A history of Amsterdam and its ideas - An Amsterdam State of Mind
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- Опубліковано 19 чер 2024
- On March 4th and 5th 2021, amidst a Lockdown and inability to run tours due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Look Up ran an online Zoom tour event; "An Amsterdam State of Mind".
Presented by Simon Wood.
0:00 Introduction: A Birds Eye View
2:10 Chapter 1: Of Monasteries and Merchants
14:16 Chapter 2: Reluctant Rebels
20:11 Chapter 3: Faith Can't Be Forced
27:18 Chapter 4: Free City - Free People - Free Market
35:20 Chapter 5: A Free Mind
44:31 Chapter 6: Ideas Don't Die, They Just Keep Moving
51:09 Chapter 7: Gods of Lust and Money
57:17 Chapter 8: I Would Like to Meet Myself
1:01:18 Chapter 9: If You Tolerate This?...
1:10:14 Chapter 10: Rebels With and Without a Cause
1:24:22 Epilogue: The City's Limits
As been born in Schiedam and lived through the Nazi occupation during WW II . . Complement you for a informative and in-depth history of Amsterdam . ..
Ik kan nog steds Nederlands schrijven, maar moest Amsterdam verlaten.....I was born in Amsterdam in 1944, so the soul of the City is still with me. Thank you so much for your research and explanation of the evolution of my 'geboortestad' I never learned as much in any History class as from you, and gives me motivation to do some more reading. I like your style and personality of delivery...thank you for a virtual tour of so many plances I've stood and walked.
Thank you for this real realistic film. Ik ben geboren in Amsterdam zuid waar ook een Joodse familie woonde in 1943. De hele oorlog werd deze familie door de bewoners geholpen waar het kon. Gelukkig hebben zij die afschuwelijke oorlog overleeft. Op dit moment is Amsterdam verworden tot een Naziestaat. Ik ben dan ook gevlucht 6 jaar geleden naar Purmerend en velen met mij. Auto’s mogen maximaal 30 km rijden en bijna alles waar ik met plezier naar toe ging in het verleden is weg. ( te veel om op te noemen ) zo jammer……….
I must compliment you on this very informative work . I am of Dutch decent and my mother never told me anything about Dutch history except the Nazi occupation after which they moved to the U.S . I'm enjoying learning of my history. I gave this link to my mother and she said it was very good also. Dank je wel
First comment I am writing on UA-cam, but this lecture didn't give me an option of not writing one. Took a lot of notes, googled some things along the way. Now can't wait to go for a walk around Amsterdam with this new perspective on the city. Thank you so much for this gem!
Thank you for the kind words, Lisa! Feel free to pop into our location opposite Central Station while you're here!
I enjoyed your talk about the history of Amsterdam, I am Dutch, lived in Amsterdam in the early 1960, now living in Melbourne Australia, your interesting history about the city of Amsterdam and of course of The Netherlands is spot on, you're a genius and you know a lot of the early history of Amsterdam, from Melbourne Australia a big THANK YOU!
Thanks for this great video, I wish there were more like these for other cities, too.
An absolutely superb introduction to the "mind-set" of this amazing town / city.
Essential material for those wishing to get the "feel" of Amsterdam.
Superb presentation.
I think this is the third UA-cam comment I’ve ever written. Thank you much for this- you combined so many books and thinkers that have given me a whole new view in Amsterdam. It would be incredible if you could convert them into podcasts for those of us who might be passively listening! Thanks :)
Thank you for your very kind words! We aim to continue to create more content about this amazing city and its people. A great suggestion regarding the Podcast!
Bedankt, Thanks for the video..
Brilliant! This is a wonderful informative and insightful discussion. Thank you!
Thank you!
Very interesting - thank you!
Fascinating - This is something I have been looking for for a long time! I find Amsterdam such a fascinating city so to be able to understand some of the historical reasons why it is like this has really tied everything together! Thank you.
Thank you, Benny! We're glad you enjoyed it.
Really enjoyed listening to this overview of Amsterdam history and ideas over a couple of evenings - would love to see more. Thank you very much! :)
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
By far the best, most precise story about Amsterdam Ive ever seen. Great work! Do you have a book with these ideas?
Thank you for the very kind words. No book yet!
Great lecture. Thx :)
Subbed 👍 very interesting information. I love the coffee shop culture, I would love to hear your detailed history about the coffee shop culture. How the 1st one started etc, the laws and anything else you can tell would be excellent. Keep up the good work mate
Fascinating, educational, and very well written/narrated
im so proud
Great work😊
Dank u wel.
