Journal of Interdisciplinary History, xl:2 (Autumn, 2009), 215–238.

ACCOUNTING FOR GOVERNMENT

Jacob Soll
Accounting for Government: Holland and the
Rise of Political Economy in Seventeenth-Century
Europe

The Dutch may ascribe their present grandeur
to the virtue and frugality of their ancestors as they
please, but what made that contemptible spot of the
earth so considerable among the powers of Europe
has been their political wisdom in postponing everything
to merchandise and navigation [E] the unlimited liberty
of conscience enjoyed among them.

—Bernard de Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1714)

In the Instructions for the Dauphin (1665), Louis XIV set out a train-
ing course for his son. Whereas humanists and great ministers had
cited the ancients, Louis cited none. Ever focused on the royal
moi, he described how he overcame the troubles of the civil war of
the Fronde, noble power, and ªscal problems. This was a modern
handbook for a new kind of politics. Notably, Louis exhorted his
son never to trust a prime minister, except in questions of ªnance,
for which kings needed experts. Sounding like a Dutch stadtholder,
Louis explained, “I took the precaution of assigning Colbert . . .
with the title of Intendant, a man in whom I had the highest
conªdence, because I knew that he was very dedicated, intelli-
gent, and honest; and I have entrusted him then with keeping the
register of funds that I have described to you.”1

Jean-Baptiste-Colbert

(1619–1683), who had a merchant
background, wrote the sections of the Instructions that pertained to
ªnance. He advised the young prince to master ªnance through
the handling of account books and the “disposition of registers”

Jacob Soll is Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University, Camden. He is the author of
The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System (Ann Arbor, 2009);
Publishing The Prince: History, Reading, and the Birth of Political Criticism (Ann Arbor, 2005).

1 Louis XIV (trans. and ed. Paul Sonnino), Mémoires for the Instruction of the Dauphin (Nuovo
York, 1970), 64–65.

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216 | JACOB SOLL

and recommended that he “note by hand all the accounts in the
state ªnancial registers of funds at the beginning of each year, E
also the registry of spending from the past year. He should go over
and sign with his hand all the roles of Savings, all the accounting
reports, and all the status claims that have been veriªed.” He also
warned that this work was too important for anyone else to do. By
1665, both Louis and Colbert had left behind the old humanist
language of political pedagogy, focused on reason of state, history,
and classical exempla. In its place, they saw the need for a tradi-
tional course in accounting and political economy.2

Although economic matters were of increasing interest to
ministers and monarchs, few had intimate knowledge about the
details of accounting, and few relied on professionals. But now, In
the wake of the crises that wracked Europe in the early seven-
teenth century, when large scale armies and navies were common,
and the Dutch were fashioning a seaborne empire, a new political
culture with a deeper interest in political economy and accounting
was emerging. By the 1660s, France, Britain, and Brandenburg-
Prussia had reformed their systems of state accounting and had be-
gun to give political primacy to ªnancial managers. The internal
language of statecraft was increasingly economic. For ªnancial re-
forme, mid-seventeenth-century governments turned to merchant
traditions. The ars mercatoria, l’oeconomie politique, and the methods
of the rasonato (accountant), had thrived in the streets of Venice
and Florence since the late Middle Ages, combining with the
technically minded classical humanism of Leonardo da Vinci, Fil-
ippo Brunelleschi, and Leon Battista Alberti and with the notary
and accounting knowledge of such ªgures as Coluccio Salutati,
Cosimo I de Medici, and Niccoló Machiavelli.3

After the Thirty Years’ War, the English Revolution, IL

Sonnino (ed.), Mémoires (introduzione), 5; Colbert, “Mémoire pour l’instruction du Dau-
2
phin,” ms. in Colbert’s hand, 1665, in idem (ed. Pierre Clément), Lettres, instructions et mémoires
(Paris, 1861–1870), II, Pt.1, ccvx, ccxvii.
3 Luca Zan, “Accounting and Management Discourse in Proto-Industrial Settings: IL
Venice Arsenal at the Turn of the 16th Century,” Accounting and Business Research, XXXII
(2004), 146; Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank 1397–1494 (Camera-
ponte, Massa., 1963), 37–38; Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and
Learning 1300–1600 (Baltimore, 1989), 310. On the relationship of scholarly, philological hu-
manism to technical, artisan culture, see Anthony Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder
of the Italian Renaissance (Cambridge, Massa., 2002). For John Greville Agard Pocock’s vision of
the long tradition of Italian republicanism, in a cultural context, see The Machiavellian Moment:
Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975).

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ACCOUNTIN G FOR GOVERNM ENT | 217

Fronde, and the Dutch economic dominance of the 1650s, it was
clear that old monarchical policymaking through reason of state
could not keep up with the demands of a large-scale administra-
tive, military, industrial, and colonial state without serious ªnan-
cial management. With the relative peace of Westphalia, the mer-
cantile republic of Holland gained ever more strength during the
opulent Golden Age of Jan de Witt (1618–1672), and the great
monarchies—from France and England to Prussia and Austria—
began to adopt the policies and culture developed and touted by
the Dutch. The Dutch insistence on state management through
political economy changed the language of government at multi-
ple levels. This is not to say that republicanism, tolerance, and lais-
sez-faire theory were triumphant, although they made headway.
What transformed government in the late seventeenth century
were mainly the rationalizing tools of accounting and ªnancial
policy that replaced the cumbersome late feudal ªscalité of nonstra-
tegic taxation for war.4

humanism and accounting The rise of political economy and
ªnancial culture in the great monarchies of Europe came remark-
ably late, considering the wide knowledge and effective use of
mercantile strategies in republics, cities, and banking families
across Europe from the late Middle Ages onward. Numerous vari-
ations and translations of Luca Pacioli’s Summa de arithmetica, geo-
metria, proportioni et proportionalita (1494), which included a detailed
chapter on double-entry bookkeeping, as well as manuals of ars
mercatoria and home economic manuals, were in circulation, ex-
plaining credit, currency, and trust and even dispensing travel ad-
vice. Much of this information was in the hands of commercial
families or individuals, what Braudel aptly called “le capitalisme
chez lui.” In spite of this proliferation, Tuttavia, few monarchs
had truly sought to understand the functional details of ªnance,
which Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu—a man who
admitted to knowing nothing about state accounting—called the
sinews of state. Such basic tools as bookkeeping, handling an aba-
cus, and creating bills of credit, which were well known to shop-

4
Steven C. UN. Pincus, “From Butterboxes to Wooden Shoes: The Shift in English Popular
Sentiment from Anti-Dutch to Anti-French in the 1670s,” Historical Journal, XXXVIII (1995),
333–361; Jean-Claude Perrot, Une histoire intellectuelle de l’économie politique: XVIIe–XVIIIe
siècle (Paris, 1992).

