Intro

0:00

[ Background Conversations ]

0:09

> So our final speaker is Arthur der
Weduwen, who is a historian specializing

0:15

in history of media, news, and the book.

0:17

He earned his PhD at the University
of St. Andrews in Scotland,

0:21

where he is currently a postdoctoral
research fellow.

0:24

His first major project, for which he
won three prizes, was the compilation

0:29

of the first bibliography of 17th-century
Dutch newspapers, published by Brill in 2017.

0:36

Current projects include a general history
of the library, to be published in 2021,

0:42

and two forthcoming books — two forthcoming
books, this is a busy young man —

0:45

on the early history of newspaper advertising.

0:49

His latest book, co-authored
with Professor Andrew Pettegree,

0:53

is the first comprehensive
study of the book trade

0:56

in the 17th-century Dutch Republic,
published this year by Yale.

1:00

And it’s called “The Bookshop of the World,

1:02

Making and Trading Books
in the Dutch Golden Age.”

1:05

And we do have a few copies of
it available for you as well.

1:08

So Arthur.

1:11

[ Applause ]

Rembrandts Inventory

1:17

> Stephanie, many thanks for
the very kind introduction,

1:20

and thank you all for coming here today,
of course, and a big thanks to Max again

1:25

for all the extremely smooth
and efficient organization here.

1:28

Now, we’ve heard a lot of nice things about
Rembrandt, wonderful stories from some

1:33

of his early years, but I would like
to start here today at a real low point

1:37

in Rembrandt’s life: in 1656, when
he’s forced to declare bankruptcy.

Rembrandts Books

1:43

Now, by this point, Rembrandt had really
fallen a long way and an inventory was made

1:48

of all the possessions left in his house.

1:51

Now, this included a cornucopia of furniture,
of artistic props, of things like pikes

1:58

and crossbows, of paintings, of
course, but also of 22 books.

The Dutch Book Revolution

2:04

Now, do we know what some of these books were.

2:08

It included Flavius Josephus’s
history.

2:11

It included an old Bible.

2:13

It included a book of German military drills,

2:16

clearly something he might have
used for some of his compositions.

2:19

And also 15 unnamed large items.

2:22

And here, of course, on the right, one of
his very early paintings, I think 1626.

2:27

And you see there in the bottom
right, a huge pile of books.

2:30

And I think this is generally one of the ways
in which he may have been using some of these.

2:34

But really when we think about these 22
books, and Rembrandt around this time,

2:39

that this relatively speaking
for Amsterdam was a tiny library,

2:43

and in some ways a fitting
mark of his near destitution.

2:46

For by this point, the Dutch Republic was a
land that was absolutely teeming with books.

2:52

Its publishers produced some of
the most fabulous books of the age.

2:56

And not only that, but in the 17th century,
the Dutch published more books per capita

3:02

than any other book-producing nation.

3:06

For these reasons, it’s all the more
surprising that it’s taken quite a long time

3:09

for the true history of the book trade
to be written in the Dutch Golden Age.

3:14

And in a way — I don’t want to lay blame here
— but perhaps we’ve been dazzled a bit too much

3:20

by the great Dutch painters
of the era and we’ve seem

3:22

to have overlooked the quieter revolution going
on in a bourgeois homes of Dutch citizens.

3:29

And this revolution was the way in which books

3:32

and prints were moulding
and reshaping Dutch society.

3:36

Now, it is said that Dutch homes found space

3:39

for perhaps 3 million paintings
on their walls in this century.

3:42

They certainly produced many more
books, perhaps as many as 350 million.

3:47

They traded at least 4 million
of these books at auctions.

The title

3:52

Now, this is really the story that
Andrew Pettegree and I have tried to tell

3:55

in the book here, “The Bookshop
of the World,” as Stephanie said,

3:58

you see here the English edition published
by Yale, and then the Dutch edition as well.

4:02

But I would like to tell you that the title of
this book is not the title that we envisaged.

4:06

We originally called this book
Trading Books in the Age of Rembrandt.

