The Familial State by Julia Adams PAPERBACK 9780801474040

The Familial StateRuling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe\nAuthor(s): Julia Adams\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cornell University Press, United States\nImprint: Cornell University Press\nISBN-13: 9780801474040, 978-0801474040\nSynopsis\nThe 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 patriarchswho were at the time both state-builders and merchant capitalistsshaped the first great wave of European colonialism, which in turn influenced European political development in innovative ways.\n\n On the basis of massive archival work, Adams arrives at a profoundly gendered reading of the family/power structure of the ""