Professors Marc de Smidt, in a letter of October 1, 1968, wrote: that
"in January 1967, my colleague Borchert and I have given lectures about
the Economic Base Concept in a meeting of the Royal Dutch Geographical
Society. In this meeting, I pointed out that the concept was mainly
developed by Werner Sombart." However, Marc de Smidt continues that the
matter was first approached by "the Leiden mercantalistic economist Pieter
de la Court." De Smidt then refers to the publication of this lecture in
the Bulletin (see below) and ends that he did not know that Nussbaum "had
the permission to base his book almost entirely on Sombart's 'Der Moderne
Kapitalismus'", and that he only knew "that the terms of Nussbaum
were
obviously the same as those which were used by Sombart."
M.DE SMIDT, "STUWEND EN VERZORGEND: EEN VERKENNING VAN DE ONTWIKKELING DER
KONCEPTIE," Bulletin (Geografisch Instituut Utrecht, No.4, June 1967,
pp.7-40.
J.G.BORCHERT, "STUWEND EN VERZORGEND: DE BEPERKTHEID VAN DE KONCEPTIE EN
ENKELE ALTERNATIEVE ONTWIKKELINGEN," op.cit. pp.41-63
Borchert and de Smidt, "The Economic Base Concept" (English Summary of
above papers),
op.cit., pp.64-69.
M.DE SMIDT, "A Provisional Bibliography on the Economic Base Concept,"
op.cit., pp.70-82.
In their English summary, the authors point out that Sombart had "detected
that the first efforts in this field of the economic base concept had
already been undertaken by the Dutch mercantalist Pieter DE LA COURT in
his manuscript "'t Welvaren der Stadt Leiden" in 1659 (On the prosperity of
the City of Leiden)." (p.64). Borchert and de Smidt continue,:
"In the opinion of DE LA COURT the (exporting) manufacturing industries
and the university were the two basic sectors in the urban economy of
Leiden. All other elements of the economic structure depended on this
economic base. The efforts aiming at an increase of population should
therefore be directed towards the stimulation of export promoting and
import substituting activities. Thus foreign trade should have priority."
(pp.64-5; the original and more detailed Dutch statement on de la Court's
contribution can be found on p.11)
