The Dutch Republic and Britain: The Making of Modern Society and a European World Economy

FAIN: FV-50169-08

University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth (North Dartmouth, MA 02747-2356)
Gerard M. Koot (Project Director: March 2008 to March 2010)

A five-week summer seminar for fifteen school teachers, to be held in Great Britain and the Netherlands, on the evolution of modern economic systems in Europe.

The purpose of this five-week NEH Summer Seminar for School Teachers at the Historical Institute in London and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar is to investigate how a region of northwest Europe, centered on the North Sea, acquired the characteristics that historians have labeled modern. We will study how the national economy of the Dutch Republic rose to dominance in the new European world-economy of the seventeenth century, how Britain acquired this supremacy in the eighteenth century, and how it transformed itself to become the first industrial nation. Using a comparative method, we will study contemporary accounts, historical documents, and seminal historical interpretations. We will also visit some of the key places that experienced this world-historical transformation.