Blader door transcripties » Stadsarchief Amsterdam

archieftoegang 499, inventarisnummer 227, pagina 123

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was the custom , this report , and reports of decisions taken on it in the relevant
meetings were printed and circulated to the States ' constituent bodies for in-
formation and comment . Rumours had of course got round , but it was only
when this report was released that it became known how serious the emergency
was . Property values in the area fell by around 50 %, shares in Amsterdam's loan
on the district's security , and the bonds of Holland and West Friesland dropped
in value to a derisory quotation in inventories drawn up on the deaths of persons
whose estates were subject to the Collateral Succession tax 1
.
Worse was to follow . Dutch Reformed Church ministers with a Calvinist
leaning towards the idea of crime being rightly punished in this world as well as
in the next , produced preachers and pamphleteers who equated dike-breaks such
as occurred in the omringdijk , with the disaster that overcame Sodom and Gomor-
rah and for the same reason . It is an undoubted fact that homosexuality , which does
not seem to have been unduly prevalent in the Republic of the Netherlands
earlier , was becoming more pronounced , especially in high society , in the eigh-
teenth century ; at any rate it was becoming more open and remarked on . And it
need not surprise us that some at least of the Reformed Church clergy regarded
the ' plague of worms ' as an act of divine discipline . Although not everyone was
convinced that the dike breaks were , in fact , a manifestation of vengeance on an
immoral society , the whole situation , and rumours of worse to come , severely
upset the even tenour of life in the Netherlands for some time after the summer of
1732 . A day of thanksgiving , for the retreat of immediate disaster , and of fasting
and prayer against any recurrence , was ordained and acted on , this being a typical
Dutch public reaction to such events . But one should notice also that , equally
typical , but in this case of Dutch humour in the face of disaster , a wit proposed
that the worms should be prayed to fast 2
.
The excitement about possible dike breaks , and the envisaged return to the
sea of the whole west coastline of the provinces of Holland , Zeeland and West-
Friesland , penetrated very quickly the consciousness of northern European
merchants . In the correspondence of the merchant house of Brants-de Neufville
at the Gemeente Archief at Amsterdam is a letter from a west country English
trader who asks his Amsterdam correspondent whether it would not be advisable
for him to withhold his usual parcel of leather goods because it seemed likely
that the town might collapse into the water 3
. Not everyone , of course , was as
gloomy as this about the future of the Republic's trade . But such publicity was
unfavourable , and a report , and especially an arresting but totally imaginary
illustration published in the internationally read Europische Mercurius ought per-
haps to be added to the reasons given to explain Amsterdam's slow loss of ground
Allegory on the plague of worms in the Netherlands and East Friesland with in the background
the profile of Amsterdam . Engraving by Elias Batch , 1732 Photo Gem . Arch .
1 Cf - A . C . Carter , Getting , Spending and Investing in Early Modern Times ( Assen , 1975 ) pp . 42 ff .
2 Id , Neutrality or Commitment ; Dutch Foreign Policy 1667-1795 ( 1975 ) pp . 66-7 .
8 Id , p . 66 .
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