213J John Keymore (active 1610-1620)


John Keymors observation made upon the Dutch fishing, about the year 1601. Demonstrating that there is more wealth raised out of herrings and other fish in His Majesties seas, by the neighbouring nations in one year, then the King of Spain hath from the Indies in four. And that there were twenty thousand ships and other vessels, and about four hundred thousand people then set on work by both sea and land; and maintained only by fishing upon the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland


London: printed from the original manuscript, for Sir Edward Ford in the year 1664 . Price $1,800

Title page of John Keymor's observations on Dutch fishing, dated 1664, discussing the wealth generated from herring and other fish, and the number of vessels and workers involved in the fishing industry.

Quarto, 7 1/2 x 5 3/4 inches A3B4 . Complete First edition (and only) This copy is Bound in modern boards calf spine in good condition.

One of the classic English statements of maritime mercantilism. Keymors’ famous comparison between Dutch herring fisheries and Spanish American silver mines transformed a seemingly humble industry into a measure of national power. Written at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the tract argues that fisheries support entire networks of shipbuilders, merchants, sailors, craftsmen, and coastal communities, making the herring trade the true foundation of Dutch prosperity.

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In this opening, Keymore attempts to quantify the entire Dutch fishing economy. He argues that a single herring buss supports additional vessels, mariners, coopers, sailmakers, rope-makers, shipwrights, merchants, and their families, creating a vast economic multiplier. This is essentially an early seventeenth-century argument that fisheries generate national wealth through employment and industry rather than merely through the sale of fish. It is remarkably close to what later economists would call a multiplier effect.

A remarkably early statement of English economic nationalism. Keymor argues that the Dutch Republic’s commercial prosperity rested not on distant colonies or precious metals, but upon the systematic exploitation of the fisheries of the British Isles. Written at the moment when England was beginning to challenge Dutch dominance at sea, the tract treats the herring fishery as a national resource capable of sustaining fleets, mariners, merchants, shipbuilders, sailmakers, and entire coastal communities. It is one of the most vivid expressions of the belief that maritime power, commerce, and national wealth were inseparable.

Although issued in 1664, the work preserves observations dating from about 1601 and belongs to the great debate over sovereignty of the seas that would eventually produce the famous controversies between Grotius’s Mare Liberum and Selden’s Mare Clausum. Keymors’ calculations—claiming tens of thousands of vessels and hundreds of thousands of people employed in the fishery—may be exaggerated, but they reveal how English writers understood the economic foundations of Dutch power. As a document of mercantilist thought, maritime policy, and Anglo-Dutch rivalry, it occupies an important place in the history of political economy.

https://datb.cerl.org/estc/R25717


Copies – N.America Columbia University, Rare Book & Manuscript Library Folger Shakespeare Harvard University Graduate School of Business, Baker Library Harvard University Houghton Library Harvard University Houghton Library University of Illinois University of Minnesota Yale University,

Goldsmiths’-Kress No. 1725; Wing (CD-ROM, 1996), K390


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