Amsterdam (Rough Guide) - Martin Dunford [175]
History | The Golden Age |
Expansion – and the East and West India companies
To accommodate its growing populace, Amsterdam expanded several times during the seventeenth century. The grandest and most elaborate plan to enlarge the city was begun in 1613, with the digging of the western stretches of the Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, the three great canals of the Grachtengordel (literally “girdle of canals”) that epitomized the wealth and self-confidence of the Golden Age. In 1663 this sweeping crescent was extended beyond the River Amstel, but by this time the population had begun to stabilize, and the stretch that would have completed the ring of canals around the city was left only partially developed – an area that would in time become the Jewish Quarter.
One organization that kept the city’s coffers brimming throughout the Golden Age was the East India Company (Verenigde OostIndische Compagnie, VOC). Formed in 1602, this Amsterdam-controlled enterprise sent ships to Asia, Indonesia and China to bring back spices, wood and other assorted plunder. Given a trading monopoly in all lands east of the Cape of Good Hope, it also exercised unlimited military powers over the lands it controlled, and was effectively the occupying government in Malaya, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Malacca. The speed of the VOC’s vessels amazed the company’s competitors and may well have given rise to the legend of the Flying Dutchman. One story has it that the fastest VOC captain of them all, a certain Bernard Fokke, only achieved the sailing times he did with the help of the devil – and his reward is to sail the seven seas forever; another has the VOC’s Captain Hendrik van der Decken sailing round the Cape of Good Hope for eternity after blaspheming against the wind and the waves.
Twenty years after the founding of the VOC, the West India Company (Westindische Compagnie, WIC) was inaugurated to protect new Dutch interests in the Americas and Africa. It never achieved the success of the East India Company, expending its energies in waging war on Spanish and Portuguese colonies from a base in Surinam, but it did make handsome profits until the 1660s. The company was dismantled in 1674, ten years after its small colony of New Amsterdam had been ceded to the British – and renamed New York. Elsewhere, the Dutch held on to their colonies for as long as possible – Indonesia, its principal possession, only secured its independence in 1949.
History | The Golden Age |
Decline – 1660 to 1795
Although the economics of the Golden Age were dazzling, the politics were dismal. The United Provinces was dogged by interminable wrangling between those who hankered for a central, unified government under the pre-eminent House of Orange-Nassau and those who championed provincial autonomy. Frederick Henry, the powerful head of the House of Orange-Nassau who had kept a firm centralizing grip, died in 1647 and his successor, William II, lasted just three years before his death from smallpox. A week after William’s death, his wife bore the son who would become William III of England, but in the meantime the leaders of the province of Holland, with the full support of Amsterdam, seized their opportunity. They forced measures through the States General abolishing the position of Stadholder, thereby reducing the powers of the Orangists and increasing those of the provinces, chiefly Holland itself. Holland’s foremost figure in these years was Johan de Witt, Council Pensionary (chief minister) to the States General. He guided the country through wars with England and Sweden, concluding a triple alliance between the two countries and the United Provinces in 1668. This was a striking reversal of policy; the economic rivalry between the United Provinces and England had already precipitated two Anglo-Dutch wars (in 1652–54 and 1665–67) and there was much bitterness in Anglo-Dutch relations – a popular English pamphlet of the time was titled A Relation