4:10

And we thought this was a nice idea, a nice title.

4:13

And both publishers of the English
and the Dutch edition didn’t

4:16

like this at all, for different reasons.

4:19

The Dutch publisher thought liked Rembrandt,
but they thought it might be sort of drowned

4:23

out by all the other fantastic Rembrandt books
there, so they wanted something different.

4:27

Whereas Yale — and this is quite, you
know, a bit shame face, to be honest —

4:30

they said, well, it’s not really
clear really enough Rembrandt,

4:33

I think people won’t know what we’re talking
about when we’re talking about Rembrandt.

4:37

So you need something that forces us into the
17th century and into the Dutch Golden Age.

4:41

So Rembrandt clearly not popular enough.

4:43

Which is surprising to me and certainly,
I mean, this audience here, anyway.

4:47

So Rembrandt is not in the title of the book.

4:50

But because we had this title, we have
written Rembrandt all throughout the book.

4:55

So if you go through the book, in multiple chapters,
we find Rembrandt — at his bankruptcy.

5:00

We find him at Latin school.

5:02

And of course, we talk about education there.

5:04

We find him in the world of prints and we
find him in the worlds of business publishing

5:09

and relating here predominately to his debts.

5:12

And, of course, if we go to
many Rembrandt paintings,

5:16

we do find a large number of items there.

The books of Rembrandt

5:20

Having said that, we also use Rembrandt
as a little bit of a departure.

5:23

Because I think, at least relative
to his peers in this period,

5:27

I don’t think Rembrandt was all too interested
in books, especially later in his career.

5:32

And I think if you compare
it to some other artists,

5:34

I would say that books are almost conspicuously
absent from the entire oeuvre that he produced.

5:40

But if books are present in his paintings,
then they tend to be exactly the books

5:44

which have always attracted
most attention from scholars.

5:48

And those are substantial,
massive, and magnificent books.

5:52

Books like these.

5:53

Like the wonderful 1112 Volume Blaeu Atlas.

5:58

Truly one of the most significant
publishing projects of this period.

6:02

It’s the largest atlas to
be produced in this era.

6:06

Now, these are the books that have
often stood at the centre of attention

6:10

to what the Dutch could produce in this period.

6:13

But a book like this would cost the
equivalent of an annual salary for all

6:18

but the most affluent citizens
in the 17th century.

6:22

And really what fuelled the book trade in
this period was a steady and recurring trade

6:27

in the sort of books that might be careful
and considered purchases of an artisan

6:33

or a bourgeois household, which
would buy three or five books a year.

6:38

And these were books they bought for use.

6:41

A book for medical recipes, to ensure
the health of their households.

6:45

A book on accounting to help
their son to a better job.

6:48

And most of all, books as
part of their religious life.

6:52

These sort of books tell us not
only how the Dutch lived their lives

6:57

but who they actually were.

6:59

But these these humbler books are the
books that have become almost invisible

7:03

in a story of the Dutch Republic.

7:05

And I would like to elaborate on
that point a little bit today.

7:08

And the reason for that is
that these were generally books

7:11

which were not destined for posterity.

7:14

They were intended to be used every day or
regularly and then worn out and replaced.

7:19

Few of these books have made
it through the centuries

7:22

to take their place on the shelves of a library.

7:25

And those that do survive are almost
invariably the single surviving copy

7:30

of a print run of 500, 800, maybe even 5,000.

7:35

So this book that we wrote is partly an exercise
in reversing this historical invisibility

7:41

and provide more context on the true
extent of Dutch book production.

7:47

for it’s really these cheaper, humbler books
that take us closest to understanding the heart

7:52

and soul of the complex and contradictory
society that is the Dutch Republic.

7:59

Now, why was the potency of these
smaller books not recognized

8:03

on scholarship on the Dutch Republic?

8:05

This is partly an issue that, before the digital
age, it was impossible to reconstruct quickly

8:11

or relatively quickly a corpus of
surviving print that’s scattered

8:14

around some 8,000 libraries
and archives worldwide.

