I suppose you can try and pin this on the Dutch. But the economic practices of aggregating ownership around a legal business entity and organizing production towards the maximization of profit were quickly adopted by English shipping magnets from their Dutch peers.
If you think of the first corporation as the start of capitalism the Dutch East India company started in 1602, so that would be 17th century Netherlands, not 16th century England. In any case, I think the obvious choice for a date is 18th century England (together with the Industrial Revolution). Of course, you can trace the origins back much earlier even to antiquity, but capitalism the idea to organise most economic activity around capital is in my understanding more recent.
capitalism the idea to organise most economic activity around capital is in my understanding more recent
That’s a very literalist definition.
More broadly, capitalism is a system of private for-profit renting of capital for the purpose of using excess revenue to reinvest in new capital stock.
The main distinction between modern capitalism and traditional feudalism being that reinvestment aspect (feudal lords historically did a poor job of generating surplus or reinvesting in capital stocks). And the distinction between capitalism and socialism being private ownership versus public ownership of capital.
But all three were functionally “organized around capital”. Feudalist capital was just overwhelmingly real estate based, while the Dutch/English/French capitalists were more interested in industrial machinery (ships, mills, etc).
I suppose you can try and pin this on the Dutch. But the economic practices of aggregating ownership around a legal business entity and organizing production towards the maximization of profit were quickly adopted by English shipping magnets from their Dutch peers.
If you think of the first corporation as the start of capitalism the Dutch East India company started in 1602, so that would be 17th century Netherlands, not 16th century England. In any case, I think the obvious choice for a date is 18th century England (together with the Industrial Revolution). Of course, you can trace the origins back much earlier even to antiquity, but capitalism the idea to organise most economic activity around capital is in my understanding more recent.
That’s a very literalist definition.
More broadly, capitalism is a system of private for-profit renting of capital for the purpose of using excess revenue to reinvest in new capital stock.
The main distinction between modern capitalism and traditional feudalism being that reinvestment aspect (feudal lords historically did a poor job of generating surplus or reinvesting in capital stocks). And the distinction between capitalism and socialism being private ownership versus public ownership of capital.
But all three were functionally “organized around capital”. Feudalist capital was just overwhelmingly real estate based, while the Dutch/English/French capitalists were more interested in industrial machinery (ships, mills, etc).
“Magnates”
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/magnate-vs-magnet-usage-difference