86 episodes
History of the Netherlands Republic of Amsterdam Radio
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- History
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4.8 • 18 Ratings
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The incredible journey of the world’s most influential swamp and those who call it home. Beginning at the end of the last ice age and trekking all the way through to the modern era, together we step through the centuries and meet some of the cast of characters who fashioned and forged a boggy marshland into a vibrant mercantile society and then further into a sea-trotting global super-power before becoming the centre for modern day liberalism.
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The Lion and the Letter-Cutter
In the 1440s a goldsmith from Mainz called Johannes Gutenberg developed a movable type printing press which catalysed the European printing revolution. It heralded a technological leap in communication tools which had far reaching consequences for the societies of the Low Countries, particularly in urban centres where print shops were established. A large market for books already existed in the Low Countries, in no small part because of the existence of Common Life schools and subsequent high rates of general literacy. With the copying and widespread distribution of texts becoming so much quicker and easier, other fields of work began to shift and develop, as different skills and networks were needed to smoothly bring content to the public. In this episode we are going to first take a look at what a 15th century printing workshop might have been like, before meeting some of the pioneers who would pull the printing presses and perfect the processes pertaining to the profitable publication of pamphlets, prayer books and other pre-16th century paper imprinted particularities.
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Simon Gronowski's escape from the 20th Convoy
We meet Simon Gronowski, a 92 year old jazz pianist, lawyer and Holocaust survivor. At the age of eleven, Simon was locked in a cattle wagon with his mother and around 50 other people after a month’s imprisonment at the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen for the crime of being Jewish. The train they had been herded onto was bound for the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the 20th such mass deportation of Jews from Belgium. But this train trip would be unique in world war two. The 20th convoy became the only deportation train in the entire continent which was attacked and stopped by resistance fighters, allowing around a hundred people to escape. Simon Gronowski was one of these people and it is his story that we are going to explore in today’s episode.
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Reformation in the Low Countries with Christine Kooi
We chat with author and academic Christine Kooi, whose book Reformation in the Low Countries 1500-1620 was released last year by Cambridge University Press. As its title suggests the book encompasses a vast and tumultuous period which served to greatly shape the modern nations of Belgium and the Netherlands. It is a sweeping and extremely useful narrative and we are lucky enough today to have Christine join us online from her home in the US to help us unpack it.
Do you want to know more about Flemish and Dutch history and culture? Visit www.the-low-countries.com.
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Tulips: the Myths, the Mania and the Man.
We dig up the bulbs of the past, trim the stems of historical myth and hopefully emerge with a lustrous vase of understanding as to where the tulip came from, how it became infectiously vogue in the Dutch Republic and what place it holds in modern calculations of economics.
Do you want to know more about Flemish and Dutch history and culture? Visit www.the-low-countries.com.
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The Best Possible War
Long time listeners will be aware that, alongside being passionate about the history of our boggy swamp, we also carry a deep love for the game of cricket. The venn-diagram intersection between those two things can often leave a lot to be desired. However, somehow Julian Smith, our intrepid co-creator, producer and frequent voice of excitement in the background, managed to find a small but wondrous plot of podcasting turf from which to tell an amazing story about cricket being played in the Netherlands during World War One. This opportunity came on one of our all-time favourite podcasts, called The Final Word, which is a cricket-themed podcast that delves deeply into the many fascinating stories that abound through the long history of the game. So in this small piece, you will hear the two Final Word podcast hosts, Adam and Geoff, talking with Julian, who unravels the story for us. You do not need to know anything about or have any interest in cricket to enjoy this story, which we hope you do.
Thanks a lot to Adam Collins and Geoff Lemon for having Julian on the show.
You can find The Final Word here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-final-word-cricket-podcast/id1315888074
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The Granddaddy of Netherlandish Humanism
At the end of episode 49, we said that we were going to move away from the political part of the story of the History of the Netherlands for a while to instead focus on some of the other important societal developments that were happening concurrently at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries. To be honest, perhaps it is because we have taken quite a long break, or maybe because of the change of direction we want to make now, but we have found it rather difficult to write this episode. The 16th century saw so many radical developments in such a vast variety of subjects that the prospect of somehow covering this all in a satisfactory way in this podcast without being forever consumed by it is, to put it lightly, daunting, bordering on overwhelming. So bear with us over the next few episodes as we, in our typical way, blithely set off in a new direction and attempt to lay foundations to explain how a new zeitgeist of education and learning that had originated in the Italian peninsula in the 14th century, took hold in the Low Countries in the 15th. As usual, it is not possible nor is it our intention to cover every single facet of every single topic which we bring up in this podcast, so please don’t be too disappointed if we fail to bring up your favourite 15th/16th century Renaissance humanist. Cool? Alright. Let’s go.
With thanks to Bill Weedman, Liran Braverman, Dennis van Heeren, Johan Verbeek and Egbert for their Patreon support.
SHOW NOTES: https://www.republicofamsterdamradio.com/episodes/historyofthenetherlands/episode-50-the-granddaddy-of-netherlandish-humanism
PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/historyofthenetherlands
TWITTER: https://www.twitter.com/historyofNL
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Customer Reviews
Hilarious, Broad and Deep
I highly recommend this *excellent* chronological history of the Low Countries by two Aussie immigrants who clearly love their adopted country without letting the fact blind them to its faults.
Packed with both dry and silly humour, the level of research in both primary and secondary sources is nonetheless impressive, while the breadth of the subjects they are willing to tackle, taking in not only the lives of the ordinary people as well as the aristos, but also side forays into beer, chocolate, fish and, very importantly, the horrifying actions of both Dutch individuals and of corporate, municipal and governmental institutions in colonialism and genocide.
Bursting with facts and personality.
Naijama
Is our presenter toning the excitable-ness down? I hope not.
This podcast is certainly entertaining with the dry Aussie humour (when I listened to the first episodes, I found myself thinking: “I’d never realised how Australian Dutch people sound when speaking English” ... ah well!) But it’s also very informative, and helps explain and put into context a lot about the Low Countries, and the relationships amongst all the countries and their neighbours.
Full of detail
This podcast has been a great companion to my short spell spent living in the Netherlands. It's more detailed than most history podcasts I've listened to, which is good!