historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 4. Times of success. Defending the fatherland
allowed the Dutch Republic, which at the beginning of the seventeenth century
had a population somewhere between 1 million and 1.4 million inhabitants,
to field an army of about 60.000 men in effective strenght. To compare:
during the same period France, a country greater in both size and population,
fielded an army whose real size was approximately 80.000 men. 18
Besides possessing great personal wealth the Dutch, according to Boxhorn,
also worked very hard to acquire wealth. We find this ‘Dutch diligence’ in one
of the reasons Boxhorn gives in the Commentariolus why the Dutch Republic
will continue to exist. As Boxhorn puts it:
If we also turn our eyes to the domestic resources, because they chiefly
rest upon the wealth of private individuals, and because these private
individuals labour non-stop and tirelessly to acquire this wealth and
to augment it once acquired, this commonwealth shall certainly have
hardly any want. 19
Here Boxhorn explicitly connects the pursuit of wealth by private Dutch individuals
with the well-being of the Dutch Republic. From what we have discussed
above it can be deduced that a possible thought of Boxhorn behind
making this connection is that thanks to the efforts of private individuals
there will always – or almost always – be private wealth in the Dutch Republic
from which the public authorities could collect the resources that could be
used to meet the Republic’s needs.
Even if this explanation is incorrect, the fact that Boxhorn makes a positive
connection between the pursuit of wealth by private individuals and the wellbeing
of the commonwealth distinguishes him, for example, from Lipsius. 20
However, Boxhorn was not unaware of the dangers of luxury or prosperity.
In one of his early orations we can read that ‘great empires often have succumbed
to luxury and love’. 21 And in one of his political dissertations Boxhorn
1598-1700 (Palgrave Macmillan; Basingstoke, 1 st ed. 1988, 2005), pp. 35-40, for a broader European
perspective.
18 For the figures of the size of the Dutch population at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
see Geoffrey Parker, Europe in Crisis, 1598-1648 (Blackwell Publishers; Oxford, 1 st ed. 1979, 2001), p. 6,
and Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century, p. 103. In 1600 France had 14 million inhabitants;
in 1650, 18.5 million. Parker, Europe in Crisis, p. 6. For the figures of the Dutch and French armies
in the 1630s and 1640s, see Olaf van Nimwegen, ‘Deser landen crijchsvolck’: het Staatse leger en de militaire
revoluties, 1588-1688 (Uitgeverij Bert Bakker; Amsterdam, 2006), p. 54.
19 Boxhorn, Commentariolus, IX.6, p. 145. ‘Si ad domesticas opes oculos quoque convertamus, cum
illae praecipuè consistant in opibus privatorum, atque eorundem infinita atque indefessa industria
quaedam sit in iis parandis, partisque augendis, nihil certè facilè huic Reipublicae est defuturum.’
20 See chapter 2.
21 Marcus Zuerius Boxhorn, “Oratio de Eversionibus Rerumpub. et Earum caussis. Habita cum
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