Amaury de Vicq de Cumptich recently received a Veni grant of € 320,000 from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The assistant professor at FEB’s Department of Economics, Econometrics and Finance was awarded the grant for his project on the distribution of colonial profits within colonizing nations. He talked to FEB Research about the societal and financial structures that have contributed to wealth inequality in Dutch society and how his projects aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of our colonial legacy.

As a financial historian, Amaury de Vicq de Cumptich loves learning from the past to help shape a more equitable financial future. He studied History at KU Leuven (Belgium), where he also earned a master's in Business Economics. After that, he moved to the UK to complete a master's in Political Economy at the London School of Economics. Between his graduation and transitioning into academia, de Vicq de Cumptich worked in the policy sector and in the private (bank) sector. Realizing he wanted to combine his passion for finance with history, he decided to switch to academia. “I completed my PhD at the University of Utrecht, followed by postdocs at the Paris School of Economics (PSE) and the University of Groningen. Last September, I was hired as an assistant professor at FEB.”

Financial inclusivity

De Vicq de Cumptich is passionate about creating a future where financial services are universally accessible and so he has developed two research lines aimed at offering practical insights for contemporary stakeholders. In his first line, he explores how societies in the 19th and 20th century achieved greater inclusivity in credit markets. He examines the lending models, governance structures, and societal factors that determined the success or failure of these institutional solutions. Through this research, he has uncovered innovative strategies employed by financial institutions to overcome information asymmetry in small-scale lending. “These historical examples deepen our understanding of financial history and provide valuable lessons for designing more inclusive financial systems today.”

De Vicq de Cumptich’s second research line focuses on the role of stock exchanges in serving societal needs. He explores stock market participation and investment behavior during the first era of globalization. He links succession tax data—offering a detailed breakdown of individual portfolios—with actual stock price series to investigate whether wealthier investors achieved higher investment returns. “By doing so, I aim to shed light on the role of unequal returns in driving wealth inequality. At present, I am continuing this work at FEB, where my Veni grant supports the ongoing efforts of Professor Abe de Jong and Professor Herman de Jong.” Together, they are building a publicly available dataset containing stock prices, dividends, and accounting data, which will facilitate fundamental research into the functioning of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

Colonialism and wealth inequality

De Vicq de Cumptich’s interest in the distribution of colonial profits within colonizing nations stemmed from a broader question: Who truly benefited from colonialism? “While much of the existing literature depicts colonizing nations as the ‘winners’ of colonialism, it rarely delves into how the benefits of these ventures were distributed within these colonizing nations. This gap in the literature sparked my curiosity and prompted me to investigate which groups or individuals profited from colonial investments and to what extent.’’

His Veni project focuses on the Netherlands during the mid-19th to early-20th century, when it was a major colonial power. The Netherlands serves as an invaluable case study due to its wealth of historical sources. The country also holds a distinct position in colonial history due to the so-called cultivation system. This system was notorious for its profitability for the Dutch government and inspired similar extractive policies in Belgium and Britain. “While the economic benefits of this system for the Dutch metropole are well-documented, little is known about the scale and scope of private investments or who benefited from these investments after the system's gradual abolition in the 1860s. By focusing on the era of liberalization when private businesses took over the state monopoly, my project fills an important gap in Dutch colonial historiography. My findings will offer a more nuanced understanding of the colonial legacy, contribute to ongoing discussions about colonial reparations, and provide deeper insights into how colonialism influenced wealth inequality within the Netherlands, observations that are crucial for addressing these enduring issues today.”

Colonial wealth and wealth-to-income dynamics

In an ongoing collaborative research project, de Vicq de Cumptich examines the evolution and composition of household wealth in the Netherlands from 1854 to the present. Building on the pioneering work of Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman (2014), the research team estimates the long-term trajectory of the wealth-to-income ratio in the Netherlands using three different methods and various historical data sources. This research indicates that the Netherlands had one of the highest wealth-income ratios in the late 19th century, maintaining this high concentration of wealth up until World War II. After the war and the creation of the welfare state, the wealth-income ratio dropped to one of the lowest levels, only to increase again in recent years. “While the post-World War II trends are largely driven by the unique role of the Dutch pension system, this project posits that the trends leading up to the war were significantly shaped by the Dutch colonial system. Our findings suggest that colonial wealth played a significant role up until World War II in shaping wealth-to-income dynamics. This finding raised more questions than it answered, opening up new avenues for investigation. So, for my Veni project, I decided to explore this in much more detail.”

Processing data from historical sources

In his Veni project, de Vicq de Cumptich takes a data-driven approach. First, he will assess the profitability of colonial investments by analyzing corporate and stock exchange data. Next, he will examine succession tax records to understand how individuals allocated their wealth, with a particular focus on colonial stocks and bonds. Finally, he will explore how these investment choices influenced the accumulation of personal wealth, offering a more comprehensive understanding of how colonial profits were distributed across different segments of society.

As his data-driven research involves extensive work processing historical sources, de Vicq de Cumptich has narrowed down the focus in his Veni project on the Netherlands. However, in an additional project, he is collaborating with colleagues from the Paris School of Economics, and the Universities of Brussels and Antwerp, to extend his research into a comparative study between France, Belgium and the Netherlands. “The ultimate goal is to gain a broader understanding of how colonial profits were distributed across different countries and how these dynamics have influenced long-term wealth inequality trends in each context.”

For more information, please contact Amaury de Vicq de Cumptich.