The role of the Dutch Republic as the intellectual entrepôt of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

As is well known, the Dutch republic played a crucial role in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and in the first decades of the eighteenth century, in making known to the rest of Europe the literary, philosophical, and scientific achievements of England. As is equally well known, in their role as intellectual carriers, the Dutch did not confine their services to the diffusion of English culture. During the last quarter of the seventeenth century, indeed, the Dutch republic made itself the unquestioned intellectual entrepot of Europe. The Dutch book trade then at its apogee had taken the whole of Europe for its market, and gone beyond Europe. Books printed in the Dutch republic, and especially bibles, atlases, devotional, and professional books, were produced cheaply and in large quantities from numerous printing presses. The province of Holland alone in 1675 possessed nearly 200 presses. Amsterdam by the middle of the seventeenth century had outdistanced both its Dutch and its European competitors to become, and to remain for the rest of the century, the most important centre for the production of books in Europe, boasting over 270 booksellers and printers in the