The Dutch colonial empire (Dutch: Nederlandse koloniale rijk) comprised the overseas territories and trading posts controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies—mainly the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company—and subsequently by the Dutch Republic (1581–1795), and by the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1815. It was initially a trade-based system which derived most of its influence from merchant enterprise and from Dutch control of international maritime shipping routes through strategically placed outposts, rather than from expansive territorial ventures. The Dutch were among the earliest empire-builders of Europe, following Spain and Portugal and one of the wealthiest nations of that time.
With a few notable exceptions, the majority of the Dutch colonial empire's overseas holdings consisted of coastal forts, factories, and port settlements with varying degrees of incorporation of their hinterlands and surrounding regions.Dutch chartered companies often dictated that their possessions be kept as confined as possible in order to avoid unnecessary expense, and while some such as the Dutch Cape Colony and Dutch East Indies expanded anyway (due to the pressure of independent-minded Dutch colonists), others remained undeveloped, isolated trading centers dependent on an indigenous host-nation. This reflected the primary purpose of the Dutch colonial empire: commercial exchange as opposed to sovereignty over homogeneous landmasses.
The imperial ambitions of the Dutch were bolstered by the strength of their existing shipping industry, as well as the key role they played in the expansion of maritime trade between Europe and the Orient. Because small European trading-companies often lacked the capital or the manpower for large-scale operations, the States General chartered larger organizations—the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch East India Company—in the early seventeenth century. These were considered the largest and most extensive maritime trading companies at the time, and once held a virtual monopoly on strategic European shipping-routes westward through the Southern Hemisphere around South America through the Strait of Magellan, and eastward around Africa, past the Cape of Good Hope. The companies' domination of global commerce contributed greatly to a commercial revolution and a cultural flowering in the Netherlands of the 17th century, known as the Dutch Golden Age. In their search for new trade passages between Asia and Europe, Dutch navigators explored and charted distant regions such as Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, and parts of the eastern coast of North America.[6] During the period of proto-industrialization, the empire received 50% of textiles and 80% of silks import from the India's Mughal Empire, chiefly from its most developed region known as Bengal Subah.
With a few notable exceptions, the majority of the Dutch colonial empire's overseas holdings consisted of coastal forts, factories, and port settlements with varying degrees of incorporation of their hinterlands and surrounding regions.Dutch chartered companies often dictated that their possessions be kept as confined as possible in order to avoid unnecessary expense, and while some such as the Dutch Cape Colony and Dutch East Indies expanded anyway (due to the pressure of independent-minded Dutch colonists), others remained undeveloped, isolated trading centers dependent on an indigenous host-nation. This reflected the primary purpose of the Dutch colonial empire: commercial exchange as opposed to sovereignty over homogeneous landmasses.
The imperial ambitions of the Dutch were bolstered by the strength of their existing shipping industry, as well as the key role they played in the expansion of maritime trade between Europe and the Orient. Because small European trading-companies often lacked the capital or the manpower for large-scale operations, the States General chartered larger organizations—the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch East India Company—in the early seventeenth century. These were considered the largest and most extensive maritime trading companies at the time, and once held a virtual monopoly on strategic European shipping-routes westward through the Southern Hemisphere around South America through the Strait of Magellan, and eastward around Africa, past the Cape of Good Hope. The companies' domination of global commerce contributed greatly to a commercial revolution and a cultural flowering in the Netherlands of the 17th century, known as the Dutch Golden Age. In their search for new trade passages between Asia and Europe, Dutch navigators explored and charted distant regions such as Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, and parts of the eastern coast of North America.[6] During the period of proto-industrialization, the empire received 50% of textiles and 80% of silks import from the India's Mughal Empire, chiefly from its most developed region known as Bengal Subah.
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LearningTranscript
00:00 The 1588 Battle of Calais was an awakening for the entire European continent.
00:22 Its almighty armada vanquished by England, the Spanish domination over the continent
00:27 began to crumble.
00:51 The European nations could now compete against Spain for the seat of power.
01:04 Though defeated in Calais, Spain was still going strong.
