monarchy's dynastic military adventures,
while continuing to favor mercantile accumulation and naval buildup more
generally: in fact, Parliament demanded that both be better supported.
Parliament also called for enhanced state protection for independent mer-
chant capitalists operating in Spanish American and other nonmonopoly
markets and condemned monopoly trading companies.35
One barometer of fluctuating crown support and parliamentary objec-
tions was the slow consolidation of the EIC. Although the English and
Dutch companies were launched within two years of one another, the
English company was much slower to develop an organizational identity
and permanent capital. At first there was no joint stock; whoever invested
£200 was a member of the EIC for the duration of that voyage. The first
ship sailed in May 1601, but only after nine out of ten separate voyages
proved to be profitable was a four-year joint stock established in 1613. It
was not made permanent until 1657. Before that year, overlapping syndi-
cates caused confusion of accounts and authority (Chaudhuri 1965, 40).
The EIC did make profits even at this hesitant stage, and a portion of the
surplus was appropriated by the crown and venal officers without elimi-
nating the margin for profit. In that sense, the state-company partnership
stabilized the crown's position. But the rhythm of company development
was leisurely when compared to its Dutch counterpart.
That leisurely rhythm was also imposed by the Dutch, who proved to be
power fill competitors in the Spice Islands. The first two English voyages
went to Achin, Bantam, and the Moluccas, seeking a foothold in the spice
3S
See Quinn and Ryan (1983, 220-25, 234-40) regarding attempts to expand and modernize
the fleet. The crown had begun this project from 1579, but was hampered by the preroga-
tives of venal officers in the navy. A company merchant-led campaign tor naval reform in
1618 met with resistance from these officers, but issued in proposals ultimately implemented
during the Civil War. Regarding friendly relationships between colonial-interloper mer-
chants, the great landlords who invested in and guided the Puritan colonies in the Americas,
and a supportive Parliament, see Brenner (1993,148-59,184).
trade, and a factory was established in Bantam. Tensions were temporarily

abated by the short-lived Accord of 1619, which allotted the EIC one-third
of the world spice trade and free movement in pepper. But the Dutch elim-
inated the English from the archipelago in the 1620s, except on VOC suf-
ferance (Furber 1976, 38-42). The English company was pushed back onto
the Indian subcontinent, where it expanded slowly. The smaller and more
disorganized EIC also sent out fewer ships at the outset: from 1602 to
1607, the VOC sent out sixty-five ships; from 1601 to 1609, the EIC sent
out only fourteen (Hannay 1926, 89). Like the Dutch, the EIC had not
been able to find markets for their cloth in the archipelago and began to
seek Indian textiles to replace specie as far as possible.36 The third voyage
(from 1606 to 1607) sought to gain some portion of the Surat trade, but
the Portuguese were able to keep the English out until the EIC fought
them in 1612 and 1615. This was a rare offensive military encounter for the
EIC in the early 1600s. As a rule, the EIC proceeded more cautiously than
the VOC, by making deals with Asian rulers and benefiting from the out-
comes of domestic Anglo-Portuguese negotiations. Thus the EIC's first
fort, St. George, was established only in 1640 (Bassett 1968, 89-91).
Attempts to open up trade with Bengal were made at intervals, in 1620,
1633, and more successfully in 1650; the Hugli factory that became the
nucleus of the Bengal trade was eventually founded in 1651.
The company was fighting on three fronts at once, against European
and Asian competitors, as well as competing groups of English merchant
capitalists to whom the English crown had awarded overlapping patrimo-
nial privileges. Unlike the VOC, the EIC faced a persistent serious chal-
lenge from domestic merchant interlopers, independent merchants of
unimpressive social origins, based in the West Indies trades, whose
increasing prosperity rested on the free import of American products to
Britain outside the politically constituted monopoly system of the char-
tered companies. From the late 1630s, Brenner demonstrates, these "new
men" undertook American plantation agriculture in earnest, went after
the English Guinea Company's monopoly of the slave trade, and, finally,
in the 1640s began to interlope in the East Indies trade (Brenner I993>
chap. 3). The EIC was substantially weakened as a consequence. Crown
policy did not support the company's attempts to maintain or extend its
sovereign rights or, in the last instance, the military control of the areas
36
For pressures to this effect emanating from the crown, see the minutes of the January 1601
General Court, in Stevens (1970,197-203).
and tasks from which it was extracting surplus. It was not just that English
kings wanted to bilk the protected monopoly merchants, although they at
times did; it was also that, unlike the Netherlands, the English state had
other fruitful modes of access to capital and a certain political independ-
ence deriving from the agrarian sector and county politics. For all these
reasons, English trade to the Indies was more limited in scope than that
of the Dutch before the EIC's reconstruction after the English
Revolution.37
Whereas the Dutch state facilitated the growth of the VOC and the
French state actively hampered the Compagnies des Indes Orientates, the
early prerevolutionary seventeenth-century English state had a contradic-
tory effect on company functioning. On the one hand, concurrent royal
grants to other, more newly minted, companies profited the English
crown but weakened its East India Company. The Atlantic companies
tared still worse at the hands of the crown, in part because they were sus-
pected of harboring political dissidents. James I ended company control
in British America as early as 1624 by dissolving the Virginia Company, a
site of political opposition to the crown, and granting the West Indies to
the Earl of Carlisle by proprietary patent (Craven 1932, chap. 10). The
colonial-interloping merchants who seized the opportunities inherent in
this uneasy situation helped spearhead metropolitan politico-economic
development, but it is worth underlining that this outcome was a wholly
unintended consequence of crown policy. On the other hand, the patri-
monial state was also a major pillar of the sovereign monopoly companies,
in England as elsewhere. By means of patrimonial grants, which under-
girded the subsequent success of the privileged company merchants, the
crown empowered them to set themselves up as family enclaves in the fis-
cal apparatuses of the central state and in the London City government.
The tensions that this situation encouraged further split the overseas mer-
chants, who were already divided and counterposed to a dominant landed
class. Thus, it proved impossible before the mid-century Civil War for any
one group to capture a stable position of political dominance, including a
monopoly on privilege and office-holding along the lines that the ruling
merchant-regents established in the Netherlands.
37
The numbers of outward-bound ships to Asia from England and the Netherlands indi-
cates the extent of that difference.
Merchants, the Patrimonial Nexus,

and Republicanism in Revolt
His examination of the company and interloping merchants and the patri-
monial state with which they were engaged has led Robert Brenner to
launch a bold "new social interpretation" of the genesis of the English
revolutions of the seventeenth century (see Brenner 1993, postscript). The
so-called "traditional social interpretation"—which owes a good deal to
the Marxist approaches outlined in chapter 1—argues that a feudal aris-
tocracy was unseated by a rising bourgeoisie in the Civil War and English
Revolution of the 1640s. Merchants, along with manufacturers, country
gentry, and yeomen, were treated as part of the rising classes that were
supposed to have challenged the old landed aristocracy and the monarchy
that supported it. Different positions with respect to nascent capitalism
were held to have generated different interests and predisposed actors to
adopt distinctive religious and political views more or less hospitable to
drastic constitutional change. The English Revolution thus figured as a
decisive step in the remaking of class relations and the state that sup-
ported them.38 Empirically, as it turns out, things were more messy. The
merchants, for one, were split, and a substantial minority of the suppos-
edly capitalist merchants rallied to the crown in the Civil War. And, in
fact, partisans of the traditional social interpretation never succeed in
making the case that there were distinct feudal and capitalist classes that
were forced into mutual contention.
One response has been to argue that there is no class-based coherence
for the merchants' (and others') actions. Brenner for his part tries to
restore class to a central analytical position. More broadly, he aims to
"reassociate constitutional and religious ideas with the sociopolitical and
economic contexts from which they arose—the experiences they were
designed to comprehend, the interests they were shaped to further, and
the structures they in effect defended or tended to transform" (Brenner
1993, 648). He argues that fractions of the merchant class were distin-
guished by their relationship to property relations, which included both
state-based patrimonial monopolies as well as emergent forms of capitalist
property, and that those distinctive positions nurtured different political
38
As Brenner makes clear (1993, 638 n. 1), what he and others call the "traditional social
interpretation" amalgamates "the conceptually interrelated arguments" made by
Christopher Hill, R. H. Tawney, and Lawrence Stone in the 1940s and early 1950s. Readers
should consult Brenner for a full list of relevant references.
and religious views and alliances with respect to the crown and the parlia-
mentary opposition.
Class itself is politically defined in this formulation: it is the relationship
of landlords, merchants, and of course the monarchy itself not to the
means of production but to politically constituted forms of private prop-
erty that is at issue in structuring interests and alliances. Some groups "had
come to rely simply on their unconditional landed property and thus on
the protection of their private property by the indirect coercion exerted by
the state" (Brenner 1993, 657), whereas others remained old-style patrimo-
nial dependents and supporters, and this mattered in their orientations to
political and constitutional change. Thus, Brenner also differs from the tra-
ditional social interpretation in his emphasis on "1688," the Glorious
Revolution. By the 1690s, after the revolutions had taken their course, he
argues, England's ruling landed class, now savvy about global mercantile
interests and increasingly adept at reconciling them to their own, no
longer required politically constituted property' to support itself. The patri-
monial monarchy was disciplined and superseded by a unitary national
state, in effect the first modern state in Europe or anywhere else.
Brenner's overall argument offers us an excellent purchase on some of
the comparative contours of patrimonial state-mercantile relations in north-
ern Europe and beyond in the early seventeenth century. The viable
monopoly niches in the state that merchants in England and the
Netherlands—but not France—captured and controlled structured not
only those enterprises but their reciprocal impact on their home states. That
impact was deep, long-lasting, and uneven—this is the first point at which
my interpretation differs from Brenner's. Substantively, as I spell out in
chapter 6, England's patrimonial monarchy was not superseded in the sev-
enteenth-century English revolutions. The monarchs continued to control
a dynastic foreign policy in the eighteenth century, and sovereign monopoly
trading companies played a crucial role in governance as well as in eco-
nomic accumulation. More generally, Brenner's general call to reassociate
"ideas" and "sociopolitical and economic contexts" is problematical from
my perspective because it is hard to reassociate something that never came
apart. Ideas and contexts are not readily separated when it comes to forms
of political authority, for example, that are always symbolically elaborated
and reinforced. Some powerful objections to Brenner's interpretation have
been raised by Steve Pincus (1996,12-14) in the course of his broader analy-
sis of Protestantism and patriotism in mid- to late-seventeenth-century
English foreign policy. Drawing on an astonishing range of documents,
Pincus argues against interpretations that emphasize commercial rivalry or

national strategic self-interest as the driving forces of the Navigation Act
and the first Anglo-Dutch War, emphasizing instead the ideological role of
u
an unusual political alliance between apocalyptic Protestants and classical
republicans who dominated English political culture . . . immediately after
the execution of the king in January 1649" (14). Here was one salient point
at which political culture and religion—forms of Protestantism—mattered
for the struggles over foreign policy, sovereignty, and state building in early-
seventeenth-century England, as well as the Netherlands.
A fuller and more accurate understanding of struggles over patrimonial
power also involves identifying both (1) the familial mechanics of alliances
and relationships that constitute the collective ruler and become invested
in states and (2) the meanings of fatherhood that provide the recurring
motifs for symbols of authority in early modern Europe, making family
alliances imaginable, attractive, and practically workable. These political,
economic, familial, and religious motivations or logics of action were typ-
ically fused in patrimonial politics; they were not independent causal
streams. Some merchants enunciated deeply religious visions of marriage,
children, and family lineage, for example, which entered into the consti-
tution of patrimonial networks and the politico-economic policies their
members advocated. And investing different styles of father rule with
sacramental force was one part of the political vocabulary over which
monarchists and republicans contended and over which much blood was
spilled.
In general, one can see the appeal of republicanism in the crisis-ridden
seventeenth century as part and parcel of a process of redefining elite
political fatherhood. Because of the king's superordinate resonance as a
symbolic father, doing without him—whether by defeating him in the
Dutch Eighty Years War and refusing all likely substitutes; enduring his
protracted and shaky minority in the period leading up to the French
Fronde, or killing him outright in the English Revolution—turned out to
be a scarier and more politically destabilizing proposition than elites had
anticipated. When the moorings of royal authority were unloosed, repub-
licanism, which is always a repressed political possibility in patrimonial
regimes, came to represent an attempt to reconstitute and reinvent a new
fraternal union of "small fathers." Men could now become the subjects of
their own history rather than mere subjects of the king. Such transforma-
tive and seductive notions were forwarded by many men in the elite, but
when they became more broadly popular they threatened their authority
as well as the authority of all upper strata. This dramatic caesura shook the
foundations, still under construction, of all these states.
In England, the death of the king opened the way for a variety of chal-
lenges—"the world turned upside down"—to paternal political authority
in general (Hill 1972; Thomas 1965). The possibility of lateral fraternal
alliances across evolving nation-states was suddenly acutely appealing.
The logical partner for this experiment was the Netherlands, which shared
with England a providential affinity and a favorable commercial trajectory.
Thus we have the astonishing fact that England and the Netherlands
actually considered merging at mid-century—an international and inter-
corporate project involving, and evincing, the fluidity of sovereignty. This
prospective republican alliance was canvassed during the Interregnum,
initiated by the English and Dutch East Indies companies, giving rise to
an historic moment when a distinctive type of political unit and political
subjectivity was at least under consideration. The death of the king qua
father and the fraternal republican alternative denaturalized the bound-
aries of the nation-state at a moment when this was still possible, or at
least thinkable. But fraternal republicanism failed both as the basis for an
intercorporate and international alliance and a domestic state form.
Negotiations over the merger with the Netherlands collapsed when the
parties could not agree on the boundaries of sovereign rights in the
Indies. The republic could not be stabilized. Surely Robert Brenner
(1993, postscript) is correct about its relatively narrow7 class basis. But,
once again, the nexus of patriarchal patrimonialism and commercial/
colonial empire was a crucial structuring principle. The failure of the
republic created a tainted legacy associated both with the "little patri-
archs'" and with the rule of the Cromwellian generals, without political
heirs and the prospect of national continuity and therefore with dubious
legitimacy. The killing of the king became a haunting memory of a father-
less vacuum of power that powerfully informed state formation in the
eighteenth century.
5
Dutch Decline: The Loyalty

of the Patriarch or the
"Betrayal of the Bourgeoisie" >
T he United Provinces of the Netherlands did not always live up to

their confidently unified name. Even when they did, they composed
one small country, increasingly harassed by larger, envious states.
Shouldn't we be surprised that the Golden Age lasted so long rather than
pondering how or why it ended? Wasn't the loss of hegemony and subse-
quent decline a natural, even an inevitable thing in such circumstances? In
one sense, yes. Challenges to Dutch dominance proliferated as the cen-
tury wore on, and their combined force damaged the Dutch entrepot
position. That middleman role, SimmePs tertius gaudens, had proven
extraordinarily resilient. As Jonathan Israel (1989) has shown, even the
protracted Spanish onslaught, the first two Anglo-Dutch Wars, and the
aptly named Disaster Year of 1672 (when the Dutch were threatened by
the French and English militaries at once) failed to destroy it. Eventually,
however, Dutch hegemony was undermined. Given the existence of mul-
tiple protonational states and the increasing integration among them that
the Dutch leadership itself had been so instrumental in forging, we would
expect that leadership's innovations to diffuse to competitors and interna-
tional politico-economic pressures on the Netherlands' vulnerable com-
mercial entrepot role to sharpen commensurately. Yet although these
sorts of external pressures and relationships help account for loss of hege-
monic position, they do not give us an adequate picture.
This chapter also argues that domestic structures of rule were plausible
causal mechanisms. My goal here is emphatically not to recapitulate
every detail of the vast body of scholarship on Dutch decline—the
much-bemoaned achteruitgang or verval—but rather to identify dis-
tinctly gendered, familial institutional patterns and developmental
streams, pinpoint the junctures at which they intersected, and lay out the
137
range of implications for those institutions and the system as a whole.

When we survey the Republic's two centuries, the continuities in domes-
tic political arrangements must strike us forcibly. The state was not fun-
damentally restructured. The regent family regimes clung to power. The
House of Orange secured its grip on the stadholderates. Chartered com-
panies continued to command the Netherlands' colonial possessions.
These continuities were hard-won fruits of family politics, including
interfamily struggles whose features informed the Dutch political land-
scape until the collapse of the Old Regime in 1795. Intergenerational
compacts among elite patriarchs stabilized and collectivized their identi-
fication with and investment in resource-bearing political privilege. The
explicit nature of these patrimonial pacts makes the Dutch case particu-
larly revealing and raises questions about the nature of interelite pacts in
other early modern European polities in which elites' lineage honor, eco-
nomic resources, and power derived from forms of corporate privilege.
The Zag: Absolute and Relative Decline
In the Dutch popular imaginary, the eighteenth century was dubbed the
Pruikentijd, or Periwig Period: a time of decline, of insinuating foreign
and effeminately Frenchified customs, always rhetorically contrasted to
the hearty, prosperous, and eminently Dutch Golden Age. Decline is a
loaded term to level at a state or social formation, whether contempo-
raries or sociologists are doing the leveling. It evokes images of late impe-
rial decadence, as well as a more subtle sense of internal organic
inevitability. The latter sense, at least, is misleading. First, as historians
and social scientists have repeatedly insisted, Dutch decline did not unfold
organically and the Republic's prospects dimmed in response to cross-
pressures from other areas in the emergent world economy. These cross-
pressures disrupted the centralizing control of the Dutch merchant
empire and influenced its subsequent trajectory. Relative, absolute, or (I
think) both, Dutch decline was a fact as well as a rhetorical figure.1
1
Historians disagree about exactly when and how severely the decline occurred, variously
claiming that (1) the economy stagnated from T700 to 1780, after which it downturned
sharply (de Vries 1968 [1959]); (2) it declined absolutely from 1670 to 1750 and then recov-
ered slightly (de Vries 1984); (3) it declined after 1720, precipitously so after 1740, and did
not recover during the early modern era (van Dillen 1970; Israel 1989). Riley holds that the
Dutch economy continued to grow from 1695 into the nineteenth century (Riley 1984,
521-69).
Dutch Decline 139
Let us begin with the more conventional politico-economic considera-

tions before moving on to make a case for the role of dynastic dynamics in
the political processes associated with decline and state breakdown. Dutch
agriculture was geared to exports and hence was exceptionally responsive to
such international pressures. When the grain transit trade, called the
"mother trade," fell off in response to depressed European prices after 1650,
Dutch farmers who were affected sought to compensate for their sagging
fortunes by switching to other domestically grown commercial products,
such as flax, while Dutch merchants imported more timber from the Baltic
in lieu of grain.2 Nevertheless, the drop-off in the grain trade (as well as
exports of salt and herring) eroded Dutch trade to the Baltic absolutely as
well as relative to other countries in the early 1700s, and the increased sup-
ply of timber and reexport of colonial products did not make good the loss
(van Dillen 1974, 202-3). The disruption of international markets and the
ensuing domestic depression rippled outward. Agricultural rents fell in
nominal money terms from the 1670s to the 1750s, as did investment in land
recovery and improvement (van der Wee 1978, 16-18). Effectively higher
taxation relative to profits, compounded by the recurrent waves of cattle
disease and parasites in the dikes that seemed to some like the trials of Job,
depopulated most areas during the eighteenth century (Roessingh 1979,20;
van der Wee 1978,18-19).3
It was not that Dutch agriculture was especially backward. By the eigh-
teenth century, class and occupational differentiation had stimulated the
development of what was probably the most technically advanced and
highly productive agriculture in Europe (Mokyr 1975, 296; Slicher van
Bath 1955,169-203; 1966, 24-42). Capitalist development had restructured
what had been a relatively homogeneous group of peasant or small-farmer
families. In a region of Friesland studied by Jan de Vries, the relatively
homogeneous peasantry of the sixteenth century was giving way by the
mid-eighteenth to the capitalist agrarian triad of landlords (urban regents
and petty nobility), capitalist tenant farmers, and wage laborers. Similar
tendencies were evident in Holland, where farm size increased, the num-
ber of farmers shrunk with respect to the area population, and the group
~ The drop reflected increased grain production in Spain, Portugal, and Italy; higher con-
sumption of corn, rice, and buckwheat; and, perhaps most important, the conjunctural
decline in population in the key export markets of France and southern Europe. See
Roessingh (i979,16-57).
Historians disagree as to the extent of this depopulation. In any case, it is not clear to me
that depopulation was completely negative because it precluded the subsistence crises that
afflicted France, for example.
of nonlandholders expanded (de Vries 1974,127-36).4 But Dutch agricul-

ture was unusually dependent on international markets. This situation
was again starkly highlighted after 1750, when resurgent foreign demand
led a partial recovery. Still, the bulk and agriculturally related trades were
no longer the fundament of Dutch dominance by the eighteenth century,
as Israel (1989) has demonstrated. 5 What mattered most by then was the
central nodal position of the Netherlands as active producer, trader, and
financier of flows of manufactured and finished goods, such as textiles and
colonial goods destined for reexport. Yet it was precisely these flows and
networks that were most at risk.
War gave competitor states the opportunity to chip away at the
Netherlands' commanding central position. For the Dutch, the War of
the Spanish Succession (1702-13) was the key geopolitical turning point.
This grueling engagement was fought simultaneously over world trade
and over whether King Louis XIV of France would succeed in seating his
grandson Philippe d'Anjou on the Spanish throne. It encompassed the
very bases of relations among the belligerents: the Netherlands, England,
and the Austrian branch of the Habsburg Empire ranged against a formi-
dable alliance uniting Spain and France. An abortive French invasion of
the Netherlands was deflected, but the war severely damaged Dutch over-
seas trade (Snapper 1959, 242-44). The Treaty of Utrecht that concluded
the hostilities codified Dutch losses. Dutch statesmen and negotiators had
sought to protect entrepot trade but, lacking the sustained military clout
to back up their aims, had to swallow the commercially painful conces-
sions imposed by a putative ally, England, in what was considered a back-
stabbing Tory betrayal (Geyl 1964, 293). The treaty did contain the
expansionist tendencies of the French crown, a major aim of the Dutch
negotiators. But the English walked off with Minorca and Gibraltar and
4
The exception was the poor rural eastern province of Overijssel, which saw the rise of cot-
tars who engaged simultaneously in subsistence farming and proto-industry; see Slicher van
Bath (1957, chap. 6).
5
We know that the low-cost bulk commerce in grain suffered. Other bulk trades were also
in abeyance or decline, with the herring fishery receding after 1672 and exports of domesti-
cally refined salt falling by 1740-60 to one-fifth of 1660-1700 levels (Israel 1989, 304-6, 381).
This was not good, but nor was it fatal. Because the locus of control had shifted, the
accounts of the Convoy and License duties show no quantitative decline in shipping ton-
nage up to 1715 (Becht 1908, app. tables 1-3). The Convoy and License records are a gauge
of general trends, but, as maay historians have pointed out, the records are flawed. In partic-
ular, they fail to disclose information on untaxed goods such as spice reexports. After 1680,
the VOC paid a fixed annual sum that was not included in the duties and thus did not reflect
the increase in imports of colonial products during the eighteenth century.
Dutch Decline 141
ultimately with the coveted asiento, the monopoly of slave deliveries to

