Amsterdam, stock exchange – Giuseppe Filosi, 1742

“La Borsa di Amsterdam, dove si radunano i Mercanti” [The Amsterdam Exchange, Where Merchants Gather], copper engraving made by Giuseppe Filosi for Thomas Salmon’s book Lo Stato Presente di Tutti i Paesi e Popoli del Mondo [The Present State of All the Countries and Peoples of the World], published in 1742. Coloured by a later hand. Size (including text): approx. 16 × 20 cm.

In the early seventeenth century, the Amsterdam Exchange was the most important trading institution in the world. It rapidly developed into an international centre of commerce, where virtually anything that could be traded changed hands. Transactions included shares in the Dutch East India Company (VOC), forward contracts allowing merchants to purchase goods at an agreed price on a specified future date, insurance policies, and a vast range of commodities. Merchants could also arrange freight contracts and obtain information essential to their commercial activities.

Construction of the Amsterdam Exchange began in the spring of 1608. The building rested partly on the vaulted structure of a sluice and partly on wooden piles measuring 50 to 60 feet in length.

The Amsterdam city authorities commissioned the Exchange to concentrate the city’s commercial activities in a single location. This would facilitate trade while also providing opportunities for regulation. Construction was supervised by the city architect Hendrick de Keyser, whose design drew inspiration from similar exchange buildings in Antwerp and London. The Amsterdam Exchange opened in 1611.

The building consisted of a rectangular courtyard surrounded by a colonnaded gallery. Since it was partly constructed over a series of bridge arches, vessels with their masts lowered could sail directly beneath the Exchange. This passage was closed in 1622, initially by installing a barrier across the waterway, subsequently by adding heavy wooden doors, and finally, in 1672, by permanently bricking up the opening.

The closure was reportedly prompted by a conspiracy uncovered in 1622. Balthasar Paul, a stonemason’s apprentice from Namur, had plotted to set fire to Amsterdam, with the destruction of the Exchange forming part of his plans. His conspiracy failed, and he was ultimately executed on the scaffold in Dam Square.

Securities trading may have had its own designated area in the open-air courtyard as early as 1611. It certainly occupied an established position following the renovation and expansion of the Exchange in 1668.

Although the overwhelming majority of transactions conducted at the Exchange involved commodities, Hendrick de Keyser’s building was also where shares in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) were traded, followed from 1621 onwards by shares in the Dutch West India Company (WIC). It is for this reason that the Amsterdam Exchange is regarded as the world’s oldest stock exchange.

To accommodate the grain merchants, a separate grain exchange was constructed over the water on the southern side of the Oude Brug in 1617.

By 1835, the Amsterdam Exchange had subsided so severely that it was no longer fit for use. The building was eventually demolished between 1836 and 1838. It was replaced by the Zocher Exchange, built on the opposite side of Dam Square.