01:08 The amount of gold coming in from the Americas continued to increase even after the defeat.
01:14 England, under Elizabeth I, continued its own expansion into the Atlantic.
01:20 They had the fastest ships and the largest number of cannons.
01:29 But the nation that dominated 17th century Europe was not Spain or England.
01:36 It was the Netherlands, a tiny nation of 2 million which gained independence only in
01:41 1585.
01:44 How did the Netherlands come to rule over the oceans of the world?
02:03 [MUSIC PLAYING]
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02:14 [EXPLOSION]
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02:20 [EXPLOSION]
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02:26 [EXPLOSION]
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02:42 In October, 1555, an emperor who'd ruled over Europe
02:46 for half a century was voluntarily
02:48 abdicating from his throne.
02:49 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:53 He was Charles V, who once waged wars all across Europe
02:57 to establish the hegemony of the Habsburg family.
03:01 By 1555, however, he was an old man
03:03 hobbling on a walking stick.
03:05 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:09 Charles V made his way to the throne,
03:11 supported by the 22-year-old Prince William of Orange,
03:14 his most trusted follower.
03:16 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:19 He was succeeded by Philip II, who was 28 at the time.
03:26 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:30 [EXPLOSION]
03:33 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:35 As king of Spain, Philip II inherited the Low Countries
03:38 in Belgium, which belonged to the Habsburgs.
03:41 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:44 [EXPLOSION]
03:47 William of Orange swore allegiance
03:49 to Philip II on behalf of the Dutch aristocrats.
03:52 [MUSIC PLAYING]
03:55 However, this peace was not to last.
03:57 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:01 In just 10 years, King Philip and Prince William
04:04 would be fighting each other on the battlefield.
04:06 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:09 Prince William was one of Charles' most faithful servants.
04:13 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:16 What had led him to turn against a successor
04:18 in just 10 short years?
04:20 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:30 The Dutch War of Independence, or the 80 Years' War,
04:33 was not a nationalist movement.
04:36 The 16th century was not the age of nationalism yet.
04:39 The Dutch had been staunchly loyal to the Habsburg family,
04:43 in fact.
04:44 It was Philip II who drove them to fight for independence.
04:48 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:52 Philip II saw himself as the protector
04:56 of the Catholic faith.
04:58 He was deeply pious and ruthless to religious dissidents.
05:01 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:03 He sought as a task that God had bestowed upon him
05:06 to prevent religious reform and unite Europe under Catholicism.
05:10 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:14 However, in the Netherlands, religious reform
05:27 under Calvinism was spreading rapidly.
05:29 [MUSIC PLAYING]
05:33 Within Calvinism was a concept which
05:47 worked particularly well with the interests of merchants
05:49 in the Low Countries.
05:56 It was the concept of vocation, or vocation in Latin,
06:00 which literally meant one's job.
06:02 As a vocation was given to an individual by God,
06:05 one's job became a task entrusted to him by God himself.
06:08 This doctrine enabled the theological justification
06:16 of profit-seeking activities by merchants,
06:19 as it was their vocation given to them by God.
06:21 [AUDIO PLAYBACK]
06:22 - --moral and live in a moral state.
06:25 But we also like cheap clothes and cheap food
06:27 that somebody else has to provide
06:29 by working long hours.
06:31 - And in fact, if one traces the spread
06:34 of the Protestant Reformation, not only in the Low Countries,
06:38 although particularly in the Low Countries,
06:40 it tended to spread most quickly in the towns.
06:43 And the towns were precisely where the merchants were.
06:47 And they tended to follow trade routes.
06:48 So for example, the earliest pockets of Protestantism
06:54 in England were precisely in the port towns,
06:57 the port towns that were trading with places like the Netherlands.
07:00 So there seems to have been quite a strong affinity
07:05 in the 16th century between Protestantism and people
07:09 involved in trade.
07:11 [MUSIC PLAYING]
07:14 - However, Calvinism was diametrically opposed
07:17 to Philip's policy, which aimed to unify
07:19 Europe under Catholicism.
07:21 [MUSIC PLAYING]
07:24 Needless to say, ruthless persecution ensued.
07:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]
07:35 - And Charles V was raised in this Burgundian tradition.
07:41 And so Charles V was considered to be
07:43 an autochthonous sovereign lord of the Netherlands.
07:47 He was considered by the Netherlandish people
07:50 as one of them, as he was born in Ghent
07:53 and as he was raised in the Netherlands.
07:55 And this, of course, was entirely different
07:57 with his son, Philip II, who was born in Spain
08:01 and who was raised in Spain.
08:03 - Charles V was willing to see within the church.
08:07 He was fine for Charles V if Catholicism was practiced
08:10 somewhat differently in the Netherlands
08:11 than it was practiced in Spain or practiced in Germany.
08:14 For Philip II, deeply influenced by the Catholic Reformation,
08:18 religious uniformity within the single universal church
08:23 mattered intensely, which was why
08:25 he was so insistent on placing new bishoprics
08:28 in the Netherlands.
08:29 Because those new bishoprics, those new centers
08:32 of Catholic authority, would be ways
08:33 of enforcing the uniformity of the one single universal
08:37 church.
08:37 So in that sense, Charles V and his son
08:40 were very, very different.
08:41 - Protestants suffering under the religious persecution
08:47 decided to strike back by destroying Catholic churches.
08:51 They fell holy statues and tore religious paintings
08:54 and tapestry.
08:55 [MUSIC PLAYING]
09:14 - Sometimes all it takes is a tiny tremor
09:16 to set forth a chain reaction that changes history.
09:20 That was what happened with the destruction of the statues.
09:23 No one knew that this would ultimately
09:25 result in Dutch independence.
09:29 The loyalty of the Dutch to the Habsburgs
09:31 was beyond question at the time.
09:34 The Dutch people loved the royal family.
09:37 No one had thought to rebel against Philip II.
09:41 All they wanted was the freedom to practice their faith.
09:46 But this was not what Philip wanted.
09:53 Philip II could not accept a subject's
09:55 practicing a different faith.
09:57 He took this challenge towards Catholicism
10:03 as an affront to himself.
10:04 However, William of Orange was different.
10:14 He believed that Philip's ideas of religious unity
10:17 would be impossible to achieve.
10:20 He believed that it was wrong for a ruler
10:22 to try to control the conscience of his subjects.
10:26 - Well, so he was educated and brought up as a Catholic.
10:30 He was deeply influenced by, as were many people,
10:35 not only in the Netherlands, but in Spain and the rest of Europe
10:38 by the thinking of Erasmus.
10:41 As he got older, he married into families
10:48 associated with the Reformed religion,
10:50 with the Protestant religion.
10:52 But he himself was somebody who was
10:55 willing to talk to both sides, to talk to Catholics
10:57 and talk to Protestants.
10:59 - Prince William believed that the empire
11:05 should be maintained under the principle
11:08 of religious tolerance.
11:11 He wanted to achieve religious freedom as opposed
11:13 to a single enforced national religion, be it Catholicism
11:17 or Protestantism.
11:19 [MUSIC PLAYING]
11:22 As the representative of the Dutch aristocracy,
11:26 he made countless appeals for religious tolerance
11:28 to Philip II.
11:29 He even threatened to resign from his office
11:35 if the persecution continued.
11:36 However, his pleas fell on deaf ears.
11:44 [MUSIC PLAYING]
11:48 Philip II went on to appoint the Duke of Alba
12:02 as the governor of the Netherlands,
12:03 whose reputation for ruthlessness
12:05 has earned him the nickname, the Iron Duke.
12:12 - So there's a famous painting by Brechel,
12:16 by the Belgian artist Brechel, called
12:19 The Massacre of the Innocents, which is a biblical story.
12:23 But almost anybody who saw the painting of troops dressed in--
12:27 not in-- of Roman soldiers from biblical times,
12:31 but in Spanish military uniform.
12:34 And people thought they could identify
12:35 in the painting somebody who looked very much
12:38 like the Duke of Alba.
12:39 And it was somebody going through and massacring
12:43 innocent people on the streets for their beliefs.