the Spanish colonies.6 The upshot of the war was one giant step toward
the Netherlands' loss of hegemony.
Producers and traders located in other countries were increasingly able to
process and ship their own goods, dealing with potential markets directly
instead of via the Dutch broker. This newfound capacity was embodied in
and reinforced by a wave of politically enforced protectionism that washed
over Europe in the 1720s. France and England, which had already tried pro-
tectionist measures in the seventeenth century, now took them up again,
this time with more success. They were joined by the Scandinavian states,
Russia, Prussia, Austria, and others (Heckscher 1955 [1931], 2:112-72). These
protectionist moves were sustainable in a way that they had not been a cen-
tury before, partly because there were now reasonable substitutes for Dutch
goods, trade routes, and entrepot services. Ironically enough, the competi-
tors had learned from the Dutch broker itself, about shipbuilding, naviga-
tion, military science, manufacturing, land drainage, public finance, and
some less savory skills, such as piloting the triangular trade and controlling
the colonized. Dutch hegemony—the central position in the global net-
work—was abrogated by developments in and new relationships among
other nodes. The shifting global network involved actors and alliances
scrambling to wield power in old and new ways in aid of alluring opportuni-
ties that involved bypassing the Dutch broker and strongman.
The impact on Dutch manufacture was for the most part grim. The out-
put of cloth in the major textile town of Leiden dropped from 139,000
pieces of cloth in 1671 to 72,000 in 1725 to 54,000 in 1750 and then to
28,000 in 1795, while the town's population contracted commensurately
(Posthumus 1908-1939, vol. 3). The Amsterdam silk industry felt the pinch,
and even the rural linen industry in Overijssel began to contract in the 1720s
(Barkhausen 1974, 245-46; Slicher van Bath 1957, 201-2). The Zaan paper
and canvas industries fell off drastically from peak production after 1730 (van
der Woude 1972,490-92,476-77). Tobacco processing was badly damaged,
with the number of manufactories in Amsterdam plummeting from around
6
The new Bourbon king of Spain, now Felipe V, denied Dutch merchants the access to
Spanish and Spanish American markets (and silver) that diey had formerly enjoyed and
awarded the asiento first to the troubled and ultimately unsuccessful French Guinea
Company and then to England (van Dillen 1974; Israel 1989, 370-75). Veenendaal (1980,
19-27) summarizes the Dutch position in the Spanish Succession War. See Gcyl's (i964>
chap. 7) classic account of the impact on the Netherlands on the almost continual intra-
European warfare that extended from 1688 to 1715.
thirty in 1720 to only eight in 1751, so that Dutch output totalled approxi-
mately one-fourth of its 1720 level (Israel 1989, 388). Other industries that
tottered or disappeared altogether were Zeeland's salt refining, Delftware,
and even the signature industry, shipbuilding. Gin-distilling picked up
(Schama 1977, 40). But even the best gin could not fill the place of textile
production or shipbuilding in the overall economy.
The enduring pillar of the collapsing entrepot trade system, the Dutch
position in the Indies, provided some insurance for the elite against the worst
rigors of decline. In addition to pepper and spices, for which the VOC con-
tinued to set European prices until the 1740s, European demand skyrocketed
for tea, coffee, raw silk and cotton, and Asian silk and cotton fabrics. These
products were reexported to the Baltic, France, Germany, Russia, and south-
ern Europe. The market value of goods shipped from the East Indies, which
totaled 8.7 million guilders in 1648-50, topped 23 million in 1738-40 and 28.1
million in 1778 (Glamann 1958,14). Impressive sums continued to flow from
the VOC to the state until the mid-eighteenth century, including 3 million
guilders for the charter renewal of 1700-40 and over 400,000 guilders to the
admiralties throughout the century (de Korte 1984, 6-8). From the West
Indies, including the colonies of Surinam (with its four to five hundred plan-
tations dependent on slave labor), Berbice, Essequibo, and Demerara, sev-
eral million guilders' worth of sugar, coffee, tobacco, cotton, and cocoa was
shipped annually to the entrepot. As late as 1750-74, Amsterdam, Rotterdam,
and Zeeland derived an annual average of over 10 million guilders in revenue
from Surinam imports alone. Dutch Carribean trade was still valued at 20
million guilders annually in 1763 (Goslinga 1985,217-23). Yet even this area of
strength was weakening relative to other countries' (especially England's)
subjugation of expanded colonial markets. Chapters 2 and 3 show that the
presence of multiple centers of sovereignty, including the chartered colonial
companies, encouraged struggles among contending nodes, which had real
effects on the developing system and on the states that were evolving within
it. One important outcome for die Netherlands was the consolidation of a
ruling alliance of trading families based in Amsterdam, and focused on
Europe and Asia and the strengthening of the eastern and truncation of the
western wing of Dutch empire. As we have seen, while this domestic political
outcome fostered the East Indies colonial project, it helped to limit the
development of a specifically Dutch West Indian plantation system of the
sort that England and France developed more expansively in their western
colonial territories. After the Netherlands had lost its position at the leading
edge of commercial/colonial expansion in the Atlantic, the loss of its
Dutch Decline 143
Brazilian colonial enclave deprived the Dutch of an important cushion

against the blows of competition.
Furthermore, the VOC itself underwent severe stresses by mid-century,
as the very success of the company's fused patrimonial politico-economic
structure also imposed its own limits on Dutch colonial development. This
is not to downplay the disorganizing impact of the long period of dynastic
struggles among the Safavids on the Indian subcontinent, inaugurated in
the 1720s, on which the English East India Company eventually capitalized.
But the VOC's organization also played a role—one that we can only fully
evaluate in comparison to the English company, dealt with in chapter 6.
Once a source of dynamism, before the establishment of private trade, the
VOC's close control eventually prevented the company from harnessing the
ascending and ultimately victorious forces of private traders. Private trade
continued to be severely curtailed in the Dutch company's bailiwick, in
spite of a drop in the VOC's intra-Asian fleet from 1690 to 1740. The VOC
asserted its monopoly rights to both the intra-Asian (country trade) and the
Europe-Asia route. The enforcement of the intra-Asian monopoly kept the
number of Dutch private country ships at ten or under per season between
1713 and 1743 (Furber 1976,275). This may not have damaged the company's
trade in absolute terms, but it definitely did so in a relative sense, for (as we
see in chap. 6) the English East India Company's intra-Asian trade far out-
stripped the VOC's in the eighteenth century. The VOC missed out on
important new commercial opportunities, notably the burgeoning tea
trade, which was captured by the EIC instead. Whereas intercorporate
struggle had helped defeat the Dutch West Indies Company, corporate con-
solidation closed off private trade and ultimately—in comparison to
England—hampered its East Indies counterpart.
The VOC also proved unable to cope with escalating military competi-
tion—a crucial part of its patrimonial tasks. Although the English were
bested in the Indies throughout the seventeenth century, the English EIC
gained the upper hand in the eighteenth. English ascendancy in the east
was obvious after 1759 when the VOC made an incompetent defense in
Bengal against EIC incursions and was confirmed when the VOC was
soundly whipped in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-84). The core
spice monopoly was gone by 1783, and the English secured de facto free
trade in the eastern seas (Steur 1984, 155-57).7 These failures contrasted
7
See Dillo (1992) and van Eyck van Heslinga (T988) regarding the end of the sovereign com-
pany and the fate of its remnants. They take die story up to its bitter end in 1806.
starkly with the company's previous great power role. Contemporaries

portrayed the VOC's military failures during the eighteenth century as
symbolic of the broader incapacity of both the colonial company and the
Dutch state. The contrast was deemed especially painful because it
touched on the very exploits in which the Dutch David had seemed to
achieve the most against the surrounding Goliaths, notably the eroding
eastern empire and the failure to singlehandedly repel the French from
Dutch territory in 1747 when the French had been easily overpowered in
the Disaster Year of 1672. For many, the coup de gra^e was signaled when
the VOC appealed to the Dutch state for credit and military support dur-
ing the Fourth and final Anglo-Dutch War. Not only was the company
appealing to the state as a superordinate sovereign power, but the state
was not able to muster a reasonable fleet in response.
Was the insolvency of the Dutch treasury imposed by the vicissitudes of
battle? It is true that defense and mobilization for war were expensive
and, due to economies of scale, intrinsically more difficult for smaller
countries to support. It is also a fact that existing resources in all
provinces were much diminished immediately after the War of Spanish
Succession. Holland's deficit skyrocketed to over 2,500,000 guilders, and
the province was spending fully 70 percent of its annual revenue on debt-
related expenditures (Aalbers 1977, 82-84; Boogman 1979, 402-4). The
state was so hard-pressed that it was forced to begin selling off public
lands (de Jongste 1980, 47)- But consider the counter factual: significant
sources of wealth were not being tapped by the state, particularly in the
wealthy seaward provinces. Commercial profits were not subject to taxa-
tion, long-term notes of joint-stock companies such as the VOC were free
from direct assessment, and foreign investments were taxed only when
estates passed out of the direct line of succession (Riley 1980, n). 8 The
resources were there. Fiscal crisis and state incapacity were the legacy of
structures that vested power and policy making in the hands of elite fam-
ily heads committed to protecting their local—at most provincial—identi-
ties and position.
8
As Marjolcin 't Hart (1993) reminds us, Horace Walpole pointed to the abundance of pri-
vate wealth in Amsterdam after the War of Spanish Succession, "there being more money in
particular hands of that city than ever was known, which is now lent out upon good security
for 1-1/2 and 2 at the most per cent."
Dutch Decline 145
Family Cartels and Corporate Continuity
Factional feuding among elite families is endemic to patrimonial rule,

where squabbles within the privileged patrimonial group over who gets
what are accompanied by fights between the beneficiaries and the
excluded.9 But the outcome is by no means a foregone conclusion.
Feuding can lead to intractable conflict. It may also promote institutional
innovations that manage intra-elite conflict in an ongoing and peaceful
way. In the Netherlands, both outcomes took shape at different times,
with important implications for state formation and Dutch decline. The
problem was sharply posed as access to a city council seat became defini-
tive of regent family position. At the same time, as we have seen, the
regents' prerogatives became more attractive. Income from office grew in
the eighteenth century (Smit 1977, 388-90). Town councils were also cre-
ating more lower-level offices and privileges that regent patrons could
hand out to favored clients. By the mid-eighteenth century, Amsterdam
mayors alone dispensed approximately 3,200 corporate offices, a figure
that contrasts sharply with the comparatively low total of central state
offices, about one to two hundred in the early seventeenth century and
only three hundred in 1800.10 Family feuds in the local patriciates became
heated under such circumstances, and the increasing stakes provoked an
unmanageable level of competition among the corporate elite.
This problem pervaded the urban regencies by the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries. In Amsterdam, the Corvers' family exclusive -
ness provoked a famous brouhaha, the Sautijn Scandal. A clique led by
burgomaster Jeronimus de Haze de Gregorio, nephew of the well-con-
nected Joannes Hudde, who was envious of the ascendant Corver family,
exposed the extortionate office sales of Willem Sautijn, the brother of
burgomaster Nicolaas Sautijn (member of the van Bambeeck clan and
staunch Corverite) and his associate burgomaster Jan Six, also a member
of the ruling Corver clique. During the long and acrimonious trial
(1724-31), many prominent regents were found guilty of selling offices,
9
This section draws on part of my argument in Adams (1999), which deals with the con-
tracts of correspondence and rational-choice theories of state formation.
10
For a list of mid-eighteenth-century offices in Amsterdam, see Bussemaker (1907,
474-518). Regarding numbers of central state offices, see 't Hart (1993). Most of these appar-
ently central perquisites were also local responsibilities. Furthermore, local burgomasters
controlled recruitment to the most important positions at the provincial and Generality
level, such as the deputies to the States-General and Raad van State. See Elias (1923, 201-2)
and de Vries (1977, 338-40).
including burgomaster Jan Trip; Pieter Six, schepen and later burgomaster;
and Bonifacius Bisschop and Arend van der Burch, both members of the
Admiralty Board. Sautijn and Six had sold offices for thousands of
guilders and divided the proceeds between them. In 1717-24, Sautijn had
made at least 22,820 guilders via office sales, including many in the VOC.
Nicolaas Sautijn even sold a gravedigger's office for 8,000 guilders in 1721,
which may have been the cause of his not being elected burgomaster
again after 1725. In an ironic twist, de Haze himself was found to have
sold offices in 1723, among others, the office of VOC boekhouder van de
equipage for the tidy sum of 16,000 guilders. 11 These leading lights of the
regency ended up in court not because such actions were unusual, for
they were rife in towns and corporate bodies, but because heightened
family conflict over representation on and leverage in city councils and
their rural analogues bared habitual but nominally illegal practices.
The regents found a solution that pleased virtually all concerned. In
town after town, they sat down together—quite literally—and drew up
state settlements, which they called contracts of correspondence (con-
tracten van eorrespondentie). These compacts formalized the distribution
of city offices in written succession rules, laying out systems by which all
eligible elite families would take turns getting mayoralties, VOC director-
ships, and other top corporate privileges. The contracts regulated the
membership in and control over corporate bodies, which were the condi-
tions for capital accumulation, political power, and family status. In the
short run, the settlements were an inspired institutional solution: they pro-
tected specific families' stakes in an office and guaranteed that all regent
families' office genealogies would continue unbroken. Such contracts
existed in Leiden from 1702-21 and 1741, in Hoorn from the 1720s, in
Enkhuizen from 1730, in Gouda from 1748, and in Amsterdam from 1752.12
The contracts even addressed potential pitfalls or threats to regent
dominance. First, when successful dynasties hold power on a permanent
basis, they tend to accumulate clients and are more likely to fall due to
overspending on patronage (Boissevain 1974)- This was a real possibility
11
The records of die Sautijn scandal are collected in Amsterdam Gemeente Archief (AGA)
#5061, 641A. Willem Sautijn held the offices of commissaris of Amsterdam and colonel of
the Burgerij in addition to his VOC directorship.
12
For Amsterdam, see AGA #5059, 93; for Hoorn, see Kcoijmans (1985); for Gouda, see de
Jong (1985); and for Leiden, see Prak (1985, 264). In Enkhuizen, in 1730, a typical agreement
noted the desire of the regents "not to exclude any of the gentlemen-councillors from the
directing of affairs" (cited in Kcoijmans 1985, 211). At times this system was less effective in
suppressing factionalism, such as in Haarlem; see de Jongste (1984,177-8T).
Dutch Decline 147
in the Netherlands, where many high offices or privileges carried rights to

dispense or sell other privileges and where the States-General ultimately
endorsed the traffic.13 The alternation among dynastic groups minimized
this particular by-product of the prerogative of successful dynasts to name
nonfamilial clients to lower-level positions. Second, such a system enabled
the regent dynasts to close ranks against outside pressures. It frustrated
some attempts to encroach on regent prerogatives. These features, most
likely unanticipated outcomes of the contracts, made the system more sta-
ble. Regent families had successfully laid claim to political institutions,
which became the de facto inheritable property of elite lineages as a
whole. The male representatives of these families had established a state
that could reproduce not just some but all of their patrilineages. The state
could therefore become an object of identification: elites could see them-
selves and their concerns reflected in the theater of the state even when
their families were not present but waiting offstage, in the wings.
In an analysis of competition among capitalists in the American coal
industry, John Bowman notes that in competitive "games" of indefinite
length, u the equilibrium price generated by the independent behavior of
competitors becomes a collective bad that they must eliminate in order to
survive" (1989,13). Bowman finds that the successful enforcement of car-
tel prices and profits is more likely when certain conditions are present,
including relatively few players, the presence of players who can make
credible threats, and the context of an apparently stable game (1989,
17-18,23).14 Although Bowman is dealing with organizational solutions to
capitalist collection action dilemmas, not problems confronting patrimo-
nial elite families, these particular conditions are broadly relevant. The
regents' particular game was decades, even centuries, long, and the capac-
ity of participants to inflict negative sanctions was clear to all parties.
Finally, even in the largest Dutch corporate contexts, the family heads
involved could sit down with one another and argue face to face about
the content of the cooperative strategy, which simplified the process of
arriving at a workable contract. And argue they did, even calling further
13
For office venality, see Swart (1980 [1949]). The States-General had tried to deal with the
perceived expansion of office sales with a 1715 plakaat against "taking forbidden gifts'' and
"corruption in the government/' in which die admiralty boards and East India Company
directorships were explicitly included (Groot Placaet-Boeck 1638-1796,5: 684). When die direc-
tive proved unenforceable, the States capitulated, imposing special taxes (antbtgelden) on
officeholders upon their assumption of offices, in essence taking a cut of venal transactions.
14
Bowman's full roster of conditions naturally includes some that are specific to competitive
capitalist markets and therefore not applicable in patrimonial contexts.
meetings to address disagreements and tinker with the rules.15 But the
number of interests that had to be accommodated was generally manage-
able; participants were more able to see and respond to moves to defect,
and post-agreement communication was simpler.
The Dutch deals were explicit contracts drawn up among equals and
aimed at urban corporate institutions, including the chartered companies.
They also functioned as distributional coalitions that, like the nation-state
cartels described by Mancur Olson, increased their own benefits, what-
ever the effect on the surrounding society (Olson 1984, 41-74). Effective
cartels also block entry into the desirable area. The formalization of fam-
ily appropriation of state office did just that by reaffirming family exclu-
sivity in the regent patriciate. Everywhere regent circles became
increasingly closed to new entrants, and smaller circles of elites controlled
offices more tighdy.16 Ruling families were wedded to maintaining the
organization as an elite commons (Hardin 1977). As distributional coali-
tions, however, groups of patrimonial families also differ from Bowman's
capitalist cartels or Olson's modern nation-states. They undertake actions
on behalf of visions of family lines (as chapters 3 and 4 indicate with
respect to individual families) and are increasingly tied to one another as
participants in past, present, or fantasized future relationships. We can
expect a cartel constituted by such families-in-relationship to be capable
of drawing on deeper reservoirs of loyalty and trust than other, more elec-
tive and less affective groupings and to be bound by mutual identification
as well as the rhythms of repeated exchange. By the same token, however,
the bonds that motivate special effort on behalf of the group also impose
special limits on organizational flexibility and responsiveness. The elite
commons of patriarchal patrimonial privilege on which families jointly
depended was of a special sort. The successful resolution of the Dutch
dynasts' collective action problem had several effects. First, it froze the
form of the state, which remained local and familial. This form proved
resistant to the dramatic, persistent vacancies that ensued when the
declining birthrate of the regency decreased the numbers of men deemed
suitable for high office.17 Many regents found this situation disturbing,
15
See, for Amsterdam, the records of meetings in AGA #5059, 93.
16
See van Dijk and Roorda (1971, i979)> whose work is based on the data available in two
massive prosopographies: Elias (1963 [1903-1905]) and de Vos (1931). This tendency was
marked in rural areas, such as Friesland (Faber 1977) as well.
17
Prak (1985,189-90) discusses several explanations for die rising percentage of regents who
were childless in the eighteenth century. He rejects existing explanations for demographic
decline and calls for further investigation.
Dutch Decline 149
and their responses were often ingenious. In some towns, such as Hoorn
and Leiden, they resorted to the stopgap method of filling vacancies with
wealthy burghers who were married to regent daughters and who other-
wise would have had to be content with a less illustrious political position.
In other places, such as Gouda, the regents sought to recruit new mem-
bers from outside their city. Elsewhere the regents simply recognized and
codified the shrinkage. Haarlem cut its vroedschap members from 32 to 24
in 1718.18 The regents did not call for any significant change in the basic
criteria for being admitted to or exercizing power; they left intact the
basic principles underlying the family cartels. It is not surprising that indi-
vidual regent patriarchs wanted to retain their positions and in their now
symbolically traditional shape. But note that men were now soldered to
their spots by formalized collective pressure as well. In these forms of col-
lective contract (as we also see for France and England in chapter 6), the
exit of any one family head can threaten all others party to the corporate
agreement because the disposition of power, resources, and prestige that
the contracts offer are regulated by (and often only accessible through)
the group accord.
The expanded family regimes buttressed by the contracts were a force for
stability in several ways. First, diey reinforced and elaborated regent author-
ity in local arenas. The regents controlled tax rates and constituted,
appointed, and themselves filled the tax receiverships, the source of juicy
emoluments in the Netherlands, much as in France.19 The regents them-
selves were differentially subject to taxes depending on their base in differ-
ent corporate bodies with varying degrees of power in the Union; the
Amsterdam elite succeeded in preserving a relatively favored position for
decades, as Aalbers (1977) shows, against the sharp complaints of other
Holland towns. The city fathers, the burgomasters to be precise, also
awarded the badge of citizenship (poorterschap), which remained a local sta-
tus until the end of the Old Regime. And because of the local grounding of
18
See Kooijmans (1985, 86-91) for Hoorn, where the demographic crisis spanned the entire
decade 1711-21, and Prak (1985,191) for Leiden. For Gouda, see de Jong (1985). For Haarlem,
see de Jongste (1984, 69, 98-100); Haarlem's regent daughters married lower-status men,
but seats in the council were offered to their sons only (79-80).
19
The regents favored indirect taxes, such as customs and excise, which fell more lightly on
them and were easier to collect in the absence of a bureaucratic apparatus ('t Hart 1993).
The excise duties alone, which were farmed out by the provinces, more than quadrupled the
price of basic commodities; as a by-product they raised die price of Dutch wages and
exported goods, although not proportionately (Aalbers 1977, 85). Swart (1980 [1949]) points
to this factor as a cause of the Netherlands' delayed industrialization.
i5o T H E FAMILIAL STATE
the Dutch East Indies Company directorate, the regimes strengthened the
connections among the company leadership and the elite in other corporate
bodies. The contracts also erected barriers to supralocal rationalization and
bureaucratization in politics by codifying the steps taken by the family
regimes. In spite of the tentative moves toward bureaucratization that took
place in some local apparatuses (van Braam 1977), as Marjolein 't Hart indi-
cates in her study of the Dutch fisc, there were few such signs of formaliza-
tion or rationalization of areas of competence in the eighteenth-century
state (i99B, 195-210).
Finally, the family regimes ratified the shift in class character of privilege
holders from merchant capitalists to state rentiers. Town councils were
staffed by rentiers, not merchants: of the twenty-four new burgomasters in
Amsterdam during 1718-48, only two were active merchants (Elias 1963
[1903-1905], 238). These tendencies were replicated in the overlapping per-
sonnel of the VOC board of directors. In the Amsterdam chamber, of the
seventy-seven men who served as directors at some time between 1748 and
1795, at least fifty-five (71 percent) were mayors or served in some capacity in
the vroedschap. If aldermen (schepenen) are included, as they should be, the
figure rises to at least 82 percent. Twenty-three (30 percent) were merchants
or manufacturers, and thirty-eight (49 percent) had no recorded occupa-
tion and were thus almost certainly rentiers. At least fifty-two (68 percent)
owned a country seat. Although there were still proportionately more mer-
chants and manufacturers in the VOC directorship than in the Amsterdam
city council at large, the figure had dropped dramatically, and the same shift
was reflected in other company chambers.20
As it did then, the figure of active trader turned passive rentier and state
financier stands as a potent symbol of Dutch decline. That symbol is both
evocative and illusory, because it condenses several trends that may or may
not be causally related. Overall, centuries-long changes in the Dutch politi-
cal economy are rendered as a contrast between two elites: the merchant-
regents of die Golden Age and the rentier-regents of the Periwig Period.
No one seriously disputes the accuracy of the contrast. Whereas Amsterdam
20
In the small Rotterdam chamber, for example, the nine founders of the local chamber had
combined their East Indies activities with active trading in northern and southern Europe
and the West Indies. Until about 1675, the directorships were still in the hands of merchants.
By the eighteenth century, the directors had turned their attention from trade and business
toward the government. Sixty-seven percent of die directors were schepenen or vroedschap
members until 1630. From 1630 to 1675, the figure was 90 percent; after 1675, it was 95 per-
cent. The same trend held for the mayoralty': until 1630, 39 percent held die office; from
1630 to 1675, 68 percent; and after 1675, 72 percent (Kors 1988,13-14).
Dutch Decline 151
councilors and mayors had invested a negligible amount in state bonds in

