The Burgher and the Whore

Amsterdam was, after London and Paris, the largest and wealthiest city of early modern Europe, and was, as nowadays, renowned for its prostitution. The Burgher and the Whore reconstructs Amsterdam's whoredom in detail, and explores the trade as a pre-industrial business, embedded in the city's society and economy. The story concentrates on the people living at the margins of a rich seafaring metropolis in which there was a large surplus of women, many of them poor immigrants. This is a book that can be read as the history of the Dutch Golden Age from below.