Dutch women are natural entrepreneurs
25 August 2009
The rich trading history of the Northern Netherlands is not just a story of men. According to Dutch researcher Danielle van den Heuvel, Dutch women played a significant part in that trade. Women were able to capture a place in the world of commerce as a result of large-scale commercialisation following the Golden Age. For her research, Van den Heuvel received the prize for the best dissertation at the World Economic History Congress 2009.
The heroic female entrepreneurs of the Northern Netherlands were already portrayed in old travel journals. However, up until now the degree of genuine involvement of these women in trade was not known. Van den Heuvel analysed figures from two centuries of trade from the Northern Netherlands and discovered that the women did not really become involved in commercial enterprise until just after the Golden Age. They did not, therefore, profit from the economic prosperity of that age, but only managed to establish their position in the period immediately ensuing it.
There was a reasonably mature commercial sector at the end of the seventeenth century. According to Van den Heuvel, this situation afforded the women a unique opportunity. For instance, there was a wide range of products and an even larger demand for inexpensive consumer goods. This allowed women with just a small amount of initial capital to set up their own businesses. At the same time, the structure of commercial enterprise changed which made it easier to trade, with the introduction of auctions at food markets, for example, meaning that single women who could not acquire their products via their husbands could also engage in trade.
Van den Heuvel has demonstrated that women were prominent in the world of commerce – the vast majority of traders in market and street trade were women – but that they did not play such a large part in all areas. Many guilds still excluded women from taking part in trading activities, or else asked for entrance fees that were far too high for many women. But female entrepreneurship still blossomed in the eighteenth century, mostly in Amsterdam.
The jury which awarded Danielle van den Heuvel her prize, for the best dissertation in economic history until 1800, was full of praise for her research. Both the scope of her research and her findings were described as ‘ambitious’. Van den Heuvel undertook her doctoral research with a grant from NWO and received a Rubicon grant from NWO in 2007.
..............................
For further information please contact:
- Dr Danielle van den Heuvel
- dwagv2@cam.ac.uk
- The dissertation entitled Women and entrepreneurship. Female traders in the Northern Netherlands c.1580-1815 has been published by Aksant Academic Publishers.