1600, a century later they were placing one-half their wealth in bonds,
mainly issued on Holland's public debt (Burke 1974).21 Whereas the early
VOC directors had been thoroughly knowledgeable about the trade that
they were running, their eighteenth-century counterparts were increasingly
in the dark. These contrasts are often embedded in a judgmental narrative
about men who have forsaken their youthful commercial energies for lives
of bloated ease and dependency, eventually taking their country down with
them. Historians as well as popular moralists have condemned the so-called
"betrayal of the bourgeoisie" (veraad van bet burgerij), lumping all diese
elements together in a cautionary Buddenbrooks saga.
But the critical pendulum is now swinging in the other direction, and eval-
uations have become more positive (or at least more neutral), emphasizing it
was only in the 1740s, when the Dutch Republic was already in full retreat
from a great-power role, that the Amsterdam capital market gave rise to the
first international credit structure. This occurred in response to the vast
expansion of commerce during the Golden Age and the incessant European
wars, which had fed the appetites of capitalists and states for unprecedented
amounts of credit. As Riley (1980) has demonstrated, the Amsterdam capital
market channeled loans, largely from Dutch investors, to foreign govern-
ments, West Indian planters, and into English East India Company stock.
Both Klein (1967, 7-10) and Riley (1980, 25) argue that externally driven
shifts in the Dutch political economy prompted investors (including those
whom Riley calls "the greater bourgeoisie") to move monies out of Dutch
trade and manufacturing, sectors that offered diminishing returns, into gov-
ernment finance and other forms of proprietary wealth, which seemed to
promise stable or higher profits. Klein and others argue convincingly that
these decisions were in part a reaction to world economic reconfiguration.22
21
The regentJ of other towns for which information is available evinced similar characteris-
tics, with some variation according to the position of the town in the regional division of
labor. On the general shift of the regency from trade to rentier capitalism, see Roorda (1964)
and van Dijk and Roorda (1971).
22
By "a class vaguely labeled die greater bourgeoisie," Riley means "wholesale merchants,
insurance underwriters, bankers, large-scale manufacturers, and the wealthier members of
the commercial oligarchies dominating municipal and provincial government in the most
prosperous parts of the Republic" (1980, 61). He emphasizes that investors' calculations typ-
ically rested on "defective or piecemeal" information and that, because early modern firms
could only absorb a certain amount of capital, "even entrepreneurs were obliged to become
managers of proprietary wealth" (4-1, 63). Riley is noncommittal about causal ordering:
"Thus the Amsterdam market's shift toward government finance assisted the acquisition of
proprietary wealth" (63).
This revaluation is quite helpful, as tar as it goes. But the "betrayal of the
bourgeois" should also be read as the "loyalty of the patriarch"—loyalty to
one's family lineage and to one's collectively ratified, controlled, and, yes,
enforced role in the state. The regents of the Periwig Period were attracted
to lending—even when it paid the low rate of return that it did when loans
were made to the Dutch state—because it seemed to promise generations of
dependable yields. Accumulating lineage property and proprietary wealth
was regarded as less risky for family holdings and position and as more hon-
orable than entrepreneurship.
The enthusiasm of the Dutch elite for lineage property had several conse-
quences for Dutch decline. First, it channeled plenty of cold cash into
British coffers (see also chap. 6). Second, it made men less likely to invest in
domestic manufacturing. Scholars have argued that the pattern of elites'
investments is one likely reason for the Netherlands' delayed industrializa-
tion (in the latter part of the nineteenth century and thus far beyond the
bounds of this study).23 The third consequence, and the one I pursue here,
was the entrenchment of regent families in local and provincial state offices.
Corporate autonomy, and even competition and squabbling among com-
ponent parts, was not new to the Netherlands. Corporate units had gone
their own ways, at times collaborating, at times conflicting, throughout the
two hundred years of the Republic. As we have seen in chapter 2, town gov-
ernments routinely competed with one another to impose (by force, if nec-
essary) monopoly staple rights on their intersecting hinterlands, and the
chartered companies faced off over imports, determining the future shape
of the colonial empire.24 What had changed by the eighteenth century was
the now much less forgiving context of that conflict: the threat posed to the
influx of resources by European competitors and the empty treasury, a
legacy of the almost continuous European warfare from the 1680s to 1715.
2?
The domestic factors may also include a relative dearth of certain raw materials for indus-
try and comparatively high and rigid wages in urban areas. Two caveats are in order. First, in
order to evaluate die claim that the dependence on wind and peat, rather than on the coal
and iron that was used in eighteenth-century England and Sweden, made a difference in the
Netherlands' failure to industrialize, we need better data than are currently available on the
relative costs of importing raw materials such as coal. Second, wages in urban areas may have
been a problem, but this argument does not explain the lack of investment in the latter half
of the eighteenth century, when real wages dropped dramatically. See Mokyr (1975) regard-
ing these debates, which have not been resolved. Perhaps they never will be.
24
For more on interurban competition, see Noordegraaf (1992,12-27). Noordegraaf shows
that towns could cooperate with one another when it came to preventing preventing proto-
industrial development in the countryside.
Dutch Decline 153
As the pressures on resources mounted, they were amplified by the dis-

persed sovereignty of Dutch politics. Beleaguered corporate elites
responded by grasping their piece of the polity ever more closely. They
hoarded resources when they could. The landward provinces fell behind in
their tax quotas; at times they were decades in arrears. The seaward
province Holland withheld payments in a tit-for-tat move. Because formal
sovereignty resided at the provincial level, as 't Hart (1993) notes, there
was no mechanism for enforcing the collection of any province's back
taxes. Some corporate elites stepped up competition with one another in
ways that, however unintentionally, slashed available resources further.
Each of the five local admiralty committees scrambled to cut customs rates
and collaborated with merchants in evading them altogether, hoping to
draw commerce away from its counterparts. Estimates of evasions of the
customs range from 30 to 40 percent in Amsterdam and Rotterdam to
almost 80 percent in Zeeland; the rate of evasion appears to have risen as
well. Whereas the customs had garnered an average of 1.7 million guilders
a year in the seventeenth century, revenues fell to 1.5 million guilders a year
in the early eighteenth.25 Tax revenues were falling just as the expenses
imposed by wars were rising. As a direct result, the once-supreme Dutch
navy was underfinanced, undermanned, and underequipped; progressively
deskilled; and technologically stagnant (de Jonge 1858-1862).
Paying for the necessary armed force proved an intractable problem.
The seaward regents did not want to pay for the army, which was tradi-
tionally under the command of the stadholders and was sometimes
directed toward their dynastic aims. The landward regents did not want to
pay for the navy, which was largely under Holland's jurisdiction and seen
as beholden to Amsterdam's ruling families. And although regents of all
stripes criticized the inefficiency and expense of maintaining redundant
admiralty committees staffed and supervised by urban elites and their
provincial representatives and deplored the vicious cycles of infighting over
resources that that structure encouraged, nobody wanted to introduce
mechanisms to sanction corporate units that lagged in their payments or
refused to pay—much less to eliminate those intermediary bodies alto-
gether.26 The problem of funding the navy and army remained what
25
The customs figures come from Fritschy (1988, 35). The estimates of evasions of the cus-
toms derive from de Vries (1958) and Westermann (1948).
26
The customs are of most interest here because of their direct impact on naval readiness,
but note tiiat the excise [gemccnc middelen), the other important indirect tax, was subject to
similar problems during this period (Aalbers 1977)- See Marjolein 't Hart (1993, 205-6)
Bartsrra (1952) calls the "apple of discord" among localities and provinces
throughout the eighteenth century.
Wheels within wheels. As a body composed of political cartels (of fami-
lies) within cartels (of cities, incorporated rural enclaves, and corporate
spinoffs such as chartered companies) within a cartel (of provinces), the
Dutch state had a built-in tendency to devolve into its patrimonial parts,
with all their attendant collective action problems. The struggles within
the province of Holland over each corporate body's rightful share of pub-
lic finance immobilized the province for decades in the early eighteenth
century, preventing Amsterdam and thus Holland from asserting the tra-
ditional leadership role.27 At another level, the tendency of the seven sov-
ereign provinces to temporize in foreign policy interfered with wartime
political decisions (Veenendaal 1980, 19-27). The constitutional inability
to agree politically, plus the inherited insolvency of the Dutch treasury,
enforced a policy of neutrality—even of passivity—vis-a-vis the other
European powers. Whether or not this was the best policy at the time,
and I think not, although this is certainly debatable (see Carter 1975),
these fissile political dynamics foreclosed other options.
Crisis, Reforniy and the Limits of Dynastic Power
The regents' inertia in the face of such serious political problems and
military humiliations at first seems puzzling. Why couldn't (or would-
n't) they restructure the state, the one source of politico-economic
problems that was indubitably under their control? This is neither obvi-
ous nor an idle rhetorical question; it is at least prima facie possible that
they could have done so. The regents had the requisite political imagi-
nation and experience. Over time, the regencies had collectively
authored many creative solutions to problems of accumulation and rule,
and their organizational feats were preserved in collective memory. At
this crucial and ongoing junction, one might say they faced yet another
collective action problem greater than previous ones, but still suscepti-
ble of solution.
regarding costs and criticisms of the multiple admiralty system.

27
For more on that traditional leadership role and its ups and downs, see Wansink (1971)
and Japikse (1964)-
Dutch Decline 155
Several factors encouraged political immobility among the elite. First,

decline was understood by many contemporaries to be temporary, some-
thing that would be overcome when the good old days of the Dutch
Golden Age were magically restored. This pleasant illusion was substanti-
ated by the short-lived revival of the entrepot during the Seven Years War
(1756-63), when the Dutch were neutrals and briefly recaptured their
position as tertius, the happy middleman. A real response would also have
meant revamping the very terms on which the Dutch state had been
founded: the location of sovereignty in local and provincial corporate
bodies and the system of representation in which the regents were the
chief policy-making members. The terms of the Union of Utrecht were
failing, but the Union was the closest thing to a Dutch constitution. To
supersede it was a tall order, and one preliminary question was: With
what? Yet pressures for change were mounting. The old forms of politi-
cally constituted property and corporate-owned power no longer deliv-
ered as they had in the Golden Age, and the demands placed on the state
by foreign competition and military threat (including dynastic claims on
Dutch territory) were increasingly urgent. And as the regent family
regimes reacted by staking claims to economic resources, power, and
legitimacy, the extent of coordination among urban and provincial gov-
ernments, regents and stadholders declined further and the Dutch state
became even more vulnerable.
Some farsighted souls recognized the seriousness of the situation and
prescribed specific remedies. The noted reformer Simon van Slingelandt,
secretary to the Council of State and later Holland's Grand Pensionary
(1727-36), proposed that the regents loosen their collective familial grip
on offices and vest rights to policy making, taxation, and the adjudication
of urban and provincial differences in neutral third parties: central state
officials of the sort that had vet to be created. This recommendation for
bureaucratization sans democratization would still have meant that regent
family heads would have had to do away with salient local familial prerog-
atives and institutions. Yet their money was secured in them; and their
status, authority, and public identities tied to them, in part because these
institutions had been their fathers' and would also be their sons' and their
sons' sons'. The male heads of elite families had more than their own, or
even their families' or any wider groups' economic or political benefit in
view: they were also wedded to a vision of intergenerational patriarchal
patrimonial authority'. In the absence of some galvanizing revolutionary
afflatus, an individual or collective abnegation of privilege—a revolution
from above—was highly unlikely. Van Slingelandt's proposal was taken up

by the Grote Vergaderinjj of 1717 (the second constitutional convendon in
the history of the United Provinces), but the corporate representatives
could not agree on any significant changes. Van Slingelandt was prescient,
and he had read his Hobbes. He warned his regent colleagues that if they
did not take themselves in hand, a single strong sovereign might rise up
to put an end to their squabbling, and to their unchallenged control of
the state.28
These issues were most starkly posed for the governing elite by a mas-
sive national crisis. A French invasion threatened the Dutch borders in
1747 in a nightmarish replay of the Disaster Year of 1672. Pressure on the
leaders of the body politic—for quick decisions, mobilization of men and
resources, and a sense of common purpose—required a rapid response to
the crisis of political disintegration and state vulnerability. But which
response: the radical overthrow of patrimonial governance or the tradi-
tionalism of an alternative familial solution? Both possibilities were explic-
itly canvassed by the popular insurgencies that sprung up amid looming
chaos. Some insurgents urged that the stadholder be reinstalled. The
obvious candidate, yet another Willem of Orange, was married to a
daughter of England's King George II and would thus be a doubly dynas-
tically sanctioned symbol of state-led unity. But more daring demands
were also raised. Reform movements in Holland and the south, such as
that of Rotterdam, insisted that office sales be opened to a wider public,
with proceeds going not to regent families but to a truly public purse.
Rebels in the northern provinces wanted to eliminate the regents' venal
prerogatives altogether (Groot Placaet-Boeck 1638-1796, 7:106-8, 828-29;
Swart 1980 [i949], 77-78). Oppositional pamphlets circulated in defense
of popular sovereignty, demanding fundamental changes in principles of
representation (de Jongste 1992, 57). These organized pressures against
the elite emerged from the middling burgher stratum as well as from what
the elite contemptuously called "the rabble" (hetgmuw). They mounted
institutional and ideological challenges to the peculiarly patrimonial com-
bination of corporate fiscality and government by the privileged.
28
This is van Slingelandt's (1785) analysis. See also Schutte (1988, 276-79) and Veenendaal
(1980, 28). The sole change in the early-eighteenth-century system of public finance
stemmed from a particularistic deal involving Amsterdam and the VOC-by no stretch of the
imagination a move toward general administrative or government reform (Furber 1976,
218-22).
Dutch Decline 157
The European articulation of powerful elite patrilineages, bilateral kin-

ship, barriers to family endogamy, and sharply defined ideologies of gen-
der difference encouraged specific familial solutions to state vulnerability.
We have seen early modern elite men restore ruling lineages, replace one
ruling lineage with another, widen the definition of lineal eligibility, vest
power temporarily in a female relative of the ruling family who would
govern as a surrogate for a male heir, and design interfamily pacts regulat-
ing control of politico-economic privilege. In the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury, the regents were once again able to fall back on the repertoire of
familial institutional solutions. The stadholderate was restored and
Willem IV of Orange -Nassau got the nod, just as his predecessor Willem
III had in the Disaster Year of 1672 (de Jongste 1992). Some of the regents
resisted the restoration, to be sure, but it enabled them to coopt irre-
sistible political pressures from below while unifying the polity against
attempted invasion. The French were driven back by an Anglo-Dutch
alliance, peace was concluded in 1748, and the internal revolts were
stymied or crushed. The regents paid a price for their victory: they had to
bring to an end their long domestic hegemony in the "Second
Stadholderless Period" (1702-47) by agreeing to amalgamate the provin-
cial stadholderates into a single hereditary position and solder the bond
between the office and the House of Orange. In spite of its name, there-
fore, the Dutch Republic of the eighteenth century was no more a simple
republic of rentier families and "little local absolutists" (Schutte 1988)
than it had been the doughty merchant republic of Golden Age hagiogra-
phy. The myth of Orange continued to resonate in a basically monarchical
vision, in spite of the ongoing family history of untimely death, barren
marriage, posthumous children, and extended minorities to which the
regents had owed their second spell of undisturbed supremacy in the
state.29
There were some, especially among the advisors of Willem V, who
thought that the strengthened stadholder should model himself more
closely on the Bourbon kings of France (Rowen 1988, 201). The repeated
dynastic and political connections between the Houses of Orange and
Stuart, and then Orange and Hanover, had invested these absolutist
ambitions with more credibility as thev had enhanced the international
29
To the delight of some and the fury of others, the persistent notion of a special bond
among the princes of Orange, the stadholderate, and the emerging Dutch nation was a basi-
cally monarchical vision. The stadholders had long been alternately celebrated and derided
by influential pamphleteers as monarchs in disguise (de la Court 1972 [1662]).
prestige of the Dutch ruling house. But most elite opinion makers
thought otherwise. They proclaimed the limited monarchy of England
the more appropriate inspiration, harkening back to the founding
moment of the Glorious Revolution and the symbolic figure of Willem
III, simultaneously prince of Orange and king of England. These limita-
tions were of course still very expansive—recall the ongoing proprietary
sovereignty of the English crown and chartered companies over impor-
tant matters of state. 30 The English constitutional vision was publicly
endorsed by the last two stadholders Willem IV and V, as well as by the
regents, signaling an ideological rapprochement within the Dutch elite
and a break with the strict Dutch pact among the seven provinces.
The strengthened stadholderate therefore had some impact on the
mechanics of governance, but not much. True, Willem IV paved the way
for supporters to break into government circles, whether they were
regents outside the established family cartels (as in Haarlem in 1747) or
merchants who criticized the government's failure to take commercial
concerns seriously (as in Amsterdam in 1748).3l Traces of this policy
appear in disruptions in the trend toward rentiership, which was not
monotonic. Table 1, focusing on the all-important Amsterdam city coun-
cil, shows that, just as in 1672-1702, there was a partial rollback in 1748-95
in the percentage of rentiers and owners of country seats. But these over
turnings (omwentelinjjen), as they were called at the time, were the famil-
iar cyclical alterations rather than revolutionary cataclysms. The
Amsterdam regency reached an accommodation with Willem even before
his early death in 1752, and the Haarlem upstarts, resistant to shifts in
power in a more absolutist direction, were rapidly incorporated into a
renewed regent contract of correspondence. By the time that Willem V
accepted the position of upper director (opperbewindbebbcr) of the VOC,
the symbolic recognition of Orangist sovereignty and power-sharing
arrangement that would have worried regents in the VOC directorate
30
That Willem III had belonged to more than one polity as a dynastic ruler—Willem was
first noble of Zeeland, stadholder to five Dutch provinces, and sometime claimant to the
dukedom of the province of Gelderland (still partly under Spanish control), as well as prince
of Orange and king of England!—and had therefore infused the core of patrimonial politics
with troublesome instabilities was played down.
31
Willem IV was responding directly to the disgruntled pleas of active merchants when he
appointed several of them to the Amsterdam vroedscbap. Twelve of the seventeen new mem-
bers of the council came from mercantile families that had never sat in that body (van Dijk
and Roorda 1971, 326). Willem IV's ascendancy also offered younger regents in Haarlem an
irresistible opportunity in 1747. Tired of waiting for high office and sure of the stadholder^
support, they pushed out their established elders (de Jongste 1985,177-81).
Dutch Decline 159
Characteristics of Amsterdam Vroedschap Members
N o occupation (%) Country seat (%)

1618-1650 33 10
1650-1672 66 41
1672-1702 55 30
1702-1748 73 81
1748-1795 60 60
Source: Based on Burke (1974,106) and Elias (1963 [1903-1905], 778-1030).
during the Golden Age was no longer considered a significant threat to

company operations. The revived dynastic stadholderate posed no threat
to the patrimonial monopolies that controlled important avenues of com-
merce and colonial power.
Witness the fate of Willem IV's "Proposition for a Limited Free Port,"
instigated by a close advisor and laid before the States-General and Holland
States in 1751.32 The proposal initially embraced a plan for bureaucratizing
the state as well as for reviving the entrepot; it sought to make the
Netherlands a free-trade zone modeled on Hamburg, then enjoying a ren-
aissance. It included a plan for the first national Council of Commerce, par-
alleling the English Board of Trade founded in 1696. This last change alone
would have had enormous symbolic if not practical weight because it
undermined the local estatist control at the heart of the Dutch political
economy. The proposed reform met broad resistance among the elite, even
after Amsterdam's regents had watered it down by purging the radically
centralizing elements. Even the watered-down version drew objections
offered in defense of virtually every important corporate enclave in which
the regents were anchored.33 Local regencies fought hard to retain their
particular Admiralty Board or VOC chamber, and those in areas without
chambers sought to gain seats rather than to restructure or eliminate the
chartered companies. In the end, the initiative was stillborn. Had Willem V
wanted to use his expanded dynastic powers to make more fundamental
changes in governance, all other things being equal, it seems unlikely that
32
See Hovy (1966) for an exhaustive account of the fate of the Proposition.
33
The Amsterdam regents, who wanted to keep duties low and transit trade as free as possi-
ble, also blocked reforms containing protective tariffs for domestic manufacture in the 1720s
and 1750s (Hovy 1966, 238-365). The urban regencies consistently ignored manufacturers*
criticisms of existing guild regulations, opting to protect traditional urban production, cre-
ate archaic and more easily manipulable guild structures, and uphold legislation against rural
proto-industry. See Swart (1980 [1949L 45) and Posthumus (1908-1939)-
he cculd have done so. In general, the institutional location of elite deci-
sion making power—its federal familial character—raised serious obstacles
to antagonistic change from above.
Hegemony^ Decliney and the

