What Every American Should Know About Europe

by Melissa Rossi

  In 1556, Charles divided his unwieldy empire, appointing his son Philip II as the King of Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands—and the whole kit and caboodle got a new name: the Spanish Netherlands. Philip moved south to orchestrate from Spain—but tried to replant the Catholic Church in the Protestant Netherlands, then under the sway of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Rejecting Catholicism as too iconic, Dutch Protestants looted Catholic churches in 1566, toppling statues of saints and destroying holy treasures. Philip dispatched fervent Spanish Duke of Alva to take the Spanish Inquisition north. Over seven years, Alva killed tens of thousands of Dutch, nailing them to crosses, burning them at stakes, and cutting off food supplies until there was nothing left to eat but weeds. Alva imposed harsh taxes on everything: property, land transfers, and all sales. This caused the northern provinces of the Netherlands—under the leadership of William the Silent, Prince of Orange—to announce in 1568 that they were leaving the kingdom, and that triggered a war with the Spanish that dragged on for eighty years. Ultimately, the Netherlands won freedom; officially declared in 1581, independence was finally recognized by Spain in 1648.

  Through Alva’s sadistic attacks, Spain provided the impetus for the Netherlands to become independent, but Portugal provided something that led to spectacular wealth and ruthless domination of the seas. The Portuguese provided the Dutch with directions to the Spice Islands—accidentally.

  OPENING UP THE SPICE CABINET

  For over a century, the spice trade was dominated by the Portuguese, for a simple reason: only they knew the location of the Spice Islands (in today’s Indonesia) and other Asian trade centers for aromatics, and the Portuguese had no intention of parting with that valuable information. Enter Dutchman Jan Huygen van Linschoten, who wormed his way into employment on Portuguese trading ships, where he snooped through the secret archives, copying the treasured Portuguese information. In 1596, a Dutch publisher brought out Itinerario, van Linschoten’s map-filled treasure book, which included detailed navigational charts. He might as well have published a map to El Dorado and Shangri-la. Itinerario launched a trade revolution: every Dutchman and his brother headed for the East Indies, and so did nearly everybody else, once the book was translated into their languages.

  Dutch cities hired crews that raced towards the East Indies, but nutmeg and pepper soon flooded the market, deflating profits. Again the Dutch spirit of cooperation prevailed: the separate cities bonded together to form the East Indies Trading Company (VOC) in 1602. With power to acquire land, form colonies, negotiate treaties, and run its own army, the VOC was a state within a state. It was such a vicious operation that it’s surprising the Dutch can talk about that era without wincing. It’s not surprising, however, that in 2002, when the Dutch held a celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the VOC, the Indonesian ambassador refused to attend, saying the VOC days marked Indonesia’s nadir.

  WHAT PRICE SPICE?

  Forget romantic notions of tropical islands with breezes perfumed by cinnamon and cloves. In the seventeenth century, when the Dutch launched their mad quest for the flavors that added zest to desserts and masked rotten meat, they opened up one of the most brutal chapters in history. The cruelty began on Dutch ships heading east. Allotted a chunk of bread, a round of cheese, and a bottle of water for the entire three-month voyage, many sailors died en route. Heaven forbid any rowdiness broke out: whoever instigated a brawl had his hand nailed to the mast or was pulled under the ship until his neck snapped.5 The Dutch were even crueler to the Asians who grew the spices they coveted. Welcoming parties that canoed out to greet them with gifts were blasted to smithereens; inhabitants who didn’t want to play the Dutch way—to accept low pay and trade only with the Dutch—were slaughtered. Never mind the teachings of Calvin or of humanist philosopher Erasmus, forget the idea of the evolved Dutch, once they left home turf: the 15,000 inhabitants of the nutmeg-rich Banda Islands were wiped out when they wouldn’t guarantee a monopoly; 10,000 Chinese were eliminated when they threatened a rebellion on Java; some 30,000 were killed on Sulawesi, and another 100,000 were massacred on Sumatra.6 They didn’t have to touch the inhabitants of Bali: most killed themselves when the Dutch first set foot on their island. The Dutch also ran out the Portuguese and the British, burning and boiling them to ensure the Dutch retained a monopoly on spice.

  The VOC went belly-up in 1798, but the Dutch folded most of what is today’s Indonesia—and which was called then the Dutch East Indies—into their empire, which expanded further into Asia and into the Americas and Africa.