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218 | JACOB SOLL

keepers, bankers, traders, and ship captains, were not current par-
lance among the governing classes of the large monarchies of the
late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.5

In The Jewel House, a pathbreaking study of how popular,
or unofªcial, technical culture in the streets of Elizabethan Lon-
don helped to fuel the scientiªc revolution, Harkness shows
how mathematics teachers, mechanics, barbers, surgeons, printers,
pharmacists, and herbalists developed a vernacular of the natural
sciences. Their work not only paralleled that of Francis Bacon and
the Royal Society; it also interacted with the work of noble and
formal natural historians and philosophers, thus helping to popu-
larize the authority of observational natural knowledge in London.
Vernacular culture in some ways dominated early modern ªnance;
Infatti, it was closely connected with the world of natural obser-
vation and learning—honored and time-tested at the highest
levels of trade and even within the Dutch government. This ver-
nacular and often republican mercantile culture—associated ªrst
with the governments of Italy, Svizzera, Holland, E, to a de-
gree, England—slowly became part of a formal state culture and
discourse after the 1650s. It was not a culture of capitalism; no one
used this word. Rather it was a new application of ªnancial prac-
tices to state policy.6

5 Fernand Braudel, Civilisation materielle, économie et capitalisme XVe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris,
1979), II, 358–363 (“Les jeux de l’échange”), 329; John Bart Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry
Bookkeeping: Lucas Pacioli’s Treatise (A.D. 1494—the earliest known writer on bookkeeping) repro-
duced and translated with reproductions, notes and abstracts from Manzoni, Pietra, Mainardi, Ympyn,
Stevin and Dafforne (Denver, 1914), 7–13; Christian Bec, Les marchands écrivains: Affaires et
humanisme à Florence 1375–1434 (Paris, 1967), 51; Pierre Jeannin (trans. Paul Fittingoff ), Mer-
chants of the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1972), 91–103; Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Ob-
ligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (London, 1998), 60–
69; Ceri Sullivan, The Rhetoric of Credit: Merchants in Early Modern Writing (Madison, 2002),
12–17. Richlieu cited in Orest Ranum, Richelieu and the Councillors of Louis XIII: A Study of the
Secretaries of State and Superintendents of Finance in the Ministry of Richelieu 1635–1642 (Oxford,
1963), 136. See also Richard Bonney, “Louis XIII, Richelieu and the Royal Finances,” in Jo-
seph Bergin and Laurence Brockliss (eds.), Richelieu and His Age (New York, 1992), 99–133.
On the techniques of merchant education in the Italian Renaissance, see Grendler, Schooling in
Renaissance Italy, 306–329.
6 Deborah E. Harkness, The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientiªc Revolution
(Nuovo paradiso, 2007), 9–13. See also Hans Erich Bödeker, “On the Origins of the ‘Statistical
Gaze’: Modes of Perception, Forms of Knowledge, and Ways of Writing in the Early Social
Scienze,” in Peter Becker and William Clark (eds.), Little Tools of Knowledge: Historical Essays
on Academic and Bureaucratic Practices (Ann Arbor, 2001), 165–172; Harkness, “Accounting for
Scienza: How a Merchant Kept his Books in Elizabethan London,” in Margaret Jacob and
Catherine Secretan (eds.), Self-Perception and Early Modern Capitalists (London, 2008), 214–215;

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ACCOUNTIN G FOR GOVERNM ENT | 219

Merchants and their account books allowed credit, currency,
and goods to ºow across borders and seas. In the merchant repub-
lics of Renaissance Italy, the knowledge of merchants was closely
intertwined with the development of humanist government.
Bankers and international merchants from Florence, Genoa, E
Venice not only handled currency, kept books, and moved mer-
chandise across Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Levant; Essi
also designed and managed the government of their city states. In
Venice, their benches were on the Rialto, not far from the ªsh
market and down the Grand Canal from the Doges Palace. Mer-
chant street knowledge would translate into the administrative ba-
sis of mercantile city states.

Between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Italians
and Germans had mastered private banking, and merchant houses
ºourished throughout Europe. In Braudel’s words, “[D]o not un-
derestimate the amount of knowledge necessary to acquire: the es-
tablishment of prices of buying and selling, the calculation of cost
prices and exchange rates, corresponding measures and weights,
the calculation of simple and compound interest rates; the art
of preparing a ‘simulated balance sheet’ of an operation; the han-
dling of currencies, letters of exchange, order forms, and titles of
credit.”7

In ªfteenth and sixteenth-century Florence and Venice,
ªgures such as Alberti (1404–1472)—a Latin humanist, architect,
philosopher, political counselor, and courtier—and Machiavelli
received mathematic, technical, and administrative training for
both business and city government to complement their education
in classical literary Latin studies. Alberti’s family had run an inter-
national business, the ofªces of which had stretched from England
to Byzantium. Although by the time Alberti had come of age, IL
family was poor, he certainly knew the basics of being a notary,
which entailed the knowledge of legal contracts and ªnancial pa-
perwork.8

The ideal Italian humanist knew how to ªnance projects and
keep double-entry books, as well as to write, translate, and calcu-

Muldrew, Economy of Obligation, 323–325. See also Julia Adams, The Familial State: Ruling
Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, 2005), 4.
7 Braudel, Civilisation materielle, 2, 360.
8 Grafton, Leon Battista Alberti: Master Builder of the Italian Renaissance (London, 2000), 6, 34.

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220 | JACOB SOLL

late. A case in point was Pacioli (1446–1517), whose aforemen-
tioned Summa de arithmetica contained a highly inºuential chapter
on accounting. In an iconic portrait of 1495, the painter Jacopo di
Barbari portrayed Pacioli as a learned geometrist, complete with
the tools of his craft. Pacioli had acquired his knowledge of per-
spective and Euclidean geometry in the workshop of Piero della
Francesca, a mathematician as well as an artist. Later, he established
friendships with both Alberti and da Vinci, to whom he taught
mathematics. His accounting skills were merely one facet of his
broad expertise.

In his remarkable large copper engraving, the Allegory to Com-
merce: The Glory of Antwerp (1585), Amman, the famed wood-
carver (1539–1591), depicted merchants at work on street benches
and in ofªces. Notably, the image is framed by different account
books and descriptions of the rules and practices of accounting. In
the center of the image, enshrined between pillars, is an inventory
book, the measure of the wealth of a merchant, and the product of
good bookkeeping. Inventory was capital before capitalism. Mer-
chants worked assiduously to develop functional inventory books,
but few feudal monarchs had them, even those like Henry IV of
France, who had the ªscalist minister, Maximilien de Béthune,
Duc de Sully, handling his ªnances. It was impossible to under-
stand inventory, or capital holdings, without the exact double-
bookkeeping practices of the skilled merchant.9

Due to the mores of nobility, what was common knowledge
in the streets of Venice, Florence, Augsburg, Lyon, Seville, Lon-
don, Seville, Lübeck, Stolberg, Antwerp, and Amsterdam—and
becoming so in republican governments—was still largely foreign
in the feudal courts of Europe. Great nobles and government min-
isters alike shunned what they considered to be base commercial
activities, and political humanists, increasingly literary and theo-
retical, did not teach the merchant skills that Alberti and Machia-
velli knew. The idea of learning accounting was anathema to
Christian, chivalric, and courtly princes. It is impossible to imag-
ine the Neoplatonist, elitist Baldassare Castiglione recommending
that a courtier—or Emperor Charles V, his admirer—learn the

9
Jost Amman, Eigentliche Abbildung desz ganzen Bewerbs der löblichen Kaufmannschafft . . . und
fürnehmsten Handelstädt (Augsburg, 1622): broadside [107.5 X 71.5 cm] large woodblock image
surrounded by letterpress verse, comprised of six joined sheets with additional strips at head
and foot (special thanks to Seth Fagen for this reference and description).

