Using the Amsterdam Municipal Orphanage as a window through which readers

        can see the start of profound social and economic changes in early modern

        Amsterdam, Civic Charity in a Golden Age explores the connections

        between the developing capitalist economy, the functioning of the government,

        and the provision of charitable services to orphans in Amsterdam during

        the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the period of the city's greatest

        prosperity and subsequent decline.

      Anne McCants skillfully interprets details of the orphanage's expenditures,

        especially for food; its population; the work records of those who were

        reared there; and the careers of the regents who oversaw it. The establishment

        of the orphanage itself was called for by the changing economic needs

        of rapidly expanding commercial centers and the potential instability

        of a government that depended on taxes from a large, politically powerless

        segment of the population.