This is a very interesting book about Amsterdam's remarkable economic expansion that began at the end of the sixteenth century. Clè Lesger, Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Amsterdam, presents a comprehensive reassessment of some of the most popular explanations to this intriguing phenomenon and offers a new approach for understanding it. He provides extensive quantitative evidence to show that the rapid rise in Amsterdam's trade should not be attributed to deep-rooted endogenous developments in Holland as put forth in recent studies, but rather, as the older historical literature claimed, to exogenous events, particularly the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish and the consequent division of the Low Countries. Moreover, Lesger argues against the popular staple market theory according to which Amsterdam's economic success lay in its port and warehousing infrastructure, but contends that it can be explained by the city's information processing facilities.

The basis of Lesger's analysis is a theoretical framework which he defines as the “gateway system.” The gateway system refers to an integrated spatial economic system whose trade with the outside world is carried out via specialized intermediary port cities. Through a thorough examination of neglected archival sources (including the levy of duty on exports from the Habsburg hereditary lands) as well as the existing literature, he convincingly demonstrates that by the middle of the sixteenth century, the core region of the Low Countries, Holland, Zeeland, Brabant, and Flanders, “had come to form a highly developed and closely integrated spatial economy, characterized by specialization at a local and regional level” (p. 7). Amsterdam's role within this system was to serve as its main gateway for northern and eastern Europe, as well as for the Ijssel district. Its trade consisted mostly of re-exports of a wide variety of products from the hinterland to the Baltic and to northern Germany, as well as imported products from the same regions which were distributed throughout the Low Countries. Even Antwerp, by far the most important trading city in the Low Countries, is shown to have been part of this gateway system. Antwerp's trade was specialized and restricted to specific regions, with about 5 percent of its exports being re-exported through Amsterdam.

According to Lesger, there were no internal changes in Amsterdam's patterns of trade prior to the Dutch Revolt. The operation of the gateway system remained stable and continuous between the 1540s and the first half of the 1580s. Even after the eruption of the revolt, which from about 1576 heavily damaged the export industry in the southern core provinces, little change occurred in Amsterdam's gateway role and its trade with northern and eastern Europe continued along the same path. The rapid expansion of Amsterdam's trade is shown to have only began in the 1590s, which brings Lesger to conclude that this dramatic rise was the outcome of an exogenous shock, namely the Dutch Revolt. The revolt divided the core region of the Low Countries into north and south, thereby obstructing the smooth flow of goods and the export industry in a region that exported as much as a quarter of its total industrial output (p. 123).

Lesger further maintains that as a result of the fall of Antwerp in 1585, and the continuous closure of the Scheldt by the rebels and their blockade of the Flemish coast, the gateway system of the Low Countries began to break down, which eventually required the construction of an alternative system. This new system emerged in the northern part of the Low Countries, an area that had been relatively free of violence since the end of the 1570s, whereby Amsterdam took over Antwerp's part as the major gateway for transportation networks throughout the Low Countries. Why Amsterdam? Lesger attributes this to two geographical advantages. The first was Amsterdam's geographical position that provided a connection with the hinterland and ease of access for inland crafts and the other was that its harbor had a spacious, sheltered and deep roadstead. While he does not disregard the importance of Amsterdam's social and economic institutions, he sees them instead “as a necessary precondition than as a sufficient explanation of the changes that took place in Amsterdam” (p. 6).

What I find particularly appealing in Lesger's approach to Amsterdam's great commercial success is that it is based on a general economic model. Thus, in contrast with the restrictive view that sees the rise of Amsterdam as an exceptional “Dutch phenomenon,” his approach allows us to generalize the Dutch experience in order to gain a better understanding of those conditions that may lead to economic growth in different markets.