8:18

And this is something that we’ve
been trying to do at St. Andrews,

8:20

and reconstruct on a global scale the holdings
of early printed books and to compare records

8:27

and thereby buildup a far
greater body of sources.

8:30

Generally, bibliographers say, if
they’re looking at German books,

8:34

they will look in German
libraries, but not necessarily

8:36

as much in libraries in other countries.

8:38

So this is something we’ve been trying to
do specifically for the Dutch Republic.

8:42

But it also became very clear to
us in an early stage that if we are

8:45

to fathom this new book world, we could
not rely solely on what survives today.

8:51

We must also hunt for what we call “lost books.”

8:54

Books which were indeed printed and published
in this period but do not survive today.

8:59

And I’m going to show you some of the techniques

9:01

with which we’ve been doing
that a little bit later.

Why do many books not survive

9:04

Now, why do many of these books not survive?

9:06

Well, partly this is an issue
of library collecting culture.

9:11

Libraries, particularly the large
scholarly libraries visited by historians,

9:16

tend to collect a certain sort of book.

9:19

Very often the books that professional men
and serious collectors would most value,

9:24

like this beautiful Blaeu Atlases, big,

9:26

serious books of scholarship,
often in scholarly languages.

9:30

And this specifically excluded the
sort of books favoured by craftsmen

9:34

and more humble bourgeois households
when these were being produced.

9:38

If we think of Sir Thomas Bodleian, the creator
of the famous Bodleian Library in Oxford,

9:43

when he founded this, he
specifically forbade his librarian

9:47

to accession what he described
as idle books and riffraff.

9:51

And by that he meant books in English.

9:53

[laughter] Now, this was much the
same in the lovely Library of Leiden,

9:59

which is specifically designed
really for use by its professors

10:03

to consult big, expensive reference works.

10:07

Around the time that Rembrandt
was a student at Leiden,

10:11

the library was not formally opened to students.

10:14

It was closed to students for
a period, for about 25 years.

10:17

This was really a professorial resource
with almost no vernacular books,

10:22

books not in Latin or Greek or Hebrew or Arabic.

10:27

Then again, the people who bought more humble
books didn’t take very good care of them either.

10:32

The sort of little religious texts,
prayer books, and catechisms or almanacs,

10:38

these were all books that really made up the
trade in this period, but they were books

10:43

that were heavily used and then discarded.

Examples

10:52

There’s a couple up here, and these are — I’ll just run
you through some of the examples

10:54

that have been highlighted in our story.

10:56

They are books like this.

10:57

On the right you have a Dutch
school book, a really horrible book,

11:02

It’s called “The Mirror of
Youth,” in translation.

11:04

Which is a dialogue between a father and son
about all the atrocities of the Dutch Revolt.

11:09

And it’s got quite graphic, very
cheap woodcuts all throughout,

11:12

some of which are repeatedly
used in totally random scenes.

11:15

But this is an incredibly cheap book

11:17

that would have been standard reading
at all Dutch vernacular schools.

11:20

And you see it’s — I think
this is the 15th impression,

11:23

and we only have two other impressions
surviving before this edition.

11:28

On the left, you have a Dutch-French dictionary.

11:31

And this is an extraordinary item,
held in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam,

11:35

which was part of a find of a Dutch naval
expedition, to find a northeast passage

11:40

to the Indies in the late 16th century.

11:43

And the sailors took with them Bibles
and catechisms and also this dictionary.

11:48

And when the expedition failed and they
had to sail back, they left this behind.

11:51

So this was found in the 19th century
in Novaya Zemlya, in the north of Russia,

11:55

in the little house that they had built.

11:57

And it’s come back to the Rijksmuseum.

12:00

Again, and this dictionary is the only surviving
example of this entire print run of this item.

Practical Books

12:06

Then we’ve got catechisms.

12:08

Again, very practical, very
treasured, practical books.

12:12

We’ve got stories of the great
exciting Dutch voyages of the period.

12:16

Which, of course, really, really sparked
the imagination, as you can imagine,

12:21

of many young boys and girls of this time.

