The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe

The Wilder House Series in Politics, History and Culture

by Julia Adams

The seventeenth century was called the Dutch Golden Age. Over the course of eighty years, the tiny United Provinces of the Netherlands overthrew Spanish rule and became Europe's dominant power. Eventually, though, Dutch hegemony collapsed as quickly as it had risen. In The Familial State , Julia Adams explores the role that Holland's great families played in this dramatic history. She charts how family patriarchs―who were at the time both state-builders and merchant capitalists―shaped the first great wave of European colonialism, which in turn influenced European political development in innovative ways. On the basis of massive archival work, Adams arrives at a profoundly gendered reading of the family/power structure of the Dutch elite and their companies, in particular the VOC or Dutch East India Company. In the United Provinces, she finds the first example of the power structure that would dominate the transitional states of early modern Europe―the "familial state." This organizational structure is typified, in her view, by "paternal political rule and multiple arrangements among the family heads."

Genres: Sociology, History, European History

Hardcover

First published July 1, 2005

Reviews

[Letitia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found Julia Adams sentence structure hard to follow and the content maddeningly repetitive. In essence: during the Dutch Golden Age of economic expansion and trade, family was really really really important.

[Brad Eastman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am fascinated by the early modern period and how the institutions we now take for granted came into being. In particular, the nation state and the rise of modern capitalism both took seed in the 17th and 18th centuries, most strongly in the Netherlands and England. Ms. Adams covers this period as a sociologist, not as a historian. She looks at the intertwined rise of the modern corporation (the Dutch and English East India Companies) and the rise of the centralized nation state. Although the account is sociological, it is deeply rooted in history and Ms. Adams calls upon both scholarly literature from sociology and history.

Despite my interest in the subject matter, I was very disappointed in this book. Ms. Adams is too enthralled with her academic language. Perhaps Ms. Adams believes that writing with such technical and little known terms brings precision to her work. I reality, Ms. Adams obscures her intended argument. If she had simply tried to describe the rise of the East India Companies and the role elites played in founding and managing the companies, I would have understood her basic premise. In my opinion, her need to sound academic weakens her argument. Instead of evidence she resorts to theoretical gobley gook and I had trouble understanding what she added to the field.