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ACCOUNTIN G FOR GOVERNM ENT | 221

minutiae of keeping account and receipt books. The Neoplatonic
values of inherent talent (sprezzatura) and prudence were inimical
to toiling over books and cultivating the ethic of truthfulness
requisite for a bookkeeper. Princes preferred the more general
knowledge of humanists and the industrial skills of naturalists.
Their knowledge of political economy did not include ªnancial
considerations. Not even Philip II of Spain, the great administrator
king (“el rey Papelero”), meddled in accounting. Kings were not
bookkeepers.10

from the marketplace to the halls of government: ac-
counting as political knowledge in holland Unlike the
feudal courts of Europe, the Dutch Republic viewed banking and
trade as central to the power structure of the state. The ars
mercatoria was a rich part of everyday urban life and an essential ele-
ment of state government. The Dutch ruling elite was familiar
with the minutiae of ªnance, industry, and trade.

In 1609, the Dutch burgomasters instituted the Wisselbank,
located in Amsterdam’s city hall, to guarantee the value of pre-
cious metal currency and deposits for the purpose of making pay-
ments in sound currency. Eventually, it made its loans only to the
East India Company, which the republican state helped to found
In 1602. These short-term “anticipation loans” were meant to
smooth the Company’s cash ºow between the arrivals of return
ºeets. A crucial difference between the Amsterdam bank and the
later Bank of England (O, for that matter, the earlier bank at Ant-
werp) was that it was not a “fractional reserve” bank, il quale è in-
tended for making loans, but an exchange bank, intended for
making payments. This function supported the merchants and pri-
vate bankers (kassiers) who did make loans, by accepting bills of
exchange and other short-term credit
these
kassiers and merchants were required to hold accounts at the Bank
to ensure prompt, full-currency payments.11

instruments. Tutto

10 Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier (Cambridge, 1995), 29; Sullivan, Rhetoric of
Credit, 37–38; Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (Chicago,
2007), 81–83; James E. King, Science and Rationalism in the Government of Louis XIV 1661–1683
(Baltimore, 1949), 64–83.
11 Lodewijk J. Wagenaar, “Les mécanismes de la prospérité,” in Henri Méchoulan (ed.),
Amsterdam XVIIe siècle: Marchands et philosophes: Les bénéªces de la tolérance (Paris, 1993), 59–81.
Thanks to Jan de Vries for information about the Wisselbank.

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222 | JACOB SOLL

Adam Smith later noted the need for government expertise in

bookkeeping in order to maintain such institutions:

At Amsterdam, Tuttavia, no point of faith is better established than
that for every guilder, circulated as bank money, there is a corre-
spondent guilder in gold or silver to be found in the treasure of the
bank. The city is guarantee that it should be so. The bank is under
the direction of the four reigning burgomasters who are changed
every year. Each new set of burgomasters visits the treasure, com-
pares it with the books, receives it upon oath, and delivers it over,
with the same awful solemnity, to the set which succeeds; and in
that sober and religious country oaths are not yet disregarded. A ro-
tation of this kind seems alone a sufªcient security against any prac-
tices which cannot be avowed.12

By mid-century, Amsterdam not only had a stock exchange,
but its banks also offered loans (bills of exchange), which could be
directly invested in shipping-merchandise futures. What was dis-
parate and private among business houses elsewhere in Europe was
ofªcial state culture in Amsterdam. With local industry, banking,
trade, Dutch merchants’
stock exchanges, and international
knowledge of ªnance became more sophisticated than that of their
Italian predecessors, as their merchant empire expanded across the
mondo, and their cargos came to include Brazilian wood, Asian
plants, and Arctic whale oil. The marketplace in Amsterdam was
famous for its luxury products and treasures. The tight interaction
of the governing elite with Dutch structures of ªnance, politica,
and trade ensured that the republic was governed by ªnancial
managers who handled large amounts of varied information. IL
close relationship between the workings of the city of Amsterdam
and governmental culture reºects the kind of informal knowledge
exchange between the street and the high institutions
Quello
Harkness describes in The Jewel House.13

12 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Edinburgh,
1776), 304 (Bk. 4, Chap. 3, Pt. 1).
13 De Vries and Ad Ven der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Persever-
ance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (New York, 1997),129–131; Simon Schama, The Embar-
rassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York, 1997), 301;
Oscar Gelderblom, “The Governance of Early Modern Trade: The Case of Hans Thijs,
1556–1611,” Enterprise and Society, IV (2003), 606–639; Burke, A Social History of Knowledge
from Gutenberg to Diderot (Cambridge, 2000), 164; Harold John Cook, Matters of Exchange:
Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (Nuovo paradiso, 2007), 20–21; Clé Lesger
(trans. J. C. Grayson), The Rise of the Amsterdam Market and Information Exchange: Merchants,

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The mixing of industrial knowledge with international trade
and politics is what made Amsterdam’s information exchange
unique. Holland, particularly the stock exchange and the East In-
dia Company in Amsterdam, was at the center of the world eco-
nomic system. Letters to and from merchant and imperial trading
houses throughout the world assessed political climates, trading
routes, the price ºuctuations of commodities, and works of schol-
arship. Dutch consuls sent reports from Dutch whale oil factories
in the Arctic, the West Indies, Europe, Brasile, Surinam, Manhat-
tan, and Arden, and Dutch trading outposts were everywhere,
even in the backyard of the French monarchies, in such cities as
Nantes and La Rochelle. Inoltre, Amsterdam handled the
warehousing and shipping for much of the world’s merchandise—
even that of its close neighbors—which passed ªrst through Hol-
land before being resold or processed. Amsterdam and The Hague
served as the hub of a civic information web, encompassing all of
Holland, as well as England, France, Germany, and the Baltic
States. Only those familiar with the intricacies of the ars mercatoria
could have ruled this empire.14

