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The World’s First Stock Exchange Page 247 (256 of 305)
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Acknowledgments and Overview of Literature and Sources
book. This is true, for instance, in the case of Thomas Sprenck-
huysen, who sold his share to the Raphoen brothers, and in the
account of the option deal between Jacob and Joseph Pereira. And
as for the story of the two maids who subscribed to the VOC’s ini-
tial capital shortly before the share register was closed, obviously
I do not know their reasons for investing. The correspondences of
Jeronimus Velters and Jacques de Velaer Jr., however, do contain
a wealth of fascinating details.
I am not the first to research the Amsterdam trade in VOC
shares. As far back as 1919 M. F. J. Smith published Tijd-affaires
in effecten aan de Amsterdamsche beurs, which deals with edicts,
regulations, and some of the pamphlets about buying and selling
shares in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This book also
contains a brief summary and analysis of Confusión de confusio-
nes. Smith expanded this summary significantly in the introduc-
tion to the Dutch translation of Confusión de confusiones (1939),
the complete text of which is available at http://www.dbnl.org.
Johannes van Dillen unearthed a great deal of archival material
about Isaac le Maire’s bear consortium. Transcriptions of these
documents were published in the article “Isaac Le Maire en de
handel in actien der Oost-Indische Compagnie,” which appeared
in the Economisch historisch jaarboek in 1930. Van Dillen also
published the share register of the VOC’s Amsterdam chamber in
Het oudste aandeelhoudersregister van de Kamer Amsterdam der
Oost-Indische Compagnie (1958). This book provides biograph-
ical data about almost all those who contributed to the initial
capital of the Amsterdam chamber. The extensive introduction to
this work discusses the establishment of the VOC and the public
subscription to the startup capital.
More recently Neil De Marchi and Paul Harrison wrote “Trad-
ing ‘in the Wind’ and with Guile: The Troublesome Matter of the
Short Selling of Shares in Seventeenth-Century Holland” (1994),
which explores the moral aspects of naked short selling. The work
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