Well that was interesting, thank you
Excellent, Thank you. It would be interesting if you did a video showing more buildings and their history like you did here.
Thank you! You must have read our minds. Make sure to subscribe to the channel as we hope to begin a 'Buildings of Amsterdam' series very soon!
Amsterdam is heaven 😂
Damm it!
Great video, informative and easy to follow along to. How do you spell the word for something thats illegal but a blind eye is turned. To "look through your fingers at whats happening"
Thanks for the kind comments, Aaron. The word your after is spelled "Gedogen".
@@LookUpAmsterdam Thank you.
@@MrMarshman90 It also refers to a Dutch proverb "Iets door de vingers zien" (To see something through the fingers) = gedogen.
@@ronaldderooij1774 Dank je.
@@ronaldderooij1774 I may sound stupid asking this but what does it mean to see through your fingers mean? Is it to ignore or turn the blind eye to something?
In Manhattan French were there before Dutch, it used to be called "La Nouvelle Angoulême"
Yes, the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed through there on behalf of the French and named it La Nouvelle Angoulême in honor of King of France, Francis I, before he then moved on. Jacques Habert presented this thesis in his 1950 paper "When New York Was Called Angoulême" which apparently caused quite a stir.
The French colonization of North America generally focused around the St. Lawrence river and Mississippi River. Unlike their English counterparts, the French used their territory more as outposts for trading than for colonization.
It would certainly be fair to say that the French had contact with the Dutch as the two powers’ territories touched in upper New York, but there doesnt appear to be anything to indicate a desire colonize New York by the French. The intent of many voyages of this era was to find the fabled North-West passage or a shorter way to China.
More about can be found in the documentary "What If New York Was Called Angoulême?" directed by Marie-France Brière.
@@LookUpAmsterdam Well, there were ceratinly very sad stories of Dutch colonizers being murdered on a regular basis by the French in upstate New York. I believe one such incident is even commemorated up to this day in some town in Albany or New York. I don't remember.
@@ronaldderooij1774 Yes, I think you may be referring to the "Schenectady Massacre". This was an attack made in 1690 by the French against an unguarded villiage in present day Albany. By this stage the English had already taken control of New Amsterdam. This happened in 1664 where it was renamed "New York".
@@LookUpAmsterdam Yes, indeed, thanks!
i just want to know the way of thinking of European ......... especialy Netherland Kingdom ......... thank you .
Good content, but the sound quality is quite poor.
Thanks for the comment. This was recorded live in our shop/gallery space which has very tall ceilings and is acoustically a bit of a challenge. We hope it was still understandable and informative.
Hmm.. Interesting point of view, but if you stood on the colonized side. It's all make sense where they got so rich and able to build so much because hundreds of years colonizing Indonesia and monopolized trading route in SEA.
You bare a striking resemblance to a character in Plebs 🤔
The WW2 part was unnecessarily ong.
The video is on to something with the paradox and the fine line between looking through ones fingers and hypocrisy, but it's marred by many errors, typical anglocentric misconceptions and projections, and the focus on Amsterdam gives the false impression it always led the way.
Thanks for the comment. If you're aware of any factual errors let us know and we'll try to make a correction in these comments. It's always possible we got something wrong. Great point about Anglocentrism and in world historical terms it certainly is Anglocentric. We ended up scripting in an Anglocentric way because for this video we were trying to capture something of the impact of the city on intellectual history and it was in the English speaking world that the largest legacy was felt. Which areas of Amsterdam's historical legacy would you appreciate us covering in future?
@@LookUpAmsterdam Sorry a bit late but I missed that reply but good sports and fair is fair.
- The freedom of conscience was codified by the rebels in the Union of Utrecht of 1579, the de facto constitution of what was to become the Dutch Republic and this freedom of conscience in how to serve god made the King of Spain the tyrant that had no longer to be recognized by the people in the DOI from 1581. This made things like congregation a matter of public order up to the cities to be regulated. Amsterdam only joined the rebels in 1578 as one the latest so it's not like religious tolerance originated there and also many English reliigious refugees didn't go to Amsterdam either but to other cities, many more tolerant.