The Early Lessons of Stevin and Montchrétien

Pacioli’s
pan-European bestseller on accounting did not show up in either
state policymaking or princely pedagogy until the 1590s when the
Dutch mathematician and engineer Simon Stevin (1548–1620) be-
came both tutor and advisor to Prince Maurice of Nassau, Stadt-
holder of the Republic of Holland. The centrality of ªnance and
business within the Dutch republic meant that merchant knowl-
edge was essential to elite education. The author of works on
mathematics, physics, nautical mechanics, lingua, and music,
Stevin represented a branch of learned humanism different from
that of the literary philologists and lawyers, like Desiderius Eras-
mus, or the later political historians Justus Lipsius and Jacques-
Auguste de Thou. The jurist Hugo Grotius, whose father was a
friend of Stevin, was said to have admired both his theories and his
nautical inventions. Stevin was to become the state engineer, su-

Commercial Expansion and Change in the Spatial Economy of the Low Countries c.1550–1630 (Lon-
don, 2006)), 183–214.
14 Woodruff D. Smith, “The Function of Commercial Centers in the Modernization of
European Capitlism: Amsterdam as an Information Exchange in the Seventeenth Century,"
Journal of Economic History, CLIV (1984), 986, 992; Michel Morineau, “Or brésilien et gazettes
hollandaises,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, XXV (1978), 3–30; Braudel, Civilisa-
tion materielle, 75–80.

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224 | JACOB SOLL

perintendent of ªnances, and chief of the all-important Dutch
waterworks.15

As a scholar, Stevin descended from Florentine mathemati-
cians, inventors, and engineers. Although he wrote about such
formal subjects as language and mathematics, he focused mainly
on engineering and practical learning. Following the Italian tradi-
zione, he considered accounting and double-entry bookkeeping a
branch of the mathematical sciences, which he impressed on
Prince Maurice, all the while keeping a journal of their interac-
zioni. Despite his place in the House of Orange, Maurice clearly
felt he needed to know the merchant practices of bourgeois re-
publicans.16

Increasingly, political economists saw this sort of training as
necessary for all monarchs who functioned in a mercantile world.
In 1615, Antoine de Montchrétien dedicated his Treatise on Politi-
cal Economy (1615) to the regent Marie de Medici and her son
Louis XIII. He begged the Queen Mother to teach her son about
the technical side of manufacturing, as well as about the new mer-
chandise and natural products from the colonies. The king would
need to understand shipbuilding, metalworking, manufacturing,
and even forging. He would have to know about sandalwood,
materia medica, tobacco, and rhubarb. Montchrétien advocated the
kind of practical logic of the marketplace associated with Petrus
Ramus and was well versed in the work of the traveling medical
humanists, such as Garcia da Orta, and the Jesuit travel writers, COME
well as in the older artisanal humanism of Brunelleschi, Alberti,
and da Vinci. Most of all, Montchrétian insisted that the French
monarchy follow the Dutch model: “If the rule practiced in Hol-
land could be introduced into this kingdom, it would without
doubt be a good thing and favorable to industry and diligence.”17

Late humanism, represented by both Erasmus and the Roman
historian Tacitus, relied on rhetoric, history, and law. Montchré-
tien, Tuttavia, demanded that the royal curriculum also include
the basic elements of the ars mercatoria, insisting that the king ac-

See Simon Stevin (ed. Ernst Crone et al.), Principal Works (Amsterdam, 1966), V (on en-

15
gineering), 1, 3–6.
16 A transcript of Stevin’s journal (1548–1620 and of a discussion between him and Prince
Maurice is found in Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping, 15–16, 7–13.
17 Antoine de Montchrétien, Traicté de l’oeconomie politique (Rouen, 1615), 11–51, 323–324,
18, 108.

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ACCOUNTIN G FOR GOVERNM ENT | 225

quire a working knowledge of ªnance, study Indendants’ reports,
understand the tax codes, and try to reform corruption.18

In spite of the economic works of Jean Bodin, Bacon, Bar-
thelemy Laffemas, and Montchrétien, and of Marie de Medici’s
personal connections with banking families and her personal
knowledge of the marketplace in Amsterdam, she did not heed
Montchrétien’s advice. Financial and industrial training never en-
tered into Louis XIII’s pedagogical program, nor did it for most
monarchs. In 1641, Falvio Testir, an Italian poet, exclaimed, “This
is the century of the soldier.” But Montchrétian saw, presciently,
that it ought to be the century of the accountant or the administra-
tor who could successfully pay the soldier and the shipbuilder.19
The Literature of Mercantile Management and Dutch Politics: Bar-
If France
laeus, de la Court, de Witt, Spinoza, Hobbes, and Locke
failed to adopt mercantile government, even with the industrial
and colonial projects of Richelieu, Barlaeus’ Mercator sapiens, O
The Learned Merchant (1632), shows that in Holland, classical hu-
manism, political economy, and government continued their co-
development. Barlaeus’ oration on the glory of Holland’s mercan-
tile might was written to celebrate the inauguration of
IL
Athanaeum Illustre of Amsterdam, the predecessor to the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam, and to defend the merchant burgomasters—
primarily Andries Bicker—against the princely pretensions of
the House of Orange. Inºuenced by the technical branches of
humanism—Galen, Pliny, and Euclid—Barlaeus favored utilitar-
ian knowledge. Navigation, geography, art, geometry, medicine,
and neo-Stoic ethics would guide the philosopher-merchant to
manage his affairs competently and honestly. Barlaeus assigned an-
cient virtue to the wise and just merchant manager who could in-
state a reasoned politics to create abundant commerce. This form
of management had helped Dutch merchant interests triumph
over both Spanish invasion and Swedish competition.20

Whereas Catholic and monarchical Europe produced neo-
classical writings either upholding or attacking monarchy by rea-

Ibid., 358.

18
19 Testir cited in Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of
the West 1500–1800 (New York, 1996; orig. pub. 1988), 1.
20 Caspar Barlaeus, Mercator sapiens, sive oratio de conjugendis mercatorae et philosophiae, In
Catherine Secretan (ed.), Le “Marchand philosophe” de Caspar Barlaeus: Un éloge du commerce
dans la Hollande du Siècle d’Or. Étude, texte et traduction du Mercator sapiens (Paris, 2002), 153.
Barlaeus’ oration accompanied Gerardus Vossius’ Oratio de Historiae Utilitate.

