Human capital - reading and writing

From Pioneers of Capitalism The Netherlands 1000–1800 by Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden

The Netherlands lagged far behind the rest of western Europe in church building during most of the Middle Ages, but suddenly began to catch up and even overtook its peers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A similar development can be found in a very important dimension of well- being, human capital. The reconstruction of the production of manuscripts and books, based on the research by Buringh and Van Zanden, can be used as a proxy for the growing importance of literacy at this time (tables 2.1 and 2.2). Over the entire period, growth in book production is spectacular: between the sixth and eighteenth centuries, in per capita terms, European book production increased by a factor of more than ten thousand. The position of the Netherlands also changed dramatically. In the Middle Ages, the country—still on the fringes of Europe—was not an important center for book production: in per capita terms its output amounted to no more than 20%–30% of the average western European level. Yet in the fifteenth century this suddenly changed, with the Netherlands producing more than double the European average of manuscripts, and lagging behind only Belgium. With the invention of book printing, its relative position remained intact: between 1454 and 1500 the Netherlands appears to have printed more than double the European average number of books, with the Hanseatic town of Deventer as the most important center of this new industry. In the sixteenth century, book printing in the Low Countries was initially concentrated in Antwerp, but after 1585 production in the northern Netherlands skyrocketed, reaching an average per capita output that was consistently three to more than four times that of Europe as a whole.25 During the seventeenth century, Holland became the “bookshop of the world.”26 Exports of books were important, but the domestic demand for print was equally large.

It has been argued that the marriage system found in western Europe, where marriage was based on consensus and women had a relatively strong position as a result, contributed to this favorable environment for human capital formation. The Reformation, with its emphasis on independent reading of the Bible, further contributed to rising levels of literacy. As late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Catholic provinces of the Netherlands were much less literate than the Protestant ones. Indeed, although poor and sparsely populated, the Protestant province of Drenthe was a frontrunner in literacy, owing to strong promotion of primary education by the regional government. Around 1815 in the Netherlands, the proportion of brides capable of signing their marriage certificate—a test of minimal literacy–was almost 60%; approximately 75% of grooms could do the same. The northern parts of the Netherlands scored best in all respects (70%–75% brides, 85% grooms), and the Catholic south the worst (Limburg: 42% brides, 68% grooms). These percentages were high by inter- national standards: only countries such as Sweden and Prussia, with their tradition of state-organized education—as inspired by Luther—surpassed Dutch figures.