Archive for July, 2010
Protected: The Golden Age
Friday, July 30th, 2010Forgotten Crafts: Milkman
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
A Dutch milkman
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
Once he was a common sight in every town and city: the milkman with his dogcart filled with milk churns. He would call at each door and fill your cup or pan with fresh, non-pasteurized milk. During hot summers, a white blanket was put over the churns to keep most of the heat out. Nonetheless, the milk was not fit for drinking right out of the churn. It had to be cooked first to kill the germs. Choosing the right milkman was no easy task since many of them tended to dilute the milk with water. In the worst case with not-so-clean water.
In the mid 1900s, a bottle system was introduced. Housewives would leave the empty bottles at the door and the milkman would replace them with new filled ones. Once a week he would come by to collect his money. By the 1970s the bottles had been replaced with all kind of alternative packaging such as cartons and bags, which contained pasteurized milk fit for direct consumption. By then, the milk could also be bought at the supermarket and the occupation of milkman started to disappear: first in the larger cities and in the 1980s also in the countryside. Some managed to stay in business longer by transforming their milk vans into mini grocery stores. They were called “SRV-man”.
Nowadays the SRV-man has also all but disappeared: the Dutch buy everything at the supermarket. However, I still remember the sound of the SRV-van’s horn driving through the street and the excitement you felt as a kid in the summer, because maybe –just maybe– mommy would give you a guilder to go get yourself an ice cream.
Peace And Exploration
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
Death of Willem Barent
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
At the beginning of the 1600s the battle for independence had shifted to the Eastern provinces of the Republic and by 1609 a truce with Spain was signed that would last for 12 years.
This relative peace gave the Western provinces the opportunity for economic repairs. During the war many Protestant merchants had fled the Southern Netherlands and settled in the Northwestern provinces of Zeeland and Holland. They brought with them an enormous amount of knowledge about trading with and sea travel towards the Orient as well as considerable funds.
At the time, the spice trade was dominated by the Italians over land and the Portuguese and Spaniards over sea. But the Portuguese were weakened by English privateers and the Dutch saw a golden opportunity that they seized. They would go and get the so valued spices from the Orient themselves.
The Republic set out to find their own best route to the East. First they launched an expedition in 1594 to explore a Northern route. However, the expedition, led by Jacob van Heemskerck and Willem Barentsz, got stuck in the ice of Nova Zembla and was forced to survive on the ice for ten months. Two more attempts were made only to come to the conclusion that “Northern Passage” was an illusion.
In 1595 another expedition had set out on a Southern route to the East Indies, rounding the Cape of Good Hope. The voyage was an economic and human disaster. One ship was lost, the profits were minimal and only about 80 of the original 248 seamen came home sound and safe.
Despite all this the expedition was considered a great success: it proved that it was possible to sail around the cape to the Indies without being bothered by the Portuguese. Ad so, in 1602 the Dutch East India Company (also known as VOC) was founded starting a period of unknown economic growth and wealth for the young Republic.
