ABSTRACT
It sometimes seems as if the seventeenth century, wedged between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, has no features of its own. With Renaissance and Reformation on the one side, Enlightenment and Revolution on the other, for the century in between we are left with but vague terms like ‘transition’ and ‘change’. To trace the titles of history textbooks dealing with the seventeenth century is often amusing. They frequently illuminate only one aspect, occasionally not very typical, of that century. Sometimes a reshuffling of the international cards is considered most significant: ‘From Spanish to French Ascendancy’; or emphasis is placed on the rise of monarchical power: ‘The Age of Absolutism’. The same incertitude prevails in economic history: the sixteenth century is grouped round the international phenomenon of the price revolution, the eighteenth century is interpreted in the light of the Industrial Revolution; for the seventeenth century, however, we read only fragmentary treatment, country by country, with mercantilism brought forward as the only common international politico-economic trend.
