Bücher von Maarten Prak

In this 2005 book, Maarten Prak charts the political, social, economic and cultural history of the Dutch Golden Age and examines the extent to which the Golden Age was a product of its own past or the harbinger of the more modern, industrialised and enlightened society of the future.

This is the first comparative and comprehensive account of occupational training before the Industrial Revolution. Apprenticeship was a critical part of human capital formation, and, because of this, it has a central role to play in understanding economic growth in the past. At the same time, it was a key stage in the lives of many people, whose access to skills and experience of learning were shaped by the guilds that trained them. The local and national studies contained in this volume bring together the latest research into how skills training worked across Europe in an era before the emergence of national school systems. These essays, written to a common agenda and drawing on major new datasets, systematically outline the features of what amounted to a European-wide system of skills education, and provide essential insights into a key institution of economic and social history.