A Quick History of Amsterdam

amsterdam isn't even 800 years old okay that is quite old but it's amazing what they've packed into that time i'm mark i'm the owner of that damn guide and i'm going to zip you through those centuries picking out the important things that happened along the way this makes an overview and a framework for when you join me walking around town you can slot things into where they belong because the city doesn't always unfold itself chronologically you can join me on a walking tour in person or also on one of my new virtual zoom tours online what i'm going to cover in this video is the 1200s when amsterdam began as a settlement around a dam across a river the 1300s where there was a miracle in town the 14s when people here challenged the dominant trading power of the time the 15s when they challenged the mighty habsburg empire and went to war the 1600s was the emergence of a republic here at the dutch golden age and in the 1700s a decline in trading fortunes the 18s dominated by the monarchy the 19s world wars and the emergence of counter-culture the 2000s there have been issues of multiculturalism gentrification and sustainability always of course water defenses as well so let's start at the beginning and head right back to the beginning of the 1200s in the early to mid 1200s some people built a dam across the amstel river to keep out the high tide they built that dam about 500 meters inland from the mouth making a nice harbor in front of it for fishing boats of course the high tide would have gone over the edges of the river because it's such a low-lying part of the world here so they had to build defenses these are called dikes or levees in the us and these are big man-made banks of earth that run along the riversides on the seafront keeping the people here safe and dry 1275 is considered to be amsterdam's birthday because this is the first time the city was mentioned officially in a document count flores of holland the local nobleman said if you come and live here on this dam on the amstil which became known as amstelleredama and then amsterdam you can trade on my rivers without paying a toll he was the count of holland this is the drainage system of europe he has a lot of rivers so traders got an excellent advantage if they came here which they did now flores wasn't trying to be nice and sociable and fun he wanted to pull them here because he knew that trade equaled money equaled influence and this was going to be the best way to protect his lands it worked in the 1300s there was a miracle in town now there's a lot of water here so walking on it would have been great but please don't get your hopes up too high because they were pretty easily impressed in 1345. the effect however was that amsterdam had a holy relic miraculous holy relics are a real magnet for pilgrims who flocked here from all over europe and stayed and of course the church was perfectly happy with this because pilgrims are great for the church they took up so much space that in 1500 there were 19 monasteries and convents in the old town so you can imagine the friction between the traders and the pilgrims for all this lovely canal frontage the traders won but it did take them a couple of hundred years in the 1400s trade in northwestern europe was dominated by a very powerful cartel called the hansa or the hansayatic league they'd been around since the 1100s amsterdam is a young trading city could have joined the league and got instant access to each other's markets and also mutual defense a great benefit it would have cost them a slice of independence and profit however and they didn't want to give that up too easily they'd always been great innovators here and they took those skills that they had learned fighting the sea and they transferred that into building better boats and they used the sea routes and nibbled away at the league's monopoly up in denmark they positioned themselves well to be an independent-ish trading power in the coming century now the reason i said independent dish is because amsterdam was part of the habsburg empire then but that was quite spread out so they had an element of control over their own affairs [Music] charles v was the last of the very grand habsburg emperors in the mid-1500s he was ill and he abdicated and he gave his brother ferdinand austria and bits of germany and hungary his son philip got spain the netherlands most of south america mexico the philippines and a lot of italy now that sounds like quite a generous present from dad but the thing is it was spread across the globe it was difficult to control philip needed money to fund armies to put out fires all over the place but the money at that point already came from amsterdam and the dutch provinces because of all the trade here and that meant tax now philip could have learnt a thing or two from the dutch like tolerance in those years they were becoming protestant here massive change in europe he was an ardent catholic however and he saw it as his god-given duty to win them back to the catholic fold no looking the other way for him just to keep trade flowing his brilliant idea to do this was to send a spanish inquisition which nobody expected nobody expects the spanish inquisition they were burning people at the stake it was pretty brutal times and as you can imagine the dutch weren't too keen on it and they ended up rebelling a long slow war dragged on here for 80 years and they became independent of the mighty spanish habsburg empire it was really quite an achievement the 1600s in the 1500s the portuguese controlled the spice trade with southeast asia the dutch loved spices and all they had to do was go to lisbon which was pretty easy the thing is in 1580 spain took over portugal and they just happened to be at war with spain so they couldn't go there anymore this wasn't a problem they were innovative they went off to the east and they bought the spices themselves they ended up creating the dutch east indies company and taking over the entire spice trade from the portuguese the west indies company was formed to control trade with the americas and the caribbean this company is probably best remembered for creating the small town of new amsterdam on the island of manhattan they also engaged in privateering otherwise known as state-sponsored pirating and they were controlling the dutch coffee and sugar plantations on the north coast of south america and in the caribbean islands now these plantations were hugely profitable and that unfortunately is for one reason alone and this was the dutch transatlantic