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The World’s First Stock Exchange Page 253 (262 of 305)
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Acknowledgments and Overview of Literature and Sources
archive in the Amsterdam City Archives) contain much more
useful data about share trading. Both made loans against VOC
shares on a large scale and kept meticulous records of their deal-
ings. Deutz also traded in shares and derivatives. All these trans-
actions can be reconstructed using his books. There is no clearer
picture anywhere of seventeenth-century share trading than in
Joseph Deutz’s surviving ledgers and journals, which cover the
1665–1684 period.
Jeronimus Velters’s archive, which is also in the Amsterdam City
Archives, is very small, but the little it does contain is extremely
interesting. Velters wrote all his letters in duplicate, among them
many about share trading, and his letter books covering a long
period, 1667 to 1710, have survived.
Finally the Archive of the Portuguese Jewish community in Am-
sterdam, similarly in the City Archives, contains many personal
papers relating to buying and selling shares. They ended up in
this archive because the synagogue looked after the estates left
by many members when they died. Most of the estates date from
after 1700, but the archive also contains some good documenta-
tion from before the turn of the century. Manuel Levy Duarte’s
papers are particularly important to research into the seventeenth
century. Aside from his correspondence with Rodrigo Dias Hen-
riques and a few rather chaotic journals of share transactions,
there are some interesting items in boxes of loose documents.
The contents of these boxes create the impression that when Levy
Duarte died, someone gathered up all the papers lying around
at his home and took them to the synagogue. In among the tax
demands, receipts from tailors and cobblers, and notes about the
rent that Levy Duarte received on his properties, there are many
bills from brokers who had assisted in share transactions.
Court archives also contain a great deal of information about
the trade in VOC shares. However, this data has to be approached
with a good deal of caution. Court sources, by definition, only con-
tain information about deals that went wrong, so very high-risk
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