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226 | JACOB SOLL

son of state, Barlaeus’ work began a series of major political trea-
tises defending sound economic management and tolerance as the
driving forces of politics. Most inºuentially, the free-market polit-
ical economist Pieter de la Court (1618–1685) developed these
ideas into a virulent attack against monarchy and a detailed outline
of how economic and ªnancial management was a basis for sound
political policy. From a Protestant, cloth-making family, de la
Court had received the Dutch classical merchant’s education,
which combined shop-room ºoor apprenticeship, travel, E
bookkeeping with classical and theological studies. By both tem-
perament and marriage, he was connected to Jan de Witt and his
republican cause in the struggle for control of the Netherlands.
With de Witt’s protection and collaboration, de la Court
wrote the radical True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republic of
Holland in 1662. De Witt not only paid for its publication; he
added some of his own writings and placed his name on the title
page, toning down some of de la Court’s more strident arguments.
This collaboration was the realization of Barlaeus’ ideal—the phi-
losopher and merchant administrator working together for repub-
lican ideals and economic policy. De Witt was a product of the
classical education of the Dordecht Latin school, but also of Carte-
sian mathematics, on which he published and which he connected
with accounting. He trained as a lawyer, and traveled through
France and England. He was a classical statesman in his knowledge
of courtly government and diplomacy, but he was also a mercan-
tile manager. He served as Grand Pensionary of Holland from
1652 A 1672, Quando, in spite of the hostility of Spain, Sweden,
England, and France, Holland became the opulent center of world
trade, industry, and art, as well as a beacon of tolerance in a Eu-
rope nearly strangled by its own cord of religious conºict.21

In True Interest, de la Court and de Witt mixed classical learn-
ing with pure political economy in what was clearly a radical at-
tempt to transform the genre of the political maxim, generally
dominated by such classical historians as Tacitus, Livy, and Caesar.
Although the book’s introduction makes reference to classical
writers, what follows is mainly an attack on the dynastic politics

21 Antonin Lefèvre Pontalis, Jan de Witt, Grand Pensionnaire de Hollande: Vingt années de
république parlementaire au dix-septième siècle (Paris, 1884), II, 313–318; Herbert H. Rowen, John
de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland 1625–1672 (Princeton, 1978), 391–398; Pontalis, Jan de
Witt, 88–89.

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ACCOUNTIN G FOR GOVERNM ENT | 227

and ªscalité founded on the royal reason of state. The authors
claimed that the inhabitants of Holland could “receive no greater
mischief in their polity than to be governed by a monarch or su-
preme lord” and that well-administered cities always fare better
than monarchies, for which they could adduce the support of Ar-
istotle’s Politica. They insisted that citizens could not pursue their
economic endeavors without political, religious, and economic
liberty. Their plan for good republican government derived from
sound economic management. As the title of Chapter 4 proclaims,
“Holland lies commodiously to fetch its provisions out of the sea,
and to provide itself by other arts and trades; and how great a
means of subsistence the liberties may be to us.”22

Thus did technical humanism evolve toward the ªnancial
theory of the Enlightenment and the complex Baconian, Carte-
sian, and proto-Lockian nature of Dutch political culture. Al-
though True Interest refers to classical political texts and critiques
monarchical politics, the body of the work is a mercantile study of
geography, population, and the technical management of trade—
not the kind of literary and historical maxims usually associated
with political humanism. Tuttavia, it is not so much a break with
tradition as an afªrmation of the merchant class, industry, and free
trade—citing such precedents as Gerard de Malynes, Lex mercatoria
(1622)—over absolutism, war, and taxes. This mercantile call of
victory had actually begun with the decline of the Italian merchant
states in the ªfteenth century. Yet, although Florence had evinced
republicanism with a mercantile bent, the conºuence of free gov-
ernment and information, good accounting, and trade and reli-
gious tolerance (none of which was possible without the others, COME
the book makes clear) was uniquely Dutch.23

At the age of twenty-two, upon the death of his father,
Baruch Spinoza took charge of his family’s failing shipping com-
pany. He was intimately familiar not only with the basics of man-
aging a ªrm but also with the vagaries of maritime trade and inter-
national ªnance. Although Spinoza ultimately forsook both
commerce and the Jewish religion to concentrate on philosophy,
his knowledge of Cartesianism, mathematics, and accounting, COME

Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, 254; de la Court and de Witt, The True Interest and Polit-

22
ical Maxims of the Republic of Holland (London, 1746), 4–6, 14, 15, 31, 49–70, 22.
23 De la Court and de Witt, True Interest, 2. On new attitudes of merchant virtue, Vedere
Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 478, 49–50.

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228 | JACOB SOLL

well as his belief in the efªcacy of clear and distinct reasoning, did
not lead him far from the values that informed mercantile practice.
Inoltre, his Tractatus Politicus evinces a republicanism and a sup-
port for natural and individual rights that echo de la Court.24

By the seventeenth century, Holland’s trade and religious
freedom were celebrated and feared. Dutch wealth became leg-
endary in art and poetry. In 1653, during the ªrst Anglo-Dutch
War, Andrew Marvell wrote “The Character of Holland,” a scath-
ing poem against the republic, criticizing its mercantile and tech-
nical ideals while noting the connection between the state, bank-
ing, and engineering. Throughout the seventeenth century, works
such as the anonymous verse essay, London’s Metamorphosis: Or, UN
Dialogue between London and Amsterdam discoursing compendiously of
the change of Government, Alteration of Manners, and the Escapes of
Sectaries (1647), and William Aglionby’s The Present State of the
United Provinces of the Low-Countries as to the Government, Laws,
Forces, Richess, Manners, Customs, Revenue, and Teritory of the Dutch
(London, 1669) marveled at, and also expressed mistrust about,
Dutch wealth, tolerance, and difference. Many of these works
claimed that the Dutch were essentially pirates and parasites,
growing rich at the expense of the French and English.25

Before the Anglo-Dutch War of 1665, Restoration England
viewed Holland as a hotbed of republicanism. Tuttavia, after the
French annexations of the 1670s, moderate monarchists began to
see Holland as more of a viable ally than France, especially when
the House of Orange returned to power in 1673. The pro-Dutch
monarchists were led by Sir William Temple (1628–1699), who
wrote Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands in
1673. He echoed de la Court and de Witt, noting that Holland’s
success had nothing to do with either the reason of state or the ar-
cana imperii. Invece, in a proto-Lockian fashion, he lauded its mer-
chant-friendly governors, political freedoms, and religious toler-
ance.

Being pro-Dutch usually meant believing in religious toler-

24
Jonathan Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750
(New York, 2001), 166; idem, “Philosophy, Commerce and the Synagogue: Baruch Spinoza’s
Expulsion from the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish Community in 1656,” in idem (ed.), Dutch
Jewry: Its History and Secular Culture (Leiden, 2002), 125–140; Baruch Spinoza (trans. R. H. M.
Elwes), A Theological-Political Treatise and a Political Treatise (New York, 1951), 289–297.
25 Pincus, “From Butterboxes to Wooden Shoes," 337; Jacob and Lynn Hunt, “Why Hol-
land?" (forthcoming); Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, 301.

