The Dirty Secret of Early Modern Capitalism

This study investigates a less-than-wholesome chapter in capitalism's early manifestation in the Dutch Republic and its seventeenth-century global economic entanglements in the arms trade and mercenary warfare, showing how the Dutch accumulation of great wealth was closely linked to their involvement in warfare at home and far abroad.

---

This book shows how the Dutch accumulation of great wealth was closely linked to their involvement in warfare. By charting Dutch activity across the globe, it explores Dutch participation in the international arms trade, and in wars both at home and abroad. In doing so, it ponders the issue of how capitalism has often historically thrived best when its practitioners are ruthless and ignore the human cost of their search for riches. This complicates the traditional Marxist understanding of capitalists as middle-class exploiters in arguing for a much greater agency among lower-class Dutch soldiers and sailors in their efforts to benefit from skills that were in high demand.