Most of the growth of Amsterdam came from the rest of the Dutch Republic, urbanization rather than migration, and from the migration the vast majority came from the Southern Netherlands after it was (re)taken by Spain. Ship technology had been imported while sitll part of Spanish Empire, knowledge about navigating the East was the product of espionage and the Dutch Republic dominating European trade was the result of the specialized merchant ship with only just enough guns to fend off pirates instead of the Spanish, Portuguese and British warships with cargo capacity, and because a Dutch farmer invented the wind powered sawmill in 1592, allowing the Dutch to build ships 30 times faster than the others.
A lot of things came together in Amsterdam but a lot had already been brewing during the Northern renaissance in all of the Low Lands, not just the Norhtern Dutch Republic part. There was the humanism of Erasmus and Coorrnhert (rehabilitation of criminals), there were civil rights far more extensive than the Magna Charta and for commoners too, who were much more equal because money was taking the place of nobility and land, while thanks to land reclamation, there were many land owning peasants. Already in the 1500's the Low Lands were probably the most modern people of Europe with an anti authoritarian tradition.
There already were exchanges, insurances and other financial products, there already was trust in paper. The VOC triggered the stock exchange because it started as a nationalistic war entreprise with the initial shares sold to lots of ordinary people all over the country, with chambers in several cities. The initial idea of the VOC was to kick some Portuguese ass and bring back mainly silk to finance it. But the VOC saw more possibilities and wanted to reinvest and grow rather than pay the dividend it was obliged too, it only started paying dividend after 3 decades, in 1631. Of course the carpenters and the maids who had put their savings into the VOC couldn't wait for that and thanks to the exchange, they could cash in and people wealthy enough to play the long term game bought those shares. And still, a stock exchange has no other function than allow companies to grow rather than pay up dividend.
3.27 That's actually not an example of slavery, everybody in the Dutch Republic was free by law. Appearently the dark skinned man is with an Ottoman or Persian merchant, and if no one told him his was free the servant would return to slave status when back on the ship, but technically he can't have been a slave and if he'd refused to serve there would be no possible legal action or enforcement. But there were also many blacks and POC living in Amsterdam, just like any other. Rembrandt had black neighbours in the Jodenbreestraat, most likely they a few modelled for him. The blacks were usually men, sailors of freed slaves from capture Spanish ship made into sailors and married white women.
The dominant Dutch brand of Protestantism saw all people as children of god and slavery as something the evil catholics did. The VOC took a lot of liberties anyway and sneaked in some slavery or local forms of servitude right away, but the WIC started out much more idealistic. That led to Manhatten being bought and not taken, and New Amsterdam founded without slavery, and becoming New York with free, land owning blacks. Stuyvesant was not a very enlightened man but he made sure the records of their posessions and status were transferred orderly to the English. That went all tits up in a matter of decades, a biblical excuse for entering the slavetrade had to be found, but this is another manifestion of the Dutch looking the other way when something is not up to their standards, and developping double standards and hypocrisy. It's much older than the 1800's Dutch Indies and also related to the 17th century idea that we carved out our own little Garden of Eden out of the North Sea here in a big bad world we only want to make money off, but not conquer and rule.
The foundations of New Amsterdam/New York with it's multiculturalism, religious tolerance and upward social moblity were already layed befor Locke could read and write. His influence on the USA is throught the plot he was part of. He was a philosopher working and living in the Netherlands and helped with the glorious invasion of England in 1688. He even accompanied William's wife to London. It's through the Bill of Rights and the parliamentary monarchy Stadtholder Willem III founded Locke influenced the USA. But basically it just made Britain much more like the Dutch Republic, where Locke's ideas had little influence on because it was already decadent.
I'm actually feel a bit offended by the 'lack of heroism' concerning the jews of Amsterdam. Not because there was sufficient heroism, but by the rather gratuitious judgement that is obviously not fully though through. The Amsterdammers went on strike to change the Nazi's mind, which was both courageous and terribly naive. But I understand if you were a tram driver, you would have refused, get tortured and killed while knowing it wouldn't change anything? Like a Tibetan monk setting fire to himself?
As the people from a counry that was under Nazi occupation and not from one that knew jews were gassed, told that on the radio and did nothing about it, we are actually raised with the question what one would have done and could have done. You mention Yad Vashem and when it comes to saving jews Yad Vashem there are far more Dutch hero's per than anywhere else in occupied Europe.
