ABSTRACT
TWENTIETH CENTURY Economic historians who study the nineteenth century have been almost obsessed with the problem of the late industrialization of the Netherlands. The fundamental issue was why ‘modern industry’ arose much later than in neighbouring countries such as Britain, Belgium, or even Germany (Griffiths 1996a). Sometimes it helps to approach the issue in a completely different way: why did ‘modern industry’ arise at all in the Netherlands in this period? During the nineteenth century most small economies seem to have moved in the direction of greater specialization and to have concentrated on activities in which they had a ‘comparative advantage’. The Danish economy, for example, became increasingly dependent on the export of a small number of agricultural products, while Belgium specialized in a specific range of (semifinished) industrial products. Why did the Dutch economy not follow a comparable path of development? The ‘agrocommercial’ nation of the first half of the nineteenth century was heavily dependent on its exports of agricultural products and the supply of international services to the mainly German hinterland. After 1860 the Netherlands began to develop an economic structure that was much more differentiated and balanced. In this respect the development of the Dutch economy is more comparable to that of large countries, such as Germany, France, and Italy (Griffiths 1996a).
