This book offers a comprehensive history of brewing in Holland from the beginnings of large scale production at the end of the first millennium through medieval expansion, the boom of the Renaissance, and the disastrous decline of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It closes with the revival of the industry in the era of industrialization.
Major technical innovations, from Germany, in the fourteenth and again in the nineteenth century, made it possible for brewing to take a leading role in the Dutch economy. The adaptation of those improvements went on always under the careful supervision of the state.
Relying on the extensive records of urban and provincial governments the author traces the cooperation as well as tension between brewers and public authorities spanning one thousand years.