But most of them are in the rural area's. And you only have to look at Anne Frank's hiding place to get an idea what kind of exceptional house it took to hide one family, and how many people it took risking their lives and having to trust eachother to get someone out of Amsterdam into a hiding place in the country side, where often whole villages had to pretend those dark haired children were from one the families. That's not possible in the context of a big city, with so many jews, and on top that there was direct SS government, not indirect and not the Wehrmacht, having access to very detailed civic records, a resistance having to start up from nothing while already occupied, badly organized and naive, just like the jews themselves were equally naive, passive and collaborating mostly, from a sense of safety build up over 4 centuries. My grandparents were from the country side and had people in hiding, and they were and I am very careful about judging people in the very different circumstances of Amsterdam.
Of course there was cowardice, looking the other way and collaboration. But without not even a beginning of understanding the dilemma's people had to deal with, as well as logistical mountains to climb and ultimate prices to pay, the requirements to cast a judgement like that aren't met, not even close.
@@DenUitvreter Yes we totally agree that much of what happened in Amsterdam is owed to the other parts of the Low Countries too. In counterfactual terms a reasonable assertion to make for example is that 'it might have been Antwerp' when it comes to many of the devlopments mentioned. Antwerp was the leader of many of areas and the involvement of Spain which took much of what Antwerp had developed to Amsterdam. One of our favourite books here in the store is "The Edge of the World" which gives a good account too of the interplay between all the North Sea trading towns and cities in the creation of 'modernism'. No one city was responsible. Likewise as you point out the VOC was clearly not only an Amsterdam enterprise, although the dominance of Amsterdam representation among the Heeren XVII proved the reality of Amsterdam's dominant role. In terms of slavery yes you're right someone who stepped on to land in Amsterdam should've become automatically free, we talk about the lives of these free people many of whom lived on the Jodenbreestraat on our slavery tour. (We've taken picture though as an imaginative symbolic representation of trade rather than a literal scene.) In terms of slavery in New Amsterdam the picture is complicated - we've used in part "Island at the Centre of the World' by Russel Shorto for our research although this blog also lists slavery's existence in New Amsterdam before the British and how there were both 'free Africans' and slaves in this era. www.womenhistoryblog.com/2008/02/slavery-in-new-amsterdam.html On John Locke you are right to stress his influence comes through the Bill of Rights in England and his other writings such as Two Treatise of Government our point is that he formulated these ideas in part whilst living in Amsterdam and being part of the salon culture here. If we gave the impression it was through New Amsterdam that those ideas came that's our fault.
@@DenUitvreter On the issue of resistance one of our recent instagram posts mentioned the strike on behalf of Jewish people in Amsterdam was the first of its kind in occupied Europe. Indeed an act of extreme bravery and a way we wish we'd mentioned Amsterdam led the way. Likewise there were many individual heroes, some of which we mentioned such as the events at the Hollandse Schouwburg. The question we tried to pose in the video was why were the numbers of those deported from the Netherlands among the highest of occupied Europe and why did the Nazi occupiers report that part of this success was because of the comparative Dutch willingness to co-operate and efficient systems of co-operation and why did this lead to so much post war regret. Much of our commentary on this part comes from Geert Mak's history of Amsterdam where he notes the greater ease found by the resistance in hiding English pilots than Jewish people. Mak's strong conclusion which we didn't fully endorse but perhaps hinted towards is that 'despite the heroic work of some individuals, no form of resistance was such an abject failure as that against the deportation of the Jews'. Our question is what lay within the culture, politics or worldview that made this so.
A comparison here might be with Denmark where they were aided by the actions of the Royal Family in resisting or Bulgaria where the Orthodox Church was vital in the process of seeing comparatively low numbers of Jewish people deported. Our aim is not to criticise individuals but to point out that power structures and ways of viewing the world have an impact.
This is a question we pose not as critics of Amsterdam but because it was a question that was asked by Amsterdammers of themselves in the 1950s and 1960s and the answers they arrived at formed part of their desire to be counter cultural. It is also a question that was posed by Amsterdammers during the war - in the resistance museum in Amsterdam there is an interesting exhibition area discussing how the Church leaders changed to active resistance due in part to a correspondence with theologian Karl Barth, their change being not due to any more or less bravery but due to seeing Nazism and resistance in different philosophical terms before and after the correspondence.
This video contains twisted facts, untruths, lies and misinformation! at least the first 40 minutes. Couldn't watch any more, because I was disgusted by this video.
Sorry to hear it wasn't to your liking. In the areas where you believe we made factual mistakes please let us know so we can make a statement of correction on this timeline. We're also happy to share references to our sources of information on any of the parts of the video. Many of the facts come from the books we sell in the store.