Breakdown of the Familial State
As is well known—at least in the Netherlands!—the Dutch patrimonial

system came to a mad, bad, and dangerously explosive end. The catalogue
of cataclysm included failed revolution at home, definitive destruction of
any remaining pretenses to commercial/colonial hegemony at the hands
of the English, and the invasion of the Netherlands by Revolutionary
France. The "funeral rites of Dutch power" coincided with the revolu-
tionary reemergence of France, observes Simon Schama (1977, 2), and
with the definitive ascendancy of English commercial/colonial power.
The salient events and processes can be dated: 1780-1784, the Fourth
Anglo-Dutch War; 1782-87, the Patriot Revolution; 1795 and 1798, the
French invasion and subsequent French-sponsored coup d'etat, and 1783
and 1806, the end of the VOC's spice monopoly and formal demise of the
company as a sovereign profit-oriented enterprise, respectively. These
events and processes were both causally connected and linked in the man-
ner of clues or symptoms, in my view, revealing the fissures in the Dutch
patriarchal patrimonial system. It is in the latter sense that they are most
relevant here, given my focus on the patriarchal familial strand in state
formation and disintegration and its relationship to the Netherlands'
hegemonic position in the global political economy.
The beginning of the end for the Dutch governing elite and the patri-
monial institutions that gave it life was the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. The
perceived failure of the Dutch to compete militarily undermined the
elite's domestic legitimacy, recalling Theda Skocpol's (1979) argument
that such delegitimation was a precondition for crisis in Old Regime
states. The domestic authority of the Dutch rulers did suffer during the
Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, which they were seen to badly bungle (te
Brake 1989, 40-43). Popular perceptions of military failure were also
linked to wider cultural understandings of normative political authority,
and for the Dutch this was a double whammy. Because state institutions
in the Netherlands were mobilized around the symbolism of ruling
fatherhood, and because offices and privileges were structurally secured
Dutch Decline 161
to elite patrilineages, opposition to (and defense of) patriarchal political

authority was elaborated and resisted on that basis. Furthermore, the
losses of the war (including the VOC's famous spice monopoly, the cyno-
sure of the global commercial/colonial system, surrendered in 1783) were
interpreted as particularly damaging for the Netherlands, including the
House of Orange, two figures intertwined in a presentation of national
identity based on a providentially sanctioned role.
The revolutionary situation stemmed from the ways that the regents had
resolved their collective action problems, particularly by having developed
and institutionalized local dynastic distributional coalitions for state privi-
lege, and the role of segmented corporate political organization more gen-
erally. When elite family heads staked out sovereign local and, at most,
provincial, bodies as their own turf and implanted themselves there, they
raised the barriers to state building and national policy formation.
Furthermore, because the repertoire of familial roles was strictly limited,
and the incumbents and acceptable idioms of rule rigidly circumscribed,
policies were relatively inflexible with respect to capital accumulation and
taxation—particularly from the perspective of the rising merchant and man-
ufacturing capitalists who were not tied to traditional corporate bodies. So
the family practices and gender ideologies that had sealed the rise of the
Netherlands and made possible the accumulation and strengthening of pat-
rimonial privilege and position, in turn contributed to political immobility
and decline, to the character of revolutionary ideology, and to the persist-
ently local form of the revolution and subsequent political reaction.
The regents' and stadholders' institutional grip was also tightening just as
the traditional legitimating political symbolism of heredity, birth, and blood
was being challenged by Enlightenment and popular attitudes thematizing
merit, utility, and reason.34 Also at issue for the developing bourgeois and
popular opposition was the regents' and the stadholders' having made for-
mal their intergenerational proprietary claims to political privilege. This
evoked complementary forms of complaint and resistance directed at the
authority of entrenched patrimonial elites. The disaffected rallied in a series
of municipal revolts, leveling charges of nepotism and regent dynastic
decay; they condemned family government, including the contracts of cor-
respondence, on behalf of that bold new category, Het Volk ("The
People"). New and independent actors unanchored in corporate privilege
called loudly for novel forms of political power divested of archaic obliga-
34
See the essays on the Dutch Enlightenment in Jacob and Mijnhardt (1992).
tions. Some strands of the movement criticized general pretensions to patri-

archal authority and celebrated the virtues of fi-aternal government and
popular, or at least burgher, sovereignty.35 This was not the only cause of
revolution or even of the collapse of the elite's hegemonic project, but it
was an important dimension. The Pattiot Revolution was a pendant on the
chain of consequences inaugurated by the formation of the patriarchal pat-
rimonial state centuries earlier.
The narrative of those formative years was a live issue for the Dutch on
both sides of the fray. Baron van der Capellen's "Aan het Volk van
Nederland" (To the People of the Netherlands), the most influential rev-
olutionary tract of all, indicted the Stadholder and the House of Orange
as "the principal enemy of freedom" and the regents "a subsidiary entity"
in a now two-centuries-long oppression (Israel 1995, 1099). For Van der
Capellen (1781), the actions against popular militias taken by Willem I the
Silent and the regents were to blame for strangling the republican vision
at birth. So was the 1581 edict by the States of Holland suppressing links
between the town councils, on the one hand, and the popular militias and
guilds, on the other. "Perhaps more importantly, however," as Wayne te
Brake writes of Van der Capellen's extraordinarily influential text, "he
offered his readers a plan of action that was designed to reduce the over-
arching influence of the Prince and his 'fawning lot of grandees'" (te
Brake 1989, 42). Although the regents were not condemned quite as
roundly as Willem V, the prince of Orange and the regents were basically
bundled together, as an ensemble, and as such they responded.
During the multiple revolutionary situations that punctuated the cen-
tury's last decades, culminating in the failed Patriot Revolution, Willem V
worked with the regents to squelch the stirrings of democracy in munici-
pal settings and to put a stop to attempts to eliminate the regents'
remaining prerogatives. The Dutch regent elite had continued to batten
on state-sanctioned corporate bodies as the key mechanisms for securing,
maintaining, and extending their families' status, power, and wealth. They
embraced their pieces of the polity ever more closely in the eighteenth
century, first authoring the familial contracts of correspondence and
then—however unwillingly—installing a unitary dynastic stadholderate to
shore up the edifice of patrimonial rule. In the last instance, in the time of
35
Regarding the accusations of nepotism, see Palmer (1559-1964, 364-70). Van Sas (1992
[1784-1786], 91-120) discusses the condemnation of the contracts of correspondence and
familial government. See also Schama (1977, chap. 3) and de Wit (1654,15). For a discussion
of the role of women in the Dutch upheavals, see te Brake, Dekker, and van de Pol (1990).
Dutch Decline 163
decline as well as in the Golden Age heyday> the patrimonial princes and
elites needed one another. Centuries afterward, Vilfredo Pareto sourly
remarked of declining elites that as they make the yoke heavier they have
less strength to maintain it (Pareto 1991, 59). It took the help of Prussian
mercenaries, paid for with £90,000 borrowed from the English state, but
together the stadholder and regents suppressed the revolts in 1787 and
thus the indigenous basis of the Patriot Revolution.36
Ironies abound. First, some of the professed goals of the would-be
Dutch revolutionaries were imposed on the Netherlands by France after
the debilitated Dutch state fell to a French invasion of 1795 and the rem-
nants of the United Provinces were dismantled following a French-spon-
sored coup-d'etat in 1798. Thus the Dutch Revolution of 1795 actually did
result in the consolidation of a newly integrated, bureaucratized state, but
it was a state that was metaphorically stamped "made in France." Second,
the Dutch East Indies Company did get incorporated into the state as a
modern sovereign political body (van Eyck van Heslinga 1988), but only
after 1806 and the French invasion—and because the rise of England had
dramatically downgraded the Netherlands' position of dominant world
commercial-colonial power. During the period of occupation, until the
French were ejected from the Netherlands in 1813, the English had taken
over most Dutch overseas possessions. The English eventually handed
back to the Dutch East Indies Company some of its holdings. But the
VOC that remained was a qualitatively new organizational entity. It was
not a patrimonial corporation, and its glory days were over.
36
See the excellent articles on the Dutch Patriot Revolution by Wayne te Brake and Nicolaas
van Sas in Jacob and Mijnhardt (1992). Kossmann (1971) is a helpful source on subsequent
political developments, with specific reference to the dialectic of federalism and unitarism in
the Dutch state.
6
France, England, and the

Enigmatic Eighteenth Century
T he expansiveness of the Dutch Golden Age created a context in which

rulers and overseas merchant capitalists throughout Europe were lured
by new opportunities and confronted new dangers. On one side lay the tan-
talizing fruits of internationalizing trade at a level never before seen in
Europe, heaped atop more traditional concerns with territorial gain. On the
other side was the correlate, war, inevitable in an age of uncertain and com-
petitive interstate and intercorporate relations. The wrenching wars of the
League of Augsburg (1689-97) and Spanish Succession (1701-13/15) that
inaugurated Europe's bellicose eighteenth century strained the financial
and political capacities of all states involved. The Dutch had developed
novel ways of marrying economic dominance in Europe with forced accu-
mulation abroad. Now their commercial and colonial innovations, and the
state that sought to advance them, could be copied, tinkered with, com-
bated, and transcended; they were prey to what Alexander Gerschcnkron
(1962) calls the late developer's advantage.
Corporate bodies such as the sovereign merchant companies could be
crucial players in the triangular dynamic of primitive accumulation, war,
and state formation. Recall that corporations were also instrumentalized
by rulers desperate for resources, sometimes to the extent that companies
were gutted, killing the state's own progeny (as in seventeenth-century
France), and at other times in ways that enabled them to survive and
thrive, as in the Dutch Golden Age when the VOC amassed enormous
resources and exercised sovereign control over extended trading networks
and territories. When they did well, patrimonial corporations became rel-
atively autonomous actors. They were potential sites of innovation in
their home states as well as abroad, but also arenas of elite entrenchment
164
The Enigmatic Eighteenth Century 165
and reaction. Their activities could create international openings and by

the same token threaten the integrity of metropolitan politico-economic
systems. In the Netherlands, as we have seen, such challenges proved too
daunting and ultimately contributed to decline and the erosion of state
power in the eighteenth century. Similar challenges arose in England,
which not only weathered them but became the next hegemonic power—
the English elite confronted a similar crisis, with analogous roots, but the
outcome was different.
Why so? This chapter tackles this question by exploring the dimension
of macrosocial life foregrounded throughout the book: the family
monopolies of political privilege, especially those that shaped and were
shaped by overseas trade, in this era inevitably linked to military capacity.
That family principles were part and parcel of relations among the
crowned heads of Europe is clear, and one theme is the resilient role of
royal dynasticism in overseas projects and the positions from which oppo-
nents bitterly contested it. But family had a broader sociological role, or
so I have contended. Coalitions of elite patriarchs came to occupy and
identify with sites of intergenerational political privilege in the
Netherlands, France, and England, collectively and consciously taking in
hand parts of state apparatuses and their colonial projections. This family
grab rebounded on metropolitan development. In the Dutch case, it
helped entrench a kind of fractious localism, ultimately undercutting the
capacity of the Dutch elite to discipline the workings of the colonial
machine without rationalizing away their own prized position at the con-
trols. This chapter charts the collective responses of the state elites in
France and England, and their starkly contrasting upshots, in the face of
similar institutional opportunities and conundrums.
In general, family mechanisms of rule with great staying power played a
cardinal role in forming states and commercial/colonial projects, which
then, in turn, shaped elite patrimonial monopolies. The changing prac-
tices and publicly articulated dynastic principles of male elites were impli-
cated in their investments in male-defined lineages, in their links with
specific class practices and especially forms of property in politics, and in
relationships with monarchs and crypto-monarchs such as the Dutch
stadholders. Observing Dutch dynamics suggests that the relative rigidity
of these mechanisms could make it harder for elites to hang on to desir-
able niches in the changing global political economy. But was that always
the case, and if not, why not? For E. P. Thompson, England's eighteenth
century was "enigmatic"; John Kenyon called it "mysterious" because of
the conjunction of what he took to be social sclerosis at home and

enhanced power abroad. They are right—there is an enigma to be unrav-
eled. For comparative insights, this chapter first looks to the organization of
patrimonial rule and especially to the nodal relationship among rulers, com-
mercial companies, and merchant capitalists in eighteenth-century England
and France, whose rulers were laying claim to the position that the Dutch
had created but could no longer sustain. The final section of the chapter
examines how these competing projects of empire building became increas-
ingly significant for elite patrimonial monopolies at home, fundamentally
challenging familial state structures. These interconnected crises of empire
and patriarchal authority roiled the early modern world. The specific form
of family embeddedness in state, property, and patrimonial companies
allowed in England what was for the elite a happy resolution of the crisis—
one that proved impossible in the Netherlands or France.
The French Patrimonial Package
System or Anti-System? Law's Company and the French State

Prospects looked bleak for France's overseas commercial and colonial ambi-
tions at the outset of the eighteenth century. In the wake of the ruinously
expensive War of Spanish Succession and the death of Louis XIV, the
Compagnie des Indes Orientales was commercially and militarily defunct.
What a contrast with the active Dutch East Indies Company, a sovereign
trading body that was strong enough to refuse independent merchants the
right to operate in Asia until the 1740s! The embattled French company fell
into the hands of one of the crown's largest financiers, the renowned
Antoine Crozat, who assumed the rights of the organization in 1712 in
exchange for a 10 percent cut of its net income (Dermigny 1970, 463).
Crozat, Samuel Bernard, the Paris Brothers, and other major financiers held
85 percent of the value of farms on indirect taxes, the source of the bulk of
die crown's 204 million livres in annual revenue in the 1720s (Dessert 1984,
210-36). The Compagnie des Indes retained the right to grant independent
merchants trading permits, for a fee. It survived as a mechanism by which
the crown's patrimonial dependents squeezed out rent.
Commercial/colonial enterprise continued to be constrained by the
crown and state elite; these had a history of treating merchants as competi-
tors of company formation rather than as an organic part of mercantilist
projects, as in the Netherlands and England. Nor did merchants have a

berth in the patrimonial state. But precisely because of its estrangement
from vested interests, commerce became one of the crown's best hopes for
escape from the constraints imposed by its own patrimonial group. The
crown had emerged from the war and into the regency of Louis XV
freighted with a huge debt of 600 million livres, mortgaged to its depend-
ents, unable to pay up, and desperate for solutions. Tactic number one
involved deeper patrimonialization. The crown converted existing corpora-
tions such as provincial Estates, city governments, and the Hotel de Ville de
Paris into revenue farms, as well as selling thousands of new offices in the
guilds, judiciary, and state administration. These offices carried the usual fis-
cal exemptions, monopolies over production or distribution, noble titles, or
other patrimonial prerogatives (Bossenga 1987,117-18). They also continued
to lure takers because they promised their families an intergenerational ele-
vation of status, frequently tied to those future prerogatives, as chapter 4
shows. Once committed, the elite tenants of these corporate bodies could
then be compelled to advance loans to the crown, although the bitter pill
was sweetened because they were often awarded commissions and interest
(Lachmann and Adams 1988,157-58; Matthews 1958, 81). In the early eigh-
teenth century, as David Bien (1987, 93) shows, the crown was still adding
to the numbers of corporate revenue farmers and lower-level venal officers.
Tactic number two was contradictory and raised a forthright challenge
to the ascendancy of venal interests over the state. This involved the
expansion of central state bureaucracies, including the secretariat of for-
eign affairs and, even more radically, a direct attempt to bypass venal
finance.1 The crown secured a "hired gun," a Scottish financier named
John Law, and Law and the regent tried to sever patrimonial officers' and
revenue farmers' investments in their privileges from their control over
revenue sources and to convert their holdings into public debt. If this
ploy had worked, it would have helped the crown dig itself out without
amassing more semiprivate debt and preserved it from creeping intergen-
erational colonization by venal and quasi-venal office-holding families.
The ambitious scheme failed, but is no less important for that. Its failure
was, first of all, symptomatic—it reveals the familial state structure and
corresponding limits to development. Law's System and the Anti-System
1
See Rule (1976) regarding the secretariat, first forwarded by a minister of Louis XIV, com-
posed of offices {bureaux) staffed by protocivil servants rather than crown commissioners,
several dozen foreign embassies, and eight hierarchically organized categories of functionary.
i68 T H E FAMILIAL STATE
rigged up in response also had their own impact on patrimonial state for-
mation in France.
The key to the scheme was the Compagnie des Indes, in yet another
dizzying incarnation. Law's remodeled company, founded in 1719, united
the inactive Compagnie des Indes Orientales and the more recent
Compagnie d'Occident (dating from 1717).2 In addition to merging the
colonial monopolies, the vast new organization was to be responsible for
the tax collection and coinage of the realm and for reimbursing the crip-
pling state debt. At its peak, the company embraced various eastern colo-
nial initiatives, the rights to all trade in Louisiana and Canada, control
over Paris rentes, and the first effort in France at a public bank (Giraud
1961; Harsin 1970, 227-28). "What I have been calling a Bank up to now
should be seen as a company like those famous companies that we see
flourishing in England and Holland, but with this difference," Law
remarked, stressing the gigantism of the enterprise, "that this bank or
company will have no other frontier for its commerce than that of the
commerce of France, all of which will be in its hands" (Girard 1908, 12
[my translation]). This wildly ambitious initiative infused France's milita-
rized colonial trade with new energy. The company sent ships bearing
over 6,700,000 livres to buy Indian goods in 1720 and established a
Bengal entrepot in Pondichery. It developed far-reaching projects to
expand trade in pepper and to colonize Mauritius (Furber 1976, 136-37).
But Law also opened colonial commerce to wider participation by inde-
pendent traders in collaboration with the company, for example, in the
tobacco and beaver trades. This was a clear break with the state's previous
mercantile projects, which had typically envisioned overseas merchants as
competitors to be eliminated by the crown. Also prospering under the
new order were slave merchants exploiting the West Indies, such as those
based in the city of Nantes (Bertin 1962, 471; Martin 1924, 9-12;
1926-1927,435-46). When it came to combining commerce and coercion,
Law's System was no prettier than any of its patrimonial predecessors in
France. It merely appeared to be more successful—at least for a time. As
Richard Lachmann and I (1988) have argued, it was also a pyramid
scheme that would have eventually collapsed under its own weight.
Before it reached that point, however, Law's System awakened the hos-
tility of the elites whose organizational turf it threatened. Crown finan-
ciers, such as the Paris Brothers, who had been strongly linked with the
2
See Giraud (1961) for an account of the operations of the Compagnie d'Occident.
regime in the waning days of Louis XIV, authored an Anti-System, a

canny attempt to topple Law that offered the public shares in a tax farm
and then tried to bankrupt Law's company bank by presenting the notes
they had collected for conversion into gold.3 But the coup de grace was
administered by corporate revenue farmers and venal officers. Law's
attempt to reimburse and eliminate many offices blocking the expansion
of trade damned the System in the eyes of provincial aspirants to privilege,
and company revenues seemed inadequate to support the remaining offi-
cials (Matthews 1958,69; Weber 1904,315-18). Shares plunged, the System
crashed in 1720-21, and John Law fled the country.
The company was reorganized in 1723 and 1729-31 and was confirmed
as a traditional royal revenue farm, jointly administered by a series of gen-
eral controllers and ministers of the marine. It received from the crown
the revenues from the rights to the western domain and the Louisiana
tobacco farm, which were promptly subleased, again at the behest of the
crown, to sixty members of the resurgent and consolidated state elite who
styled themselves the Company of General Farmers. The Compagnie des
Indes had once again become a colonial corporation whose profits mainly
derived from reinvesting its capital in noncolonial outlets (Boulle 1981,
113). It was an intermediary corporate form by which rentiers extracted
resources from other ventures. 4
This may not have been the optimal path to commercial development
or colonial exploitation, but this state of affairs was not necessarily an
insuperable obstacle. What mattered was whether metropolitan rulers and
their patrimonial dependents left independent merchants and, through
them, producers the resources to reproduce themselves and expand and
whether they backed them up militarily and accorded them legitimacy on
their home European ground. The first of these conditions was met, at
least for a time, but the other two were not.
The Law interlude had important unintended consequences. First, it
unshackled foreign and especially colonial trade. The average annual value
of foreign trade virtually quintupled from 215 million livres in 1716-20 to
1,062 million in 1784-88. This was a startling leap forward, even after the
60 percent inflation from 1730-80 is taken into account. In 1716-20, the
3
They were initially unsuccessful. The crown supported Law by debasing the gold content
of specie while maintaining the value of the notes. See Girard (1908, 18-19); Luthy (i960,
298-303).
4
See especially Charliat (1931, 69-71); Dermigny (1970, 465-66); Girard (1908, 27-31,
177-97); Luthy (i960, 861-62); Price (1973, r.288,362-63).
value of French foreign trade was about one-half of England's; just before
the Revolution it had reached almost the same level (Butel 1990,162-63).
France had become the largest supplier of manufactured goods for Spain
and its American empire and dominated the Levant and Italian markets.
Signs of relative underdevelopment remained. Reexports were largely
controlled by foreign merchants resident in France and were almost
entirely carried in foreign ships. In 1713-80, for example, an average often
French ships a year were registered eastbound on the sound, whereas the
Dutch averaged eight hundred a year and the British over five hundred
during the same period (Bamford 1954, 207).
But overall, it was a miraculous result. The leading sector was colonial
trade, which grew twice as fast as other international trade in the eigh-
teenth century. While exports of French products tripled, colonial reex-
ports rose eightfold (Butel 1990, 163). Most of the increased traffic was
due to the links between merchant communities of the Atlantic ports and
the major colonies of Saint Domingue (Haiti), Martinique, Guadeloup,
and Guiana. Bordeaux, which dealt in slaves, sugar, indigo, and coffee,
registered imports of 163 million livres in 1771, up from 9 million in
1724-35, accounting for some 25-30 percent of the external trade of
France as a whole (Charpentier 1937, 33-36). Nantes was the major base
for the infamous slave trade that surged after Law's System opened up the
monopoly.5 Relative to the West Indies, the East Indies trade was a less
important component of the economy than it was in the Netherlands—a
result of the competitive disadvantage bequeathed by prior French
Pacific-company projects. After the post-Law era reconstruction, how-
ever, the Compagnie des Indes was commercially active as a state enter-
prise, although on a smaller scale than the Dutch company.6
The Law disaster also gave the patrimonial state a new lease on life. The
crash wiped out most of the state debt, which was held in company
shares, but simultaneously discredited the concept and institution of pub-
lic banking, contributing to the serious shortfall of credit in later years
leading up to the Revolution. As a consequence, the state was unable to
take the Dutch or English route toward public finance. The fate of the
5
Slave traders were delivering about 35,000 slaves annually by 1783-92, and merchants were
investing about 30 million livres a year in the slave trade after the American War of
Independence; see Stein (1979; 1983, 114). The slave trade did not encounter significant
opposition in France until 1788.
6
It sent thirty (or fewer) ships a year, and 26 (or fewer) returned. Trade averaged 8,200,000
francs a year from 1725 to 1769 (Garnault 1899, 6; Weber 1904, 513-47).
System also stood as a warning to would-be reformers: it underlined the

ferocious opposition of the patrimonial elite, based in officers' possession
of, desire for, and belief in their entitlement to investments in state privi-
lege and corporate prerogatives. In this manner, the limits inscribed in the
eighteenth-century French state paralleled those of the Dutch. Only
when existing intergenerational pockets of privilege were respected and
preserved, or somehow circumvented, would rulers or rebels make head-
way in rationalizing the political economy or reconstructing the architec-
ture of the state. This proved to be as significant an obstacle in the path of
political change as it was in the Netherlands.
The Syndication of Trench Tamily Property in Privilege

