"Capitalism's second cycle of material expansion"
"By the end of the sixteenth century, it was clear that the United Provinces, known today as the Netherlands, would be in charge of this second cycle" (271)
"The Dutch [...] were the first capitalist power to establish the self-sufficiency of a modern state and project influence across the globe. Ships in the employ of the two major Dutch trading enterprises, the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, could be chaperoned wherever they went by the large and technologically sophisticated Dutch navy" (272)
"Amsterdam became not just the political but also the physical center of world commerce" (273)