12:47 And so that was widely believed--
12:49 that was widely perceived to be the policies
12:52 that Alba was pursuing as a mass persecutor of Protestants
12:56 and rebels.
12:57 - As retaliation for the destruction of the holy statues,
13:03 the Duke of Alba installed a special court, which soon
13:06 became known as the Court of Blood.
13:09 It was where over 10,000 Dutchmen were put on trial,
13:12 and over 1,000 were sentenced to death in just two years.
13:14 The execution of the Counts of Egmont and Hulme,
13:20 their most prominent statesmen, came as a huge shock
13:23 to the Dutch people.
13:24 They were Catholics who had been faithful to King Philip
13:31 all their lives.
13:32 The sole reason for their execution
13:35 had been their failure to persecute the Protestants.
13:38 Religious tolerance was a sin to King Philip.
13:41 The terror of the Spanish Inquisition
13:49 began to grip the Netherlands.
13:51 [MUSIC PLAYING]
13:55 [MUSIC PLAYING]
13:58 The Spanish Inquisition spread fear all over Europe.
14:15 It was synonymous with cruel torture and biased rulings.
14:19 Once you were put on trial, you had no hope.
14:22 [MUSIC PLAYING]
14:25 The most extreme punishment was to be burnt, tied to a stake
14:50 and burnt, burnt at the stake.
14:52 That was the death, death by burning.
14:55 That was the most extreme punishment.
14:57 Other types of ways of shaming people,
15:01 in the case of, say, women who were witches,
15:03 they would put them on donkeys, naked,
15:06 and walk them around the town where they were well-known.
15:09 Everybody would go, "Whoa!"
15:11 You see, that sort of thing.
15:12 Then there was also imprisonment.
15:14 You could be imprisoned until the Inquisitors were satisfied
15:19 that you had learnt what you should learn
15:22 and you would behave properly.
15:23 And then those who have not confessed, who have refused,
15:27 or those who've done it before,
15:29 then they're taken away and executed.
15:31 And it's even more than that.
15:33 Some people die in prison, of course.
15:36 So they take their bones and they burn them in public,
15:40 you see, destroyed completely.
15:42 [Children playing]
16:00 Spain was not always this intolerant toward other religions.
16:04 In fact, it had been one of the most open-minded countries in the Middle Ages.
16:10 Islam, Christianity, and Judaism co-existed in peace back then.
16:16 Spain was divided between Islam and Christian rule back then.
16:20 In order to compete against the Islamic kings,
16:28 who practiced religious tolerance,
16:30 Christian kingdoms such as Castile and Aragon
16:33 also adopted openness toward Jews and Muslims.
16:37 [Children playing]
16:52 Alfonso the Wise, ruler of Spanish Castile in the 13th century,
16:56 invited the Jews and Muslims,
16:58 who had nowhere to go in Europe because of religious persecution,
17:01 into his kingdom.
17:03 [Children playing]
17:09 Well, I think that Alfonso X really had many advisers, Jewish advisers.
17:15 And also, you saw that also in Spain,
17:19 that you have certain Jewish streets and Jewish neighborhoods,
17:24 and they were often, the Jews were really protected by the ruler
17:28 for the reason that they had, the ruler profited from their knowledge,
17:35 from their trade network.
17:37 Alfonso X hired many Jews to help him to rule the world.
17:43 He does call himself the emperor of the three religions,
17:47 and he is, I believe his tombstone has inscriptions in Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin.
17:57 [Children playing]
18:00 Riding on this policy of tolerance,
18:02 Castile's capital city of Toledo blossomed into the center of European politics,
18:07 culture, and industry.
18:09 Alfonso X even introduced to Europe books that were considered heresy at the time,
18:14 such as the work of Greek philosophers,
18:16 Indian fairy tales,
18:18 scientific texts from Islamic cultures.
18:21 He even allowed the Koran to be translated and read in Europe.
18:26 By means of these instruments called astrolabs,
18:38 which measure the elevation of the stars from a particular point,
18:45 it's in the observing of the stars for astronomy or for astrology.