Daily Prints

12:26

And an even more humbler,
very daily pieces of print.

12:33

On the left here, this is
an incredibly common genre.

12:35

On the left here, you see a wedding broadsheet.

12:38

Now, this is a poem written by someone to
celebrate a wedding of two of their friends.

12:43

And it’s printed just as a
placard on a single side.

12:47

And these were standard fare
in the Dutch Republic.

12:50

If you went to a wedding — well,
these days we have a photographer.

12:53

In the 17th century, you
would have a wedding poem.

12:55

Sometimes you would have
three or four different ones.

12:58

And it was specific writers who would produce
hundreds of these throughout the period.

13:03

But again, rarely they don’t survive.

13:05

And then another aspect of the Dutch
print trade, an example on the left there,

13:09

is really an incredibly competitive
and dynamic newspaper market.

13:14

This was really the period of the invention
of newspaper, of newspaper advertising.

13:18

And the Dutch had about 50 different
newspapers in this particular period.

13:23

But these too rarely survive.

13:25

Now, with a sort of broader global
perspective, we should not forget books

13:29

which were destined for foreign audiences.

13:32

Because in this period, Dutch books not
only were produced for Dutch audiences

13:37

but for customers all across
the European continent.

13:40

And Dutch booksellers really dominated
the international trade at this point.

13:43

They had branches in Scandinavia and Germany.

13:46

And some publishers catered
exclusively for this market,

13:50

often in religious texts, like
on the left-hand side here.

13:53

This is a Hungarian edition of
the Psalms printed in Amsterdam.

13:57

And on the right, you have a German Lutheran
Bible, specifically produced for the markets

14:03

in what is now roughly Prussia
and Northern Germany.

14:10

Now, these sort of books, again, they
don’t tend to survive in Dutch libraries

14:13

but they do tend to survive in libraries in
Germany and Hungary, etc. But we also begin

Two Paradoxes

14:18

to touch here on a little bit of
a paradox that’s playing here.

14:22

And it’s the fact that some of the books in
our great libraries survived so well because —

14:29

precisely because they were not much read.

14:32

[laughter] And in a way, it’s a strange paradox
that the books that were most valued by owners

14:36

in this period have often
survived least well today.

14:40

Then there is a second paradox that I would
like to talk about, and that’s the fact

14:43

that the books that made reputations in
this period were not necessarily the books

14:49

that made publishers a lot of money.

14:51

Dutch publishers were so successful in
conquering international markets precisely

14:56

because they chose not to publish certain books.

14:59

So you never see sort of great Latin legal
works being printed in the Dutch Republic,

15:04

because that was a market that was
absolutely swamped by editions from Lyon,

15:09

by editions from Venice or Southern Germany.

15:11

So what the Dutch did, they bought these
books cheaply abroad, took them to Amsterdam

15:15

and Leiden and then re-exported
them at higher prices.

15:18

And the way they worked in
the market for whale blubber,

15:22

they did the exact same thing with books.

15:24

It’s just another commodity.

Lzb

15:27

And one particular family
captures this paradox really well,

15:29

and that’s the Elzevir family
of Leiden and Amsterdam.

15:32

Which is founded by a guy called
Louis Elzevir who arrives

15:35

in Leiden 1580, practically bankrupt.

15:38

But he quickly begins to sell
books to the university professors

15:42

and develops a relationship with them
and he starts to make some money then.

15:45

And he establishes dynasty that really dominates
the international trade in the Dutch Republic.

15:51

Elzevirs are most famous for publishing
Galileo, on the left here the example,

15:55

when his publications were forbidden in Italy.

15:58

For publishing the likes of
Balzac, you have there on the right.

16:01

And for publishing Descartes.

16:03

But what we also know is that the Elzevirs
were extremely tight with their authors

16:08

and always drove an incredibly hard bargain.

16:10

And they drove the hardest bargain
of all with some very young authors,

16:14

and those were Leiden University students, who
had to publish their disputations at the university.

16:23

Often several a year as they were
practising and leading up to their promotion.

