In the introduction, we observed how the nineteenth century has assumed a dominant position in much research on the history of retail trade. This century is seen as a watershed between an age dominated by markets and small, primitive shops and a new age characterized by scaling-up, rationalization and the emergence of modern retail businesses. The large department stores and fashion boutiques that arose in Western cities after the mid-nineteenth century were icons of this new age. For a long time, it was possible to maintain this image of under- developed shops in the years before large department stores and clothing shops made their mark on the urban landscape because the source material for the early modern period is relatively scarce and not particularly accessible. But another factor was also at play, as I argued above. On the whole, the towns that were studied were still small at the beginning of the nineteenth century, meaning that their shopping systems were underdeveloped. This only changed when these towns grew in the course of the nineteenth century and new industrial towns penetrated the highest echelons of the urban hierarchy. The link between industrialization, modernization and the emergence of the modern retail system was then easily drawn. Amsterdam was chosen for the present study because this city was already relatively large in the early modern period, meaning that the existence of a differentiated retail system was not ruled out in advance. Moreover, by taking the long view, we gained an overview of continuities and discontinuities that would otherwise have remained hidden, and I should like to highlight some of them here.

One of the most striking findings of this research is the spatial continuity of the retail system in the city. The area that formed the heart of Amsterdam's retail landscape in the second half of the sixteenth century was still the city's shopping heart in the mid-nineteenth century, and even today, the real estate prices per square metre on Kalverstraat and Nieuwendijk are among the highest in the city (and the Netherlands). This is a key observation because it is consistent with the significance that this study has ascribed to the urban grid and how it determines the accessibility of locations in a city. The urban grid shaped shopkeepers’ location preferences and thereby determined the distribution of shops across the urban landscape to a major degree.