18:52 And of course, astrology is the part of astronomy that claims to predict
18:56 the future on the basis of the movements of the stars.
19:00 And Toledo would be the same as Greenwich is for time measurements now.
19:07 It's the basis for how to measure stars from the elevation of Toledo.
19:12 And this will later become important for things like navigation.
19:16 Followers of other religions were often massacred in medieval Europe.
19:30 Thus, Spain became the best place for these people to live in
19:35 and prosper in Western Europe.
19:37 Sometimes it was the only place.
19:41 The Prosperity of the Jews and Muslims
19:45 The prosperity of these Jews and Muslims
19:48 were ultimately beneficial to the kingdom as well.
19:52 They built a financial industry,
19:54 which greatly enriched the coffers of the Spanish royalty.
19:58 They were the first to adopt the advanced technologies of the Arab world.
20:02 Productivity was the highest among all European regions.
20:07 Spain's Reconquista
20:10 By the 15th century, Spain had become the richest country in Europe.
20:16 Finally, in 1492, the Reconquista is complete.
20:35 Christianity has won in the long struggle against Islam forces in Spain.
20:40 Islamic rule in the Iberian Peninsula came to an end with the fall of Granada.
20:46 All of Europe celebrated.
21:03 However, it was a huge blow to the Jewish people.
21:07 The Alhambra Decree was announced, banishing all Jews from Spain.
21:12 In March 1492, Spain makes the Alhambra Decree banishing all Jews from its land.
21:28 The decree says, "We order the Jews of our kingdoms to depart and never to return.
21:35 We secure to them and to their possessions,
21:38 and we likewise give license to Jews to export their goods and states,
21:43 as long as they do not export gold or silver or coin money or other things prohibited."
21:49 Thus, in effect, the Jews could not be secured of their possessions.
21:53 They were driven away penniless by the conditions of the decree.
21:59 The 60,000 Jews who were stripped of their belongings and banished from Spain moved to Portugal.
22:10 However, Portugal became a part of Spain soon after, and they were expelled once again.
22:19 Their exodus finally brings them to the Netherlands, which was more tolerant to other religions.
22:25 The Spanish court became even more zealous, drunk on their religious victory over the Muslims.
22:39 They began to kill Jews who had converted to Catholicism
22:43 under the claim that they were rooting out heretics who had pretended to convert.
22:49 In Valencia, 1,000 people were executed from 1494 to 1530 for secretly practicing Judaism.
22:59 In Seville, 4,000 people were burned at the stake.
23:05 Spain's Conversion to Islam
23:09 Nevertheless, certainly Spain sees its success in terms of intolerance.
23:23 They expel the Jews in 1492, they force the Muslims to convert by 1520,
23:30 and in the 17th century, I believe it's 1610, they expel all the people who save their Christians
23:36 but by blood are thought to be Muslim.
23:39 And what you see is sort of the origins of racial ideas of purity of blood.
23:45 So, for example, in the 16th, 17th century, in order to be a university professor at some places
23:53 or to have a state office, you have to prove what was called "limpieza de sangre", purity of blood.
24:00 You could be the most devout Christian imaginable, but if your grandfather was Jewish,
24:05 then you're too suspect.
24:09 As the king of the purest Catholic country,
24:15 Philip II demanded that the Netherlands enforce religious homogeneity as well.
24:22 Those who refused would have to pay with their lives.
24:26 All the Dutch wanted was religious freedom.
24:32 The Duke of Alba tried to force the Protestants to yield.
24:38 He even tried to revive religious trials.
24:51 This led to widespread protests and destruction of statues.
24:56 The religious movement was soon turning into an armed uprising.
25:02 At last, the protests turned into a war for independence led by Prince William of Orange.
25:13 [Music]
25:16 A festival is held in Leiden every year on October 3rd to commemorate the battle.
25:36 [Music]
25:39 The rebels, yes.
25:54 And they have given us new freedom in Leiden.
25:59 Since 1574, right? Since 1574. So more than 500 years.
26:07 So that's a real tradition.
26:10 From 1573 to 1574, the people of Leiden stood strong against the merciless onslaught of Spanish troops.
