The teaching and learning resources listed below are primarily focused on the Dutch Republic from its origin in the last third of the 16th century to its fall in 1795, with an emphasis on how it created what has been called "The First Modern Economy" and its crucial role in the development of a European led world economy.
While the Dutch Republic was a major economic, cultural and political force during the early modern period, especially in the seventeenth century, which the Dutch call its Golden Age, its economic success was part of a larger Western European phenomenon, centered around the North Sea. Historians have characterized Western Europe's economic success in relation to the rest of the world as the 'Great Divergence' and the 'Rise of the West.'
During the eighteenth century, Britain, which experienced the world's first industrial revolution, became Europe's economic leader and in the nineteenth century played the major role in spreading European capitalism around the world. For teaching and learning resources on Britain's industrial revolution, see my companion site, Aspects of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.