To other monarchs, the position of the Bourbon rulers in the eighteenth
century might have seemed an enviable one. The French crown had subordi-
nated the national estates, which had met in 1614 for the last time before the
Revolution. The crown was the fount of material control over vast reserves
of hereditable resource -bearing political privilege and the source of newly
minted (but ostensibly traditional) status markers of social mobility and insti-
tutionalized privilege. Furthermore, those impressive powers were organized
around an unparalleled political theater, the court at Versailles, a brilliant site
for die display of symbols of hierarchical royal authority. Throughout the
eighteenth century, the Bourbon kings continued to lay claim to a superor-
dinate, divinely justified social fatherhood and, as feminist theorists and his-
torians of gender have shown, their claims were part and parcel of the
prevailing language of political legitimation (see, for example, Maza 1993). In
fact, Sarah Hanley (1994, 122-24) argues, monarchical political discourse
became more patriarchal over time; even as new rhetorics of fatherhood cel-
ebrated the benevolent paterfamilias as against the severe ruler of yore, kings
and their ideologists sought to highlight the authoritative relationship
between father and child rather than husband and wife as the template for
the bond between ruler and subject.7 The Bourbons were political patri-
archs, strongly positioned as symbols and centralizing sources of family priv-
ilege and patronage. But although scholars and contemporaries often assume
that the Bourbons were the absolutist rulers par excellence, holding the elite
7
For the advent of new rhetorics of political fatherhood, see Hunt (1992, chap. 2).
Parlementary elites thus made novel pleas to Louis XV's affectionate "paternal solicitude"
alongside dieir more threatening insistence that "filial respect" should be seen as compatible
with their holding independent political views (Merrick 1990a; 1990b, 68-84).
as well as the populace hostage to their designs (while the eighteenth-cen-

tury English kings were held hostage by the landed magnates as an implicit
condition of dynastic support), bodi Louis XV and Louis XVI also came up
against the limits of patriarchal absolutism. The relations, increasingly con-
scious and codified, that representatives of elite families developed among
themselves constrained the French kings as well. Dutch political develop-
ments, embodied in the contracts of correspondence, are a good pointer
toward what we might look for in the French situation.
By virtue of its very capacities, the French crown was able to pursue
what Gail Bossenga has nicely termed the "extended patrimonialization"
of the state, whereby "bundles of privilege, status and governmental func-
tions were, for all practical purposes, owned by the elite" (1997, 31). This
long-standing tendency dispersed as well as extended state power; it
enabled the elite to secure an intergenerational family foothold in corpo-
rate privilege by buying into diverse sites and apparatuses.8 In the eigh-
teenth century, the privileged codified sturdier familial-organizational ties
among themselves. The royal secretaries (who were not actually secre-
taries, you will recall, but holders of sinecures purchased as part of family
strategies of ennoblement) banded together and established a corporation
to cope with the crown's pressure for funds in the 1720s and protect
themselves from the monarch's unpredictable depredations (Bien 1978).
The Company of General Farmers (CGF) syndicated itself in 1726. One
hundred fifty-six families supplied the 223 revenue formers that ran the
CGF between then and the Revolution; these families increasingly inter-
married and collectively controlled the corporation by regulating the
rotating appointment of younger relatives to positions of apprenticeship
(Durand 1976, 46).
These practices meant that family cliques became simultaneously less
differentiated from one another and more defended, so that anv one ruler
could not readily seize the advantage by promoting men hailing from one
family clique over those based in another, as Louis XIV had done with the
Colbert and Fouquet clans in the previous century. The monarch had lost
one of his prime tertius opportunities—"being the third between players
in two or more relations with conflicting demands" (Burt 1992, 31). He
could not readily grant larger cuts of revenue or switch powers among
offices once such cliques were in force—and he could not afford to buv
8
Venal offices alone are estimated by David Bien (1989) to have reached 50,000 toward the
end of the Old Regime.
them out. The combination of stably institutionalized mechanisms of

group defense with the old lure of low-risk family investment and
advancement ensured that crown-sponsored holdings remained attractive
even at relatively low rates of return. 9 Not all of the privileged bunched
into corps, but the Dutch case helps us see the signal importance of the
fact that among those that did were heavy hitters, such as the CGF, that
regulated the fiscal underpinnings of the crown's commercial/colonial
ambitions.
Hilton Root argues that these family pacts stymied development in
France by disrupting the relationship between "universalistic, achieve-
ment-oriented norms" and the developing state (1994, 217-18). Root is
right on target in emphasizing the importance of the pacts because, as the
office-holding family cliques codified lateral ties, they also secured their
hold on privileges as articulated through traditional corporate forms. The
pacts thus preserved the position of the grander elite in central state appa-
ratuses and were a vehicle through which its members elaborated an
intergenerational corporate identity based on their weighty office
genealogies, defined against both the independent bourgeoisie and small-
time provincial nobility. The patrimonial elite had been perpetually nour-
ished and replenished by a stream of bourgeois who made their way into
the state by abandoning trade for ennobling office, but, as Lucas (1973)
has shown, commoners found the route to intergenerational family
mobility and status honor via state power increasingly closed to them in
the eighteenth century.10 Provincial nobles, for their part, mounted a feu-
dal revival, the "seigneurial reaction" of the last decades of the Old
Regime, and demanded renewed royal favor on the basis of honorable
family antiquity and simple hereditary exemption from taxation.11
Root's hypothesis is incomplete, however, as the basis for a more gen-
eral understanding. One lesson that emerges from comparing France to
the Golden Age Netherlands, where universalistic, achievement-oriented
practices were no more widespread but the familial state did encourage
9
In general, the attraction of office-holding continued to be strong. Doyle (1984) shows
that 5,000-7,000 made their (or, rather, their families') way into the nobility during the
eighteenth century via office-holding.
10
Meanwhile, the percentage of nobles climbed in provincial estates, parlements, and other
important corporate bodies. In the CGF, for example, the proportion of nobles shot up
from less than one-half to more than two-thirds (Durand 1976,131).
11
The Segur Ordinance of 1781 ordered army commissions reserved to men who could show
four quarterings of nobility; see Bien (1974)- Hampson (1963, 8-13) summarizes feudal obli-
gations and their revival at the end of the Old Regime.
sustained politico-economic experimentation, is that development

depends on which institutional arrangements and elites family settlements
implant, and how they function in the global context. Dutch elite family
commitments to a dispersed pattern of corporate privilege first fostered
the flow of resources, support, and legitimacy from key constituencies—
especially long-distance merchants—to the state, although the institu-
tional arrangements that enabled the ruling elite to mobilize
competitively through locally and provincially based corporate forms
eventually left them unable to deliver the goods in the face of growing
challenges from abroad.
Because the familial mechanisms are similar in the French case, the con-
trast highlights the distinctive nature of the seigneurial nobility that was
incorporated into the French state in the seventeenth century—to the
detriment of mercantile prospects—and then came to rely on state-based
mechanisms and collective capacities to perpetuate itself over the genera-
tions. Corporate officeholders were able to parlay this position to
strengthen their intergenerational connections and mobilize collectively
in opposition to proposed reforms, radically limiting the capacity of the
crown to introduce new terms and conditions of governance. The rich
recent historiography on the French Revolution has emphasized the
efforts of the crown to breach these constraints, but, especially in the con-
text of imperial crisis, it was too little, too late. In the last decades of the
Old Regime, the crown repeatedly tried to level fiscal distinctions by
imposing taxes on the privileged, rationalizing state apparatuses, and
extending and multiplying mechanisms of political representation, but the
privileged proved quite capable of effective resistance.'2 As the Parlement
of Douai put it in the teeth of a reform effort in the 1770s, "the right to
bequeath an office to one's heir cannot be regarded as a simple privilege,
but as a veritable right of property founded on the most sacred titles, on a
contract that Louis XIV resolved of his own accord to make with his
newly conquered subjects" (quoted in Bossenga 1991,55).u But note the
revealing melange of invocations of hereditary family privilege and con-
tractual rights to property. Especially when freighted with promises of
eventual familv ennoblement, their commodificatioii undercut the honor
and legitimacy of hereditary nobility—and thus the dynastic monarchy.
12
There is a vast literature on this issue; see especially Bosher (1970). For a partial review, see
Lachmann and Adams (1988).
13
Bossenga (1991) is a superb analysis of the struggles over patrimonial privilege in Lille, in
the waning days of the Old Regime.
Other potential solvents and signs of what we would now call moder-
nity stemmed from within the patrimonial corps themselves. The very
men who held tight to corporate privilege routinely welcomed some
forms of institutional innovation with open arms. The CGF, for example,
adopted some key features of bureaucracy in its later years (see Bosher
1970; Lachmann and Adams 1988). But the structure of patrimonial
authority raised some fearsome obstacles to the generalization or diffu-
sion of innovation to areas of the state under other corporate bodies'
administrative control and, as we have seen, the crown found itself with
less and less room to maneuver.
The English Patrimonial Package
From Mercantile Body to Monied

Company in the English State
World power and domestic dinosaur—this paradox seems to characterize
the eighteenth-century East India Company, at least at first glance. The
EIC, according to an admiring entry penned in 1751 for The Universal
Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, was "the most flourishing trading
company in the kingdom, as likewise one of the greatest in Europe for
wealth, power, and immunities" (Postlethwayt, quoted in Neal 1990,119).
Its fortunes were at the high-water mark then. After years of acrimonious
division, it was relaunched as a patrimonial corporation in 1709, issuing
from the union of the Old (crown-chartered) and New (parliament-sanc-
tioned) East India Companies in one integrated body. The company's sov-
ereign prerogatives were resoundingly endorsed. And unlike its
early-seventeenth-century predecessor, the EIC now had a permanent
organizational existence as a single organizational body.14 But the recon-
struction of the EIC also signaled an erosion of crown control over its
overseas mercantilist offshoots in favor of a nominally shared executive
responsibility. The new company cohabited with the executive's evolving
14
The company acquired a permanent organizational identity in 1660. Sovereign power was
now vested in the General Court (the body in which the proprietors, the stockholders, met
at least four times a year to formulate strategy), which annually elected the twenty-four
members of the Court of Directors (the metropolitan office that oversaw day-to-day opera-
tions). These bodies were in turn linked to a decentralized organization of Four Presidencies
in the Indies (Scott 1910-1912, 2:150; Sutherland 1952, 32-44).
176 T H E FAIMILIAL STATE
exercise of statutory control over commercial/colonial policy. The EIC

was a building block in a colonial system that was recognizably old style
but that reoriented not only the mercantile structure of England but also
the map of long-distance trade in Europe; mercantilism was actively
strengthened in overseas long-distance trade (Thomas 1968 [1926], 118-65).
The Navigation Acts, slightly remodeled, regulated the nationality of
shipowners and crews, proscribed certain destinations for their goods,
established what types of colonial manufacture were allowed, and regu-
lated the fiscal relationships of colonial to home industries (Thomas and
McCloskey 1981, 93-99). The viability of these arrangements abroad
depended on military force, delivered by the chartered companies and the
state's armed forces, especially the navy, which was the largest in Europe
by the eighteenth century. The growing capacity of the navy to support
England's overseas traders would prove one of the decisive differences
between England, on the one hand, and the Netherlands and France, on
the other.
The Dutch were the big losers. Colonial markets became a crucial
source of imports and exports, and the goods were marketed to Europe
directly, bypassing the Dutch entrepot. English imports from 1752 to 1754
still included about 30 percent of the commodities that had dominated
medieval northern European trade (such as wine, timber, woolen and
linen textiles, hemp, and flax), but Asian and American products now
accounted for fully 46 percent of imports (Davis 1969, 119). Rising
European demand powered the Atlantic import and reexport trades in
sugar, tobacco, indigo, and dyewoods and the surging Asian tea trade. By
the 1790s, Europe was absorbing 80-90 percent of reexports (Farnie 1962;
Wilson 1965, 264).15 The Netherlands had been England's main source of
imports, the finisher of its manufactures, its major market outlet, and a
key source of shipping services before the English Revolution. By 1700,
the Netherlands' position had slipped in relative terms, coming in second
in imports behind English colonial plantations, although it was still the
primary destination for exports. By 1760, the Netherlands was only tenth
in supplying imports, and as a market for British exports its share was
one-third of what it had been (Wilson 1965, 271-72). Throughout this
period, multilateral trade built on colonial contacts and possessions was
replacing the dependency on the Netherlands. The Dutch had created
ls
Between 1700 and 1800, imports were up 523 percent and the exports and reexports 568
percent and 906 percent, respectively (while the population of England rose 257 percent);
see Deane and Cole (1967, 46).
this style of large-scale overseas trade, and the English borrowed and per-
fected it, displacing the Dutch entrepot in the process.
The East Indies trade was just one sector of the foreign trade (and lest
we forget, enforced extraction) that was crucial to the growth and struc-
ture of the English and, in fact, British economy during this period, as his-
torians such as Davis (1954), Deane and Cole (1967), and Hobsbawm (1965
[1954]) have long maintained. But it was a particularly important one as a
corporate source of expanded resources and even more as a site of institu-
tional innovation. Its metropolitan directorate related uneasily to the
development of capitalism and the broader rationalization of the metro-
politan state—both processes that it was unwittingly encouraging. The
English company had been feebler than its Dutch cousin throughout the
seventeenth century. Ironically, this very weakness gave rise to the distinc-
tive feature of the eighteenth-century English company: the development
of a thriving symbiotic private sector. For decades, as I discuss in chapter 4,
independent English merchants based in the Atlantic had pressured the
EIC to open up its monopoly. When the EIC finally bowed to this pres-
sure in the late seventeenth century, it compromised by recognizing the
rights of what were called "private" traders in the East Indies—including
interlopers based in Europe, Asian merchants, and company servants trad-
ing on. the side.16 Private traders carried goods for the company in intra-
Asian trade, paid customs at company ports, and investigated prospective
routes, in return for military protection (P. Marshall 1987, 281). By the first
decade of the century, private traders were transacting one-half of the
company's intra-Asian country trade. The EIC eventually surrendered the
whole of this commerce, resulting, unexpectedly from the point of view of
the company directorate, in a huge expansion of EIC and private trade.17
This development stood in sharp contrast to the domain of the VOC,
which maintained its internal monopoly until the 1740s, until it scrambled
to imitate the EIC's more profitable arrangement.
It was precisely this combination of patrimonial umbrella and energetic
independent capital that transformed the EIC into a late-blooming success
16
The inroads made by private country trade, which had leapt ahead during the lapse of die
EIC monopoly during die Civil War and the Interregnum, were grudgingly recognized by
the EIC directorate, which relaxed its prohibitions in 1670-79. With die rebirth of the
United Company in 1709, private trade surged ahead. See Chaudhuri (1978).
17
At Calcutta, for example, English private shipping tripled from 1700 to 1750 (Watson 1980,
36, 183). Elsewhere (Adams 1996) I have discussed the way in which this delicate balance
undermined the Dutch company; here I treat it as an input to the metropole.
story as a transitional colonial enterprise. The EIC and the English and
Dutch private traders with whom it contracted concentrated on the bur-
geoning tea market, centered in Canton and fed with Indian cloth and
American bullion. Imports of tea into England topped £100,000 in 1706
(Furber 1976, 127). As the price of tea fell, annual consumption per head
catapulted upward some six- or sevenfold between 1725 and 1760 (Wilson
1965, 308).18 Tea was one of the first two mass commodities purveyed in
Europe—the other was coffee, controlled by the VOC by virtue of its grip
on Javanese growing areas. The East Indies was most important as a source
of a rich import trade in the early years of the century, in contrast to the
markets of the Atlantic settler colonies, but that was changing as well.19 The
EIC was able to respond to opportunities such as the weakening grip of the
Dutch and the disintegration of the Mughal empire in the 1720s and muscle
in on the Indian subcontinent (Chandra 1971).
As the EIC in the Indies was increasingly exacting protection from
locally operating merchants, it was maintaining its hold—at times with
difficulty—on the sovereign rights that it held at the behest of its home
state. The company was indispensable not only because of its long mer-
cantile and imperial arm, which sheltered independent merchant capital-
ists, but also because of its transitional role in domestic politics and
finance. Let us take politics first. Company men, at the heart of the patri-
monial elite—lodged in a position analogous to the Amsterdam bour-
geoisie in that city's government—controlled London's Aldermanic
Court and as aldermen worked to discipline the direction of City policy.20
This was no easy task, for the City opposition envied the elite their corpo-
rate privileges and consistently pressed for a more open, more aggressive
18
By the 1790s, after Pitt's Commutation Act (1784) had slashed duties on tea, the EIC was
shipping 15-20 million pounds of tea annually for sale in London. These sales brought in
about £2,700,000 a year (Furber 1976, 244; Nightingale 1970).
19
Overall, East Indies imports rose in value from £551,000 to 1.9 million a year between
1701-1705 and 1766-1770 (Bowen 1986, 4). Exports to the East Indies also dramatically
increased in value, about tenfold each year between 1700 and 1770, beginning at £113,000 in
1701-05 and totalling circa £1.1 million a year by 1766-70. North American trade experienced
a similar increase, shooting up from £268,000 to 2.1 million, while exports to the West
Indies merely tripled to £1.2 million (Schumpeter i960,17-18). Inflation was negligible until
the latter part of the century. If 1700 is taken as the base year, with the price of consumers'
goods other than cereals set at 100, the price is still only 101 in 1775-79. In 1780-84, it totals
108, and it rises until 1795-99, when it hits 134. See Mathias (1969).
20
The City Council represented some 12,000-15,000 freemen and through them a depend-
ent population of 700,000 or so; as a potential channel for the "strong corporate spirit" and
Tory leanings animating smaller-scale merchants, tradesmen, and master craftsmen, it was
always a latent threat to the status quo. See Sutherland (1984, 41-66).
maritime and colonial policy than either the patrimonial elite or the
crown wanted (Rogers 1977). In this way, patrimonial-style politics con-
tinued to organize significant features of the structure and regulation of
large-scale commercial and colonial enterprise. It was an ongoing source
of social tension that the independent merchant capitalists who pressed to
open the colonial field were limited and policed by the patrimonial elite,
hand in hand with the crown and its ministers. The East Indies men sup-
ported the crown and ministers in its turn, partly by the tried and true
expedient of shelling out money—for example, the £200,000 that the
company paid to secure its charter renewal in 1766 (Kramnick 1968, 54).
East Indies men also constituted one of the biggest blocs in the House of
Commons, along with the more dispersed West Indies interest, and the
bloc favored the crown.21
The enormous profitability of the company also prompted major stock-
holders and directors to diversify into state finance, into what is still known
today as the City of London (Carruthers 1996,53-91; Earle 1989,146-52).22
As a pillar of die rising monied interest in the metropole, along with the
South Sea Company and the Bank of England (founded in 1694, imported
by William and Mary from Amsterdam on their Dutch home ground, but
now given truly national extension), the EIC played a transitional corporate
role. Its loans continued to fund state debt in traditional ways. The big
monied companies held approximately £19,000,000 out of the total
national debt of £50,000,000 in 1720, even after funded debt borrowed
from private citizens had begun to displace loans from the patrimonial
corps. Approximately one-quarter of state debt still derived from loans from
these corps in 1749 (Sutherland 1984,153-64). Yet the EIC was also part of
the financial revolution we've come to call the emergence of public credit.
Its short-term bonds became as important as government bills in the devel-
oping money market (Sutherland 1984,157). It underpinned new modes of
21
In T709, 29 members of Parliament (MPs), owning a meager 4.3 percent of EIC stock,
were involved in the company. By 1764, some 66 MPs owned stock. By the time of the 1768
Parliament, at least one-quarter of MPs had a direct financial stake in the company (Bowen
1986,95; Dickson 1967, 266).
22
Carruthers (1996) analyzes the interface between politics and markets in the late-seven-
teenth-century English financial revolution. See especially his chapter 3, on finance and state
formation from 1672 to 1712.
23
The public bank supplanted the array of semiprivate gold merchant "banks" that resembled
the Paris financiers who dominated French state finance until die Revolution. Tax-farming was
definitively abolished under William and Mary (1689-1702). Farming of the customs was elimi-
nated in 1671 and of the excise and hearth tax in 1683 and 1684, respectively (Brewer 1989,
state finance that departed from corporate revenue farming, even as its own
sphere was qualified by these innovative practices.23
One upshot of this was that a higher proportion of resources was chan-
neled to the state exchequer than in the Netherlands. Another was that
both the EIC and the state's funded debt were able to draw in Dutch
investors, estimated in 1776 to account for £59,000,000 of the national
debt of £143,000,000. "With the borrowed profits from Holland's
Golden Age," as Wilson says, "Britain gambled on an imperial future, and
gambled successfully" (i949,161). The shape of that imperial future had
yet to be determined.
Meanwhile, at home, the company exemplified the fixed patrimonial
form that allowed for ongoing, even explosive innovation in a context of
intercorporate and international competition. It was a cause and compo-
nent of a creeping financial and bureaucratic revolution: the emergence of
a centralized structure of public credit by which commercial and colonial
wealth—including that of the dominant Dutch contender—could be reli-
ably and legitimately appropriated by the state. But on what grounds, by
what sort of state, and to what ends?
Ruling Families and Familial Rule in Hanoverian England

