Rise of the Dutch Republics
How the Peloponnesian War, the Dutch East India Company, and a Russian fruit peddler predict the greatest ventures of the 21st century.
This week I wrote about the coming of new VOC-scale companies at American Reformer. Here’s an excerpt:
Spring 2024, West Texas.
“I don’t know, you’ll have to ask them if it’s against the rules.”
I stand in front of a trucker about to load five hundred pounds of gunpowder and half a million primers into an 18-wheeler. His faithful, corpulent wife leans out of the open passenger window to observe. She patiently waits for her man to take care of business so they can keep their plans.
The driver seems to have no personal investment in the fact that the combination of gunpowder, primers, and a violent catalyst would scatter him to atoms. The truck has never blown up. It has never turned into a biblical fireball post-collision with a mom-van on I-35.
He is friendly, good natured, and probably right––the truck will probably not explode.
You would know if you were towing all the components for a bomb wouldn’t you? Of course, as would I.
Almost everyone expects something dramatic to happen in the US over the next decade but it’s difficult to say exactly what. Let’s take a stab at naming some of the ingredients in the truck and how they can combine to create the largest private enterprises in over 300 years.
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Summer 431 B.C. Platea, Greece.
The Corinthians stand before the assembly in Sparta. Their message: you do not want war with Athens.
“The Athenians are addicted to innovation, their designs are characterized by swiftness alike in conception and execution… … they were born into the world to take no rest and give none to others. Such is Athens, your antagonist.”
Read the rest of the piece at American Reformer, Rise of the Dutch Republics.
Nice one. I have long had a theory that among the 17th century seeds of the Industrial Revolution, and I include the Dutch East India Company as part of this, were the widespread advent of two things in Europe: coffee and codfish. The former provided something nonalcoholic to drink that would not kill you, with the added stimulant effect helping spark the world’s first capital markets, and the latter provided protein to a calorie starved populace, enabling a huge expansion of population.