ABSTRACT
Few cities in North-Western Europe underwent such dramatic changes in the early modern period as Antwerp, as regards both economic and religious matters. Between 1495 and 1565 Antwerp developed not only into the economic capital of the Low Countries, but it also became the centre of the growing commerce with the rest of the world and took up a leading position in the system of European public finances.1 The metropolis paid a heavy price for its part in the Revolt of the Netherlands, which resulted in the Spanish Reconquest of Flanders and Brabant. The fall of the city to Parma in 1585, the subsequent blockade of the Scheldt by the Dutch, the emigration of nearly half its population and the flight of capital to the north put an end to Antwerp’s ‘Golden Age’. During the first half of the seventeenth century the former metropolis continued to play an important role as a centre of production and consumption, but its predominance in international trade was a thing of the past, as the city fathers made clear to the Cardinal-Infante Don Ferdinando in 1635: on one of the stage sets painted by Rubens, Mercury could be seen flying away to make way for Industria, which was represented in the guise of the ‘Daughter of Poverty’.2 The commercial decline was indeed only partly compensated for by the expansion of the luxury industries. From the 1650s onwards, local producers had in addition to cope with growing competition, both from within the Spanish Netherlands and outside it, which threatened to lose the city its last trump card.3
