Marjolein ’t Hart (1955) is Emeritus Professor of the History of State Formation in Global Perspective at VU University Amsterdam. She graduated cum laude in Economic and Social History (MA) at the University of Groningen in 1981. Her MA Thesis studied Irish returnee emigrants in the nineteenth century. In 1989 she obtained her PhD degree in History at the University of Leiden with a thesis on the rise of the fiscal-military state of the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, supervised by Prof. Charles Tilly (New York) and Prof. Wim Blockmans (Leiden). She held positions at various universities (Groningen, Leiden, Rotterdam, VU University Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam) and in various disciplines (history, sociology, political sciences). She was a Visiting Scholar at Trinity College Dublin, a Fellow of the New School for Social Research at New York, a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar, and Visiting Professor (Queen Wilhelmina Chair) at Columbia University. Since 2013, she headed the History Department of the Huygens Institute, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. She organized a substantial number of (international) conferences. For the Flemish Interuniversity Board she participated in the examination of the history departments of the Flemish Universities. She was also member of the editorial board of a number of periodicals, among others of the International Review of Social History, which she chaired.
Specialization
General
Social and economic history
Early modern history, in particular of the Netherlands
Global history
Historiography; theory and methodology of (social) history
Themes
State formation, warfare and bureaucratization
Revolts and revolutions
Environmental history
Institutional economic history, in particular the role of finance
Key publications
Oorlog en Ongelijkheid. Een inclusieve geschiedenis van de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam, Boom 2022)
Inclusieve geschiedenis, kan dat? Een verhaal over een oorlog (Afscheidsoratie, VU Amsterdam 2022)
The Dutch Wars of Independence. Warfare and Commerce in the Netherlands 1570-1680 (London, Routledge 2014)
Waarom belastingen goed zijn voor democratie. Staatsvorming en politieke cultuur in wereldhistorisch perspectief (Oratie, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 2014)
The Making of a Bourgeois State. War, politics and finance during the Dutch Revolt (Manchester, Manchester University Press 1993)
De wereld en Nederland. Een sociale en economische geschiedenis van de laatste duizend jaar (Amsterdam, Boom 2011) with Karel Davids (eds.)
Wereldgeschiedenis van Nederland (Amsterdam, Ambo-Anthos 2018, with others, eds.)
Globalization, Environmental Change, and Social History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2010) with Peter Boomgaard (eds.)
Humor and Social Protest (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2007) with Dennis Bos (eds.)
Urban Achievement in early modern Europe. Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2001) with Patrick O’Brien, Derek Keene and Herman van der Wee (eds.); paperback edition in 2008
A financial history of the Netherlands 1550-1990 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997) with Joost Jonker and Jan Luiten van Zanden (eds.); paperback edition in 2010
‘Power’, in: Peter Clark (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2013), 421-437 with Wim Blockmans
‘De democratische paradox en de Opstand in Vlaanderen, Brabant en Holland’, in: Mario Damen and Louis Sicking (eds.), Bourgondië voorbij. Opstellen aangeboden aan Wim Blockmans (Hilversum 2010), 323-335
Special Issue/Themanummer ‘Het geld van de stad’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 3:3 (2006) with Manon van der Heijden (eds.)
‘Gewetenloze kapitalisten, handige fiscalisten, strategische huisvaders of gedisciplineerde calvinisten? De Nederlandse Republiek als casestudy’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 123 (2006), 418-438
'Cities and statemaking in the Dutch Republic, 1580-1680’, Theory and Society 18 (1989), 663-689
‘The glorious city. Monumentalism and public space in seventeenth century Amsterdam’, in: Patrick O’Brien, Marjolein ‘t Hart, Derek Keene and Herman van der Wee (eds.), Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe. Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2001), 128-150
‘The Dutch Republic: The Urban Impact Upon Politics’, in: Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen (eds.), A Miracle Mirrored. The Dutch Republic in an European Perspective (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), 57-98
