Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century

Rembrandt, Hals and Vermeer are still household names, even though they died over three hundred years ago. In their lifetimes they witnessed the extraordinary consolidation of the newly independent Dutch Republic and its emergence as one of the richest nations on earth. As one contemporary wrote in 1673: the Dutch were ''the envy of some, the fear of others, and the wonder of all their neighbours'...