Secret of Netherland’s advancement

By Ismail Misbahu

“God created the earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands” The Dutch.

The Netherlands hugs the North Sea and shares borders with Germany and Belgium, making it a great jumping off point for exploring Western Europe. Trains and buses are available for anyone who bothers not travel by plane to countries like France, Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium etcetera. On waterways are ships bringing in different people from Kiev, Venice, China, and Canada for tours on the Netherland’s countryside. Tours on the NL’s lowland areas is an amazing exploration of natural beauty and great memories of historic towns and cities. Although the tour was not the initial purpose of my trip, it provided great insights on major historical events known to have shaped the history of Europe centuries ago.
The saying “God created the earth but the Dutch created the Netherlands”, explains how the latter stood up to conquer nature ⸺ ‘man and nature relationship’ a historian would say. This relationship explains how the Dutch become products of their environment. A greater part of the land, almost a half of it is below sea level and according to the documentary we watched at the touring site of Kinderdijk, some kilometers away from our instructor’s beautiful district, Dr. Simon Polinder, dikes of considerable sizes helped shield the low flat land from invasion by the North Sea. Without the existing dikes more than half of the country would be flooded daily. The Dutch have made many lakes and turn parts of the sea dried, creating polders flowing through it, hence the saying above.
At the Kinderdijk, we saw how water is pumped from the lower level to the highest flat by various windmills. This continues until the water is drained from the areas to the nearby river, making the land less exposed to flood or swamps. About 19 of such windmills are present at Kinderdijk, and on boat, we had the privilege to reach into the sites of such windmills and shine our eyes. The insides of the mills are extremely Dutch cultured, material remains unbelievable to fathom. One must see how the Dutch were so hardworking and efficient.I could figure out from the inside a wife’s groom in, a bedroom and a kid’s cabinet, wardrobe, kitchen, sewing machines, farm tools including some fishing rods and nets etcetera.
Not only are windmills in the Kinderdijk but also are the remaining wheels of the steam engine and the graphic art designs of the windmills themselves. This must remind someone of the role of the Netherlands as the champion of water management during the industrial age of Europe. Although this development came to the Netherlands later, at about 1850,the documentary seemed to have suggested that the country’s hydro-tech and power prominence might not necessarily be the result of industrial revolution, it must have begun much earlier. Not only was there a glimpse of these historical events but equally important were also the souvenirs including a wooden boot which, as impressed by the story in the documentary, must have been used by farmers at the early age, and perhaps by people in charge of the river delta.
This reminds me of the great delta we saw in Wapenveld, another beautiful district of our teacher and trainer, Dr. Eva Krah,a healthy village with beautiful tracts of lush agriculture.
The delta in this touring site is a storage of various sediments forming at the cross triangle of several distributaries and water channels, hence the delta. History has indeed shown how deltas have been significant to the development of human civilization. Historians believe that it was in the fertile river delta in Mesopotamia that humans first learned to harness the power of water for irrigation in agriculture. So were the ‘creators’ of the Netherlands who also harnessed and transformed their lands into a very fertile, green, and lush agricultural expanse. Along the great Mesopotamia for instance, emerged civilizations such as those of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Kuwait, Turkey, and Iran. The stability brought on by agriculture allowed culture to flourish and little wonder farming and herding of cattle become the most important issues of national concern in the Netherlands. On the contrary, they remain the most topical security challenge to the country just as to the rest of other parts of the World.
The reason is clear why greater part of the Netherlands is under water. ‘The Little Ice Age’ brought colder winters to parts of Europe and North America including the Netherlands. Farms and villages were destroyed by encroaching glaciers during the mid-17th century. Canals and rivers which have been the distinguishing environmental features of the Netherlands were frequently frozen deeply enough to support ice skating and winter festivals. We visited the sites some few kilometers away from Wapenveld where the glaciers were said to have been deterred by human blockade.
The U.N.-funded panels of scientists say global warming is responsible for the melting ice, that heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels are nudging up temperatures. Scientists dismisses global warming, arguing natural climate fluctuations are responsible. That glaciers are proposedly caused by cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, variations in Earth’s orbit and axial tilt (orbital forcing), inherent variability in global climate, and decreases in the human population.
Religion has been one of the most important historical antecedents shaping the believe and value system of the people of the Netherlands. Yet the opposite is the case where in Nigeria, people become religious without adhering to the religion. Netherlands is among the countries with high religious tolerance. The interview I had (as part of our ethnographic field exercise) with one of the elites in Wapenveld hinted at saying that politics has become a threat to democracy and as well, has continued to challenge Freedom of Religion and Belief (FORB) especially since the Tram attack in 2019. To many in the Netherlands, minority Muslims from Morocco and Turkey are the threats to religious freedom and democracy. However, some academic professors including University students might have held different opinion, only to believe that this is rather a perceptible phenomenon not necessarily that there has always been a connection between migration, Islam and terrorism.
The history of the Church and the reminders of the 16th century Reformation are expressed in various forms of arts, paintings and statues across the city of Utrecht and virtually all over the Netherlands. Inside the Utrecht University campus is a large hall hosting different worshipping corners. On the doors up the stairs are paintings of the great protestants: Martin Luther, John Calvin and others. While Germans hold on to Lutheranism, most Netherlanders are Orthodox Calvinists with others believing in Anabaptism. In the village of Wapenveld, we saw Orthodox Christian Churches and we were told how Christians in the village dress decently, different from the half-naked dresses of the many you could see in Nigeria!
On our Free walking Tour, the Hague, I was shown a place at the backyard of the King’s palace where gun powder was stored and of course, the reason why the soil appears different from the other ones in the city; ash and sandy. We were told that the sea and the storing of the gun powder were strategic to the protection of the King during the Protestant wars. In other words, this development also impressed on the impact of industrial revolution on the part of the Netherlands.
A stone-throw from the King’s palace was a tall building decorated in a style like that of King Luis XIV. We were told that the architect was asked to replicate the Luis’ style and there’s of course a sketchy mark to impress the architect’s mastery of art. This was a place where, as we were told, leading members of Roman Catholic and Protestants usually gather to set the armistice of peace. In one of such occasions, a ‘Roman Catholic’, of course the Dutch would say, shot one of the Protestants to death, marking an end to the armistice of peace between the two Christian followings leading to dismemberment and subsequent emergence of nationalities such as the Rome (Italy), Spain and the Netherlands.
Few steps into the entrance of the King’s palace, was a statue and a building, now hosting the body structure of the State’s judiciary. The statue was a man (I could not remember his name) who had the courage to unite various European cities under the King of Netherlands and the court and the judicial bodies adjacent to it were used to enact and pass laws to the cities under control. When I asked, ‘did he subdued them’? Ronald, our walking eye, insisted it was an effort to ‘unite’ them’ and of course, he said, this started a long time ago when some of these cities fall under the power of the Dutch East Indian Trade (the VoC) up until the Renaissance.
Ismail Misbahu is a Public Affairs Analyst.