Summary and Conclusion

Abstract

The bulk of the literature on the Dutch economy in the nineteenth century has been concerned with the question of industrialisation and it has focused largely on two specific aspects — the timing of an ‘industrial revolution’ or ‘take-off’ and the factors behind the evident lateness of this event.¹ It is probably fair to say that following the thorough analysis of the late Professor de Jonge there is now general agreement that significant industrial development did not occur in the Netherlands until the last decade of the nineteenth century.² However a similar consensus over the explanations for this relative industrial backwardness or retardation has yet to emerge. This study, by concentrating on the relatively small timespan of the twenty years between 1830 and 1850, has attempted to isolate the factors responsible for this phenomenon in that period at least and to raise a number of expectations which need to be tested against developments in the subsequent forty years.