  Back in the Netherlands, few had a clue what the VOC was up to abroad; all they saw were the treasures and the skyrocketing riches. A wealthy merchant class blossomed in the seventeenth century, and the country’s religious freedom attracted everyone from French Huguenots to Portuguese Jews. The Netherlands was the only place in Europe where your station in life wasn’t defined by birth: more important was your financial worth. The booming overseas trade and rise of the bourgeoisie triggered a golden age. Dutch women strolled the streets wearing Indian textiles, chintz, and Chinese silk. Ships hauled back stunning Oriental screens, tea sets of bone china, delicate Japanese flowers, and elaborate sculptures of teak. The fragrant spices—Javanese pepper, Ceylonese cinnamon, sassafras, ginger, and nutmeg—were only some of the faraway foods that made the Netherlands the best place to feast. In the land known for chewy breads, creamy cheese, butter, and every sort of fruit, vegetable, and meat, the Dutch could also polish off French wines, German beers, Caribbean coffee, Indian teas sweetened with sugar from Brazil, as well as Polish grain, and olives, dates, and figs from the Mediterranean.7

  NIEUW NETHERLAND

  The Dutch settled key areas of New York after hiring English navigator Henry Hudson, the first European to stumble upon the river he named after himself. Claiming the land in 1609, they liked the location—and liked the beavers even more; the rodents were then the rage for coats. Fort Orange is today’s Albany; Wiltwyck is Kingston; and today’s Manhattan, purchased from local Indians for sixty guilder, was New Amsterdam to the Dutch, who developed Broadway, ahem, as “Gentlemen’s Street.” The English snatched New Netherland in 1630, at the end of yet another Anglo-Dutch War, changing the name to New York; the Dutch got South American territory Suriname out of the deal. Long gone are most of the stunning wood houses the Dutch erected during their seventeenth-century stay, but a few names remain: among them, Haarlem and Staaten Island, the land named for Dutch Parliament, the Staaten Generaal.

  The era was ripe for inventions and discoveries in unknown realms. Astronomer Christian Huygens invented the pendulum clock and identified Saturn’s rings; Anton van Leeuwenhoek delved into cellular biology, after first inventing the microscope; Dutch scientist Cornelius Drebbel whipped up a perpetual-motion machine and the world’s first submarine.8 And sixteenth-century Dutch society went nutty for cut flowers, previously cultivated only for medicinal purposes.

  ANOTHER STOLEN BEGINNING

  Far more than simply a flower to the pragmatic Dutch, the tulip is a bulb. Sure, the countryside of mustard yellows and inky purples plays sweetly to the eyes, as do the markets where the brilliantly striped and subtly mottled blooms go for a pittance. But real money comes from the paper-wrapped progenitor, the onion-like bulb, sales of which bring in $700 million a year. The flower that’s now a Dutch symbol didn’t originate here; the tulip first poked up in Turkey. It ended up in Holland after the Ottoman Empire gave a gift to an Austrian ambassador, who took the beauties to Vienna’s Imperial Garden. Botanist Carolus Clusius, who ran Vienna’s garden, took a job at the prestigious University of Leiden in 1593, and planted a plot of them. His horticultural research soon became talk of the town. The wealthy started adorning their tables with cut blossoms, but Clusius refused to part with his precious blooms, no matter the price. Unable to bribe him, schemers simply dug up his bulbs from the beds, launching the tulip industry with their late-night theft. Because there were so few, the Dutch grew obsessed in t
heir desire to possess them, and the value of the tulip bulb shot up, at one point reaching about $2,000 each. Speculators jumped in, and entire fortunes were made and lost during a few frenzied years in the 1630s now called Tulipmania—an era when the tulip was known as “the flower that drove men mad.” Their insanity cost them: when the bottom dropped out, it had nearly the effect of the 1929 stock market crash.

  The Dutch now cultivate some 3,500 tulip varieties, selling bulbs at much more reasonable prices

  .

  The trademark of the Dutch golden age is the elegantly realistic style of painting that appeared in lobbies and drawing rooms. Wall-size portraits of militias and literary clubs replaced paintings of bleeding Christ and haloed saints as the merchant class replaced the Church as the main commissioners of art. Landscapes, cozy domestic interiors, and portraits hung from walls, even in middle-class dwellings; “Everyman” could buy art directly from the artist’s studio or purchase affordable prints in markets—the first time that high-quality art trickled down to the masses.