The parliamentary elites had divided over these vexing questions in the
period leading up to the Glorious Revolution of 1688. They had agreed
on restoring the monarch (Charles II) in 1660, after the trauma of politi-
cal patricide, but had disagreed about the nature of monarchy itself. Their
arguments, made in the teeth of Charles II's and his brother and heir
James II's absolutist ambitions, highlighted varying views of the
monarch's ideal role. At this precarious juncture, Sir Robert Filmer's
Patriarcha (1991 [1680]), an enunciation of familial principles of political
organization, was published posthumously and found a wide audience.
Filmer advocated—or, rather, reminded his readers of—the great politico-
familial chain of being, through which sons were subject to male family
heads, who were in turn to serve as dutiful subjects of the father-king.
Was the king a paternal proprietor, as in Filmer's conservative Tory view,
or a trustee, as the Whigs saw him?24 If the latter, did the monarch hold
the crown and its capacities in trust for a divinely sanctioned royal lineage,
92-95; Carruthers 1996; Dickson 1967; Neal 1990; Root 1994, chap. 9).
24
The labels Tory and Wbigwzvc first applied in die 1680s, in precisely this context.
as absolutist rulers were wont to claim, or for a wider association, a group

of aristocratic family heads and pedigreed natural rulers represented in
Parliament? Was Parliament to be a consultative corporation or a deci-
sion-making body and, if the latter, what kind of sovereignty would it
have? Or could dynastic legitimacy itself be reinvented?
It is often assumed that the Glorious Revolution settled these crucial
questions in favor of a sovereign and effectively "modern" Parliament.
Dynasticism, if it figures into the picture at all, is supposed to have disap-
peared as a meaningful political principle then or shortly thereafter.25 It is
true that the Revolution issued in James IPs flight to the continent and
the deposition of James and his heirs in favor of another branch of the
Stuart family tree: James's elder daughter Mary, in conjunction with her
husband, the stadholder of Holland, William, Prince of Orange, himself
half-Stuart. The associated Bill of Rights abrogated future monarchs' inde-
feasible hereditary right. Postrevolutionary advocates of parliamentary sov-
ereignty also benefited from something they did not foresee: the pressures
of massive and continuing war, which restructured the relationship
between crown and Parliament as William IIPs escalating need for funds
qualified the monarch's sway over foreign policy.26 But it did not put an
end to that perceived right. Royal dynasticism infused sovereign claims to
territory and the products of those territories, and threats to enforce such
claims had real teeth in the eighteenth century. Furthermore, James's per-
ceived birthright and the political claims of his heirs—aka Jacobitism—
retained a stubborn and long-lived legitimacy in elite opinion as well as
popular memory, an issue that became still more troubling with the acces-
sion of the dynastically distant Hanoverians in 1714. As one unhappy Tory
put it, "The succession of the crown to the next of blood is a law eternal
and wrote with the immediate hand of God and nature" (quoted in
Western 1972, 38-39). The Dutch regents had traversed similar terrain dur-
ing their seventeenth-century Exclusion Crisis and failed to extinguish
resurgent Orangist claims to sovereign princely status. Jacobitism lay at the
25
See, for example, Schochet (1975)- In coronations and other canonical ruling-group cele-
brations of the eighteenth century, England was celebrated as a national association of elite
family heads and the monarch as the patriarch who reconciled them. See Clark (1985, 83);
and, more generally, O'Gorman (1989, 225-44).
26
For the locus classicus of this argument, see Foord (1952 [1947]). Note that die settlements
themselves sought to reinstate the status quo in England and were not radical. The settle-
ments had much more radical consequences for Scotland, nurturing Scottish parliamentary
independence and restructuring church governance from the episcopal to the presbyterian
style (Mitchison 1983).
core of the opposition Tory party, and tear of Jacobitism and all that it
stood for energized the leading forces of the pro-Hanoverian Whigs for a
substantial portion of the eighteenth century.27 This became even more
important as alternative dynastic choices came to symbolize distinct execu-
tive orientations to foreign policy and overseas commerce.
Claims that dynasty simply decayed also fail to register the broader rela-
tionship between family and politics in the wake of the crisis of 1688 and
during the century that followed. For starters, patriarchal political authority
was reinforced by elite devices that regulated family property relations. The
practice of strict settlement kept the patrimony together, held in trust by
the father for his eldest son, then renewable for his son, and so on. Strict
settlement, most pervasive among the landed elite, "enabled a landowner to
tie the hands of his heir and turn him into a tenant for life" (Stone and
Stone 1986, 48). It also promised that estates would be coupled with titles,
which almost always descended to male heirs (Spring 1984,4). This practice
was invented in the seventeenth century, after the Restoration, but was
most widely applied in the eighteenth. Strict settlements symbolized and
enforced the impulse of lineage heads to preserve the knotty intergenera-
tional complex of estates, family name, and titles. These singular projects of
family lineage advancement, and the contractual devices collectively
invented and administered with them in mind, supported the economic
position of landed elite families.28 They guarded against improvident heirs
and indulgent fathers, either of whom might destroy the heritage of the
patrilineage and damage the future integrity of the estate.
Such settlements were not merely a matter of family economy: they also
involved political authority. Strict settlement reinforced all three legs of
this tripod—although no longer in terms of elites' direct feudal control of
vast household retinues backed by force, at least on English turf. Now the
27
For the role of Jacobitism in the Tory part)' and the attitude of the Whigs, see Clark (1985,
esp. chap. 3). Colley (1982, 25-50) disagrees with Clark's argument that the Tories had a dis-
tinctive Jacobite identity and that the Whigs (including George I and II) were unified "by
their common suspicion of a disaffected toryism and by their justified apprehension of a
Jacobite invasion based on the military and diplomatic supremacy of France" (1982, 26).
Note, however, that Clark's argument places more emphasis on the existence of those per-
ceptions than on whether or not they were factually borne out. See also Monod (1988).
28
A long-running historical debate has addressed the role of the strict settlement in the
financial position of great estates, with Habakkuk arguing that settlements improved the
position of the peerage in the eighteenth century, and his critics claiming consolidation at
most. For my purposes, the difference between these positions is minimal. See Habakkuk
(1950; 1979; 1980; 1981) and Beckett (1977), Roebuck (1980), and especially Spring's superb
book on aristocratic inheritance in England (1993).
relationship was indirect, mediated via family heirloom seats in the Lords
and Commons and state offices that effectively belonged to great magnate
families, such as the Lord Lieutenancies, a regional position resembling the
Dutch provincial stadholderships. The lords lieutenant dispensed huge
numbers of offices in patronage chains, including the local justices of the
peace. Thus, the political authority of magnate families—or their male rep-
resentatives—was strengthened in the eighteenth century, based on the
entanglement of patrilineage, property, and authority. That patriarchal
relations among the governing elite were renewed in a form regulated by
the group rather than exercised by individual fathers raises two points of
comparison with Netherlands. First, as in the Dutch case, I would expect
this systemic affirmation of paternal authority to have affected relation-
ships within these families. Patriarchy could not be expected to give way to
greater equality, in spite of Lawrence Stone's (1975, 1977) strongly urged
arguments to the contrary. And, in fact, Eileen Spring (1984) and others
have shown that provisions for daughters and widows deteriorated under
the strict settlement regime; married women lacked a legal persona until
the nineteenth century, and children were deemed the father's property
until the 1830s, when the first statutory act reducing the power of hus-
bands was passed.29
Correlatively, Parliament sanctioned remodeled dynasticism in royal
lineage—the second point of comparison with the Dutch case. In contrast
to the Netherlands, where the assembled rulers of town, corporate
enclave, or province called the shots, these provisions and settlements
were in the last instance enforced by the consolidating central state. Only
the crown and assembled elites in Parliament could overturn a strict set-
tlement. The symbolic and institutional sources of the politico-economic
strength of English magnate families were migrating upward.30
England had acquired the core of a well-ordered "fiscal-military" organ-
ization relatively quickly compared to other European countries, perhaps
by the early eighteenth century, as John Brewer (1988) has persuasively
29
Younger sons did better because they were less likely to receive land than formerly and
more likely to find alternative padis into state service and the expanding professions. They
were not as likely to gravitate toward commerce. Thus, younger sons of die landed gentry
did not flow into the overseas trading companies in great numbers, except during 1650-1710,
when the gentry found itself particularly hard pressed after the Civil War (Stone and Stone
1986,131-33).
30
Careful marriages elaborated these connections, such that, as Cannon puts it, "To trace all
the relationships which made the opening of an eighteenth-century Parliament a family
reunion for many members would be impossibly time-consuming" (1984,114).
argued. The consolidation of newer and more rationalized central adminis-

trative departments—Customs and Excise, Navy Board, and Board of
Trade—contrasted with the underdeveloped central instance in the
Netherlands and was surely crucial to England's growing success abroad in
accumulation and warfare.31 At the same time, many a central state office
continued to be regarded as a family interest for much of the eighteenth
century as family pressure groups bound together by patrilineage and ties
to in-laws contended for perquisites, just as their Dutch counterparts
snatched up the offices and privileges that radiated outward from local cor-
porate centers (Aylmer 1961, Mounod 1988). Did the actions of family fac-
tions "clutter the history of the eighteenth century with trivial detail,"
veiling more important issues, as John. H . Plumb (1951, 41) confidently
asserts? This seems very far off the mark. Nothing was more important
than family to suturing the ragged operation of public power. At the same
time, as the next section shows, nothing was more troublesome.
The scramble for favors was channeled by a remarkable elite arrangement,
initially orchestrated by the Whig leader Sir Robert Walpole and dubbed the
Robinocracy, in which the ascendancy of Whig ministerial managers and
crown counselors, dominated by the nobility, was linked to the distribution
of proprietary office-holding. The Robinocracy constituted a partylike group
that in its heyday "settled like a cloud of locusts on the royal household and
all the institutions of executive government" (Plumb 1967, 69). It was the
functional equivalent of the more formal Dutch contracts of correspondence
and the French family syndicates of officeholders in linking privileged elites
to state power. A 1739 opposition pamphlet listed hundreds of these "place-
men" pullulating in the army, navy, law, state departments, diplomacy, royal
household and administration, and colonial outposts (see Speck 1977, 211).32
Walpole's success stemmed from his capacity to use crown patronage to cre-
ate submissive Parliaments, pleasing the king and strengthening the central
31
Venality of office figured less in these areas than in, say, the royal household (Brewer 1969,
75-76; Hoon 1968 [1938], 209-10; Speck 1977, 4J-42). The newer departments were not free
of venality, but increasingly handed out venal positions as rewards for reliable service in
more genuine capacities. For the customs, see Hoon (1968 [1938], 2.1-18). Furthermore, the
royal household shrank as its administrative functions were transferred elsewhere, and sales
of important court offices ended in George Ts reign (Plumb 1967,107-12).
32
Dickinson (1973) is a general text on the Robinocracy, or Walpole's System, at its heyday
in the mid-eighteenth century. Another nickname for this cosy arrangement was Old
Corruption—but Brewer (1988, 72) argues that Old Corruption in its most virulent phase
was actually a product of a later period, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and the
unprecedented level of spending that accompanied them.
state while at the same time distributing this patronage to reinforce the
power of elites at the local level. The system depended on a legitimate and
secure Hanoverian dynasty. For its part, the House of Hanover needed the
support and management of the local dynasts. Thus, a strengthened central
state, and dynasty, could coexist with England's notoriously autonomous
local elite. Once again, we should not overlook the role of dynasty as a prin-
ciple of legitimacy and authority encoded in practices of rule. The
Parliamentary Act of Settlement had invented a new royal dynasty and
begun to render it legitimate. The nouveau dynasty was reviled and ridiculed
for decades, particularly as it publicly broadcast its ugly internal squabbles,
but the onus was on the Whigs to nurture it if they wanted to stay in power
and pass on their positions to succeeding generations.
So how did the big bourgeoisie, including the movers and shakers of
trading company enterprise, fare in this familial scenario, given that the
most important levers of state power were controlled by the heads of the
great landowning families—the magnates who maneuvered for the rights,
partly at the behest of the crown, to dispense parliamentary seats and gov-
ernment patronage and by the same token to manage the substance of
politics from the 1710s to the 1770s in the Augustan Age?33 Lured by the
prospect of family distinction, social-climbing bourgeois continued to
aspire to landed gentry status, hooked to the system by lineal ambition as
well as politico-economic prospects. A study of the London aldermen
indicates that the corporate city patriciate of the early eighteenth century
was increasingly likely to marry its progeny into families of landed gentry
(Rogers 1979, 445).34 City dynasties did emerge in their own right as the
33
These movers and shakers sat in the House of Lords, but relied less on that corporate body
than on their capacity to manipulate the composition and politics of the Commons which, it is
worth recalling, was not democratically elected during this period; see Cannon (1984) and
Pocock (1980,12). A substantial proportion of Commons members never faced an election in
their parliamentary careers. As late as 1780, less dian one in eight Englishmen could vote; the
proportion was lower in Scotland. About one-half of Britain's MPs had simply been placed in
their seats by a patron in the 1780s. For a general account, see Evans (1983,15-18).
34 « p o r those successful businessmen who aimed to put dieir families upon the map, it was the
routes followed by their predecessors—marriage to landed men tor their daughters, establish-
ment on die land for their sons—that remained die most travelled ones in the later seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries" (Horwitz 1987; also see Namier 1929, 4-10, 16-19, 21-31).
Scholars disagree, however, about how successful these businessmen were at achieving these
aims. Stone and Stone (1986,131-33) claim that merchants achieved a negligible rate of social
infiltration into even the lower squirearchy in the early modern era. Earle (1989) finds greater
merchant-gentry interpenetration. According to Rogers (1979, 444), intermarriage rose
between representatives of landed society and London's commercial magnates in die eigh-
teenth century, at the same time as die influx of gentlemen into merchanting fell.
century wore on, as landed estates became scarcer and an urban rentier
existence more socially acceptable. Meanwhile, men hankered after the
intergenerational family mobility that state service and parliamentary seats
could deliver. "The Government contracts were usually held with a seat in
the House of Commons," notes L. B. Namier (1929), "whilst baronetcies,
the crest over the profits, had invariably to be gained by service in the
House; and a generation or two later, provided the money was preserved,
the trade discontinued, and a seat in the House retained, a coronet was
within the reach of the children or grandchildren of the successful
Government contractors" (59-60). Returning East Indies nabobs and
absentee West Indies planters fervently pursued these familial aims. What
is not clear is how many were successful in acquiring estates or placing
their daughters in the gentry or aristocracy and how many more were dis-
appointed as strict settlements tightened the land market and the price of
brides rose.
Disappointed or not as individuals, the company merchants collectively
depended on the structure of relations forged between magnates and
crown in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. Overseas traders may
have found the patriarchal landed fantasy seductive, but they were perforce
aligned with the sitting dynasty and its adherents against those who bran-
dished the Jacobite banner of an imaginary bucolic past.35 Hanoverianism
was generally framed against a Tory "politics of nostalgia" (Kramnick
1968), a reactionary stance that exalted the retired life of the country gen-
tleman and excoriated the ruling house, the monied companies, the City
of London, and the expansionary state implicated in global reach, all of
which were seen as of a piece. Supporters of the House of Hanover cele-
brated commercial and colonial power as well as calling for a defense of the
realm against the older cluster of fears of Popish plots, French-style abso-
lutism, and accompanying fantasies of the wholesale ruin of paternal pre-
rogatives and unchecked appropriation of elite property. By defending the
sitting dynasty, however, neither the Whigs nor their merchant members
and supporters were advocating personal monarchical power. (That line of
defense would have been difficult to pursue in any case because the House
of Hanover was by its distant dynastic credentials questionably legitimate
35 « E v e n if their prime interest was their own private advantage," remarks E. P. Thompson
of the Hanoverian Whigs, "the very size of the immense private interests at risk made them
zealous opponents of a nostalgic and anachronistic Jacobite counterrevolution" (1975, 258;
see also Speck 1977, chap. 1). Their interests and desires were not "private" in the contempo-
rary sense, to be sure, but Thompson's larger point still stands.
until the 1760s, even beyond the point at which the perceived Jacobite-
French threat to Britain that the Hanoverians were bent on countering
culminated in Charles Stuart's failed 1745 invasion.) Overseas merchants
actually wanted more restrictive interpretations of monarchical familial
right; they smarted when the crown betrayed them on the issue of the cot-
ton trade and complained when George I and George II engaged the state
in continental military actions on behalf of personal family dynasty, argu-
ing that the crown's autonomous adventures blocked further commercial
and colonial expansion (Holmes and Szechi 1993,56-58; Rogers 1977). But
if they were company men, they considered themselves stuck with the
Robinocracy and its subsequent manifestations and consistently resigned
themselves to the House of Hanover as the better dynastic alternative; the
autonomous merchants, frustrated and champing at the bit, could find no
other alternative than loyal opposition. Clearly, English merchants, patri-
monial or autonomous, did not control the key levers of state power as
they had in the Golden Age Netherlands. They had to operate under the
dynastic umbrella reinvented by the great magnate families to consolidate
their own familial preserves.
Crises of Patriarchal Authority and

Empire in France and England
War and empire—these were two persistent themes of eighteenth-century

European politics. Breaches in the Netherlands' patrimonial empire
sparked Dutch rulers' crisis of authority and patriarchy at home, in the
metropole. As we turn to France and England, I will argue, we see similar
patterns: imperial crisis, and patrimonial dynamics at the heart of crisis, in
both cases entangled with patriarchal forms of rule. There, too, the colo-
nial systems were pressured from without and imploded. Company rule
formally concluded in France with the Revolution and in England in
1828-32, but on both fronts the game was up, as it was in the Netherlands,
in the 1780s. The associated delegitimation of rulers' authority in Europe
was implicated in the simultaneous crisis of monarchies and elites. The
historical resolutions of this quandary differed, entraining the destruction
of elite political redoubts, state breakdown, and revolution in France and
elite renegotiation, state reconstruction, and hegemony in England. My
brief is not to tell the story of the French Revolution or of England's own
unfolding Golden Age—that would take me well beyond the bounds of
this book's argument—but the tale of the entwined role of elite family
pacts and monarchical fatherhood in the collapse of the patrimonial sys-
tem. And by this I mean the system both domestic and international—the
familial resolutions that underpinned the collapse of the Dutch and
French governments remade the global arrangements of power by which
England profited.
France
If this were an eighteenth-century novel, "In Which the Company
Continues Its Career as Phoenix" would be the chapter devoted to the
Compagnie des Indes's further exploits. Opportunity for expansion
knocked, just as it had when Colbert was ascendant a century earlier, but
the state did not answer. The company once again experienced a burst of
brilliance, launching what was to be its last serious bid for mercantile and
territorial supremacy in India under the aggressive leadership of Joseph-
Francois Dupleix. Dupleix's ambitious territorial and military projects
were mounted with an eye to bolstering company trade, especially at the
expense of the company's English rival. His very success in extending the
company's sphere of influence in the 1740s meant that he eventually had
to appeal to the state for backup. But the crown refused support for years
(running true to form), eventually offering intermittent and half-hearted
military aid. The contrast with England was stark, for when called upon in
similar circumstances, the English state directed naval squadrons and
army regiments to help defend the EIC's holdings from the French
(Holmes and Szechi 1993, 254-55).
The Seven Years War spelled the end for the growth of French colonial
power under the Old Regime and marked the limit of the expansion of
merchant capital. The war brought on the final debacle for that particular
version of the Compagnie des Indes, groaning under an enormous debt
of 60,000,000 livres and a decimated infrastructure (Luthy i960,861-62).
Dupleix's chief consolation prize was awarded posthumously: a metro
stop in Paris now bears his name.
Independent traders welcomed the company's collapse, and the domes-
tic fruits sprouted in indices of merchant self-organization, including
protests of independents against the privileged monopolies. Merchants
organized themselves in Marseille (Bonnassieux 1892, 316-7; Cordier 1976
[1906], 221-31), Bordeaux (Charpentier 1937, 121-33), Le Havre (Barrey
1910) and elsewhere. The merchants and slave-traders of Nantes were
among the most vocal in opposing patrimonial companies, and the

Nantais played a central role in the 1765 campaign against reviving the
Cornpagnie des Indes (Boulle 1972, 103; Martin 1926-1927, 241-43; 1931,
338-44). After the suspension of the Cornpagnie des Indes's monopoly in
1769, the criticisms of independent merchants were borne out by the
abrupt increase in trade, which, in spite of taxes and stringent limitations
on where independent merchants could discharge their goods, immedi-
ately leapt from 8,200,000 francs a year to 20,294,000 (Garnault 1899,6).
Nevertheless, the French state was not able to do any better by the inde-
pendents than it had by the Cornpagnie des Indes. The state failed to pro-
vide adequate naval protection for independent traders during the
Austrian Succession War and, most disastrously, the Seven Years War
(Taillemite 1988, i39~49, 273). Merchant and manufacturing capital then
flowed away from commercial ventures, back into the safer waters of local
and provincial state offices and bonds. Boulle points out that even the
slave-traders of Nantes, among the most aggressive merchants, reverted
to traditional uses of capital in the face of the state's failure to support
them (Boulle 1982, 93-108).
Overall, the French colonial and overseas commercial enterprise con-
tinued to lack the state support that the Golden Age Dutch or even the
English companies routinely commanded. As Jones shows (1995, chap. 5),
officeholders were able to put a stop to the crown's experiments with
broadening political representation. And the crown continued to heed
them. No wonder—the crown continued to rely on privileged corpora-
tions for funds (the corps were putting up one-third of the king's loans in
the 1780s; Bien 1987, i n ) as part of its dependence on a mode of finance
that was increasingly inadequate to the state's position in the competitive
intercorporate and interstate system. Without a Dutch- or English-style
public bank or state treasury, the crown was unable to raise taxes in
wartime and maintain the level of armed (especially naval) readiness
needed to protect traders from foreign powers. The interelite pacts and
the institutions they secured prevented merchants from articulating a sig-
nificant voice in policy making whether as merchants, as part of the patri-
monial group, or as subjects. In fact, the French state actually reinstated
the Cornpagnie des Indes monopoly in 1785, infuriating the independent
merchants and confirming the association of France's privileged overseas
traders with the increasingly beleaguered monarchy.36 The chorus of
36
The merchants of the town of Loricnt decried the company "with whom no maritime or
opposition made its way into the 1789 cahiersof the States-General, which
called for the abolition of the Compagnie des Indes as part of the aboli-
tion of privileged monopoly companies in general (Bonnassieux 1892,
317-18,499-501)—and the overthrow of patrimonial privilege altogether.
The Company was finally abolished in 1790, in the heat of the Revolution.
Just as they had in the Netherlands, the state and company collapsed in
tandem.
Let me make one important point in closing this section, bearing on
the role of the monarch or his or her functional substitute as symbolic
patriarchal center in times of imperial crisis. The monarchs of France
(and, as we have seen, England) incarnated the legitimating and organiza-
tional principles that made possible the positions of their respective elites.
In times of public failure in war or colonial crisis, therefore, monarchs and
elite readily became the joint targets of perceptions and accusations of
patriarchal weakness. How far could they, the monarchs, be sidelined,
blamed, or reined in if the men of the elite were to keep their own pieces
of the patriarchal patrimonial pie? One reading is that both the Dutch and
English elites had gone too far in this regard, the English in the era of the
seventeenth-century English Revolution and the Dutch in the Second
Stadholderless Period in the eighteenth century. Restoration and resigna-
tion followed: restoration of Charles II in England and the Dutch elite's
having acceded to the elevation of the prince of Orange into hereditary
stadholder of all provinces in the mid-eighteenth century. But of these
three patriarchal symbolic and organizational centers, the Bourbons were
by far the most vulnerable. The prince of Orange was a quasi-monarchical
figure who, had he been a different sort of man, could have filled the
absent center of Periwig Period politics. But he was not that sort of man,
and there were plenty of elite partisans of English constitutional monar-
chy who breathed audible sighs of relief that he wasn't. As such a limited
monarch, as Linda Colley (1992, 226-50) notes, George III was able to
duck the blame for defeat in America and for problems of eastern empire.
u
The former prime minister, Lord North, was made the scapegoat for
national humiliation; while the king himself, because of his undoubted
domestic probity, his obstinate patriotism and his adroit alliance with the
manufacturing towns were affiliated'* in a typical 1785 petition to the crown (quoted in
Nussbaum 1933, 487). Sewell (1996) discusses a rare moment of collective effervescence, in
the early stages of the Revolution, in which some elites volunteered to surrender their
privileges.
boy wonder, William Pitt the Younger, came to represent for many Britons
reassuring stability and honest, uncomplicated worth in the midst of disas-
ter and disillusionment'' (Colley 1992, 226). But Louis XVI was not so for-
tunate. Widespread caricatures limned him as a weak household head,
unable to control his wife Marie Antoinette (vilified as a bad mother and
sexual predator) and therefore, by metaphoric extension, his kingdom
(Hunt 1992, chap. 2). This line of familial discourse was reflected in and
contributed to the delegitimation of French monarchy. Increasingly, as
Sarah Hanley has shown, both monarchs and corporate elite faced public
arguments over the limits of the paternal prerogative in politics. These argu-
ments explicidy linked the patriarchal prerogatives of crown and elite family
heads, for example in objections to the despotic family practice of serving
lettres de cachet on willful sons and daughters, who could then be impris-
oned at the behest of parents and with the sanction of the crown.
England
The contrast with England was stark and symptomatic because the mid-
eighteenth century seemed to bring to spectacular fruition the promise of
1688 and empire. The Seven Years War marked the moment at which
England's ruling group realized—belatedly!—that England had moved to
the fore in commercial and colonial centrality. Canada had been rent from
France and mainland America from France and Spain; the Indian empire
was under British control, as were the slave, sugar, and carrying trades
spanning West Africa, the West Indies, and Britain. Yet the triumphant
imperial moment was swiftly followed by a crisis of the mercantile system
and its associated forms of sovereign rule. The role of the dynastic monar-
chy in making foreign policy, the dynamics of patronage, and the fate of
the state's patrimonial colonial projections preoccupied the political elite.
At the time it was unclear whether interelite struggles would spark a revo-
lution or could be contained within the framework of the existing state.
These issues echoed the political tremors in the Netherlands and France.
Here as there, a key point of tension lay at the interface between the met-
ropolitan state and the old colonial system, and this site became the
jumping-off point for people's renewed political questioning and efforts
at restructuring. But the result in England was quite different than else-
where. In a dramatic turn of events, the metropolitan state began to assert
power over the EIC, and in the heat of the struggle the concept and prac-
tice of sovereign rule were reforged.
The assumption of territorial rule in India and the associated division

