Amsterdam is one of Europe's great historical cities. The city-center dates back to the early 17th century and breathes a museum-like atmosphere.
Today, Amsterdam is a relatively small and rather modest city in the global urban landscape, but there was a time that Amsterdam was second to none.
Seen from Miami, what makes Amsterdam so interesting is the way in which that city rose to global prominence - a way that should look quite familiar to those with some understanding of Miami's own history as a world city.
Thus, in the narrative that follows, you may substitute Miami for Amsterdam, Latin America for Europe, Havana for Antwerp, Communism for the Spanish Inquisition, airplanes for sail-ships, and Cubans for Jews - and update the entire script some 375 years
.
In the European region of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Amsterdam was unique in that it provided a politically and economically stable business environment, allowing it to attract capital and business activity from many other places.
While other countries were facing civil wars and rebellions - and above all the expansionist threats of the Spanish empire - Dutch cities north of the Rhine delta were expanding their economies in an oasis of peace.
The swift rise of Amsterdam to hegemonic status in the late 16th century was directly related to the fall of the Belgian city of Antwerp to Spanish troops in 1585.
This caused Antwerp's business classes, especially many Jews, to flee to Amsterdam, bringing their entrepreneurial skills, capital, and business connections. Through the years, they were joined by French Huguenots, Flemish, Germans, Portuguese, Jews from central and east Europe, and by others seeking religious, political and economic freedom.
Towards the end of the 16th century, Amsterdam had become the center of trade in the emerging world economy. It was the main clearinghouse for intra-European trade anywhere between the Baltic region and the Mediterranean, and also for intercontinental trade between Europe and Asia.
The port of Amsterdam sheltered more foreign ships than any port in the world, and many descriptions exist of the impressions of foreign visitors awed by the sight of all that international traffic and produce.
Amsterdam became the world's leading financial center, providing credit to businesses throughout Europe, further adding to its riches. The abundance of capital in the Dutch Republic at this time is illustrated with the establishment of the Dutch East India Co., in 1602.
The company's starting capital was 10 times that of its main competitor, the London-based English East India Co. About one-third of this capital was provided by recent immigrants who had fled the Spanish occupation to the south.
Amsterdam also held an important symbolic function, especially for other Europeans.
When visitors came to marvel at the city's wealth and its harbor full of foreign ships, they had come to see a reflection of their desired future. As such, Amsterdam represented the cultural power whereby hegemonies define what the future will be for others. Amsterdam functioned as a "laboratory of modernity."
Finally, the city acquired some of the social characteristics that are presently associated with world cities.
In the final years of the 16th century, which witnessed a peak in international migration to Amsterdam, about half of the city's population was foreign-born or of foreign extraction. Many of the immigrants were wealthy entrepreneurs, but many others held menial jobs and lived through hard times.
The rich were richer than anywhere else, and the poor as numerous and perhaps even worse-off. The stark realities of social polarization went hand in hand with an espoused culture of diversity, freedom and tolerance.
But Amsterdam's preeminence was not to last forever.
With the rise of other great cities in the 18th century such as London and Paris, Amsterdam's glory faded. The most fundamental reason was that Amsterdam was no longer the exception: other European countries, too, started to create the conditions for a stable free market with optimal freedom and minimal risk.
If there are striking similarities in the ways in which Miami and Amsterdam rose to world city status, there could also be important commonalities in the subsequent travails of the two cities.
As I have argued before on these pages, democratization and movements towards free markets in Latin America could present Miami with widespread competition of the kind it has not experienced before. If so, Miami would no longer be the exceptional city that it has been in past decades.
That would not necessarily imply a bleak future. Amsterdam's decline since the end of the 17th century was relative, not absolute. Today, it is still a very prosperous, dynami, and cosmopolitan city.
Jan Nijman is professor of Geography and Regional Studies at the University of Miami.