  * * *

  Of all the Dutch masters—a group that includes Flemish artists Rubens, Van Dyck, and Pieter Brueghel (see “Belgium,” page 105)—the most sought after of that era are Rembrandt and Vermeer, though in lifestyle the two couldn’t have been less alike. Rembrandt (1606–1669) was flamboyant, well-regarded, and wealthy (albeit fleetingly) in his day, painting militias, as in The Nightwatch (1642), or portraits of Amsterdam’s elite. Rembrandt was so in demand that he opened studios and instructed dozens of apprentices to imitate his style. Lesser-known, quiet Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), now famous for his Girl with the Pearl Earring, lived in Delft, where his main client was but one wealthy merchant, and Vermeer’s money was tight. Both artists turned their attention to daily life in the Dutch home, capturing spiritual beauty in the mundane, and both experimented with light and oil-rich paint that imparted a special sheen. Rembrandt, however, left us with some 600 paintings, 300 etchings, and thousands of drawings—although who knows how many are actually fakes. Vermeer worked more slowly, producing at most forty works, perhaps because he was often frolicking with his wife, who bore him fifteen offspring. And while Rembrandt painted over sixty self-portraits, no one is sure what Vermeer looked like. Both artists died in poverty and both would no doubt be astounded at the millions of dollars their paintings fetch today.

  Civilized at home, the Dutch continued to be obnoxious at sea. By 1672, everybody was so sick of their high-handed acts that England, France, and German states attacked the Netherlands. Despite treaties, problems continued, especially with the British, who temporarily wrested away Dutch colonies in Asia. A bigger headache loomed on the horizon. Napoleon invaded in 1795, installing his brother Louis as ruler in 1806. That only lasted four years, but Louis made lasting changes, including founding the Rijksmuseum, where the works of the Dutch masters now hang.

  When Napoleon fell, the Netherlands reassembled herself as a monarchy, but in 1830, Belgium and Luxembourg, which were mostly Catholic, pulled away taking a major chunk of land and much of the population. (See “Belgium,” page 112.) Not to worry—besides holdings in the Americas, including Suriname and the Dutch Antilles, the Dutch clung to most of the East Indies (Indonesia), an area that increased their land holdings fifty-fold.

  The northern part of the Netherlands is mostly Protestant; the southern part remains mostly Catholic and more demonstrative—for the Dutch.

  Successfully declaring neutrality in the First World War, the Dutch tried the same tactic again in WWII, but it didn’t work. On May 10, 1940, Nazis attacked, soon occupying the country. The Dutch made efforts to hide Jews, but of the 140,000 Jews who lived there prewar, only 20,000 survived to its end, a source of lingering Dutch guilt. The Netherlands also lost the Dutch East Indies when the Japanese occupied the archipelago in 1941. The Dutch assumed that the islands would come back after the war, but the islanders had other ideas: a nationalist movement had taken root, and they proclaimed independence in 1945 as Indonesia. The frantic Dutch shipped out the military in the “Police Actions,” during which they killed an estimated 100,000 Indonesians over four years.9 The United States finally threatened to cut all Marshall Plan funding unless the Netherlands recognized Indonesian sovereignty, which they did in 1949. The events of those ruthless Police Actions are still coming out today.10

  Typically coolheaded and rational, many Dutch are strangely emotional and irrational about Indonesia. To even talk about the Police Actions and the loss of the Dutch East Indies is to hit upon a national quirk. Another sore point: Srebrenica. When the details of the botched 1995 Bosnian peacekeeping effort emerged in 2002, the shocked Dutch parliament simply walked out.

  SREBRENICA

  In 1995, while serving as UN peacekeepers in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, Dutch soldiers allowed Bosnian Serbs to take away Muslim men and boys, after being given assurances that the Muslims wouldn’t be harmed. A slaughter ensued. In 2002, the Dutch government issued its report on the matter, stating that at least 7,000 Muslims were killed despite being under Dutch protection. The report faulted both the government, for sending in peacekeepers without adequate arms, and the Dutch military, which tried to hush up the affair.

  Like Austria, Switzerland, and Scandinavia, the Netherlands accepted many Bosnians and other former Yugoslavian refugees during and after the war.