slave trade the west indies company bought and sold human beings more than half a million africans were enslaved and taken to these places so that money could be generated for the rich merchants and the mother country this period has always been known as the dutch golden age but this terminology is now being brought into question as people address the inhumanity and the brutality that it was based upon back in amsterdam however in the early 1600s the money flooded in so quickly they hardly had time to count it this is when they built the grand canal belt for merchants to make beautiful houses not surprisingly all this wealth made the neighbors jealous and the french and the english and some of the germans invaded at the same time they call this not unreasonably the disaster year that was 1672. they managed to avoid defeat by flooding large parts of the countryside to stop the invading armies but their dominance had been shattered there was a long slow decline through the 1700s a lot of corruption set in there was a huge gap between rich and poor and the poor god very poor people wanted change and that came in the shape and form of the french revolutionary armies they spread across europe with their liberty equality fraternity stuff and they came this way and they were welcomed and they made a democracy it didn't last very long because napoleon took control of france and he wasn't the world's number one fan of democracy and he made his younger brother louis king of holland which is amazing work if you can get it if anybody offers you that position grab it with both hands and ask questions later the french period finished with napoleon's defeat and then things start to get a little strange here because we got a dutch king i mean this had been a republic for some hundreds of years then briefly controlled by the french in various formats and then in 1815 we got an absolute dutch monarch we still have the same royal family today seven generations later gracing the throne with their exceptionally expensive presence the 1900s during the first world war the netherlands stayed neutral which is a fantastic thing to do if you happen to be in the middle of a world war zone because you don't get invaded your country doesn't get messed up you don't lose a generation of young men and actually local business boomed because of a lack of foreign competition the second world war rolled around and they thought yeah we know how to do this hitler said at a great big rally that he would respect the traditional dutch neutrality and the next day invaded the netherlands they weren't expecting it they put up a fight for five days and then the germans said look if you don't surrender we are gonna flatten rotterdam by air raid this afternoon which unfortunately is exactly what happened the germans then said if you don't surrender now we're going to flatten all of your cities one after the other so they surrendered to five years of occupation which were terrible times for all they were appalling times if you were a jewish amsterdammer 78 of jewish amsterdammers were murdered during the war either here or in concentration camps now this is a terrible stain on the city's history because amsterdam even then thought of itself as a tolerant accepting safe place it shouldn't be overlooked that a lot of brave acts occurred during the war almost 10 000 jewish amsterdammers made it through the war in hiding at phenomenal risk to the people hiding them this is overshadowed by the vast majority of amsterdams that looked the other way and a devastatingly effective minority of amsterdams who were dutch nazis and they collaborated with the german nazis after the war the adults didn't want to address this they just wanted to move forward put their lives back together get over the trauma of it the children from the war years however grew up and they became adults in the 1960s and 70s they looked back and they saw an establishment that had committed crimes the police on the streets then could have been policing the streets during the war years and looking the other way or even worse so they rebelled they were anti-establishment they were very liberal as a generation socially inclusive environmentally aware as well now that liberalism made amsterdam into a magnet for counter-culture movements so you got hippies and squatters and gay rights and feminists and environmental radicals and you name it they came here and they became the mainstream the 2000s and the present day there are currently 184 foreign nationalities living in amsterdam making up just over half the population and the whole population is just under 800 000 so it's a very mixed place to live issues that have been dealt with so far this century are multiculturalism and its lack of integration into liberal dutch culture gentrification and the obvious benefits that brings but is this perhaps going too far and sustainability how or how do you live sustainably in such a small and densely populated country in europe always in the background are concerns about water and flooding as well just so you get a good idea of how pressing a problem this is i've got two maps for you one shows the country with all the sea and water defenses in place and the other shows the country with the water being allowed to find its natural level fighting the water will certainly dominate the next century but hey we have good old dutch innovation to fall back upon to sum up the last 800 years there are some themes running through this there would be a problem here and the people would turn it into an opportunity they challenged the hansa league the habsburg empire the portuguese spice trade and each time they took risks and it paid off they led the way into the modern age then everybody else caught up and now they just keep their heads down and try and hang on to their cash they're not as great risk takers as they were but that innovation is certainly still here and i think always will be when you join me on one of my walking tours whether that's in person or online please tell me which parts of this video you found the most interesting and i would be very happy to focus on those during our time together to keep up to date with what i'm doing you can always follow me on facebook my business name is that damn guide and if you like this video i will be making more so subscribe on youtube 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Channel: That Dam Guide

Views: 23,929

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Id: eBlxUA9haMg

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 26 2020