An Economic and Social History of the Netherlands, 1800–1920 provides a comprehensive account of Dutch history from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, examining population and health, the economy, and socio-political history. The Dutch experience in this period is fascinating and instructive: the country saw extremely rapid population growth, awesome death rates, staggering fertility, some of the fastest economic growth in the world, a uniquely large and efficient service sector, a vast and profitable overseas empire, characteristic 'pillarization', and relative tolerance. Michael Wintle also examines the lives of ordinary people: what they ate, how much they earned, what they thought about public affairs, and how they wooed and wed. This book will be of central importance to Dutch specialists, as well as European historians more generally.

Stable monetary systems form one of the pillars on which rapid economics development in Southeast Asia in recent decades has been based. The same was true in the past. Monetary stabilization became as important issue after 1870, when silver depreciated rapidly against gold and Western countries switched to the gold standard. Colonial Indonesia followed the Netherlands in this respect. On the ardent advice of N.P van den Berg, then president of the central bank, the Java Bank, it was the first Asian country to stabilize its currency against gold, in this case against the gold-based Dutch guilder. Van den Berg was a prominent proponent of monetary stabilization and was well known for his contributions to he dicussion about currency systems and monetary policy in the government of British India, which was at the time exploring ways to achieve stabilization of the rupee. Both the arguments and the wealth of data in the reprint of this very rare book will be of interest to historians of Southeast Asia.

Overview of the financial history of the Netherlands from the sixteenth century onwards.

This report on the Netherlands is the seventh in a series of reports looking at how the broader education, health, social and labour market policy challenges identified in Sick on the Job? are being tackled in a number of OECD countries.