Approaches the success of merchant capitalism in Holland in the early modern period from the perspective of the labor market, delineating the role of itinerant and settled wage workers, forced labor from, and slave labor in, the colonies. Zanden (economic and social history, Free U. of Amsterdam) traces the decline to changes in the labor market, and describes the first rise of industrialism as a resurgence of mercantilism, which collapsed for the same reasons about 1850. Distributed by St. Martin's. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.