<span>The first nation to build its economy on capitalism was the Netherlands, since it was in fact the Dutch who created the first stock company, in which people could buy shares of companies. </span>
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Holland was the cradle of commercial capitalism and modern science, and was the homeland of Grotius, Spinoza, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Huygens and Sawammerdam, among many other geniuses who lived in Amsterdam, Utrecht or Leiden, as in the case of Descartes or Hobbes. In that period, Holland was considered the land of nonconformity par excellence and freedom of thought. And it was also the place where the first "national economic miracle" of the history of capitalism took place.
