History of the Netherlands
The incredible journey of the world’s most influential swamp and those who call it home. Beginning at the end of the last ice age and trekking all the way through to the modern era, together we step through the centuries and meet some of the cast of characters who fashioned and forged a boggy marshland into a vibrant mercantile society and then further into a sea-trotting global super-power before becoming the centre for modern day liberalism.
Episodes
June 3, 2024 • 46 mins
They both lived during the Dutch Golden Age, grew up in Leiden, were taught by the same painter, shared a studio, received all the praise, and painted the rulers of their time. And yet, Jan Lievens is not as famous today as his friend Rembrandt.
In this episode of The Low Countries Radio, we reconstruct the lives and works of these two giants of art, showing how trends and the zeitgeist can drive or hinder an artist's career, but h...
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January 23, 2024 • 66 mins
In the 1440s a goldsmith from Mainz called Johannes Gutenberg developed a movable type printing press which catalysed the European printing revolution. It heralded a technological leap in communication tools which had far reaching consequences for the societies of the Low Countries, particularly in urban centres where print shops were established. A large market for books already existed in the Low Countries, in no small part becau...
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December 27, 2023 • 38 mins
We meet Simon Gronowski, a 92 year old jazz pianist, lawyer and Holocaust survivor. At the age of eleven, Simon was locked in a cattle wagon with his mother and around 50 other people after a month’s imprisonment at the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen for the crime of being Jewish. The train they had been herded onto was bound for the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the 20th such mass deportation of Jews from Belgium. But thi...
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November 20, 2023 • 73 mins
We chat with author and academic Christine Kooi, whose book Reformation in the Low Countries 1500-1620 was released last year by Cambridge University Press. As its title suggests the book encompasses a vast and tumultuous period which served to greatly shape the modern nations of Belgium and the Netherlands. It is a sweeping and extremely useful narrative and we are lucky enough today to have Christine join us online from her home ...
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October 10, 2023 • 52 mins
We dig up the bulbs of the past, trim the stems of historical myth and hopefully emerge with a lustrous vase of understanding as to where the tulip came from, how it became infectiously vogue in the Dutch Republic and what place it holds in modern calculations of economics.
Do you want to know more about Flemish and Dutch history and culture? Visit www.the-low-countries.com.
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September 18, 2023 • 26 mins
Long time listeners will be aware that, alongside being passionate about the history of our boggy swamp, we also carry a deep love for the game of cricket. The venn-diagram intersection between those two things can often leave a lot to be desired. However, somehow Julian Smith, our intrepid co-creator, producer and frequent voice of excitement in the background, managed to find a small but wondrous plot of podcasting turf from whic...
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September 4, 2023 • 58 mins
At the end of episode 49, we said that we were going to move away from the political part of the story of the History of the Netherlands for a while to instead focus on some of the other important societal developments that were happening concurrently at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries. To be honest, perhaps it is because we have taken quite a long break, or maybe because of the change of direction we want t...
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June 19, 2023 • 73 mins
Just as much as Dutch and Flemish culture today have been defined by their ability to seek consensus through compromise, so too have they defined by a willingness to angrily, and often violently, take to the streets in order to be heard. In this episode of The Low Countries Radio we will take a look at some of the major and minor protest movements that have occurred across the Low Countries which have helped shape them into the pla...
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April 11, 2023 • 56 mins
What do black chickens have to do with witchcraft? Why were pigs not allowed to walk the streets freely in the Middle Ages? And should we welcome the return of the wolf or not? You'll hear the answers in this podcast on the history of animals in the Low Countries.
We have long imposed our personal whims on other animals. We use them for labour or sport. We give them symbolic meaning, assigning them divine significance and power. Or...
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February 20, 2023 • 63 mins
When the Netherlands and Belgium did not exist, people spoke of the Low Countries when referring to the area around the river deltas. Water has always played an essential role in the history of that region.
For centuries, living on these waterlogged lands provided the Dutch and the Flemings with opportunities for trade, urbanisation, agriculture and much more. But it also meant that they lived under the constant threat of devastati...
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February 6, 2023 • 66 mins
The double marriage between the Habsburg and Spanish dynasties organised in the creation of the Holy League in 1495 was part of a larger plan driven by the Spanish monarchs to create a general European-wide alliance against the French. To further these aims, Ferdinand and Isabella also arranged for their other children to marry into the Portuguese and English royal families as well. Such good family planning, however, was not to yi...
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January 23, 2023 • 55 mins
When French king Charles VIII laid claims to the Kingdom of Naples and invaded Italy in September, 1494, an anti-French coalition called the League of Venice was formed, with the aim of kicking France out of the Italian peninsula. “Hang on a second, what does this have to do with the Netherlands?”, I hear you ask. Bear with me here. The League of Venice included a bunch of Italian city-states and regional powers, including the Pope...
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January 9, 2023 • 50 mins
When Philip the Handsome came of age and took over direct rule of the previously Burgundian, now Habsburg, territories of the Low Countries in September, 1494, his accession marked the first time since the death of Charles the Bold in 1477 that a native and natural born male prince had filled that position. The last twenty odd years of crises had bled his lands and peoples dry physically, mentally and financially. Across the board ...
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November 21, 2022 • 58 mins
Throughout the history of the Low Countries, people from this part of the world have been pioneers in almost every sense of the word. Whether by seeking out and charting far away lands during the European Age of Exploration, or in advancements made in science, technology and engineering, or through their approach to social issues such as drugs or euthanasia, the inhabitants of the Low Countries have been breaking new ground almost ...
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October 24, 2022 • 63 mins
In March 1492, the town burghers and knights of Guelders hailed Charles of Egmont as their duke, beginning a four decade period of bitter, contested conflict with the Habsburg Burgundian state. That’s right, just as the revolts in Flanders came to an end with the surrender of Sluis, the football of violent defiance was handballed from Flanders to Guelders. But across most of the Low Countries, a period of relative calm would ensue,...
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September 19, 2022 • 69 mins
We flip through the pages of comic history in the Low Countries; from the use of illustrated prints from as early as the 15th century to the position of comic studios in Belgium and the Netherlands during the Second World War. You’ll hear about some titles that you may never have heard of, as well as many that you smurf. While we peruse the panels of printed production from the Low Countries, we’ll see how the ninth art has develop...
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August 1, 2022 • 51 mins
We get out the drawing board, put on a hard hat and clamber up a scaffold of creative construction, so that we may cast our view on a few of the most striking, unique or just plain weird buildings that can be found in Belgium and the Netherlands and explore some of the schools of thought that have come to influence architecture in our beloved little swamp.
Do you want to know more about Flemish and Dutch history and culture? Visit...
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July 25, 2022 • 49 mins
What was that crazy story that we just told? How much of it really happened? What does it all mean for our understanding of rebellion and resistance, and for how we perceive the role of defiance in events that have come before us? We explore all of this in the final episode of our series: The Unfortunate Voyage of the Batavia.
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July 22, 2022 • 61 mins
The VOC is back! Three and a half months after Commander Pelsaert abandoned everybody to a life a brutality and thirst, finally those who have managed to survived may just be rescued. But who of the mutineers and the defenders will be able to tell their story first? How will the VOC react to the utter madness that has taken place on these islands? This episode tackles all this and more.
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July 18, 2022 • 43 mins
In the history of European military aggression in Australia, this is where it all began. Of the people that remain alive following the doomed voyage of the Batavia, not to mention the shipwreck and then the genocide that followed, they now have to face a civil war.
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