The 17th century is known in Dutch history as the ‘Golden Age’ because it marked a period of unprecedented cultural flowering and economic growth in the Low Countries. This was in stark contrast to the economic stagnation and decline experienced elsewhere in Europe right through to 1750. In the Republic, the new political structures put in place in the 16th century were expanded and refined. They were dominated not so much by the nobility or the clergy, as elsewhere in Europe, but by a middle-class elite drawn mainly from the wealthy merchant families and known in Dutch history as the regent class. Consequently, political decisions were taken less (as in neighbouring countries like England or France) with a view to gaining greater power or influence in Europe or elsewhere in the world, than to promote or safeguard the nation’s trading interests. Amsterdam evolved into the world’s leading port and commercial centre. The key to its success was its status as an entrepot, indispensable to the selling on, transhipment, warehousing and processing of imported products.

Around 1670 the Republic had some 2,000 large cargo vessels - many times the number in the English merchant fleet. This gave it a virtual monopoly of the carrying trade around the world. The economy benefited particularly from trade with distant lands. Spices, pepper, silks and cottons were imported from the East Indies, Bengal, Ceylon and Malacca, while the triangular trade between the west coast of Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean, and Europe was chiefly in plantation goods like sugar, salt, tobacco and brazil wood. Later, slaves were added to the list. Initially, the Dutch merchantmen sailed to Africa solely in search of gold and ivory and eschewed the slave trade. But eventually they came to accept it as a fact of life. To justify their dealings in slaves, they turned to the Bible and claimed that Africans were the sons and daughters of Ham, who was cursed and condemned to servitude by his father, Noah, and had (they said) passed on the curse to the whole population of Africa.

The status of Amsterdam as the financial capital of the world was due mainly to the Amsterdam Exchange Bank, set up in 1609 as an official body to facilitate financial transactions. These were complicated by the many different forms of coinage in circulation. The Exchange Bank accepted cash of all kinds and registered its value in guilders in the owner's bank account. This laid the basis for the cashless transfer of funds.

But the Golden Age is known not only as a time of economic boom. Culturally too, the Republic towered over the rest of Europe. An unusual feature for the time was the marked influence of the bourgeoisie on the various arts. This was especially true of painting, a field in which the best remembered practitioners of the period include Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen, Pieter de Hoogh, Jacob van Ruysdael, Gerard Dou and - greatest of all - Rembrandt van Rijn. Rembrandt (1606-1669) was born in Leiden, the son of a local miller, and spent a year at the academy there before being apprenticed to a local artist, Jacob van Swanenberg, and later to the Amsterdam painter Pieter Pietersz. Lastman. In 1625 he returned to Leiden and set up as an independent artist. Seven years later, however, he moved back to Amsterdam and took lodgings with the art dealer Hendrik van Uylenburgh, whose cousin, Saskia van Uylenburgh, he married a year later. Of their four children only one, Titus, survived.

After Saskia’s death in 1642, Rembrandt’s financial circumstances became increasingly difficult, culminating in bankruptcy and the distraint of many of his paintings and other possessions. By that time he was living with Hendrickje Stoffels, who bore him a daughter, Cornelia. Hendrickje and Titus acted as Rembrandt’s agents, finding sufficient commissions for him to settle his debts. Most of these commissions came from the wealthy citizens and merchants of Amsterdam. Rembrandt died in 1669 and was buried in the Westerkerk in Amsterdam.

Rembrandt painted many portraits, including the world-famous group portrait known to posterity as The Night Watch. Biblical scenes and self-portraits are a major feature of his oeuvre. His best-known works include the Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, Portrait of Saskia as Flora, The Sampling Officials of the Drapers' Guild (De Staalmeesters), The Bridal Couple ("The Jewish Bride") and The Holy Family. Nowadays, Rembrandt's works are dispersed throughout Europe and the United States. Major collections can be found in the print room of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Boymans-Van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, the print room of the British Museum in London, the Albertina in Vienna and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

In the field of literature too, the Republic produced famous names like Jacob Cats, Pieter Cornelisz. Hooft, Bredero, Constantijn Huygens and Joost van den Vondel (a poet whose most famous works included his classical tragedies Gijsbrecht van Amstel and Lucifer, which are still regularly performed). Another figure worth mentioning is Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), a Dutch jurist who was a distinguished theologian, classicist, historian, statesman and diplomat. One of his best known works was the legal masterpiece On the Law of War and Peace, in which he defended the doctrine of the just war if a dispute could not be settled in any other way. One section of this work, on the doctrine of the freedom of the seas, argues that (apart from a narrow three-mile coastal zone) the seas cannot be regarded as subject to any particular power. This study is still regarded as the basis of the law of the sea.

During the Golden Age, Amsterdam attracted immigrants from all over Europe and beyond. All kinds of people migrated to this metropolis, where religious dissent was tolerated and work was freely available. Flemish, Portuguese, English, French, German and Polish visitors flocked to admire the city. Their number even included the Russian Tsar, Peter the Great, who studied the latest shipbuilding techniques in Zaandam, just north of Amsterdam, with a view to modernising the Russian fleet. The father of Baruch Spinoza, a Jew fleeing religious persecution in Portugal, was another newcomer to Amsterdam. His son (1632-1677) became famous throughout Europe and corresponded with a host of major contemporary figures. His contacts with liberal Christians and free-thinkers eventually led to his expulsion from the Jewish community and his departure from Amsterdam. His most celebrated work is the Ethics, in which he used mathematics to unite the Jewish mystical tradition and rational scientific thought in a single all-encompassing vision. His work, together with that of Voltaire and Descartes, had a great influence on the Enlightenment.

In the mid-17th century, England and France intensified their attacks on the economic hegemony of the Republic. England promulgated the Navigation Act in 1651 and on land the Republic waged exhausting wars against Louis XIV of France. The economic burdens imposed by these events eventually brought about the end of the Golden Age. By the early eighteenth century, it was all over.