26:25 The city came close to starvation as the Spanish surrounded its walls.
26:30 However, the people of Leiden resisted to the end.
26:36 As a final resort, they broke open the dam using seawater to flood the Spanish troops away.
26:42 And then the land came underwater.
26:48 And they did it because the people who liberated us had boats.
26:51 So the Geuzen had boats.
26:53 There was a very, very strong wind in the night before the 3rd of October.
26:57 And that's where they came with the boats to Leiden.
26:59 And the Spaniards, they had to flood the city because there was too much water for them.
27:05 At that time, we wanted to be free.
27:07 And if we want something here in Leiden, then we are going to get it.
27:10 So then we will be free in the end.
27:12 Anthony, wow.
27:19 The liberators came with white bread and herring for the starving people of Leiden.
27:23 The city of Leiden commemorates the event today by giving out bread and herring.
27:47 Delicious.
27:49 On January 29, 1579, the seven states of Northern Low Countries make a pact to stand together to the end
28:14 for their religious freedom and rights.
28:17 This was the Union of Utrecht, which laid the foundations for the nation we now call the Netherlands.
28:40 This union was founded on the principle of religious tolerance.
28:44 The treaty stated, "Each person shall remain free in his religion,
28:48 and no one shall be investigated or persecuted because of his religion."
28:53 However, the persecution continued in the Spanish territories.
28:59 The sack of Antwerp in 1576 drove more Jews and Protestants into Northern Netherlands.
29:07 The Jews were forced to flee to the Netherlands.
29:12 The troops that were based in Antwerp, they of course, like all troops, needed payment.
29:20 But the payment, which had to come from Spain with ships,
29:24 the ships were taken by Elizabeth of England.
29:28 And so there was no money available in Antwerp to pay the troops.
29:33 And as a consequence, once troops don't get paid, they, well, they want to get the pay anyway,
29:40 and they started looting.
29:41 And that's how they, that's called the Spanish Fury in Netherlandish historiography.
29:48 [Train sounds]
30:03 This results in a sharp population decline.
30:06 In Spanish-ruled Southern Netherlands from the 1560s to 1589,
30:11 Antwerp went from 85,000 to 42,000.
30:15 Kent and Bruges are halved in population size too.
30:19 The people who left usually settled in Amsterdam, Leiden or Haarlem in the north.
30:26 They had left in search of wider freedom of religion.
30:30 [Train sounds]
30:37 On the other hand, the population of Amsterdam went from 30,000 to 200,000
30:42 in the years between 1570 and 1670.
30:46 The population of Leiden went from 15,000 to 72,000.
30:53 According to statistics from 1650,
30:55 one third of the people living in Amsterdam were immigrants or descendants of immigrants.
31:00 [Train sounds]
31:09 And it's remarkable, if you look at the heads of some of the biggest merchant houses
31:15 and manufacturing firms in the Netherlands,
31:18 how many of them are not from families that have been settled in low countries for a long time,
31:23 but they're people with French surnames, or Jewish surnames, or German surnames, last names.
31:33 So this really becomes, by the middle of the 17th century, a melting pot,
31:40 a place where people from various religions, various regions, can come and settle.
31:45 And they played a very important role.
31:47 [Music]
31:50 These newcomers to Amsterdam were wealthy financiers, successful Protestant traders,
31:55 highly skilled workers and engineers.
31:58 [Music]
32:05 They contributed immensely to the city's economic development.
32:08 [Music]
32:27 This meant that the skilled workers and capital of Spain, France,
32:30 and the southern low countries migrated in a massive scale to the northern low countries.
32:35 [Music]
32:40 Tolerance triumphed once again,
32:42 as religious freedom became the foundation of the Netherlands' success.
32:46 Their doors were opened to immigrants from all over Europe,
32:49 who then propelled the country into its golden age.
32:52 [Music]
33:13 The prosperity of the Netherlands began in the oceans.
33:17 Shipbuilding and shipping were the twin engines of growth.
33:22 The Dutch were called the horsemen of the sea in the 17th century.
