PhD defence B.F.M. (Bram) Hilkens

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation:

Economic inequality is one of the greatest issues of our time. In recent years, scholars have looked for the roots and development of economic inequality in the long run. It showed that in many European regions, inequality has been rising since after the Black Death (1347–1352). Inequality declined surrounding the World Wars, only to have risen again since ca. the 1970s. My thesis has investigated the evolution of land inequality—that is, the aggregate differences in landholding—in early modern Holland (1543–1708). It argues that differences in landholding widened during the Dutch ‘Golden Age’ (ca. 1580–1650), as well as afterwards when the economy stagnated. The reasons for inequality growth differed, however. While differences grew by fast division of plots through fast population growth in the phase of economic growth, inequality increased by large landowners obtaining more land in the phase of economic stagnation and decline. Part of this rising land inequality in the second half of the seventeenth century was the result of a new aristocracy increasing their grip on the countryside by obtaining land and sometimes building country houses. Therefore, economic growth during the Dutch ‘Golden Age’ had more ambiguous effects on inequality in rural Holland than the end of the Dutch ‘Golden Age’, which had more obvious negative effects for the common population.