"How it came that the bakers bake no bread": A Struggle for Trade Privileges in Seventeenth-Century New Amsterdam

Simon Middleton

FOR two weeks in October 1661, New Amsterdam experienced a bread shortage. The bakers refused to comply with a local ordinance charging them to bake twice a week and to keep the town supplied with bread of sufficient weight and quality. The burgomasters who administered the municipal government sent for Hendrick Willemsen, a baker and bread inspector, and demanded to know "how it came that the bakers bake no bread?" Willemsen explained that the regulated price of bread was so low compared to the price of grain that the bakers were "afraid to buy grain for beavers as they may suffer loss" and that they "ought not be obliged" to bake twice a week. The burgomasters declared their intention to "deliberate, so that neither the bakers on the one side nor the community on the other be taken short." At first, the authorities ordered the bakers to "bake good bread and to keep continually large bread in the shops" or risk exclusion from the trade for a period of a year and six weeks. Ten days later, they revised the ordinances relating to bread, increasing prices by 10 percent. The bakers returned to regular baking, and New Amsterdam was assured of a bread supply. 1

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The dispute between New Amsterdam's bakers and its burgomasters seems familiar from accounts of the regulation of the grain trade and baking in early modern Europe. In the Old World, paternalistic urban authorities regulated commercial activities considered too important to the general good to be left to the whims of the market or the discretion of profit-minded individuals. 2 In the New World, the scarcity of labor, abundance of land, and fluidity of social conditions are often thought to have undermined traditional restrictions on commerce and encouraged the rise of individualistic enterprises. The pursuit of individual interests, so the argument goes, freed trade from social obligations and eventually led to the transition to a free-market economy and, ultimately, capitalism. 3 How does the exchange between the bakers and the burgomasters in New Amsterdam fit in the context of this general transition? The bakers' refusal to bake could be interpreted as a protest by conservative craftsmen intent on securing their just deserts and preserving their independence and traditional ways of working. Alternatively, their refusal may reveal an entrepreneurial dissatisfaction with regulations and a determination to raise the price of bread and ensure profitable baking. 4 Whether the bakers are portrayed as defenders of a traditional economy or progenitors of a free-market society depends on an assessment of their motives and the communitarian versus individualistic character of New Amsterdam's economy. 5 This article argues that the categories of craftsman and entrepreneur needlessly constrict our understanding of early American tradesmen and the interaction between self-interest and communitarian concerns in urban artisanal trade.

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