Social Hierarchy of the Dutch Republic

Lower in status came the farmers, craft and tradesmen, shopkeepers and government bureaucrats. Farmers prospered from cash crops for the towns and the seafaring population, and as lakes were turned into polders such as the Beemster, Schermer and Purmer, pumped dry by windmills, local grain and dairy farming soared. Windmills and peat carried by canal gave cheap energy; the wind-powered sawmill let the shipyards build a vast fleet, and sugar refineries grew. Skilled Protestant craftsmen from Antwerp, Bruges and Ghent moved north after Antwerp fell to Spain in 1585. Guilds and town militias had once checked the regents, but in the course of the 15th century the towns’ government became oligarchical.

Moving in or out. Status followed income, so a craftsman or shopkeeper who prospered could rise into the affluent middle class; a skilled tradesman earned about 200 guilders a year.

How many? Everyone else: farmers, craftsmen, tradesmen, shopkeepers and lesser officials with their families, the largest part of the population. The other shares are estimates, so this one is too.

The Catholic Church had been more or less suppressed since the war with Spain began, and Catholic services were soon forbidden in every province. Personal freedom of religion remained, but public office was out of the question. Money could overcome intolerance: Catholics bought the privilege of holding services in a conventicle, a house doubling inconspicuously as a church, while in 17th-century Leiden anyone opening a home to services could be fined 200 guilders and banned from the city. Catholics tended to keep to their own section of each town: the painter Johannes Vermeer lived in the “Papist corner” of Delft. Cities with a mainly Catholic background, such as Utrecht and Gouda, did not share in the Golden Age.

Moving in or out. Birth into a Catholic family decided it, and the way to office lay only through conforming to the Reformed Church. Wealth and status belonged almost exclusively to Protestants.

How many? Estimate: Catholics were 18 per cent of the population at the start of the 18th century and 23 per cent at its end; the articles give no figure for the 17th century, when they were already “one of the largest single denominations”.

The Republic drew Portuguese and Spanish Jews fleeing the Inquisitions of Iberia in the 16th and 17th centuries, and later poorer German Jews. The Portuguese community had many wealthy merchants, who lived openly as Jews and took part in trade on a par with wealthy Dutch merchants. Amsterdam welcomed the Sephardic Jews and granted them all privileges except citizenship, but its tolerance served the city’s convenience: poor Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe were far more carefully vetted, and those who came to depend on the city were encouraged to move on. Like the Catholics and the Anabaptists, Jews kept to their own section of each town and were barred from public office.

Moving in or out. Birth into the community decided it. A Sephardic merchant could grow as rich as any Dutch merchant, but Amsterdam’s citizenship stayed closed to him.

How many? Estimate: the articles give no count; the Portuguese and Spanish Jewish community and the poorer German Jews who came later lived mostly in Amsterdam.

Below the craftsmen stood skilled labourers, maids, servants, sailors and others employed in the service trades. Dutch workers were generally paid better than in most of Europe and enjoyed relatively high living standards, though they paid higher taxes than usual. Between 1570 and 1620 the non-agricultural workforce grew by 3 per cent a year, and real wages for unskilled labourers were 62 per cent higher in 1615–19 than in 1575–79. Many were newcomers: nearly half of Amsterdam’s people were first-generation immigrants, from the Protestant parts of Germany and elsewhere, and in Amsterdam there was always work. Sailors manned the largest merchant fleet of any nation, and by the 1680s nearly 1,000 Dutch ships entered the Baltic each year.

Moving in or out. Work drew migrants from the Dutch countryside and from abroad, where many people were poor and unemployed. Since status followed income, better pay could lift a family.

How many? Estimate: the articles give no count; the skilled workers, maids, servants, sailors and other service workers of a land where nearly a third of the people lived in towns, and the crews of the largest merchant fleet of any nation.