16:29

And the Elzevirs could set particular
prices because they had a monopoly

16:34

on these particular dissertations.

16:35

So there were many complaints about both
the quality of the printing for these

16:39

and the high rates that they set.

16:42

But this is really where the
Elzevirs made most of their money.

16:44

But the reason this hasn’t been
recognized it’s because only about 15%

16:50

of all the dissertations originally
published have no longer survived today.

16:54

So if Rembrandt was defending a
disputation when he was a student —

16:58

which is certainly possible
— it has not survived.

17:00

But we shouldn’t say that’s
particularly unusual.

Latin Classics

17:04

Now, the Elzevirs also made a big
market in the trade in Latin classics,

17:10

small format Latin books, which were —

17:14

as we’ve heard before, in the Latin
School these were essential reading.

17:19

So again, you have a large captive market
with students who constantly need books.

17:23

And as we know, students often throw away books.

17:26

So this is a market where you
constantly need new editions.

17:29

So that’s another aspect of that.

17:34

And finally, the Elzevirs also made a
particular claim to fame by being some

17:37

of the very first booksellers
to hold specific book auctions

17:41

and publish printed auction
catalogues of these sales.

17:45

And on the left side here, you have the
earliest printed auction catalogue in the world.

17:51

This is the catalogue of the books of
the Dutch statesman Philips van Marnix,

17:56

which was auctioned in Leiden in 1599.

17:59

Now, the auction market was a
big boon for the Dutch book trade

18:04

because it injected a certain
cash flow in the business.

18:07

This was a society in which
credit and book exchange —

18:13

so selling books for other books
— was the main means of trade.

18:17

But in auctions, you had to pay cash.

18:18

So this was a very welcomed
injection for many booksellers.

18:22

But it also promoted collecting.

18:24

And it promoted the growth
of personal libraries.

18:27

Because as soon as people realized
that they could invest in books —

18:31

that is they could build up a library, say, of
1,000 items, but comfortable in the knowledge

18:37

that when they died, their heirs
could then sell their library

18:40

and make a decent return on all that investment.

18:43

So libraries were both practical but
they were also a relatively safe bet.

18:46

And this is really what we see
starting in the 17th-century.

18:51

We know of over 4,000 book auctions
that took place during this period,

18:55

all with printed catalogues like these.

18:58

But these catalogues also provide
a glimpse into another paradox,

19:04

if not some of the hypocrisy
of Dutch book-selling business.

19:08

Now, like most early modern countries, the
Dutch Republic had a system of book censorship,

19:12

forbidding the printing of subversive
and unorthodox religious works,

19:17

which you were not allowed
to print, buy, or sell.

19:21

But then again, if we look at
some of these auction catalogues,

Banned Books

19:24

we start to find things like this.

19:27

Which are specific sections
in the auction catalogues

19:31

of libri prohibiti, or forbidden books.

19:35

So these were separately marketed to an
audience to say, this is really the good stuff.

19:40

[laughter] This is what you want to buy.

19:41

And this just went on happily ever after.

19:44

While the magistrates of Leiden were the
first to ban the publications of Spinoza

19:49

in the Dutch Republic, Leiden was also the town

19:53

where almost all auctions with
libri prohibiti were held.

19:56

Including from some libraries
owned by Leiden’s magistrates.

20:00

So it’s a funny world.

20:02

You have to be careful.

20:06

These auction catalogues also allow us to
reconstruct the corpus of books published

20:11

in the Dutch Republic in the 17th-century.

20:13

And from many of these catalogues and
other contemporary references, Andrew and I

20:19

and our team in St. Andrews have now accumulated
references to almost half a million books sold

20:27

at auction or marketed for sale in catalogues
in the Dutch Republic in the 17th-century.

20:31

Now, this provides us with really interesting
material, because we can compare this

20:37

to the corpus of books that we know
of that does survive and find some

20:41

of these lost books, some of these lost items.

20:45

I should say, this also involves
the use of newspaper advertisements.

