Civic Charity in a Golden Age

Résumé du livre

Using the Amsterdam Municipal Orphanage as a window through which readers

can see the start of profound social and economic changes in early modern

Amsterdam, Civic Charity in a Golden Age explores the connections

between the developing capitalist economy, the functioning of the government,

and the provision of charitable services to orphans in Amsterdam during

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the period of the city's greatest

prosperity and subsequent decline.

Anne McCants skillfully interprets details of the orphanage's expenditures,

especially for food; its population; the work records of those who were

reared there; and the careers of the regents who oversaw it. The establishment

of the orphanage itself was called for by the changing economic needs

of rapidly expanding commercial centers and the potential instability

of a government that depended on taxes from a large, politically powerless

segment of the population.