Netherlands: Notable Concepts and Developments

States General (All Facts)

• Term used to refer to the bicameral Parliament of the Netherlands in the Hague

• In 1581, they deposed King Philip II as ruler of the United Seven Provinces of the Netherlands and thus declared war on Spain (the Eighty Years’ War that was ongoing but initiated by Spain) and independence from Spain

Duyfken / Dove (All Facts)

• Dutch vessel that once reported sailing down the western coast of modern-day Papua New Guinea, where some of the crew were killed by “wild, cruel, black savages,” making it seem likely that the area was the west of the new continent discovered at the time of “Australia”

Tiger (All Facts)

• Dutch Ship which went to trade with natives on the Hudson River, building huts and establishing a settlement there

Fortune (All Facts)

• Dutch Ship which went to trade with natives on the Hudson River, building huts and establishing a settlement there

Batavia (All Facts)

• Dutch Ship of Dutch Merchant Francisco Pelsaert that was shipwrecked along the Morning Reef in modern-day northwestern Australia

Haarlem (All Facts)

• Dutch ship which was wrecked in Table Bay in South Africa in 1648; whose survivors found the people and climate of the Cape of Good Hope hospitable

• They survived there by growing their own fruit and vegetables, thereby avoiding scurvy, which accounted for many deaths on long voyages made by the Dutch

Corantos (All Facts)

• Precursors to newspapers

• They were news-books whose publication greatly increased the spread of information to the English public

• They offered short reports of events happening in a variety of places, often abroad

• They appeared in new editions every week and originated in Europe, mainly in Germany and the Netherlands

• The first of them in England detailed events in Europe’s religious wars

Patroon System (All Facts)

• System in which the namesake title was given to a candidate who could round up 50 potential settlers and pay their passages to New Netherland

  • Settlers were offered huge areas of land and feudal rights over 50 people if they paid their passages

• System in which the namesake would be rewarded with a large estate and enjoy privileges similar to those of a feudal baron

• The settlers the namesake rounded up would live and work in conditions of near servitude

• The namesake would have jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters

• System devised by the Dutch West India Company

• System that was an experiment in colonization which failed

  • This is because the Dutch were not keen to sell themselves into servitude in a far-flung and “uncivilized” land

Windhandel (All Facts)

• Dutch term that translates literally to "wind trade" and means selling hot air, empty promises, or engaging in risky financial speculation with no real underlying value

• Term which was coined to describe and refer to the Netherlands’ “Tulip Mania” of the 1630s and the consequences that resulted from it

Tulips (All Facts)

• Flower which first appeared in Europe in the 1500s, imported from Turkey

• Thereafter, it became an increasingly fashionable until it became so fashionable that it caused the namesake “mania” to occur throughout the Netherlands in the 1630s

• By the 1630s in the Netherlands, they became a prized commodity, with its

  • species having been classified in a strict hierarchy

  • cultivators vying with each other to create ever more exotic varieties

  • buyers undeterred by the extravagant prices offered for it

Ratelwacht (All Facts)

• Historical Dutch term used to refer to a night watchman who patrolled city streets carrying a wooden rattle to sound alarms and signal danger

Mercantilism (All Facts)

• Developed and expanded greatly under the reign of King Charles II of England and the East and West India Companies, it

  • favored protectionism at home with colonies trading only with the mother country

  • emphasized exploiting (new) overseas colonies

• Its critics argued that

  • there was a finite amount of world trade

  • a country can only expand at the expense of others

• Held that the wealth of a nation depended on the its possession of precious metals

  • Thus, the nation’s export should be curbed, as should all avoidable imports of goods

• Held that governmental regulation of the economy was necessary to increase the power of the state, since a nation’s economic power depended on the bullion at its disposal

  • A key factor of the view is the emphasis on the monopolization of colonial trade by the mother country

• Its exponents included

  • Thomas Mun (England)

• It produced a formidable challenge to the Dutch domination of overseas commerce

Japanese Chrysanthemums (All Facts)

• Cultivated in Holland by 1678