Logistics in early-modern Europe: A discussion of specialization, flexibility and efficiency in the activities of the Dutch shipping community in the eighteenth century Werner Scheltjens To cite this version: Werner Scheltjens. Logistics in early-modern Europe: A discussion of specialization, flexibility and efficiency in the activities of the Dutch shipping community in the eighteenth century. 2008. halshs- 00586845 HAL Id: halshs-00586845 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00586845 Preprint submitted on 18 Apr 2011 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Logistics in early-modern Europe A discussion of specialization, flexibility and efficiency in the activities of the Dutch shipping community in the eighteenth century Werner Scheltjens, Ph.D. Student Paris School of Economics / University of Groningen
[email protected] Introduction1 In the historiography of Dutch economic history, maritime shipping records have played a crucial role. Generations of historians have put remarkable effort into the processing and publication of surviving maritime shipping records that cover various periods in time and distinct geographical areas. Sometimes these publications took the form of complete (electronic) databases of the original maritime shipping records2, more often they appeared in the form of compact, statistical editions based on the original records3.