The capitalist gate to the world: trade relations between Western Germany and the Netherlands, 1740-1806

在我们的项目中，我们将1740-1806年期间从下莱茵河延伸到莱茵河-主要地区的西德地区的经济发展和增长与西德国和荷兰的贸易关系联系起来。我们假设，西德国的经济好转和现代化进程开始于1740年左右，主要是由该地区被纳入新兴的大西洋世界经济和资本主义实践的同步传播。与荷兰的贸易增加，荷兰是通往世界贸易的大门，导致了德国批发贸易的出现，并刺激了许多制造业分支的大量增长。只有这种贸易的扩张才使许多行业的标准化大规模生产和劳动分工成为可能。据推测，甚至在1800年之前，新的重商主义实践就促进了资本主义在西德国的发展。制造品通常通过荷兰港口城市运往遥远的市场，德国商人受益于第一个现代经济体提供的发达和现代化的贸易和金融基础设施。结果，荷兰贸易和德国制造业之间出现了一种不对称的互补关系。我们假定，西德商人在做生意的过程中，逐渐熟悉了荷兰资本主义的进步方法，这些方法在西德德国迅速传播开来。荷兰对德国的进口也很重要，因为西德地区购买了大量殖民地商品供其消费。新殖民地消费品和原材料的进口通常由出口制成品的同一家商行负责。除了确定贸易总量之外，我们对德国进出口的研究是为了回答这样一个问题：消费的新可能性对资本主义结构的出现有什么意义。殖民地商品的可获得性是否足以激励劳动的强化和在日常生活中实施市场原则？总而言之，这些讨论导致了一些研究问题：德国西部和荷兰之间的贸易关系在18世纪世纪是如何发展的，哪些商品的交易量是多少？哪些行为者进行了贸易，商业惯例在德国是如何发展的？融入大西洋世界经济对德国西部的经济增长和后来的工业化有多大意义？这些问题将在微观层面上进行研究，使用系列来源以及商业分类账和不同商人的信件。

In our project, we put into context the economic development and growth in the West German region stretching from the Lower Rhine to the Rhine-Main-area in the period 1740-1806 with the trade relations of Western Germany and the Netherlands. We hypothesize that Western Germany's economic upturn and modernization process beginning about 1740 was prompted mainly by the region being integrated into the emerging Atlantic world economy and the concurrent spread of capitalist practices. The increase in trade with the Netherlands, which served as the gate to world trade, lead to the emergence of a German wholesale trade as well as it stimulated the abundant growth of numerous manufacturing branches. Only this expansion of trade made standardized mass production and division of labour in many industries possible. Presumably, the new mercantile practices fostered the advance of capitalism in Western Germany even before 1800. Manufactured goods usually were sent to distant markets via Dutch port cities, where German merchants benefited from the well-developed and modern infrastructure for trade and financial operations that the first modern economy provided. In consequence, an asymmetric complementary relation emerged between Dutch trade and German manufacture. We suppose that West German merchants became acquainted with progressive Dutch capitalist methods while conduction business, and that these methods spread swiftly in West Germany. The Netherlands were significant for German imports, too, as the West German regions bought large amounts of colonial goods for consumption there. The import of the new colonial consumption goods and raw materials was often handled by the same merchant houses that exported manufactured goods. Apart from determining the total volume of trade, our study of German imports and exports is to answer the question what significance the new possibilities to consume had for the emergence of capitalist structures. Was the availability of colonial goods a sufficient incentive for an intensification of labour and the implementation of the market principle in everyday life? Altogether, these deliberations lead to a number of research questions: How did the trade relations between Western Germany and the Netherlands develop during the 18th century, and which goods were traded in which volumes? Which actors conducted the trade, and how did mercantile practices develop in West Germany? In how far was the integration into the Atlantic world economy significant for the economic growth, and later industrialization, of Western Germany? These questions are to be researched on a micro-level by using serial sources as well as business ledgers and correspondence of diverse merchant houses.