of spoils posed several quandaries for the English. Expanded territorial
rule abruptly ended the long period of profitability and relative political
harmony in the company, between the company and private traders, and
between the premiere patrimonial corporation and the state. Discord
arose from patrimonial politics as usual: Robert Clive's unauthorized
seizure of Bengal (i757)> resulting in the acquisition of the diwani (land
revenue) in 1765; and the conquering of Bihar and Orissa in 1764. From
then until the metropolitan state asserted authority over the company,
instability was the name of the game, with potentates driving indigenous
merchants in search of protection into the arms of the EIC on the one
hand, and the lengthening reach of English private trade destabilizing
existing mercantile and political arrangements and inviting the company
to extend its political umbrella, on the other. Meanwhile, high-ranking
influential EIC employees lobbied effectively for a politics of company
intervention, including war, to save their own investments and projects.
In India, the company's servants moved to unite the roles of company
mercantile employee, tax collector, and semiprivate trader, a shift that
strengthened their hands against competitors, including the Dutch
traders who had heretofore been allies (Nightingale 1970, 232-35). Yet
the burgeoning infrastructure costs that accompanied even modest terri-
torial rule were too high to sustain with existing commercial profits, and
the collection of territorial revenues quickly became a paramount goal.
The EIC initially succeeded in this sphere as well. During 1770-71, years
of severe famine and high indigenous mortality in Bengal, the company
showed an increase in territorial revenues over 1768 (Misra 1959, 174-75;
on eighteenth-century Bengal, see also Chaudhury 1988). Soon enough,
however, the assumption of territorial rule caused even the company fis-
cal and political woe. The company administration could not both over-
see its own expanded activities and curb the depredations of its own
newly empowered servants. Disgruntled independent merchants stepped
up their demands on the metropolitan state to do away with company
privilege. Clive himself worried about the emerging chaos and pleaded
with the state to assert sovereignty over the EIC's Indian possessions.37
37
The state responded to the perceived opportunities, threats, and chaos that the EIC had
provoked. In avid expectation of increased revenues, a promise was exacted from the direc-
torate to augment its payments to the state exchequer by an additional £400,000 annually.
The sum was not forthcoming: company representatives in India were using their new
administrative roles to enlarge the territorial dominion in pursuit of wider control overtrade
(Unlike in the Netherlands or France, in fact, the state had the capacity
to do it.) The potential political clout of the company's new role posed
another sort of challenge. The EIC's army shot up from 3,000 in 1748 to
69,000 in 1763, and its servants reportedly entertained plans for the con-
quest of China (Black 1990, 65). Who would rule, company or state? And
who would control access to the company's expanding patronage? 38
These were the old patrimonial problems, arising with fresh urgency, and
they elicited a familiar initial response from most company directors:
they were not letting go of their privileges. At stake, they cried, were
their fundamental charter and property rights (Bovven 1986,13-14)—and
by this they meant the rights of English men to continued family prop-
erty in power. And they were right.
The fundamental political question was canvassed by the larger political
elite in the face of company resistance: If the state were to take over and
absorb its own patrimonial arm, what sort of state should that be? As in the
Glorious Revolution, the collective answer was hotly contested, although the
present weightier burdens of empire gave the old debates some new twists.
Converging at the same historical moment in the 1760s were the dramatic
changes in company fortunes, the breakdown of die Robinocracy, and the
accession of a partisan new king (in 1760), George III. George's opponents,
the ousted Whigs, raised the specter of royal absolutism in denouncing the
king's policies. The carefully ordered arrangement for the distribution of
patronage could now be disturbed by royal whim—and this was com-
pounded by the new imperial pressures and perquisites, which were compro-
mising the state's capacity to mobilize a consistent political line and defend
its overseas trade and colonial outposts. That the corporate form became
part of a thoroughgoing crisis in the colonial system and forms of sover-
eignty itself testifies to the patrimonial practices and quandaries that contin-
ued to characterize the English state. How could state power be enhanced,
which would perforce include opportunities for expanding patt'onage, with-
out raising the specter of royal absolutism? This was a contest over the state,
and the outcome was not settled in advance.
routes, while overly high dividends and speculations on company stock sparked a serious
financial crisis in England in 1772 (Sutherland 1984, 205-13). Successive ministries went on
record saying that the relationship between the state and EIC was failing.
38 p r o m 1758, the year after Clive's triumph at Plassey, the formerly placid company elections
to the Court of Directors were bitterly contested. The directors divided over the merits of
territorial rule, while the ministry and opposition tried to organize factions in virtually every
election (Philips 1961 [1940], 23-24).
Unlike the Netherlands or France, England survived the crisis of

authority triggered by the imperial crisis through reform rather than revo-
lution. Beginning in the 1770s and culminating in the 1832 Reform Act,
the rulers themselves disassembled key structures of patrimonial power
and began to assert political stewardship on behalf of a wider public—
although it was still a public principally understood as previously unen-
franchised corporate interests.39 They divested central state niches of
corporate rights to accumulate resources, deploy power, and elevate fam-
ily status. The civil service emerged during this period (Parris 1969), and
the monarchy was shorn of its last significant role in the quotidian exer-
cise of state power, the selection of ministers (Foord 1952 [1947]). William
Pitt the Younger, prime minister from 1783 to 1801 and from 1804 to 1806,
was an axial figure in this unrolling transformation; he took steps to
rationalize the state, restructuring the conditions under which king and
elite could exercise their political authority. And Pitt's India Act (1784)
marked the beginning of the end of the company as an autonomous patri-
monial enterprise; the metropolitan state began to reclaim sovereignty
over the EIC's home office.40 So, although some among the ruling elite
balked at assuming wider sovereign control over overseas commercial and
colonial arrangements, the state machinery was increasingly equipped to
do so. Enhanced state powers enabled ruling elites in the European
metropole to capitalize on imperial opportunities presented by the disor-
ganization that they had helped, wittingly and unwittingly, provoke.
Furthermore, in contrast to the Dutch elite, which had a collective famil-
ial stake in a style of corporate privilege associated with dispersed feder-
ated sovereignty, it seems clear that the bulk of the English ruling elite
had come to sec their stake in a functioning central state. This is not to
underplay the dramatic debate and sharp political struggle—or the sheer
elite and popular political instability—that issued in the bureaucratic
experiments and political solutions of late eighteenth-century England.
Those struggles were fraught, involving what J. C. D. Clark (1985) calls
the matrix of property, providence, and patriarchy that the elite them-
selves, under duress, were finally taking apart.
39
These included the commercial and manufacturing interests that the Whigs wanted to
enfranchise as corporate communities in the 1830s; see Gash (1977 1*953], 17—18, 26).
40
Parliament ended die company's monopoly on Indian trade in 1813, and in 1834 the char-
ter lapsed and, with it, the remaining monopoly on the Chinese tea trade (Philips 1961
[1940], 152).
Thus, I see the process of political modernization as more protracted

and uneven than either the marxist or bellicist versions of English political
development, both of which would put the end of the Old Regime in the
seventeenth century, whether in the English Revolution or the Glorious
Revolution of 1688-89 (e. g., Brenner 1993; Brewer 1988). We could take
the familial state argument to extremes, for the curtain has still to be rung
down on the Old Regime in England or for that matter Britain, where
under some constitutional circumstances dynastic monarchy still holds real
power. Perhaps the final curtain will never descend, because we moderns
may always long for a mythical paternal political center—which is currently
monarchical in England and the Netherlands, and presidential-patriarchal
in France and the contemporary United States. Nonetheless, my argu-
ments in this chapter stand against this extreme familist intellectual vision
as well as against more traditional marxist and bellicist renditions of
English history. The substantial transformation in the English state had
taken place by 1828-32, culminating in the series of changes registered in
the Reform Bill. That terminal date also witnessed the end of the com-
pany's remaining monopoly—as in the Netherlands and France, the
monopoly on trade. A new colonial system and empire was then at hand
(Hobsbawm 1967, 55-57): in the nineteenth century, England converted
India into an enforced dumping ground for English cotton manufactures.
In comparison to the Netherlands and France, the English elite was able
to stave off crisis and the great question of reconstruction or revolution for
a longer time. The impact of the French Revolution itself altered the timing
of the Dutch and English crises, accelerating the Dutch demise on the one
hand, and slowing England's reckoning with patrimonial practices on the
other. In the absence of French events, their death knell in England might
have come in the 1790s. Many reasons for English exceptionalism have been
adduced—whether with respect to the timing or the sheer fact of recon-
struction rather than revolution. These are usually class-based and are gen-
erally developed with a comparative eye to France: the relatively high
degree of social mobility among social gradations; the lack of a truly distinct
noble caste; the fact that magnates were forwarding the rise of agrarian and
manufacturing capitalism and promoting state responsiveness to rising
commercial and industrial pressure groups; the specificity of Anglicanism;
and the sobering spectacle of the French Revolution itself, which encour-
aged elites to make concessions to popular pressure (Brenner 1993, 655-56;
Christie 1984,54-93; Colley 1992, 220-50). My argument does not write off
these or other causal streams in the sense that I would not seek to erase
them in favor of a whole new roster. This chapter instead underlines the
ways that people grappled with them from within the overall umbrella of
the patrimonial state, whose patriarchal ruling ideas and practices continued
to underpin the horizons of political possibility.
Conclusion
I n this book, I have taken on several large and interrelated analytical tasks,
in addition to pursuing smaller theoretical and historical questions along
the way. First, I have offered an explanation of the zigzag pattern of early
modern Dutch development. Patriarchal patrimonial governance—a specific
nexus of family cliques, merchant class, and patrimonial politics—was the
domestic institutional engine behind the ability of the Netherlands to play
the role of tertiusgaudcns {Ac lachcnde derde> or "the laughing third") and
establish itself as the first global accumulative power. The Dutch elite, the
merchant-regent family heads, proved able to coordinate themselves, defeat
foreign contenders, and sideline domestic aspirants to monarchical rule,
launching what has become known as the Dutch Golden Age. They
authored some bold extensions of patrimonial power, notably the great char-
tered companies, the Dutch East Indies (VOC) and West Indies Companies
(WIC), which had an enormous impact not only on the colonies but also on
the Dutch metropole and imperial projects of other European contenders.
But he who laughs last laughs best. The tertius naturally becomes the tar-
get of others, as Georg Simmel (1950 [1923]) and Ronald Burt (1992) have
detailed, and the Dutch Republic was no exception. Dutch hegemony was
soon under attack. The attack was a subterranean and subtle erosion in
many ways, the product of all manner of unintended consequences. But it
was also ferociously direct, especially when military actions against the
Dutch were undertaken by the rulers of France and England—sometimes
working at cross-purposes, sometimes together. Nevertheless, the organiza-
tion of Dutch governance also contributed to the decline of the
Netherlands' state and empire. Family investments in politico-economic
privilege fostered Dutch federalism and weakened the navy and empire,
even as elite family heads devised deals that enabled them to hold on to the
197
patrimonial state as an intergenerational patriarchal preserve. It was not that

family per se was automatically bad for state formation. The reinstatement
of the princes of Orange as not just provincial but national dynastic stad-
holders in the mid-eighteenth century might even have provided an alterna-
tive route to the elaboration of a political center. Perhaps. But before that
could happen, the Netherlands sustained a triple blow: the failed Patriot
Revolution, a French invasion, and the demolition of any remaining claims
to commercial/colonial hegemony at the hands of the English.
While they were on top, and still the mirthful tertiusy representatives of
the Dutch patrimonial state and its offshoots invented a number of fresh
ways of doing things that were copied by competitors. These included the
first colonial company with a merged capital and unitary organizational iden-
titv, the VOC, and the institutions of public finance, both of which gave the
Dutch tremendous initial advantage in the mercantilist stakes. The men of
die elite also inhabited and shaped the ideological landscape of early modern
politics, particularly in trying to name their forms of governance and to clar-
ity their principles of legitimacy: dynastic-patriarchal? republican? corporatist?
majority rule? The contracts among family heads that stabilized the federated
patrimonial state had all these practical elements and ideological possibilities.
Dutch political innovations conserved a pronounced federal style. But when
they were copied and elaborated, particularly in England, as we have seen, it
was with national extension and redoubled global impact.
Patrimonial practices were traditional, but as Max Weber has stated, they
could set in motion fundamental transformations. One of the most impor-
tant of these was the chartered companies, those engines of exploration,
peaceful and forcible accumulation, expanding rule, and, eventually, cul-
tural domination and metissage. This book has focused on the impact of
these and related practices on state formation in early modern Europe,
where we would expect the impact to be less destabilizing than in the
colonies. But even in their European heartlands, the elite men located at
the nexus of state, family, and monopolistic niches were persistently invited,
nay compelled, to think about new ways of doing things, to grope for new
languages in ways that seem paradigmatic of the early modern moment.
The array of irresolvable, socially and culturally productive tensions that
these men created and confronted turned up in many guises: Simon
Schama's "embarrassment of riches," Philip GorskPs "disciplinary revolu-
tion," and my "familial state." These patrimonial contradictions and their
uneasy resolutions and continuing antagonisms are by now sedimented in
all of us, our social practices and our psyches, worldwide.
Conclusion 199
In a narrower sense, early modern European politics has also been impor-
tant to historical sociologists. The period loomed large for scholars of the
1970s and 1980s, the crest of the "second wave" of historical sociology
(Adams, Clemens, and Orloff 2005). Then theorists returned Weberian
and other specifically politically focused answers to the basically Marxist
questions about why one mode of economic production—feudalism—
gave way to another—capitalism. The early modern counted as the axial era
of European if not world transformation in these terms, and many sought to
lay bare its dynamics and the causes of its cataclysmic concluding state break-
downs and revolutions.1 A composite summary narrative evolved that, shorn
of nuance, goes something like this. Once upon a time, there was feudalism
in Europe: lords profited from the labor of peasants and made war on other
lords, fighting it out amid overlapping claims over territory and people. And
so it went for hundreds of years, with merchant capitalists and free peasants
operating in the interstices. Then two things happened. Some capitalists
(some were merchants, some not) developed new ways of extracting surplus
in Europe and, increasingly, throughout the globe. And some lords (some
were monarchs, some not) devised new ways to claim sovereign lordship
over other lords and new fiscal institutions for extracting surplus from capi-
talists and peasants so as to improve their superordinate position of military
power at home and abroad. Sometimes, in the manner of Goldilocks, the
lords and rulers took too much from their European subjects for overall
development and, if they were also unable to keep up their military strength,
were overthrown in violent revolutions (France); sometimes they took too
little and condemned their country to economic and political stagnation (the
Netherlands); but sometimes the amount was just right, was invested wisely
and well, and the transition to capitalist modernity was triumphantly effected
(England)—on home turf if not, alas, in the colonies.
Versions of this second-wave summary narrative displaced modernization
theory, which had been the dominant social science mode of interpreting the
1
In American sociology, as discussed in Chapter 1 above, the work of Theda Skocpol (i979)>
Michael Mann (1986), and Charles Tilly (e.g., 1990) was especially influential in this
regard—so much so that people's shorthand trope of "Tilly, Mann, and Skocpol" joined
"thefiscal-militarymodel," a phrase borrowed from John Brewer (1989), and invocations of
the birth of a global trading system (vaguely invoking the work of Immanuel Wallerstein
[1974-1988]), to informally gesture at a retrospectively integrated second-wave explanation
of politico-economic transition in early modern Europe. It was not the only prevalent
approach (witness Reinhard Bendix's Kings or People, for example), but it was the canonical
sociological explanation, die one more likely to be featured on graduate school preliminary
examinations.
multiple European political transitions and early modern revolutions.2 The

composite story made a place for systematic conflict over economic resources
and political power, and was therefore an improvement in both historical
accuracy and explanatory potential. But some important things were also
lost—especially a richer sense of the modern, and therefore the early mod-
ern, all of which tended to be boiled down to economic modes of produc-
tion and associated but relatively autonomous forms of politics. And with
that theoretical closure and substantive reduction came severe methodologi-
cal limits. Historical sociologists grasped after positivist, even law-like, forms
of explanation of large-scale social processes. In the face of increasing evi-
dence of its inapplicability to such complex, time-bound objects of analysis,
sociologists tried to adhere to the vision of spelling out and testing the nec-
essary and sufficient conditions for the genesis of bourgeois revolution, mak-
ing of the modern state, and/or the transition from feudalism to capitalism.3
Even if we restrict our claims to Europe alone rather than the early mod-
ern world, however, the second-wave or fiscal-military model is breaking
down as a holistic explanation of the transition to modernity. This book,
The Familial State, is both symptom and agent of the demise of the general
theoretical and methodological meta-narrative. It may be read as one of
many texts that seek to plug the evident gaps and remedy the inadequacies
in the second-wave account—to bring this or that additional factor uback
in," in the endlessly reiterated terminology of the time. Other important
and now-restored topics or variables that we might instance include demog-
raphy (Goldstone 1991), elites (Lachmann 2000), and religion (Gorski
2003), with others still to be excavated. But I hope to have convinced read-
ers that patriarchy cannot simply be added as an asterisk to fiscal-military
preoccupations that remain otherwise undisturbed. It raises a far more fun-
damental challenge to second-wave accounts of state formation and break-
down, for it bears on the forms of power and authority that characterize
emergent political systems: their invention, their languages, their discursive
tensions and possibilities, and whether they are sustainable or not. The early
modern patrimonial state and its sovereign arms or extensions would not
have existed without the concept of father-rule and associated patriarchal
practices of power. At the very least, therefore, the overall argument should
change the way that the states of modernizing Europe are typified and
2
Tilly (1975) was an influential critique of modernization theory as applied to the formation
of national states in western Europe.
3
See Adams, Clemens, and Crloff (2005: 1-72) for an in-depth discussion of the lineaments
of second-wave historical sociology'.
Conclusion 201
described. Beyond that, patriarchal principles were also developmentally

significant, structuring distinctive trajectories of state formation and sov-
ereign colonial ventures. The ways that family heads in France, England,
and the Netherlands oriented themselves to dynastic patrimonial privi-
lege; the manner in which the exercise of privilege redounded on and
reconstructed those elites and their interlinked families over time; how
the now-reshaped elites collectively grappled with retaining their patriar-
chal political positions—these were all important. They informed the
internal tertius dynamics of dynastic rulers and competing factions of elite
family heads, and were in turn informed by them. These dynamics were
integral to the repeated, analogous forms of instability, restabilization,
and crisis in all three states.
When we look at the era as a whole, what we might conventionally con-
sider the ultimate outcomes varied. The Old Regime French state fell victim
to a massive crisis of pamarchal political authority and empire. The Dutch
state and empire of the Periwig Period suffered from similar pressures but
managed to stagger along before being eviscerated by war and invasion. The
eighteenth-century English state tottered but remained standing: state and
empire were reconfigured sans invasion or social revolution. The upper
reaches of each state had been patriarchal pammonial preserves. Key elite
actors, authorized and collectively empowered by patriarchal family ideology
and position, had a hand in shaping the different resolutions (including die
non-familial ones) to analogous institutional limits and quandaries. So one
implication of the foregoing arguments is that we need to attend to the hinge
points in the interlaced macro-level narratives, especially the moments at
which it became possible for people to imagine running states and their
imperial extensions in a new and different way. But equally important, if less
flaringly dramatic, is the emphasis on the preceding continuities of the early
modern era—those that have made it possible for social scientists and histori-
ans of Europe to characterize it as an era. I hope that we can now better see
the imaginative cultural and political work it required for those members of
the elite to craft new arrangements that enabled what now reu*ospectively
appear as institutional stabilities. The various versions of elite family pacts and
contracts for passing down and sharing state office and politico-economic
privilege were prime examples. Over time, they entailed increased emphasis
on father-rule among the elite in all three states. They collectively committed
elites to pauiarchal political forms of organization. But by the same token,
they nurtured people's oppositional sense of future fraternal-familial and lib-
eral-individual political possibilities.
20 2 T H E FAMILIAL STATE
Those readers who have patiently made their way through this book have
not found an exhaustive account of those necessary and sufficient factors that
made for the distinctive patterns of Dutch, French, and English political
development or for that matter state formation in general. I hope they aren't
too disappointed—but I see this as an impossible and undesirable goal, by the
nature of the sprawling analytic beast. As a persistent quasi-religious fantasy of
social scientists, it parallels some historians' equally fantastic Braudelian dream
of providing a total history, whether of patriarchy or anything else.4 What this
book offers, instead, is a new way of seeing—a reconstructed version of the
Weberian ideal type of patriarchal patrimonialism—that is both a conceptual
redescription of early modern European states with their colonial extensions
and a basis for more illuminating theory and better explanation of their
dynamic development.5 It is not meant to close but to open further research,
argument, and debate. And perhaps it is a new way of seeing that social sci-
entists and second-wave historical sociologists particularly need, for thev are
more liable than historians to read back modernist institutional differentia-
tion into medieval and early modern sites, just as they are less likely to see
that patriarchal patrilineal modes might appear anew in contemporary states.
In today's Islamic world, some strikingly similar quandaries of patriarchy and
modernity infuse high politics, state formation, and interstate relations. We
can better understand their workings if equipped with a sense of how they
appeared in European metropolitan and colonial history.
Let us recall, meanwhile, that patriarchal patrimonialism, as a web of signs,
was first developed and wielded not by sociologists but by the historical
actors themselves. They undertook actions, made pacts, built networks and
institutions, and so on. They did so by assembling and reinventing signs to
address one another and to solve practical problems that they saw. If we have
come away with a sense of the pervasiveness of family and gender in early
modern European politics and its elaboration in some far-reaching institu-
tions, we are in part but tracing the path of their invention.
4
Even in a more modest way, I have not sought to plumb the workings of patriarchy as a
total system. That would have been a different intellectual project, involving my examining
the arguments pro and con of a wider range of historical actors as well as scrutinizing the
inner workings and struggles over family life. That said, this book has also argued that patri-
archy, father-rule, is produced in more than one site, rather than in the family alone.
5
Conceptual description, theory, and explanation are analytically separable but practically
entangled, as Max Weber contended. Ideal types have causal elements embedded in the
"'pure constructs of relationships' that we conceive as 'sufficiently motivated,' 'objectively'
probable,' and thus causally 'adequate' in the light of our 'nomological knowledge"' (M.
Weber 1904, quoted in Ringer i997> 111-12). See Adams (2005) for farther discussion of
patriarchal patrimonialism and Weberian ideal-types.
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Index
absolutism, 8,17-18,39,42, 44, 79,107, burghers, 40,42,149,156, 162

