ABSTRACT
This chapter shows the results of a case study on two coopers' guilds, one in Haarlem and one in Rotterdam. Given the centrality of coopers to the Early Modern urban economy, this sector can be used as an indicator for economic development. In Rotterdam, a city in the southern part of Holland, the breweries were an important source of income in the second half of the seventeenth century. Skills were transmitted on the shop floor, something that was the case for many other technical professions in the Early Modern period. In the years between 1650 and 1700 no major technical innovations seem to have occurred in cooperage. Haarlem and Rotterdam were located in the Province of Holland, the most urbanized region of the Dutch Republic. The western part of the Dutch Republic, with Amsterdam as its centre, profited in particular from the new-found wealth.
