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The B&W and the city council became familiar opponents to the plans for expansion proposed by Westerman and the Artis Board of Directors. In the period discussed here, the zoological society developed into a popular and scientific success supported handsomely by continuous financial contributions by the Amsterdam bourgeoisie. Despite the fact that almost every member of the B&W and city council also held zoological society memberships,23 these ties provided no political clout for Artis; the two branches of the city government created some of the only obstacles the society encountered in its expansion period.

No doubt, changes within professional organization did influence the societies’ popularity. However, social, political, and economic changes also influenced both the fate of enlightenment societies and, perhaps more importantly, the rise of new institutional forms. Although sometimes cataloged, new nineteenth-century societies have attracted little scholarly scrutiny; historians have not seen them as a continuation of the tradition of private Dutch enlightenment societies. Despite its nineteenthcentury reputation among both European zoologists and the cultured bourgeoisie, Artis remains conspicuously missing in accounts written by historians of Dutch culture and of Dutch science.

79 Occasionally, the municipality voiced support for the reorganization of the atheneum, but it chose not to increase its capital investment in the institution. 81 Reorganization plans of the atheneum in the middle decades of the century paralleled national discussions of university reform in general, and those of medical and natural science education more specifically. Particularly after 1868, when the state military medical school in Utrecht closed (as a result of new medical education laws) and its students transferred to the Atheneum Illustre, Amsterdam’s medical student numbers soared.