Herman Van der Wee, born in Lier, Belgium, in 1928. Ph.D. from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Professor Emeritus of Economic History at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Guest of the Rector (Fall 1999)
The research undertaken at NIAS as Guest of the Rector during the Fall 1999 had a double focus. A good part of the research was concentrated on the social and economic history of the Low Countries during the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. More specifically, the research aimed at deepening the analysis of industrial development, urban as well as rural, in Flanders, Brabant and Holland during the period mentioned above and to integrate this development into a European economic context. The main emphasis was on the rise, growth and decline of the textile industry, by far the most important industrial sector of the Low Countries, and of the whole of Europe, during the Ancien Regime.
A second part of the research undertaken at NIAS was related to a new project on the theme Monetary Policy in Belgium during the Second World War and the period immediately after the War to be written for a book on the “History of the National Bank of Belgium, 1940-1971”. The project is still in its initial phase: research, therefore, was focused on finding relevant data in Dutch archives, i.e. the archives of the Nederlandsche Bank, the General Archives and the archives of the Ministry of Finance and of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Very useful and interesting information was discovered in the war archives of the two ministries, mentioned above.
Finally, a few papers were written for conferences in Washington DC, New York, Istanbul and Amsterdam, which took place in the Fall 1999: the papers were related to my ongoing research on monetary history and banking history during the modern period and on industrial history during the Ancien Regime.