33:26 They utilized the immigrants' advanced shipbuilding skills to create a revolutionary vessel,
33:33 the flute, which was economical and fast.
33:38 So the Dutch quickly discovered that what they wanted to be cheap in transportation,
33:43 you had to have a big ship that went really fast, but that didn't need a large crew.
33:48 And that's when in 1594, they started building flute ships.
33:53 And flute ships had the advantage of being quick,
33:56 and they had a very nice proportion to the ship's haul,
33:59 which made that they could transport a lot of goods with a very small ship.
34:03 So that made it much cheaper.
34:05 And in the European waters, these ships did very, very well.
34:09 [Music]
34:16 The flutes were not only faster, they were also cheaper to build.
34:22 Advanced technologies enabled the Dutch to make ships at a far lower cost than their competitors.
34:29 If it took 1,300 pounds to build a ship in England, it could be done for 800 pounds in the Netherlands.
34:38 It was invented in Holland. It doesn't look so very revolutionary,
34:43 but the secret of this ship was that it was a middle-sized ship,
34:48 which could be sailed with only a few people.
34:51 You needed only a crew of some 20 people to sail it,
34:56 which meant that it didn't cost much if you had to pay the crew.
35:01 You didn't need many people.
35:03 [Music]
35:06 These advantages allowed the Dutch to ship goods for a third of the cost of other countries.
35:12 This enabled them to dominate the global shipping trade.
35:17 [Music]
35:23 In the 17th century, the total number of trading vessels in the world was 20,000,
35:28 and the Netherlands owned 15,000 of them.
35:32 75% of the world's trade was being conducted by the Dutch.
35:36 [Music]
35:41 The Dutch also made huge profits from the luxury goods trade.
35:47 Luxury items such as sugar, spices, and silk from New Amsterdam, Brazil, South Africa, India,
35:54 Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Japan were collected at Amsterdam and then shipped all over the world again.
36:02 [Music]
36:07 Let's take a look at sugar. Sugar used to be a very expensive product, far more expensive than salt.
36:14 [Music]
36:21 The sugar refining industry, which began in Antwerp,
36:24 naturally moved to Amsterdam in the late 16th century as a result of mass migration.
36:29 [Music]
36:35 The diamond industry also came to the Netherlands through the same route.
36:39 [Music]
36:49 [Music]
36:53 Until the 18th century, all of the world's diamonds were mined in India.
36:58 The diamond polishers who cut the raw stones into sparkling gems were mostly Jews.
37:03 [Music]
37:12 Being in the money lending business,
37:14 they sometimes had to craft and sell precious stones that were handed over to them as collateral.
37:19 [Music]
37:21 Thus, the Jews would bring the diamond industry with them wherever they went.
37:26 [Music]
37:28 Before the Alhambra Decree, it was Spain.
37:31 But after the decree expelled them from Spain, they settled in Lisbon and Antwerp.
37:37 However, the Spanish Inquisition followed them to their new homes.
37:41 The Netherlands was the only place which guaranteed their safety.
37:45 [Music]
37:56 Thus, in the 17th century, Amsterdam took Lisbon and Antwerp's place as the center of the diamond industry.
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38:14 The history of Amsterdam dates back from 1586,
38:19 where our first diamond polisher was registered in the marriage certificate of Amsterdam.
38:24 And later, the trade was being developed because the Portuguese Jews were driven out of the Spanish countries.
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38:39 Diamonds were not the only treasures that the Jews brought.
38:43 The Jews had been money lenders for a long time.
38:46 They were expert financiers.
38:49 Jews introduced innovative financing methods to lay the foundation for the modern financial system in the Netherlands.
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39:05 In 1602, Olden Barneveld, the land's advocate of Holland, pushed for the creation of the Dutch East India Company.
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39:15 It was established to advance the highly profitable trade of Asian products.
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39:26 However, the problem was money.
39:29 Asian trade involved a huge sum of money and high risks, making it difficult to finance the enterprise.
39:37 The financiers involved in the project came up with a truly important innovation - shares.
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39:50 The Dutch East India Company is an important innovation as it is, because it is a company based on shares.
