Prof. dr. Oscar Gelderblom

 
UU
UU

Prof. dr. Oscar Gelderblom

UU

“The corona crisis increases the difference between the poor, without savings, and the rich, with a buffer. We actually see that in every crisis.”

Research Focus: Economic History, Financial History, Trade History, Migration, Political Economy

Oscar Gelderblom (1971) is a Professor of Financial History at Utrecht University since 2014. He obtained his PhD at Utrecht University in 2000 with a dissertation on the role of Southern Dutch merchants in the rise of Amsterdam as a center of world trade between 1578 and 1630.

Focus on the history of trade and finance

Gelderblom has a special interest in the history of trade and finance. He has published on the organization of long-distance trade in early modern Europe, on financial markets, entrepreneurship, migration and political economy. He currently works on the financial affairs of ordinary Dutch people in the twentieth century, on the early history of the VOC and on the financial development of the Low Countries before the Industrial Revolution.

More emphasis on 20th century

Together with Joost Jonker, Gelderblom leads the financial history group of Utrecht University. For a long time the group worked mainly on financial markets before 1800 but in recent years also on the creation of an inclusive financial system in the Netherlands in the twentieth century. One project deals with the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises, another with the investment behavior of the Dutch political elite.

Television series on the financial history of the Netherlands

The financial history group teamed up with the Dutch broadcasting company NTR to create a unique citizen science project, ‘Kasboekje van Nederland’. The project has mobilized Dutch families to share their financial records with Utrecht’s financial historians, who use the ‘cash books’ to explore the financial history of Dutch households. The project’s website relates this history and provides access to the six episodes of the television series, broadcasted in the Spring of 2018.