Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Shops, Markets and the Urban Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Amsterdam
- 2 Changing Distribution Systems: Differentiation and Specialization in Early Modern Amsterdam
- 3 Shop Location Patterns in the age of the Great Urban Expansions
- 4 The Retail Landscape and the Consumer in the Seventeenth Century
- 5 The Location of Shops in Amsterdam in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
- 6 Stagnation and Modernization in Amsterdam’s Retail Sector, 1700–1850
- Conclusion: Continuity and Change in Amsterdam’s Retail Landscape
- Appendix: Sources for the Location of Shops in Amsterdam and Selection of Sectors
- List of Consulted Sources and Literature
- List of Tables
- Image Credits
- Topographical Index
1 - Shops, Markets and the Urban Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Amsterdam
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Shops, Markets and the Urban Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Amsterdam
- 2 Changing Distribution Systems: Differentiation and Specialization in Early Modern Amsterdam
- 3 Shop Location Patterns in the age of the Great Urban Expansions
- 4 The Retail Landscape and the Consumer in the Seventeenth Century
- 5 The Location of Shops in Amsterdam in the Mid-Eighteenth Century
- 6 Stagnation and Modernization in Amsterdam’s Retail Sector, 1700–1850
- Conclusion: Continuity and Change in Amsterdam’s Retail Landscape
- Appendix: Sources for the Location of Shops in Amsterdam and Selection of Sectors
- List of Consulted Sources and Literature
- List of Tables
- Image Credits
- Topographical Index
Summary
Abstract:
Chapter one explores modern retail location theory in order to provide the tools with which to research and interpret the location patterns of shops in early modern Amsterdam. The spatial analysis clearly reveals that, already in the second half of the sixteenth century, consumer durables were sold in real shopping streets, while suppliers of daily necessities were dispersed over the city. In these years, the display and sale of goods took place almost exclusively in front of the shopkeeper's door or in the window, where both goods and customers were protected from the weather by a canopy extended from the wooden façade.
Keywords: location theory, shopping streets, shop fronts, outdoor sales
In the course of the sixteenth century—the starting point of this study—Amsterdam already had a history of retail trade dating back several centuries. Little is known about shops in this period, but we are able to establish some rough outlines. These form the background to the situation in the sixteenth century, when the source material allows us to sketch a picture of shops and shopping in Amsterdam for the first time.
Historical background
With the construction of a dam on the Amstel river in the thirteenth century, a number of pre-urban sites on both sides of the river were connected, transforming the nature of the young settlement. The dam acted as a barrier to shipping between the catchment basin of the Amstel and the external waters of the IJ and Zuiderzee, meaning that goods had to be transferred. Carters and porters were needed for this, but trans-shipment points such as these were also typically places where artisans and merchants made a living; for when the vessels came to a temporary halt and people came together, there was business to be done. There would also have been fishermen and fish traders at the settlement on the Amstel and the IJ, of course, and there would have been farmers, too, although the settlement's low-lying position in a marshy river delta made the surroundings rather unsuitable for farming.
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- Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020