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oa Vermijdbaar verval?
Het uitzonderlijke voorbeeld van San Marino in Jan Hendrik van Dongens
Mijn Tijd Winst (1789-1791) - Amsterdam University Press
- Source: De Achttiende Eeuw, Volume 53, Issue 1, Jan 2021, p. 5 - 18
Abstract
The fear that a republic will inevitably decline occupied a central place in late eighteenth-century Dutch thought, but concrete examples are rarely analyzed in depth. This article takes a closer look at a largely ignored thinker from this era, Jan Hendrik van Dongen (1766-1789), focusing on the theme of republican decline in the collection of his most important writings: Mijn Tijd Winst (1789-1791). Special attention is paid to his treatment of the remarkable example of San Marino. This small, isolated, and agrarian republic had enjoyed a stable existence for more than a millennium and thus appeared to be an exception to the historical rule of inevitable decline. The question arises if the example of San Marino holds lessons for the larger, internationally oriented and commercial Dutch Republic, which was widely considered to be in rapid decline at the end of the eighteenth century.