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The World’s First Stock Exchange Page 249 (258 of 305)
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Acknowledgments and Overview of Literature and Sources
VOC was run in the second half of the seventeenth century. Coen-
raad van Beuningen plays a major role in it. Together with Jaap
Bruijn and Ivo Schoffer, Gaastra compiled data about all VOC
flotillas. This research was published in the three bulky volumes
of Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Cen-
turies (1979). The database can also be consulted at http://www.
historici.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/DAS.
Pieter van Dam’s Beschryvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie
(1701) is of interest as a general account of the VOC. Van Dam
was the VOC’s general secretary (advocaat), and in that capacity
he attended all the meetings of the Lords Seventeen and the Am-
sterdam directors and so knew better than anyone how the Com-
pany conducted its business. He wrote this seven-volume history
of the VOC on the Company’s instructions. It is accessible in full
at http://www.historici.nl/retroboeken/vandam/.
For those who like to study figures, De jaarlijkse financiele ve-
rantwoording in de VOC (1984), by the retired accountant J. P.
de Korte, is essential reading. De Korte collected all the available
data about the VOC’s corporate finances in order to write this
work. The figures were then organized and presented in such a
way that anyone who has ever looked at financial statements can
understand them.
Anne Goldgar recently wrote the very good Tulipmania: Money,
Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age (2007) about
the tulip bulb bubble. In my view Goldgar does not say enough
about the financial aspects of bulb trading, but she paints a splen-
did picture of the trading community, which gathered on winter
evenings in taverns all over the province of Holland (and a few in
Utrecht) to buy and sell tulip bulbs.
Jonathan Israel has written a number of excellent articles about
Portuguese Jews in the Republic. “Jews and the Stock Exchange:
the Amsterdam Financial Crash of 1688” appears in the com-
pilation Diasporas Within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews, and
the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (2002). “The Dutch
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