A Uniquely Comprehensive Social View of Eighteenth-Century Amsterdam
We present the preliminary results of an empirical exercise that attempts to fuse together two separate collections of probate inventories from eighteenth-century Amsterdam into one data set capturing households from the richest elites to the poorest segments of urban society. Although formally similar, the two data sets have different origins: the notary archives contain inventories from the upper and middle classes, whereas inventories from the Burgerweeshuis or civilian orphanage give insight into the material world of impoverished artisans and the laboring classes. We employ an external source to benchmark the socioeconomic position of the inventoried households. Many inventories contain rental debts, from which the annual cost of rented dwellings can be calculated. These are then integrated with artificial rental values of the residences of home-owning households, upon which a real estate tax was levied. When this verponding tax was reformed in 1732, assessors included the rental value of rented rooms, cellars and attics as well as of entire houses. Using this excellent series of residence values as a proxy for the city’s income distribution, we stratify two samples of combined notary and orphanage inventories around the base years 1730 (n=215) and 1780 (2=217) by crossing the rental values of the inventoried households’ living quarters with the entire urban housing hierarchy. This stratification methodology enables us to correct the wealth bias found in any collection of probate inventories, thereby overcoming one of the main objections against the use of this source in social and economic history. Indeed, our uniquely comprehensive view of urban society in eighteenth-century Amsterdam permits valuable contributions to recent debates on material culture, household finance, and urban inequality.