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ance and an economic approach to government, as well as good
accounting techniques. Muldrew argues that the rise of account-
ing was part of the rationalist and individualist orientation of the
early Enlightenment, representing an alternative to state authority.
Alongside natural law, accounting intimated the importance of a
life regulated according to the rules of mathematics—that is, IL
systematic, daily practice of bookkeeping, whether of ªscal re-
cords or personal diaries. Così, individual self-control, formazione scolastica,
and reason were related to the spread of accounting techniques,
thanks, in no small part, to the political theorists who wrote about
accounting’s inºuence on government.26

In Leviathan (1651), Hobbes, familiar with practices of ac-
counting from his youthful employ collecting receipt books, used
the metaphor of accounting not only in questions of self-control
but also in his very deªnition of reason: “When a man Reasoneth,
hee does nothing else but conceive a summe totall, from Addition
of parcels; or conceive a Remainder, from Subtraction of one
summe from another. . . . REASON in this sense, is nothing but
Reckoning (that is Adding and Subtracting) of the Consequences
of Generall names agreed upon, for the marking and signifying of
our thoughts.”27

John Locke, in his posthumous Of the Conduct of the Under-
standing (London, 1706), also associated “the man of reason” with
the certainty of accounting, sound judgment, E, by association,
good government. Locke had not only worked and studied in
Holland; he had corresponded with de la Court and was
inºuenced by True Interest of Holland. Locke borrowed from de la
Court and de Witt’s attitudes toward tolerance, and he undoubt-
edly was aware of how political economy, accounting, and reason
intersected in Holland.28

a public reckoning: england and the dutch model Al-
though de la Court and de Witt did not directly discuss methods
of bookkeeping, Amsterdam was already seen as the center of
good bookkeeping in Europe, as Richard Dafforne claimed in
Merchant’s Mirrour, or Directions for the Perfect Ordering and Keeping of
His Accounts (London, 1660). Published two years before True In-

26 Muldrew, Economy of Obligation, 128, 146.
27 Thomas Hobbes (ed. Richard Tuck), Leviathan (New York, 1996), 110–111.
28

John Marshall, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (New York, 2006), 355–359.

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230 | JACOB SOLL

terest, Dafforne’s work was the product of his sojourn in Amster-
dam to learn accounting from Dutch bookkeepers, whom he con-
sidered the best in the world. Although Dafforne’s book was a
practical guide to, and an interpretation of, the earlier works of
Pacioli and Jan Ympen, his discussion of double-entry bookkeep-
ing included his belief that a good classical education mixed with
accounting led to good government.29

Citing Stevin and his training course for Prince Maurice as
“Princely Book-keeping,” Dafforne recommended that account-
ing be raised to part of the “Liberall sciences.” Thus, the inºuence
of the Dutch vision of government, apprendimento, and accounting cir-
culated in the world of merchants and the Republic of Letters, Ma
how much inºuence did it have on real practical government?30
The Dutch Vision and Practical Government in England: Pepys and
Petty The mid-seventeenth century should be seen as the Euro-
pean moment of political economy. After the various wars and cri-
ses, and with the rise of trade, the rules of politics changed. Rulers
across Europe—from the parliamentary England of the Restora-
tion to absolutist France and Prussia—realized that the Dutch held
the keys to a new economic and political development. Each
looked to Holland for speciªc elements of political economy.

Although Samuel Pepys was not so clear a product of Dutch
culture as Dafforne and Temple were, nonetheless, he represents
the ascendance of political economy, and of the Lockian self-
accountant, in government. Given a larger state infrastructure and
navy, England’s Charles II was forced to rely on advanced ªnan-
cial management. Serving as a naval administrator, Pepys used his
organizational talents to help England ªght the Dutch navy in the
Anglo-Dutch War; accounting was a traditional part of naval op-
eration. In his Diary, Pepys regularly discussed accounting for the
state, and for himself. Pepys not only did the books for his own
“Tangier” project; he also veriªed the books of other ofªcials. Lui
was openly critical of those who did not keep good accounts; non
even Charles II or John Montague, the Commissioner of the Ad-
miralty and Earl of Sandwich, were spared.31

Ibid., 143.

29 For Dafforne, see Geijsbeek, Ancient Double-Entry Bookkeeping, 142.
30
31 Pincus, “Introduction: The Revolution of 1688–1689: The First Modern Revolution,"
in idem (ed.), England’s Glorious Revolution 1688–1689: A Brief History with Documents (Boston,
2006),12; Pepys, Diary, Thurs 21st December, 1665; Marzo 4, 1665; Marzo 2, 1665, in which

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ACCOUNTIN G FOR GOVERNM ENT | 231

At the same time that Pepys was writing, Charles II was re-
forming state accounting through the Commission of 1667, Quale
made the royal Treasury the central point of state ªnancial admin-
istration. Though Pepys doubted that
this innovation would
lavoro, the new central accounting ofªce, run by courtiers such as
Montague, was Charles II’s most important reform. Members of
Parliament, Tuttavia, worried that better control of ªnancial re-
sources would give Charles too much power. But the secretaries
of the Treasury kept good books and built lenders’ conªdence.32

As accounting and political economy became more estab-
lished within the English government, men like William Petty
(1623–1687) were helping to build complex social, political, E
economic policy through ªnancial and social statistics. In his Politi-
cal Arithmetik (1682), Petty, a classicist well versed in mathematical,
natural, and medical studies, designed an approach to policymak-
ing based on population and trade surveys, much like de la Court
and de Witt had done. He devised measures of national income
and taxation. He wrote numerous treatises about economic the-
ory, monetarism, employment, and the government’s role in man-
aging national funds and wealth. He was keenly aware of how vital
state register and accounting books were for taxation and mone-
tary policy. Inoltre, he developed the practice of cost ac-
counting, which involved setting a budget and determining the
cost of operations and land holdings in order to project future
management. This innovative offshoot of the Dutch managerial
model was an extraordinarily delicate operation.33

Political economy became highly public in England. Costs
and policy attracted much debate between Crown and Parliament,
involving numerous other commentators and analysts. In England,
the Republic of Letters took account of costs.

a secret account of french absolutism: colbert and finan-
cial reform To this point, accounting was less developed in
France than in England, at least as an undertaking open to public

Pepys describes the place of accounting in his public and private life during the course of a sin-
gle day.
32 Henry Roseveare, The Treasury, 1660–1870: The Foundations of Control (New York,
1973), 1, 21, 22, 28.
33 Andrea Finkelstein, Harmony and the Balance: An Intellectual History of Seventeenth-Century
English Economic Thought (Ann Arbor, 2000), 74–88, 113, 116.

