Archive for July, 2010
Forgotten Crafts: Bridge Hauler
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
Bridge in Amsterdam
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
Of course, Amsterdam is famous for its many canals. To get across these canals there are numerous small bridges. These bridges are typically very steep, to allow highly loaded cargo ships pass easily underneath them. However, these steep bridges used to be very annoying for any merchant with a cart. And there were a lot of those in past centuries: milkmen, bread sellers, vegetable sellers, you name it.
Pushing a heavily loaded cart up and down steep bridges numerous times a day was backbreaking. Luckily, most bridges had a bridge hauler. A sturdy man that would haul your cart over the bridge with a hooked rope for a small fee. Some of them even had songs to sell their services.
Unfortunately, in the 1900s, this colorful character disappeared from Amsterdam’s street life, his song replaced by the roaring sound of cars and motorcycles.
Tyrants, Heretics And Heroes
Friday, July 16th, 2010
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
In 1555 Philips II, son of the legendary king Charles V, became ruler of the “Low Lands”, a territory now known as The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. At the time, these were wealthy territories with important trading cities like Antwerp. Charles V, born and raised in the Belgian city of Gent, had been fond of the region and his wise rule had earned him the loyalty of the Dutch nobility. That loyalty was vital because it was the nobility that exerted real power in the cities and provinces that made up the Low Lands.
Philips however, was born and raised in Spain and had no feelings for the region except a keen interest in its wealth. He was also a very devote Catholic. These two character treats would soon bring him into deep trouble with the Dutch.
Philips started out by reducing the power of local noblemen and relying more and more on Spanish counselors. This was his first vital mistake. By depriving the noblemen (and with them prominent cities) of their power he created a strong seed for rebellion under the high classes of Dutch society. Dutch nobility had always been happy to accept the protection of a sovereign king as long as it did not interfere with their own local power. Philips severely underestimated the importance of this tradition.
His second mistake was his fierce response to the emerging Protestantism in The Netherlands. The ideas of Luther and Calvin proved extremely popular among the Dutch. Since founding protestant churches was prohibited, so-called “hagenpreken”(literally “bush services”) were organized attracting huge amounts of people. The movement got a more violent character in the summer of 1566 when in three weeks time hundreds of catholic churches were assaulted by Protestants. They destroyed statues and paintings and robbed the gold and silver from the churches. It would have been wise to respond to this with allowing a certain freedom of faith. This would have met the demands of the Protestants and would have restored the peace. Peace was vital to the Dutch economy that heavily relied on trade.
Forgotten Crafts: Ferryman
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
A Dutch ferryman.
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
The Netherlands is a country of water. It’s everywhere. Every city, town, and piece of land is crossed by a maze of canals, ditches, rivers, lakes and the like. It was very common that the shortest way from home to school, work, church, or the market crossed water somewhere. If you did not have a boat, you would have to take a considerable detour to the next bridge.
Therefore, at strategic points in rivers and canals people would row or haul you to the other side for a small fee. These ferrymen where still very common in the 1960s and my mother still remembers jumping on the ferry every morning to go to school. She often was expelled from the ferry because she would jump onto the ferry when it had already left the shore. Because this was dangerous, the ferryman would make her get off again and walk the two-kilometer detour to teach her a lesson. Somehow it did not have the desired effect, this to great frustration of the ferryman.
However, as infrastructure improved and more people bought themselves cars and motorcycles taking the detour instead of paying the ferryman became a viable alternative and by the 1980s the profession had mostly become extinct. Nowadays, only the big ferries remain, operated by large ferry companies.
