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The World’s First Stock Exchange Page 246 (255 of 305)
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Acknowledgments and Overview of Literature and Sources
clarified in one fell swoop the circumstances in which traders chose
to exploit this loophole.
It was also known that money could be borrowed by pledging
VOC shares, but it was not until I had Joseph Deutz’s accounts in
front of me—and I could trace exactly who had given him a share
as collateral, how much he loaned on it, and how the transac-
tion was ultimately settled—that I understood precisely how the
Amsterdam repo market worked. It might be a cliché, but at such
moments the pieces of the puzzle fell into place and burrowing
through the archives was a joy.
I began my research into share trading in seventeenth-century
Amsterdam in the fall of 2006. I spent four years reading literature,
studying original sources, going to conferences and workshops,
and writing a thesis. Entitled The World’s First Stock Exchange:
How the Amsterdam Market for Dutch East India Company
Shares Became a Modern Securities Market, 1602–1700, it was
finished in 2010. It has not yet appeared in book form, but it can
be downloaded as a PDF file from http://www.lodewijkpetram.nl.
After I received my research degree I went back to my computer
and wrote De bakermat van de beurs—the present book. So is it
simply a popular version of the thesis? Not entirely. The thesis
argues that the Amsterdam market for VOC shares can be seen
as a “modern” stock market—the first modern stock market in
history—while the focus in De bakermat van de beurs is on the
narrative of how the buying and selling of VOC shares developed.
The book is consequently intended to be more anecdotal. The
heart of the book consists of the stories of the men (and the oc-
casional woman) who traded VOC shares.
We do not have all the intriguing details of these stories. Most
sources (about which I shall say more below) simply state that
trader A had not yet received a share he believed he was owed by
trader B. Period. I have consequently taken the liberty of slightly
romanticizing most of the anecdotes that open the chapters in this
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