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232 | JACOB SOLL

scrutiny. Athough accounting manuals were available to the court,
and Colbert promoted the publication of works concerning trade
and accounting, France had no true public reckoning of state ac-
conta. Infatti, not until the writings of Henri de Boulainvilliers
and Jacques Necker in the eighteenth century did this lack of pub-
lic reckoning become a major issue. The state’s accounting was re-
formed under Louis and Colbert, but secretly. Nonetheless, Louis
and Colbert’s new Superintenancy of Finance made massive
strides in state accounting, mainly by disposing of the independent
and corrupt Nicolas Fouquet, without signiªcant public debate.34

Although he did not abolish the tax farmers and the old forms
of state ªnance, Colbert introduced the control of state books.
With his team of Contôleurs Generaux de Finances, he set about
verifying not only treasury records but also the feudal registries of
noble rights. For Colbert, accounting meant social control and full
disclosure of ªnances in a world where noble privilege decided tax
exemption. Most signiªcant in cultural terms, Colbert adopted a
language of accounting and political economy for state administra-
zione. Louis and Colbert banished the humanist political counselors
who had served in the governments of Henry IV and Richelieu.
The building of navies, industries, colonies, armies, and buildings,
and the subjugation of Protestants and nobles, demanded a state
administration based on a more solid foundation than the mere
reason of state. Colbert carried out massive reforms and works on
a scale that Pepys could hardly imagine. Unlike Pepys, Colbert did
not need to worry that his king might not have good enough ac-
countants around him; he kept the books himself and taught Louis
the basics of accounting and political economy.35

Along with his massive policy of state enquêtes, surveys on a
scale that dwarfed the work of Petty, though it was not always as
sophisticated, Colbert designed an accounting course and created
weekly reports for Louis XIV. What Colbert wrote to the Dau-
phin in 1665 he had already taught Louis in 1661. The “registers”
so important to Louis and Colbert were not just traditional ac-
count books; they represented an extraordinary step in the counsel

34 Michel Antoine, Le Coeur de l’État: Surintendance, contrôle général et intendances des ªnances
1552–1791 (Paris, 2003), 296.
35
Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System (Ann Arbor, 2009).

Ibid., 300–301. On Colbert’s strategies, see Soll, The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste

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ACCOUNTIN G FOR GOVERNM ENT | 233

of kings, a victory of the moderns over the ancients. Louis went so
far as to banish traditional humanists from his inner circle of advi-
sors.

On June 23, 1663, the foreign minister Hugues de Lionne
wrote to Godfroi, the comte d’Estrades, to insist that a copy of de
la Court and de Witt’s book be sent immediately to Colbert.
Colbert clearly read the book, as he did Malynes’ Lex Mercatoria.
He was not just interested in impeding Dutch shipping, reversing
its mastery over French products and colonial enterprises, and cur-
tailing its radical book trade; he also wanted the beneªt of Dutch
economic and industrial know-how. Colbert was in the process of
creating his own, large-scale project of political economy and state
accounting.36

In 1663, Colbert began writing “Mémoires sur les affaires de
ªnances de France pour servir à l’histoire,” a history of royal ªn-
ance, of which only one copy exists, in his own hand. Unªnished,
it is Colbert’s longest and most detailed single work, and it func-
tioned at several levels. Primo, it was a work of political economy,
not political history. It was intended to state mercantilist ideology
and inform Louis of the ªnancial precedent of past kings. Its de-
tailed reporting of royal accounts suggests that it was for Louis’
eyes only. La cosa più notevole, it contains a long passage almost ver-
batim from Pacioli.37

Colbert prepared a ªnancial course for Louis XIV based on
Pacioli’s work on accounting. Colbert and Louis discussed the
ªgures and speciªcs of state accounting. Louis veriªed and signed
ofªcial ªnancial documents, but he clearly deferred to Colbert.
Though, at times, Louis gave direct orders, his correspondence
with Colbert shows that he mostly left the details of ªnance to his
minister. In spite of the fact that double-entry bookkeeping was
not done at an ofªcial level, the veriªcations of the “États de la
Dépense et Recette du Trésor” (1662–1681) indicate that a so-
phisticated form of state accounting emerged under Colbert’s
supervisione. Louis, Colbert, and other ministers of the Council

36 De Lionne cited in Pontalis, Jan de Witt, 315; Ms. Mélanges Colbert 53, Bibliothèque
Nationale de France (hereinafter bnf).
37 Colbert, “Mémoires sur les affaires de ªnances de France pour servir à l’histoire,” in
Clément (ed.), Lettres, II, Pt.1, Sez. 2, 17–68. See Daniel Dessert’s analysis of “Mémoires sur
les affaires de ªnances” in Colbert ou le serpent venimeux (Paris, 2000), 17–37, 44–45.

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234 | JACOB SOLL

of Finances—Pierre Séguier, Nicolas de Neufville de Villeroy,
Etienne d’Aligre, and Alexandre de Sève—signed off on the tallied
account books, but the more complex preliminary bookkeeping
and veriªcation was clearly done by Colbert for Louis. In any case,
Colbert set up the books to make them easy to verify.38

The ultimate paradox was that Louis, the Catholic king,
scourge of republics, who loathed (and even invaded) Holland be-
cause of the success and the smug independence of its burgomas-
ters and the irreverence of its radicals, presided over the kind of
political economy that only his nemeses could have made possible.
But the Dutch inºuence ran even deeper. Louis carried in his
pockets not commonplace books but the extraordinary account
books—bound in maroquin and lettered in gold—that Colbert
commissioned for him from the calligrapher Nicolas Jarry.39

Colbert was keenly aware of Holland’s particular advantages.
He sent his son, the marquis de Seignelay (also named Jean-
Baptiste Colbert), on a fact-ªnding mission there in 1671 as part of
his mercantile training, as well as to Italy and England for other
kinds of humanist education. Seignalay described Amsterdam as
“presently the most important commercial city in the world” and
marveled that everyone had his own house. In a detailed technical
and ªscal study of the Dutch ship works and navy, he noted:
“[T]he tax revenue [droits] they gain from all the merchandise that
enters and leaves . . . Amsterdam is more considerable than in
other cities, because it is inªnitely more mercantile [marchande]
E . . . these taxes [droits] are for the most part destined for the
navy.” He was also impressed with the great “order” in which
stock accounts of merchandise were kept.40

Colbert’s interest in political economy was tied directly to
Holland. He commissioned Huet—an expert in Roman and
Greek history, and a defender of the ancients—to write a history
of Dutch trade. Huet’s Memoirs of the Dutch Trade in all the states
and kingdoms, and empires of the world (1690) was a massive project,

38 For correspondence about the course in ªnance, see Lettres, II, Pt. 1, ccxxvi–cclvii,
Colbert to Louis XIV, agosto 1, 1673; Louis’s response in the margins, agosto 3, ccxxxiv.
39 Ms.Fr. 6769–91, bnf. The ªgures from the notebook for the year 1680 are reproduced in
Colbert, Lettres, II, Pt. 2, 771–782.
40
for his
d’Angleterre, Luglio, 1671, in Lettres, III, 2, 290–296, 298, 303, 306.

figlio, “Instruction pour le voyage de Hollande et

See Colbert’s project

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ACCOUNTIN G FOR GOVERNM ENT | 235

