Brief aan de heer Eymer Possibly 1851

This is a letter in Dutch, written with ink on paper by Gerrit Jan Michaëlis, likely in the Netherlands in 1881. Letters are, of course, documents of social exchange. They tell us not only about personal relationships, but also about the bureaucratic infrastructures that enable communication and commerce. The postal service had grown rapidly in the 19th century, part of the expanding networks of trade and communication necessary to the development of industrial capitalism. This letter shows the ways in which written communication permeated Dutch society, reaching beyond governmental institutions and into the lives of ordinary people. The historian might follow various lines of inquiry to understand the letter's context, from consulting postal archives to social histories of letter-writing, as well as studies of Dutch society in the late 19th century.