Recommended Reading For the Dutch Golden Age?

by [deleted]

I did not see anything in the book list, apologies if I missed it.

vortexvoid

Are there any particular areas you're interested in?

For a hefty general text, Jonathan Israel's 'The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall' is worth a read.

A good politically-focused book is Maarten Prak's 'The Dutch Republic in the 17th Century'.

For the Dutch economy, Jan de Vries is particularly good, as is van Zanden. A lot of de Vries' writings are on Europe as a whole, but they still tend to focus primarily on the Dutch Republic, and so are worth looking at.

For a social history, Van Deursen's 'Plain Lives in a Golden Age' provides plenty of interesting discussion of how much there was a "trickle down" of wealth as a result of the Dutch Republic's commercial success.

If it's art that particularly interests you, Christopher Brown's 'Dutch Painting' is a nice introduction, whilst Wayne Franits' 'Dutch 17th Century Genre Painting' provides a longer, more detailed discussion of the distinctive schools of Dutch painting.