110-11,119,122,124,157-58,171-72,180, burgomaster, 82, 98,146,149-50
186,193
admiralty. See navy Calvinism, 42, 46,52,55-57, 80,101
Africa, 41, 54-55, 57~58, 62, 66,191 Canada, 120,168,191
agriculture, 23,64,114,132,139-40 canvas, 64,141
America, 41, 54-55, 57, 59, 65,128,131-32, capital, 23-24,50,54,56,115-18, T20,130,132,
168-70,178,191. Sec also Canada; West 161,177,187,189. See also loans
Indies capitalism, 2, 28,57,101,113-14,116,126,133,
Amsterdam, 41, 4 4 , 47-62, 68, 71, 73, 82, 87, 137,139, *77,195. See also transition
90, 98-103, 141-42,145-46,149-50, from feudalism to capitalism
153-54,158-59, 179 Caribbean. See West Indies
Anglicanism, 195 Catholic Church, 47,122-23
Anglo-Dutch War Cecil family, 125
First, 62,135,137 Ceylon, 53, 66
Fourth, 143-44,160 Charles 1,125-26,129
Second, 62,69,137 Charles II, 180,190
aristocracy. See monarchy Charles V, 78
Asia, 41,50,54, 65, 115-17,119-20, 131,166 chartered companies, 67, 82
Austria, 140-41,189 established by the state, 4, 50-51,127,142,
authority, 17, 31, 37, 110-11, i34~35,149,160, 179,1941140
182-83,185, T87,194 military function of, 44-45,52, 60,
143-44.176,192-93
Backer family, 87, 95H37 as sovereign actors, 19-22, 26,55,58,121,
Baltic, 41,59,139,142 131-38,158,164,178
banking, 69, 71,168-70,179,189 China, 53, 60,129,193
Batavia, 53, 65,119. See also Indonesia citizenship. See popular sovereignty
Bicker family, 82, 90,95, 99-101 clans. See family
Andries, 57,59, 90,99 class, 24, 40,133-34,139,150,165,195
Gerrit, 41,59, 99 Give, Robert, 192
Bordeaux, 121,170,188 cloth. See textiles
Bourbon, 109,116,119,141,157,171,190 Coen, Jan Pieterszoon, 54
bourgeoisie, 80,133,173,185. See also mer- coffee, 142,170,178
chant elite Colbert, 117-19, m , 128,172,188
Brazil, 41,58-62, 64-65,143 colonialism, 22-23, 28, 49,52-54, 63, 73, n o ,
bureaucratization, 27,42, 44, n o , 150,155, 114,119,121,141-43,163,168,176,
159,163,167,175,194 187-88,193,195. See also slavery; trade
231
232 INDEX
colonial settlers, 61, 88,120,178 Parliament, 123,130,181,183,185

Compagnie des Indes, 168-70,188-90 Reformation, 122,124
Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, 121 Revolution, 15,126,133,135,190,195
Compagnie des Indes Orientales, 115, English East India Company, 58,127-32,
119-21,132,166,168 136,143,151,175-80,188,191-94
Compagnie d'Occident, 168 English Guinea Company, 131
Compagnie Royale des Indes Orientales, 117 entrepot role of Dutch, 5,38, 67,137,
Company of General Farmers, 169,172-73,175 140-42,155,159,176-77
constitution, 44, i55~56,158. See also popular estatism, 8,17, 39, 56, 79,104,107,110,113,
sovereignty 123, 159
contracts of correspondence, T46-50,158,
161-62,172,184 family, families, 37, 80, 90-93,104,161. See
Corver family, 89, 95n37, H5 also monarchy; paternal rule
cotton, 187,195. See also textiles coalitions among, 6, 33-36, 59, 76, 80, 88,
Council of State, 42-44, 47, 98 99, 104,135-36, 142,165,172-73. See
credit. See loans also marriage
Crozat, Antoine, 166 conflicts between, 101-2,138,145-46
customs duties, 43~44,127,129,153,177 lineage, 9-10, 31-34, 75~8o, 83-87, 92-97,
103, 107-8,116,124,138, 148,157,165,
de Graeff family, 99,101 171-74,180-83,186
de Haze de Gregorio, Jeronimus, 145-46 wealth, 92,118,125,152,162, 182,186, 193.
de Witt, Johan, 68, 77,100,103. See also See also state: as familial property
Grand Pensionary Far Lands Company, 59
debt. See loans father as ruler. See monarchy; paternal rule
Dupleix, Joseph-Francois, 188 Felipe V, 14m
Dutch. See Netherlands feminist theory, 3,30-34,36, 171
Dutch East Indies Company, 21, 41,50-54, feudalism. See transition from feudalism to
58-62, 65-66,127-28,131-32,136, capitalism
142-44, T59-61,163-64, 166,177-78 Filmcr, Sir Robert, 180
Board of Directors (Seventeen financiers, 113,118,126,140,153,166-68. See
Gentlemen), 51,53~54, 60, 72, 82, 93, also loans; state: finances
99,105,146-47,150-51, 158 Florence, 94,100,103
Dutch Reformed Church, 56-57 France, 42, 78, 81, 84,105,107-23,134,
Dutch West Indies Company, 52,55—58, 137-38,140-42,144,149,156-57,160,
60-62, 65,143 163-64,166-75,188-91
Board of Directors (Nineteen Fronde, 15,111,135
Gentlemen), 55, 61 Parlement, 109,117
Second (Tweede), 65 Revolution, 174,187,190,195
dycwood, 61,176
gender, 12,30-32,35, 37, 84,124,157,161
East India Company. See English East India gentry, 40,113-17,122,126,128,133,173,185
Company George 1,187
East Indies Company. See Dutch East George II, 156,187
Indies Company George III, 190,193
East Indies, 41,120,131,142,170,177~79 Glorious Revolution, 134,158,180-81,195
Eighty Years War. See Netherlands: revolt Gouda, 146,149
against Spain government, levels of, 14, 45, 47,100,102,
elite. See merchant elite; monarchy; patri- 109,150,155,194
monial rule; regents grain, 59,139
Elizabeth I, 31,123-24,127 Grand Pensionary, 47,50
Enkhuizen, 146 Grotius, 49
England, 42-46,54, 65, 69, 74, 81, 85,107, Guiana, 65,170
114,134-37,140-42, 152,156-60,163,
165,172,175-80,191-94 Haarlem, 149,158
Civil War 130,132-33 Habsburg, 39-40, 42-43, 78, 97, n6ni6,140
Index 233
Hanover, 157,181-82,185-87 manufacturing, 23, 41-42, 6 4 , 71-73,121,

hegemony, 2,73,104,117, B7, H i , 157,162,187 126,131,133,140-41,150-52,1591133,161,
Henri IV, 109,115,120 170,176
Henry VIII, 123 marriage, 86-94, 99,108,112,123,125,149,
Holland, 4 0 , 4 i ~ 4 4 , 4 7 ~ 4 8 , 50,52-53, 61, 73, 156,185. See also family: coalitions
78, 80,102,139, H 9 , 151,153-54,156,159, among
162. See also Amsterdam; Netherlands Martinique, 121,170
honor, 29, 85, 97, "2,116,123-25,152,I73~74 Mauritius, 168
Hoorn, 146,149 Maurits, Prince, 44,55, 79
Medici family, 100-101,103
Iberia. Si? Spain merchant elite, 19-23, 38-45, 48-51, 56, 61,
identity, 4, 94, "3,155 68, 72-73, 99,104-5,116-23,126-29,
India, 53,120,129,131, H3,168,178,188,191-95 133-34,150,153,158,167,174,187. See
indigo, 170,176 also bourgeoisie
Indonesia, 52-54,120,130-31. See also Batavia merchants. See also merchant elite; ship-
inheritance. See family: wealth; state: as ping; trade
familial property competition among, 50,143,152
innovation, 10,18-19, 27, 36, 4 3 , 7 9 , n6,137, cooperation among, 25, 28, 67,147,149
H5,153,164,174, 177, 180 independent, 119,121,127,130-32,143,
investment, 19,50-51,56, 6 9 - 7 0 , 7 2 , 1 0 5 , 161,166-69,177-79,187-89,192
111-12,116,127-28,144,151,173,180. See military, 24, 27, 42, 45, 66-67,153,165,188,
also banking; financiers; loans 193. See also chartered companies: mili-
Italy, 6 0 , 1 7 0 tary function of; navy; war
Molucca, 23,52,54, 65,130
James 1,124,128-29,132 monarchy, 3 , 3 0 , 4 2 , 4 8 - 4 9 , 78, 92,107,
James II, 180-81 110-11,124,133-35,158,165,171,180,
Japan,129 185-86,190-91,194-95. See also abso-
Jews, 47 lutism; paternal rule; w o m e n as rulers
monopoly
kinship. See family as company policy, 65,119,177,188-90.
kingship. See monarchy See also chartered companies
granted by state, 20,54,115,117,120-23,
labor, wage, 23-24, 681150,139 129-30,195
landlords. See rentiers
law, 30, 43, 83, 87-88, 93, " 2 Nantes, 121,168,170,188
Law, John, 167-70 nation-building. See state formation
legitimacy, 18, 31-32, 79, 86,105,107, m-12, Navigation Acts, 135,176
124,136,160-61,169,171,174,185,187, navy, 43, 47,115-17,130,153,176. See also
190-91 chartered companies: military function
Leiden, 41,53,103, H i , H 6 , H 9 of; military; war
Levant, the, 60,115,170 nepotism, 81-83, 98,101,161
Levant Company, 127-29 Netherlands, 47,78,114,134-36,140. See
lineage. See family: lineage also Orange, House of; regents; States-
loans, 24,27,62, 70-71,109,118, T2i, 129, H 4 , General
151-52,163,167,170,179-80,188-89. See influence on France and England, 115,
also capital; financiers; investment; state 130-31,164
finances revolt against Spain, 15, 3 9 - 4 0 , 4 2 , 46-47,
London, 128-29,132,178-79,185-86 54, 68, 78-79, 81, 88,102-4,135
Louis XIII, 115 networks, 7, 4 0 , 67, 77, 80, 91, 9 8 , 1 0 0 , 1 0 4 ,
Louis XIV, 109, i n , 115-17, " 9 - 2 0 , 1 4 0 , 1 6 6 , n o , 122-23,129, H i , 164
169,172,174,191 nobility7. See gentry; monarchy
Louis XV, 167,172
Louis XVI, 172 Orange, House of, 42-43, 4 5 , 4 7 , 4 9 , 77~8o,
97,102-5, n o , 138,156-58,161-62,190. See
Madagascar, 119 also Stadholder; Willem I-Willem V
234 INDEX
paper, 64,141 Richelieu, 115,120

Paris, 1141112,168 Robinocracy, 184,187,193
Paris Brothers, T66, 168 Rotterdam, 82, 84,142,153,156
paternal rule, 6,10, 29-34,74,78,107, n o , Russia, 41,59,141-42
112,124-25,135-36,155,160-62,166,
171-72,180-83,191. See also family; salt, 41,56, 59,139,142
women as rulers Sautijn Scandal, 145-46
patriarchy. See paternal rule Scotland, 124,167
patrimonial rule, 3,16-18, 24-25, 29-36, 49, seigneurialism. See gentry
69, 79, 9 7 - i o o , 104,106,113,123-27, Seven Years War, 155, 188-89,191
135,161-63,175,179,185,188,192-94. See shareholding. See investment
also sovereignty shipbuilding, 53-59, 64, 69,115, 117,141-42
patrilineage. See family: lineage shipping, 4 0 - 4 1 , 50, 63,114,170,176. See
Patriot Revolution, 160-63 also merchants: independent; trade
patronage, 16-17, 25, 43,109-10,122-23,129, silk. See textiles
146,183-85,191,193 Six family, 145-46
paulette. See venality slavery, 10, 23, 41,54,58,60-61,64-66,121,
Pauw, Reynier, 41,55,57,1001146,101 131, Hi-42,168,170,189,191. See also
pepper. See spices colonialism
Periwig Period, 150,152,190 South Sea Company, 179
Philip II, 39, 41, 7^ sovereign companies. See chartered companies
Philip the Handsome, 78 sovereignty, 8,13-21, 44~45,54, 67, 73~74,
piracy, 4 0 , 4 2 , 52, 55,57,59,115 142,153,155, 191, 193-94. See also char-
Pitt, William, the Younger, 191,194 tered companies: as sovereign actors;
plantations. See colonialism; slavery; sugar patrimonial rule; popular sovereignty'
popular sovereignty, 15, 40, 46, 57,135-36, Spain, 19,39-40,52-57,59-6o, 80,102,115,
149,156,161-62; 174,189. See also con- 124-25, T28,130,137,140-41,170,191
stitution Spice Islands. Sec Molucca
population, 23, 41,114,139,141. See also fam- spices, 50, 52-54, 66,130-31,142-43,160-61,
ily: lineage 168
Portugal, 131 Stadholder, 42, 4 4 - 4 5 , 48-49, 77~79, 84, 97,
Estado de India, 20-21 99,102-4, n o , 112,156-59,161-63,165,
privateers. See piracy 190. See also Orange, House of; Willem
privilege, 4~5, 25-26, 71, 75~76, 80-83, 93, I-Willem V
97-98,105,117,123,127,132,138, T45-47, Stadholderless Period
150,165, 171,173,178 First, 9, 68, 79,100,103,105
profit, 22-23, 50-52, 66, 69,116,129-30,144, Second. 157,190
151,179,192 state
property, 20, 24, 26,34, 81, 83-84, 93, " 2 , centralization, 27.. 73,101,104,159,183
127,133-34, 174,193 as familial property, 4,17,45,69, 76,80-83,
Protestantism, 39, 46-47,55—57,104,125,135 86, 97-99,102,108-12,126,146-48,
Prussia, 141,163 152,161,171,183-84. See also venality
Puritanism, 123 finances, 43,59,109-10,123-29,141, H 4 ,
15T, 154,156,166-69,179-80,192. See
Raad van State. See Council of State also loans; taxes
rationalization, 58,171,174,177,194 power, 2 0 , 1 0 9 - n , 122,172-73,184-87,
Reform Act, i94~95 193-94
regents, 42-49, 72-73,80, 82,97-98,104-5, state formation, 2-5.12-16, 21-23, 27,33,
138,145-49,152-58,161-63,181. See also 42-44,104,107, n o , 167-68,195
government; women as rulers States-General, 39, 42-45, 47-48, 52-57,
religion, 56 59-62, 80,147,159,190. See also
rentiers, 40, 72-73, "4ni2,118,126,134,139, Netherlands
150,158, 169,186 Stuart, 122-25,127,129,157,181,187
Index 235
sugar, 23,58, 60-61,142,170,176,191 Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie

Surinam, 23, 65,142 (VOC). See Dutch East Indies
symbols, 30-32, 46, 49, 76, 91, 95, 109, i n , Company
ii6,135,149,156, 158-61,171,183,190 Vondcl, Joost van den, 100
taxes, 25, 47, 52-53, 6 9 - 7 0 , n o , 112,114,123,
139,144,147, H 9 , T53> 161,166,168, Walpole, Sir Robert, 184
I73"74> 189 War of the Spanish Succession, 140,144,
tea, 142-43, 176,178,194n40 164,166
technology. See innovation war, 59, 79,112,119-20,144,15i~54, 164,181,
Teding van Berkhout, Paulus, 76, 96 189. See also chartered companies: mili-
territorial expansion. See colonialism; war tary function of; military; navy
textiles, 41, 53, 59, 64,131,140-41,176,178. Weber, Max, 3, 8,16-17, 32
See also cotton West Indies Company. See Dutch West
tobacco, 64,141-42,168-69,176 Indies Company
Tory, 140,180-82,186 West Indies, 41, 65,120-21,131-32,142,168,
trade, 23,52,57~59, 63-66, 105, TI6, 121, 179,191. See also America
139-42,151,169-70,176-78,189. See also West Indischc Compagnie (WIC). See
chartered companies; colonialism; mer- Dutch West Indies Company
chants; shipping Whig, 180,182,184-86,193
transition from feudalism to capitalism, 3, Willcm I, the Silent, 42, 44,77-79,162
23-24,106,127. See also capitalism Willem II, 9, 68, 79,1011147,102-3
Tudor, 122-23,127 Willcm III, 103,105,157-58
Twelve-Year Truce, 52, 80 Willcm IV, 156-59
Willem V, 157-59,162
Union of Utrecht. See popular sovereignty William and Mary, 179,181
William III, 181
van Beuningen, Coenraad, 21, 99 Witsen family, 99
van der Capellen, Baron, 162 women as rulers, 30-32, 83-84, 91-93, i n ,
van Oldenbarnevelt, Johan, 50,52-53,55, 80 123-24,191. See also gender; monarchy;
van Slingelandt, Simon, 155-56 paternal rule
venality, 25-26, 42-43, 81,108-11,116, it8, wool. See textiles
120,122,125, H5-47,167,169,172,184. world-systems theory, 2, 681149
See also state: as familial property Zeeland, 40-42,53,78,142,153
Venezuela, 56,156

The Familial State Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe by Julia Adams

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The Familial State Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe by Julia Adams

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The Familial State

edited by David Laitin

Copyright © 2005 by Cornell University

First published 2005 by Cornell University Press

Cornell University Press

T his book began life in the Sociology Department of the University of

Los Angeles, and University of Minnesota. I also discussed portions of the

T o anyone curious about the rise of states in early modern Europe, or

Dutch Republic ultimately declined—and we will have to examine

But anomalies and irritants are potentially productive. "States have

jointly do politics and share the prerogatives of sovereignty.4 I think of

In this vein, chapters 4 and 6 underscore unexplored similarities in the

Cases, Mechanisms, Institutions, and Speculations

A few analytical strategies pursued in this book are worth signaling in

to use Max Weber's ideal type to spodight certain "deep analogies"

As some personal, group, and institutional histories intersect with others

The actors themselves see some of these historical possibilities (and no

But even the finest-grained and most historically situated interpretive

The Patrimonial Nexus and

I f a state can be defined as an organization that wields sovereign control

more venerable historical institutionalise Max Weber, and his concept of

A Plethora of Patrimonial Powers

Patrimonialism5 is a concept, an ideal type, by which Weber meant to cap-

that corporate officeholders lacked any regulative power in absolutist

the constant repetition of custom," notes Mark Gould, glossing Weber,

In Which States Charter Sovereign Companies . . .

The companies were the fruits of a centuries-long gestation period. We

combining, in the most concentrated way, thoroughly characteristic patri-

social, or cultural dependence. Imperialism is simply the process or policy of

Merchant Capitalism and State Formation

Long-distance commerce was the leading economic (or politico-eco-

largely precapitalist world, extending from the Americas to Africa to Asia to

sociologists, including Paul Sweezy (1978 [1950]) and Immanuel

metropolitan merchant groupings could make their mark on political

celebrated by historians and sociologists but which remain a crucial element

the companies and the politico-economic arrangements within the territories

The Familial State

(dynastically speaking, a fatherless son), when a king fails to enforce gen-

than the idea of a family form characterized by male headship (Seccombe

feminist theorists and historians have therefore made it possible to see

and perquisites, the source of prestige and revenue as well as decision-mak-

basis of their publicly performed gender identities, their perceived family

State Making, Hegemony,

I n this chapter, I examine the politico-economic aspects of the rise of the

Merchant Revolution and Estatist

and Antwerp's loss was Amsterdam's gain. Some 60,000-120,000 southern

Thus, the position of merchants within the governing coalition, particu-

Powerful social actors arrayed themselves against the council's claims to

autonomous naval power under the prevailing corporate town- and

work brilliantly? One old, and now reinvigorated, argument names

specifically religious aims, including, as Gorski shows, the army (Gorski

Chartered Companies and the PJse of the Colonial Interest

The fledgling state, committed to promoting international commercial

competition among individual merchants (the precompanies, or voorcom-

The truce did benefit European carrying traders, shipbuilders, and

profits"27 (letter to the Count of Salisbury, 31 January/10 February 1612, in

146-48).29 The structure of the patrimonial state, and its merchant-domi-

Dutch Reformed Church, as definitive of the Dutch Republic and charac-

infamous, in which it linked captured territory and sugar plantations in

Intercorporate Relations and Patrimonial Elite Struggle

Sovereign corporations were only gradually organized and subsumed

well-known merchant involved in Italian and Levant trades and shipbuild-

States-General itself, to exchange some East Indies conquests of