In August 1688, duke Frederik I. of Saxe-Gotha dissappeared for a
stay in Amsterdam. What did he do there? He arranged a selling of
wood from the Thuringian Forest to the Dutch - officially -, but
more secretly he negotiated with the French about renting his
troops to them, and even more secretely he conducted alchemical
experiments in order to transform base metals into gold. His hope
was to get a lot of gold to rent even more troops, and through the
avails to be able to enlarge the territory of his small state. I
reconstuct the story of Frederik's Amsterdam sojourn to give an
impression of the commodification of knowledge in an early
knowledge society such as the Netherlands. Alchemists sold their
secret skills to princes. How did this shadow marked function?
What was the alchemical milieu in Amsterdam in the late 17th
century?
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