The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World Was Created by Bernstein William

Author:Bernstein, William [Bernstein, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780071760805
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 9336771
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Published: 1955-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE TORCH IS PASSED

James was a rabid Catholic, but the opposing Dissenters and parliamentarians were not alarmed by his religious beliefs. James was past fifty years old when he ascended the throne, and he would soon be succeeded by his Protestant daughter Mary. Or so everyone thought until James sired a son and heir in June 1688. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the specter of a long line of Catholic monarchs threatened England’s Protestants.

Anglicans and Dissenters invited William to England to “negotiate” with James. William seized upon an audacious plan: He would invade England and depose James in order to better harness the British military in his battle against the French. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. After William landed at Torbay (accompanied by fifteen thousand of his fiercest soldiers), James’ behavior became increasingly erratic, and his forces deserted him. In the aftermath of this English donnybrook—“The Glorious Revolution of 1688”—William and Mary jointly ascended the throne. This assured not only England’s allegiance to the anti-French cause, but also her transformation into a democratic constitutional monarchy as well.16

The marital union of Holland and England gave the Dutch only brief respite. The Republic became embroiled in a series of Continental wars, mainly against the French. In the winter of 1794, Dutch luck finally ran out as the rivers of Holland froze solid, preventing a repeat of 1672’s opening of the dikes. The ice locked much of the Dutch fleet in place and provided the revolutionary French army with a smooth highway into Amsterdam. Moreover, a populist “patriot” faction, unhappy with Holland’s oligarchic political structure, did not object strongly to conquest by the forces of the Revolution. Defeat by Napoleon ended centuries of independence. Within a decade, the French would devastate Holland’s economy with confiscatory taxes and bring to an end centuries of Dutch commercial leadership.

Even as Holland’s economic and political beacon was beginning to dim, however, some of its best and brightest minds were already crossing the North Sea to help ignite a far greater explosion of wealth.

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