20:49

Which when they were first introduced in
the Netherlands, are almost exclusively

20:53

for announcements for newly-published books.

20:56

And I’ll just show you a couple of examples.

Newspaper Ads

20:59

Oh, this is very neat too.

21:01

Obviously, this is a beautiful,
gorgeous Dutch still life you see here.

21:06

Wonderful spread of delicacies
you could eat in the 17th-century.

21:11

But if we look very closely,
there’s also a book here.

21:14

Does anyone see it?

21:18

Does that help?

21:21

This is a title page of an Amsterdam almanac,

21:24

which is being reused as
a pepper cone [laughter].

21:29

And as you can see here, the detail on
the almanac is fantastic, really precise.

21:34

You’ve got the beautiful coat of
arms that you can just make out

21:37

and a nice red and black double printing.

21:39

And we specifically know that this was a
widespread use, because we have a reference

21:43

from Pierre Bayle, the French philosopher.

21:46

When he’s insulting about a
fellow scholar’s publication.

21:50

He says, oh, I tried to get this guy’s book,

21:52

but it’s so bad that all the copies have
already been sold to the spice sellers

21:57

to be rolled up into little rolls.

21:59

[laughter] So this was a common practice.

Devotional Books

22:02

I’ll give you one example here, and that is the
example of an extremely popular devotional work

22:08

by a Lutheran minister called Johann
Habermann, translated into Dutch.

22:12

This was really for the Lutheran
community in the Netherlands.

22:15

Very popular book.

22:16

These are three surviving
examples, including this lovely —

22:19

in the center, this lovely heart-shaped book.

22:22

Which is a real rarity to see it like that.

22:24

Christian prayers.

22:26

So we know of 11 surviving editions
of Habermann’s works printed

22:30

in the Dutch Republic in this period.

22:32

But we have found another 47 in catalogues

22:35

and then another eight lost
editions in newspaper advertisements.

22:39

So from 11, we have gone
to 66 different editions.

22:42

And this is really how you can transform what
you know of particular popularity of authors,

22:47

and therefore also of relatively
of their use within Dutch society.

22:53

And we can do this for multiple
different sorts of texts,

22:57

but generally it concerns religious works.

22:59

In my conclusion, I just want
to return to the city of Leiden.

23:03

And a few years ago, I came across a very
interesting source in the archive of the city.

23:08

Which — and this reveals the instruction of
the magistrates of Leiden to their town criers.

23:14

These were the individuals who were
charged with proclaiming the law

23:17

and who could also be employed by
citizens to make announcements.

23:21

So you’ve lost your dog, your child’s run away,
you would go to the town criers of Leiden to go

23:27

out on the streets and make this news known.

Town Criers of Leiden

23:30

And here again, we have a lovely
bird’s eye view of Leiden.

23:34

And these are the 51 locations in red dots where
the town criers had to make their announcements.

23:40

So first of all, this is just interesting
to see in terms of the cityscape,

23:44

you know, where do they have to go.

23:45

They’re generally proclaiming on bridges,

23:47

which particularly carry
voices, of course, quite well.

23:50

And it gives you some sense to what extent
the magistrates of the city were also involved

23:55

in engaging with their public, with their
community in this particular period.

24:00

But why this is also interesting is the
fact that in all Dutch cities —

24:06

and this is a unique thing in this
period compared to other countries —

24:10

these town criers would also have
been carrying with them bundles

City Hall Press

24:13

of printed posters and printed fliers.

24:17

Which they would post up at these locations
in their wake, so that people could then,

24:21

if they had missed the announcement, it
would be posted up there for them to read.

24:25

And Leiden was actually one of the first cities
where the municipality was really determined

24:31

to make sure that all their
communications were printed.

24:34

After the siege of Leiden, they actually set
up a press in the city hall, the Raadhuis press,

24:39

where they produced documents like this.

24:42

The one that’s on the left here is a receipt
to a citizen who has contributed a fourth loan

24:48

to the war fund to help fight the Spaniards.

24:52

And on the right, you have a regulation
of the guild of the butchers of Leiden.