ªnished only after Colbert’s death. Apparently, admirers of the an-
cients were good at understanding the moderns. Huet sought to
show Holland’s “First Rise and prodigious Progress: After what
Manner the Dutch manage, and carry on their Trade, their Do-
minions and Government in the Indies. By what Means they have
made themselves Masters of all the Trade in Europe: What Goods
and Merchandise are proper for Maritime Trafªck, whence they
are to be had, and what Gain and Proªt they produce. A Work
necessary for all Merchants and others concerned in Trade.”41

Colbert saw Dutch mercantile culture, and its long tradi-
tion—though not the political system—as essential for building
the absolutist state. He championed a number of works on politi-
cal economy, the ars mercatoria, and accounting. He was the patron
behind the works of Philippe Barrême, Les comptes faits ou Le Tarif
Général de touttes monnoyes (Avignon, 1762) and Les Tarifs et comptes
faits du grand commerce où l’on y fait
changes d’Angleterre,
d’Hollande, de Flandre, d’Allemagne etc. (Paris, 1670). He also asked
Jacques Savary to write the Parfait Négotiant (1670), featuring a sec-
tion on double-entry bookkeeping for business—part of Colbert’s
“Ordinance pour le Commerce” of 1673, which required busi-
nesses to keep double books to be regularly veriªed by the gov-
ernment. In questo caso, Colbert’s public rules for accounting not
only set standards; they also were a form of policing.42

les

Così, the culture of Holland could represent political econ-
omy, good accounting, and tolerance, or simply political econ-
omy. It was not always taken wholesale; parts of it could be mixed
with repressive measures. Other absolutist rulers looked to Hol-
land as a model for industrial and military development and for
methods of trade and accounting, if not for republican ideals.
Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia
(1620–1688), was inspired by the Dutch model. Like de Witt and

41 Pierre-Daniel Huet, Memoirs of the Dutch Trade in all the states and kingdoms, and empires of
the world (London, 1718), title page.
42 A list of works on political economy supported by Colbert is in Prosper Boissonnade,
Colbert. Le Triomphe de l’Étatisme. La Fondation de la Suprématie industrielle de la France. IL
Dictature du Travail 1661–1683 (Paris, 1931), 32. For a list of works on political economy sup-
ported by Colbert, see Prosper Boissonnade, Colbert: Le Triomphe de l’Étatisme. La Fondation de
la Suprématie industrielle de la France. La Dictature du Travail 1661–1683 (Paris, 1931), 32. Stanley
E. Howard, “Public Rules for Private Accounting in France, 1673 and 1807,” Accounting Re-
view, VII (1932), 91–92.

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236 | JACOB SOLL

Colbert, he was born in the second decade of the seventeenth
century, and his power solidiªed in the 1650s and 1660s. In youth-
ful exile as a cousin of the House of Orange, his education in
Leiden exposed him to Dutch concepts of mercantile thrift and
economic success, and he was startled to witness ªrst hand Dutch
industrial, naval, and economic prowess. He was also inºuenced
by Dutch religious tolerance, which he tried to foster later in Prus-
sia. In the 1650s, he installed tighter accounting and treasury prac-
tices by closely working with his Hopfkammerpräsident. Following
the lead of the Dutch and of Colbert, he mixed royal accounting
with industrial and military management.43

The age of political economy was in full swing. In the Holy
Roman Empire, Joachin Becher began using political-economic
approaches in government, copying the model of the Commercial
College of Amsterdam to create the Kommerzkollegium in Vienna
In 1666. A mercantilist
like Colbert and Frederick William,
Becher introduced the language of political economy into political
discourse expressly by appropriating Dutch models. During his
Great Embassy, Peter the Great made a famous visit to Holland in
1697—immortalized by Abraham Jan Storck in the painting, “Pe-
ter the Great Inspecting a Ship at Amsterdam”—in which he, like
Seignelay before him, reviewed Dutch shipbuilding and piloting
metodi. His obsession with ships and the culture of building and
managing them (not unlike that of Colbert in his papers) was man-
ifested in his collection of naval logs, sketches of ships parts, E
books on piloting and navigation. Peter
the Great clearly
exempliªes the rise of a new, technical form of princely education
much like that ªrst developed for merchants, in the manner of
Stevin.44

The European crises of the mid-seventeenth century induced a
lack of faith in traditional, literary humanist political culture, E
the rise of well-organized, well-armed, and well-ªnanced mer-

43 Derek McKay, The Great Elector (Harlow, Eng., 2001), 13, 147, 59–60, 178. See also
Cristoforo Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600–1947 (Cambridge,
Massa., 2006), 40.
44
Ingomar Bog, “Mercantilism in Germany,” in Donald C. Coleman (ed.), Revisions in
Mercantilism (London, 1969), 176–177; Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great
(Nuovo paradiso, 1998), 370.

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ACCOUNTIN G FOR GOVERNM ENT | 237

chant empires led to the establishment of new political methods.
The results were different in each country, but the tools were sim-
ilar; European states shared not only complex economic, military,
political, social, and spiritual crises but also comparable responses
to them. Feudal government could incorporate neither the evolv-
ing merchant culture, with its reform of state ªnance, nor the exi-
gencies of a growing population. The rise of political economy
represented an attempt to meet these challenges. What is most re-
markable is that the new methods that the Dutch initiated were
not more widely adopted.

Yet, the new institutions that emerged were only a hint of
real reform. The adoption of accounting without political ac-
countability was problematical, even in England, Quale, after the
Restoration of 1688, remained partially mercantile but, to some
extent, politically backward. More dramatically, Colbert adopted
the practices of political economy and accounting, but he did not
mix them with tolerance and open government. Colbert’s secret
accounting and his creation of the intendancies spread political
economy throughout
IL
intendants and the writers of the enquêtes led the reformist move-
ments later in Louis’ reign and even into the era of Jacques Turgot.
When Colbert died, Tuttavia, the state had no effective or central
site of accounting and economic policy. Louis XIV clearly wanted
it that way. The state was Louis himself, the royal “moi,” not the
kind of policymaking that Petty had envisioned.45

the French administration. Infatti,

The comte de Boulainvilliers complained of the secrecy sur-
rounding the ministerial account books, which he sought to un-
veil in his État de la France (1724): “The spirit of servitude is gener-
ally spread through these Writings [enquêtes]; but in the end what
do these Intendants mean by the vague term, Secret of State? (. . .)
Passions have mystery and secrets; a legitimate Government has
none.”46

In England, the problem that Boulainvilliers noted was even-
tually resolved by an accountable government that permitted Par-
liament to look at Treasury accounts. As Colbert had shown, ac-
counting was effective, but secrecy was corrosive to economic

45 Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV: The Political And Social Origins of the French En-
lightenment (Princeton, 1965), 133–194.
46 Henri, Comte de Boulainvilliers, État de la France (London, 1737), IO, 54.

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238 | JACOB SOLL

reform and development. For the Dutch model to work, it had to
include all of its elements, not the least of which were openness
and tolerance. The new models of government by political econ-
omy inaugurated in the seventeenth century still needed to de-
velop. Infatti, the process continues even now.

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