The Dutch Republic and the Birth of Modern Advertising, by Arthur der Weduwen and Andrew Pettegree

It is a promising and alluring topic: in their study, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen explore the ‘birth of advertising’ in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. They introduce their readers to a fascinating world of information, people and things—a world that proves to be a microcosm of contemporary Dutch society. The authors explain that in some regards, the book itself has grown out of the allure of the topic and material: its first draft was not written with a fully-fledged monograph in mind but was intended to serve as an introduction to the edition of advertisements that the authors have published in the same series (Brill’s Library of the Written Word). The volume at hand sufficiently demonstrates that the topic deserves a book-length treatment and indeed calls for further research, not least in comparative perspective. The study is based, at its core, on the analysis of advertisements published in Dutch newspapers between 1621 and c.1700, with some chapters moving on well into the eighteenth century. While the few previous studies of early modern advertising are often framed within to the paradigm of the ‘consumer revolution’, Pettegree and Weduwen discuss their subject more specifically within the context of the development of newspapers and the history of the printing world. They not only point out the intimate connections between the book trade and the onset of newspaper advertising but also (even if implicitly) help to challenge the well-worn modernising projections which the ‘consumer revolution’ narrative entails. Advertisements are not only directed to customers and buyers but also address—and probably more often than not in the early days—potential competitors, serving as announcements of business ventures and privileges. Furthermore, unlike the dominant image today, the buyers and customers addressed were not consumers and private individuals but, rather, other merchants or manufacturers. Indeed, retail trade only made a relatively late appearance in the printed world of advertisements (with some exceptions with regard to services and the book trade)—and appeared later in Dutch than in English newspapers.

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