Financial care for the vulnerable: Rise and decline of Holland orphan chambers

Abstract

In the middle ages and the early modern period, orphan chambers were important urban institutions in a number of European regions. They ensured that orphans, the majority of whom lived with family or friends, received the inheritance that was rightfully theirs. Contrary to the much better known orphanages, orphan chambers did not deliver physical care but legal and financial care. Orphan chambers appointed guardians, oversaw their financial management, and kept inheritances safe. In some places, orphan chambers also developed financial services such as managing inheritances and funds to generate a return on money. This dissertation studies the rise, development, and decline of Holland orphan chambers and the demographic and economic factors that can explain this pattern. New perspectives are added. Orphan chambers as a welfare arrangement in a broader range of welfare arrangements in the early modern period. Orphan chambers as a financial institution and the importance of the orphan chamber to the urban financial market. Orphan chambers as an early modern government institution. By examining cases from Holland and the case of the orphan chamber of Batavia, I am able to create a comparative perspective that offers insight into the functioning and the learning capacity of the orphan chamber as an early modern bureaucracy. In Chapter two, In Loco Parentis: Holland’s orphan chambers in a European context, I show that orphan chambers, and similar institutions under different names, were a common occurrence in many European regions. They developed in a time of urban growth, when cities saw the necessity for an arrangement for middle class children who lost one or both parents at a young age and who inherited from their parents: orphan chambers. In Chapter three, Orphan chamber loans, I study the financial function of the orphan chamber, more specifically the orphan chamber loan and its development. Orphan chamber loans were designed as safe, long-term investments, based on standard conditions. It was a relatively inflexible credit instrument catered to the needs of orphans. In Chapter four, Aan fraude ten onder?, I investigate the governance of orphan chambers and whether the decline of orphan chambers was caused by fraud and mismanagement. In a relatively small number of orphan chambers, problems occurred that involved the disappearance of money. Without exception, these problems dated from the period when the heyday of the orphan chambers was over. In Chapter five, Dutch money in the tropics, I look at the establishment of orphan chambers overseas in particular, the orphan chamber of Batavia, whose development differed greatly from its Holland counterparts. It benefited both the European population and the VOC. This orphan chamber also became a typical colonial institution that treated different population groups in different ways and consequently contributed to the further institutionalization of inequality in the city. Orphan chambers should be seen as a welfare arrangement for the middle class; they were never intended for all orphans but only for orphans with money. The development of the orphan chamber as a financial institution could never really take off because orphan chambers were inflexible in the interpretation of their mission. In the history of government oversight on orphans, orphan chambers are a striking phenomenon especially because they interfered strongly in family affairs; they were a compulsory arrangement with the government in charge of custody and finances, instead of the family. When, by the end of the early modern period, the number of orphans declined and the financial markets increasingly offered alternatives for orphan chamber loans, the need for the latter as a welfare arrangement disappeared and the court took over the supervision of guardianships.