24:56

So these range really from the high political
to really the mundane regulations of the city.

25:03

But these are absolutely crucial documents,
because they, in a way, are some of the prints

25:08

that I think affect the daily lives
of citizens to the greatest extent.

25:14

Now, Rembrandt, too, had personal
experiences with such humble notices.

25:17

And here, you have the printed
notice of his bankruptcy sale from 1656,

25:24

which would have been plastered
all over Amsterdam.

25:27

And you have here also crucially — to
think about the interaction between print

25:31

and oral communication — on the
bottom here, you have the Dutch phrase

25:35

“zegget voort,” pass on the word.

25:40

If you start to look in Dutch paintings
of the period, you also start to see,

25:44

these posters were truly everywhere.

25:46

Here’s two examples, one
from the Beurs

25:48

in Amsterdam, the financial heart of the city.

25:51

And if you look in the top —
see if I can get my pointer —

25:54

posters all over here, posters
up on that wall there.

25:58

And here we go to the toll house in Amsterdam.

26:01

If you come out to the train
station in Amsterdam,

26:04

this would have been roughly in that location.

26:06

And again, this is where all incoming
ships would pay their toll dues

26:10

and they would share information.

26:11

So this was a real hub where lots
of printed posters would be found.

26:15

So if we start to think of these cities
as constantly being plastered by print.

26:20

You start to see how ubiquitous
this is and how important it is

26:23

for all these printers also to stay in business.

26:27

So finally, if anyone ever questions why some of
these little books or ephemeral posters matter,

The Declaration of Prince William

26:36

then we only need to consider what I think

26:39

in my opinion is the most influential
book of the Dutch Golden Age.

26:43

And this is a very little book.

26:44

It’s a small quarter pamphlet of
roughly 40 pages, printed in The Hague.

26:50

And interestingly enough, printed in English.

26:53

Now, this is the declaration of
Prince William III of Orange,

26:57

in which he justifies his invasion of England.

27:01

Now, this pamphlet was printed in
advance of the invasion of 1688.

27:05

And it was printed in total secrecy.

27:08

It was, however, printed
in a massive print room.

27:10

He printed over 50,000 copies of this in
English, to take with him with the Armada.

27:15

So that once they arrived in
England, they could distribute it

27:18

around to justify this military invasion.

27:21

And there’s this wonderful exchange between the
English ambassador in The Hague and King James

27:28

II and VII of England and Scotland, where
James says, you must get this declaration.

27:34

We must know what it says so we can start
a response before the invasions happen.

27:38

And so the ambassador here says,
you know, I’m really trying my best.

27:41

I’m trying to get to this declaration.

27:43

But the printer of the states
— because they’re paid so well

27:45

by the authorities — are not to be corrupted.

27:48

I can’t bribe them.

27:50

And I’ve even seen that some
of his servants can be bribed,

27:52

but they too will not endanger their
lucrative places in this business.

27:58

And he says, I will leave no stone unmoved.

28:01

And then there’s another letter a week
later where he says, no, I’m sorry,

28:03

I really couldn’t get get hold of the copy.

28:06

[laughter] It gets even worse too,
because when James finally has a copy,

28:09

when William has already set
sail, he reads it and he’s

28:12

so angry, he throws it in the fireplace.

28:14

And then he he needs to get a second
copy because he forgot what it says.

28:17

So he has to borrow Princess Anne’s copy.

28:21

So it’s total disaster.

28:24

But really, you know, this little book that
played a significant role in the formulation

28:30

of the English Bill of Rights of 1689.

28:33

It was direct passages were cited from this to
say, this is what William said when he invaded,

28:37

so this will be our constitution.

28:39

And really with that bill, I
think we see the true formation

28:42

of modern Western political democracy.

28:46

And that change I think was the achievement of a
century-long of Dutch experiments and experience

28:54

in the world of books and printing.

28:56

And in that sense, it’s a testament to the
power of the press and the influence of the book

29:02

on the culture of the 17th-century.

29:05

Thank you.

29:07

[ Applause ]

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