  Hot Spots

  Amsterdam: Ringed with canals that circle past some of the most eye-pleasing architecture on the planet, Amsterdam is also riddled with vice, much of it legal. Alas, Russian and Yugoslav mobs are moving in; some unconfirmed reports say over half of Amsterdam’s bars and cafés are paying them for “protection.”

  Rembrandthuis: Now a museum, the five-story house on Amsterdam’s Breestraat was Rembrandt’s curse. A financial stretch, the home he’d bought with wife, Saskia, was where she died the next year giving birth to his son. House payments broke his piggy bank; this house was part of the reason that Rembrandt died a pauper.

  Rotterdam: Site of the world’s biggest port—80,000 seagoing ships and 110,000 barges call at the port of Rotterdam every year.17 The Netherlands’ second largest city is a major commercial hub. Whereas the most important cargoes were once Indonesian coffee and sweet-smelling spices, incoming ships today may carry drugs and slaves into this major smuggling point into Europe.

  The Hague (Den Haag): Dutch special criminal tribunal prosecutor Carla del Ponte got off easy when Slobodan Milosevic died in his cell here—months before hearing his verdict on sixty-six counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes involving the 1990s conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Dutch (and UN) investigators say cause of death was a heart attack; Milosevic’s family claims he was poisoned. Also controversial: the newly opened International Criminal Court, which the Bush administration refuses to endorse, since U.S. officials and military fear they might be tried as war criminals; U.S. aid to foreign countries now bears a clause that U.S.-related grievances won’t end up here. Ironic, then, that President Bush’s demands that Charles Taylor be tried in the Hague resulted in the Liberian being the ICC’s first case.

  Friesland: At this northernmost outpost, they speak a language unintelligible anywhere else, mustard-making is a local art, and the passion is to trek across the Wadden Sea that turns into sticky mudflats at low tide.

  Maastricht: Limestone caves snaking underground are equipped as civil defense shelters, complete with ovens for baking bread and chapels for breaking it. Above ground, the town where European leaders decided to create the euro is brimming with fantastic medieval architecture and fancy castle restaurants. (See photo, page 186.)

  Hotshots

  Jan Peter Balkenende: With round glasses and a perpetual boyishness, the forty-seven-year-old prime minister/religious philosophy professor is often likened to Harry Potter, although he hasn’t worked any magic on his government. During his cursed tenure, immigration woes blew sky high, the queen’s husband, Claus, died, as did filmmaker Van Gogh, an
d the royals have been embroiled in scandals. The Christian Democrat opposes euthanasia, gay marriage, and hash houses, and has slowed flow of immigrants.

  The United States insisted she didn’t want any UN help on Iraq, but the Bush administration threw Balkenende into the UN ring in 2004 to announce that the U.S. had changed her mind. He sent over 1,200 Dutch troops to help reconstruct Iraq.

  Queen Beatrix Wilhelmina Armgard (b. 1938): Monarch, 1980–present. Beloved and benign, Queen Beatrix of the House of Orange inherited the position passed down from William the Silent, who beat back the Spanish and unified the country five centuries ago. Reportedly the world’s richest monarch—the family denies articles claiming she’s worth about $3 billion11—she hasn’t had to do much except fret about whom the kids plan to marry—and with all the fuss lately, you’d think she’d pay them to elope. Beatrix caused a scandal in her day by marrying Claus von Amsberg, a handsome German diplomat, in 1966, when the sting of World War II was still fresh. Despite being German by birth, Claus, who died in 2002, was also quite popular.

  Prince Bernhard (1911–2004): Father of Queen Beatrix, German-born Bernhard was a major international player: he founded the secretive Bilderberg Group in 1954 and later founded the World Wildlife Fund. He was also involved in scandals, most notably in 1976 when he accepted some $1 million from U.S. aircraft manufacturer Lockheed to sway the Dutch government to order from them.

  Johan Friso (b. 1968): Beatrix’s middle son, Johan Friso, was long suspected of being homosexual, but proved otherwise when he began dating Mabel Wisse in 2003. No sooner had marriage plans been put on the table than the media dished out rumors that Mabel had dated the Netherlands’ biggest drug baron. Worse, both Johan and Mabel lied about it to parliament. The prince gave up any shot at the crown when he wed his beloved Dutch jewel.