Civic Charity in a Golden Age

Download or read book Civic Charity in a Golden Age written by Anne Elizabeth Conger McCants and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the Amsterdam Municipal Orphanage as a window through which readers can see the start of profound social and economic changes in early modern Amsterdam, Civic Charity in a Golden Age explores the connections between the developing capitalist economy, the functioning of the government, and the provision of charitable services to orphans in Amsterdam during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the period of the city's greatest prosperity and subsequent decline. Anne McCants skillfully interprets details of the orphanage's expenditures, especially for food; its population; the work records of those who were reared there; and the careers of the regents who oversaw it. The establishment of the orphanage itself was called for by the changing economic needs of rapidly expanding commercial centers and the potential instability of a government that depended on taxes from a large, politically powerless segment of the population.