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Amsterdam

Amsterdam history (3)-The Golden Century

Introduction

Amsterdam contents

Hotels in Amsterdam

Amsterdam dancings, discotheque and Amsterdam Plage!!!!

Amsterdam
History

Amsterdam by foot or public transport

Amsterdam History (1)-From the origins

Amsterdam History (2)-War and Peace 

Amsterdam History (3)-the Golden Century

Amsterdam-Modern times and involvment in World War II

Amsterdam and Jews

Kroller Muller Museum

In 1602, the famous East-Indian Company (Oost-Indische Compagnie) is founded by the merchant cities of Holland and Zeeland, but more than half of the invested funds come from Amsterdam, where the company has its headquarters. Several times a year, a fleet leaves for the Orient, and the company obtains the monopoly of import of all Indonesian spices (nutmeg, pepper and clove), Chinese and Japanese vases, Indian fabrics. South Africa, the Mauritius islands, Ceylon and Indonesia are colonized. All this by a little, tiny country!!
The fact that the war with Spain had closed down the ports of Spain and Portugal to Dutch traders, promptly set them out to forge their own trade routes to the New World. After the founding of New-Amsterdam (future New York) overseas, in 1614, under Peter Stuyvesant (smoking his first cigarette??), the Company of the Occidental Indies was created (West Indische Companie) in 1621, in Amsterdam. With its own navy and army to protect its ships and factories the West Indische Companie was enormously powerful and incredibly wealthy. This company controlled the transport of slaves between Africa and the Americas (not very Calvinistic or Lutheran as a business!!). The island of Curacao became the main market of slaves in the New World. Amsterdam, becoming the import centre of sugar, tobacco and cacao imported from Brazil, and a lot of other products became the most important stock exchange in the world! Typical Dutch machinery, the windmill, helped to transform large quantities of raw materials in semi-finished products. Thousands of windmills in Amsterdam and the surrounding areas (Zaandam) were unheard of industrial park for that epoch (and still a stunning touristy park today). The symbol of the prosperity and power of this town was the New Town Hall on the Dam square, edified with German imported stones, as enormous as hideous, and built from 1648 on 13,000 wooden piles. But slowly, inside the Republic, Amsterdam loses its political role in the 18th century to the prejudice of the princes of Orange (Prinsen van Oranje) residing in The Hague. And because the sandbanks invade more and more the access to the Amsterdam port from the Zuiderzee, it abandons a part of the commerce to the Dutch cities located nearer to the North Sea, like Rotterdam, and foreign cities, like London and Hamburg. Nevertheless, the wealth accumulated during the Golden Century, keeps Amsterdam in its position of the European financier and banker until 1780.
In the 17th and 18th centuries wars start again! At the zenith of its glory, the new Dutch republic, still dominant on the maritime front, has to fight a lot of enemies: Portuguese, Spaniards, French, Swedes and above all these damn English;-) (a humble apology for my English readers that’s how the French called the English at that time, “ces sacres Anglais!). Its handicap of being a small country had its first consequences in its colonies. England and France sapped the country’s energies and drained its coffers. In 1795 revolutionaries backed by the new French Republic overthrew the government of Stadhouder Willem V and the States-General and declared the Batavian Republic. This was soon swept away and Louis Bonaparte (1778-1846) was installed King of the Netherlands. It’s really an astonishing fact that the French revolution will provoke a diametrically opposed reaction as in other countries. Republic will be abolished and monarchy restored! This must be the special way of the Dutch to have the “right of difference”! Louis Bonaparte transforms Town Hall on the Dam in Amsterdam into a royal palace and proclaims Amsterdam capital of the country. However on the economic level, the city is becoming impoverished and on the calamities list they find: continental block (like an embargo) obligation to participate in all Napoleon war campaigns, the loss of South Africa and Ceylon. After the defeat at Waterloo, the Netherlands and Belgium are reunited again.
End of this thriller in next article…..

Bibliography

Holland, by Adam Hopkins (Faber and Faber, 1988), Penguin Guide to Amsterdam (ed.Vincent Westzaan, Penguin 1990), Guide du Routard 1998 (ed.Hachette), De Nederlandse Realiteit, by J.Oostkamp (own folders).-Die Niederlande in Europa Geschichte (Dieter Verlag-Munchen 1986)—De Gouden Eeuw van Amsterdam, by Jan Van Heirstra (ed.New Holland 1996)