Dutch History

Simon Schama explores the mysterious contradictions of the Dutch nation that invented itself from the ground up, attained an unprecedented level of affluence, and lived in constant dread of being corrupted by happiness. Drawing on a vast array of period documents and sumptuously reproduced art, Schama recreates in precise detail a nation's mental state. He tells of bloody uprisings and beached whales, of the cult of hygiene and the plague of tobacco, of thrifty housewives and profligate tulip-speculators.

A personal portrait of a fascinating people, a sideways history, and an entertaining travelogue, Why the Dutch Are Different is the story of an Englishman who went Dutch. And loved it.

In this effortlessly erudite account, Russell Shorto traces the idiosyncratic evolution of Amsterdam, showing how such disparate elements as herring anatomy, naked Anabaptists parading through the streets, and an intimate gathering in a 16th-century wine-tasting room had a profound effect on Dutch - and world - history. Weaving in his own experiences of his adopted home, Shorto provides an ever-surprising, intellectually engaging story of Amsterdam from its golden age to the present.

Twenty-five years after her passing, Audrey Hepburn remains the most beloved of all Hollywood stars, known as much for her role as UNICEF ambassador as for films like Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany's. Several biographies have chronicled her stardom, but none has covered her intense experiences through five years of Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. According to her son, Luca Dotti, "The war made my mother who she was."

The Anarchy tells the remarkable story of how one of the world’s most magnificent empires disintegrated and came to be replaced by a dangerously unregulated private company, based thousands of miles overseas in one small office, five windows wide, and answerable only to its distant shareholders. In his most ambitious and riveting audiobook to date, William Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before, unfolding a timely cautionary tale of the first global corporate power.

We are familiar with maps that outline all 50 states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an "empire", exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories - the islands, atolls, and archipelagos - this country has governed and inhabited? In How to Hide an Empire, author Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light.

Find out how the people of this country fought against nature to cultivate land below sea level. Discover how they survived wars, invasions, and natural disasters and developed a trading nation that would become the envy of Europe. Uncover the truth behind bloody battles fought between medieval royalty, warlords, and rebellious guilds of Dutch workers, all of which shaped the country we know today.

Once valued at close to seven trillion dollars by today’s standards, the Dutch East India Company, formed in 1602, became the world’s first multinational corporation. In the nearly 200-year reign of their empire at sea, the Dutch East India Company amassed unfathomable fortunes, laid the foundation of the modern globalized world, and built monopolies that controlled the economy of the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and the East Indies.

In The Dutch Moment, Wim Klooster shows how the Dutch built and eventually lost an Atlantic empire that stretched from the homeland in the United Provinces to the Hudson River and from Brazil and the Caribbean to the African Gold Coast. The fleets and armies that fought for the Dutch in the decades-long war against Spain included numerous foreigners, largely drawn from countries in northwestern Europe. Likewise, many settlers of Dutch colonies were born in other parts of Europe or the New World.

A heart-wrenching WWII historical fiction novel set in Nazi-occupied Holland, where love, betrayal, and courage shape the fate of a dancer-turned-resistance hero. Amsterdam, 1939. Edda van der Valk’s life was meant to be lived on stage. A gifted Dutch ballerina, she escapes rivalry and rising fascism to study at a Swiss finishing school, where she finds friendship among other young women destined for resistance—Lili, Océane, Esther, Sable, and Anna. Back in Holland, Edda falls in love with Asher Hoffmann, a fellow dancer from a Jewish family. But their fragile joy is shattered as Nazi ...

This is the astonishing true story of three teenage Dutch girls, Hannie Schaft and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, that has inspired many throughout the world. When Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in World War II, these girls took up arms against the enemy by seducing high-ranking Nazi officers, luring them into the woods and killing them. They provided Jewish children with safe houses and gathered vital intelligence for the resistance.

May 10, 1940. The Netherlands was swarming with Third Reich troops. In seven days it's entirely occupied by Nazi Germany. Joining a small resistance cell in the Dutch city of Haarlem were three teenage girls: Hannie Schaft, and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, who would soon band together to form a singular female underground squad.

Conquerors tells the almost forgotten story of how Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India, and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East - then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire.

Harlem is perhaps the most famous, iconic neighborhood in the United States. A bastion of freedom and the capital of black America, Harlem's 20th-century renaissance changed our arts, culture, and politics forever. But this is only one of the many chapters in a wonderfully rich and varied history. In Harlem, historian Jonathan Gill presents the first complete chronicle of this remarkable place.

A True Story of Resilience Survival and Unbroken Spirit A Civilian Dutch Woman in Europe During World War II Treasures of Sadness is the story of Corrie's unbroken spirit. If you love historical fiction, don't miss reading this real life memoir and page-turner: Treasures of Sadness Treasures of Sadness is a real life account of a woman’s journey that began during World War II. Corrie grew up in an affluent neighborhood in Amersfoort, Holland in the 1940’s. From there she fell in love with a German soldier, rubbed elbows with royalty in Vienna, Austria and ended up in a coal mining town ...

It was an era when monopoly trading companies were the unofficial agents of European expansion, controlling vast numbers of people and huge tracts of land, and taking on governmental and military functions. The leaders of these trading enterprises exercised virtually unaccountable, dictatorial political power over millions of people.

In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today.

Between 1500 and 1800, the North Sea region overtook the Mediterranean as the most dynamic part of the world. At its core, the Anglo-Dutch relationship intertwined close alliance and fierce antagonism to intense creative effect. But a precondition for the Industrial Revolution was also the establishment in British North America of a unique type of colony - for the settlement of people and culture, rather than the extraction of things.

Huge international companies and corporations are a normal part of our everyday lives today. For most, their unimaginable wealth and power, rivaling even some of the smaller countries of the world, is something we take for granted. And we see them as the living embodiment of the capitalist system, regardless if we take it as a good or a bad omen. However, this wasn’t always the case.

This volume in a series of world history case studies utilizes the compelling but little-known journal of a surgeon in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to explore the social history of seventeenth century Holland, South Africa, Indonesia, and Thailand. Gisbert Heeck’s vivid account stands as one of the great travel narratives of his era and provides us with a unique lens to explore early modern life, including everything from the history of Western medical science to mercantilism, from the tradition of Dutch still life painting to Jewish life in Amsterdam. What emerges is a rich ...