39:58 So it is not a family company anymore, but it is based on capital of many people,
40:04 which means that you can continue your company like modern companies today,
40:09 even when the founder of the company is dead, or the few founders of the company is dead.
40:14 So that is an important innovation.
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40:19 The company was financed by 81 ship owners who controlled the majority of maritime trade back then.
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40:33 Among the ship owners, the majority were Jews who had been banished from Spain.
40:39 In a roundabout way, Spain ended up financing the Dutch trade in the East.
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40:52 In 1609, the world's first stock exchange was set up in Amsterdam.
40:59 Shareholders could cash in their shares any time they wanted.
41:04 Over 1,000 fund managers worked at the exchange in the 17th century.
41:09 Advanced financial tools such as futures and options were born.
41:14 All of Europe's capital flowed into Amsterdam.
41:18 The interest rate was 3%, which was unimaginably low at the time.
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41:27 Philip II, who once owned the Netherlands, ended up having to pay 40% interest on his loans in 1573.
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41:36 In comparison, money could be borrowed in Amsterdam for a rate of just 3%.
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41:45 As Amsterdam grew into the world's financial capital,
41:49 Philip II was forced into bankruptcy.
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42:01 Very interestingly, in the 1620s,
42:06 a great, we would say, called a prime minister,
42:10 the equivalent of a prime minister in Spain, the Count of Olivares,
42:15 proposes that Jews, some Jews, should be allowed to return and live in Spain precisely for that reason.
42:25 Let's be a little bit easier on these people.
42:29 Let's keep the Inquisition off their backs. Let's release them.
42:33 But it's not successful in the end.
42:35 And in the end, the Inquisition is even more powerful
42:38 than the need that the Spanish state has for these huge amounts of money.
42:43 And of course, as you imply, the consequences, in the end, Spain goes bankrupt.
42:48 [Music]
42:51 Diego de Cisneros, a Spanish statesman, made these remarks to Philip II.
42:57 "The Dutch rebels are growing in strength.
43:02 The Jews supported them in war, conquests and negotiations,
43:06 acting as spies in your land and extracting wealth from Spain and Portugal.
43:13 However, Spain had learned nothing from its failures of the 16th century.
43:19 The Spanish Inquisition continued its reign of terror throughout the 17th century.
43:24 Spain's pursuit of purity by the expulsion of Jews and Muslims
43:29 brought a dubious purity while costing its empire."
43:34 [Music]
43:38 The Netherlands flourished not just economically, but culturally as well.
43:42 It became home to some of the greatest artists and philosophers.
43:46 [Music]
43:50 Publishers, printers and bookshops lined the streets of Amsterdam.
43:55 Freedom of religion had led to the freeing of minds.
43:58 [Music]
44:05 Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, remembered by the quote,
44:10 "I think, therefore I exist," lived and wrote for over 30 years in Amsterdam.
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44:22 The same went for Spinoza, another great modern thinker.
44:26 Spinoza's father was a Spanish Jew.
44:31 He had migrated to the Netherlands as Jews became increasingly persecuted in Spain.
44:38 Spinoza praised the Netherlands, saying,
44:41 "This prosperous country has no nobles,
44:44 and everyone coexists side by side regardless of rank and religion."
44:48 [Music]
44:52 Spinoza was not the only philosopher working in the Netherlands in the Golden Age
44:57 that could say all these things.
44:59 There were also foreign French philosophers that moved to the Netherlands
45:04 to publish their work or to work because they were tolerated.
45:11 René Descartes is, I think, the most famous one.
45:16 So there was a good climate for this.
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46:01 "All persons in the Netherlands shall be treated equally in equal circumstances.
46:07 Discrimination on the grounds of religion, belief, political opinion, race or sex,
46:13 or on any other grounds whatsoever shall not be permitted."
46:17 This is the first article of the Constitution of the Netherlands.
46:21 The Dutch still consider tolerance to be the greatest virtue.
46:25 The tiniest empire in the world, which ruled the world's oceans in the 17th century,
46:30 was the Empire of Tolerance.
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