Pauline Croft

Book Review: Small is Beautiful? Interlopers and Smaller Trading Nations in the Pre-Industrial Period. Proceedings of the XVth World Economic History Congress in Utrecht (Netherlands) 2009

the chronological scope of the study but still highly appropriate. Perhaps the most interesting and valuable sources, however, have been the voyage books that have survived among the local archives. These were mostly kept by ship masters, the unsung heroes of much maritime history, and enable us to see how ships were crewed, supplied and run, how they were maintained and repaired, how seamen were paid, where exactly ships went once they left Whitby and before they returned, and how long it all took. They thereby fill out much ofthe skeletal information that can be derived from Port Books and the like, and are, like this volume, an absolutely invaluable resource for further research.

The Reign of James VI and I: the Birth of Britain

This article considers recent work over the past twenty-five years on the reign of James VI and I. The author argues that the multiple monarchy created by James VI of Scotlands accession to the English throne in 1603 was one of the greatest formative moments in the history of the British Isles, creating a political unit that endured until 1922, with the emergence of the Irish Free State. However, the structural problems of that multiple monarchy were also the major underlying cause of the ‘British’ civil war – fought out in Scotland and Ireland as well as England – that broke out in 1642.

Book Review: England's Maritime Empire: Seapower, Commerce, and Policy, 1490–1690LoadesDavid M.. England's Maritime Empire: Seapower, Commerce, and Policy, 1490–1690.Harlow, UK: Longman [www.pearsoneduc.com], 2000. xi + 277 pp., maps, chapter notes, select bibliography, index. £15.99, paper; ISBN 0-582-35628-8.

The impact of these advantages diminished over time, and towards the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Dutch share in the Baltic trade had become marginal. The Sound Toll registers reveal that most grain ships were no longer Dutch. In order to illustrate this dramatic change, the author has sandwiched her information between the biographies oftwo Amsterdam merchants, Hooft (1547-1626) and De Clercq (1795-1844). The latter almost went bankrupt, and rather than constantly looking for new opportunities as Hooft had done, De Clercq left his family business, which had specialized in the Baltic trade for generations. The Dutch merchant elite had become inflexible. Unfortunately, the author is much more informative about the economics of the Baltic trade than about its social implications. The mini-biographies of Hooft and De Clercq seem to indicate that a gap existed between merchants trading in Europe and those trading beyond. An exception should be made for the trade and shipping to the nonEuropean parts of the Mediterranean. These destinations became part of the Dutch trading network during the last years of the sixteenth century, and the biography of Hooft indicates that shipping through the Strait of Gibraltar was an extension of the existing trade patterns and not an innovation with a distinct commercial network. Why then did Hooft abstain from participating in the East and West India Companies founded in the latter part of his life? And why did De Clercq have to withdraw from the family firm in order to profit from the new opportunities in the Dutch East Indies during the early nineteenth century? One reviewer can ask more questions than a thousand authors can answer, and we should not forget that this book was based on a doctoral thesis submitted at Leiden University. Since every PhD student is well advised to limit the scope of his or her research to manageable proportions, the author has chosen wisely by concentrating her study on the business economics of the Baltic grain trade. Others will have to find out whether the Dutch merchant community indeed was divided into several distinct groups and whether towards the end of the eighteenth century these groups had become castes that had lost the knack of switching from one trade to another.

Review article: English parliaments re‐considered

Jennifer Loach: Parliament under the Tudors (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991; pp. viii, 172; ISBN 0–19–873091–8; £8.95 pbk) T.E. Hartley: Elizabeths Parliaments: Queen, Lords and Commons, 1559–1601 (Manchester University Press, 1992; pp. ii, 184; ISBN 0–7190–3216–4; £35.00) Parliament and Liberty from the reign of Elizabeth to the English civil war. edited by J.H. Hexter (Stanford University Press, 1992; pp. xi, 333; ISBN 0–8047–1949–7;

Libels, Popular Literacy and Public Opinion in Early Modern England

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