An Analysis on the Importance of Commercial Port Cities in the Netherlands and Urban Networking in the 16th and 17th Centuries

The economic, intellectual, and political relationships shared amongst the cities of The Netherlands in the Early Modern times are an under-studied subject in world history. The urban network in the Netherlands served as a fundamental core of the interconnected economy of the world-system proposed by Immanuel Wallerstein and is a center of gravity in Dutch historiography that merits closer examination. This paper focuses on the role the secondary urban network played in making Amsterdam and the Netherlands a major world power during that country's "Golden Age."