In colonial adventures and colonizing dreams, if the 1500s belonged to the Spanish and Portugese then the 1600s were handsomely won by the English, the French and the Dutch.
The Dutch entered the fray around the same time as the other two and like the other two fanned out east and west. To the east they sailed around the Cape of Good Hope laying the foundation for the future Afrikaners of South Africa, their next stop was Ceylon which they wrested from the hapless Portugese who the Dutch now followed to the priceless spice fields of modern day Java and took over that spice infested paradise.
Bathed in pomp, splendour and riches they carried the fragrances of nutmeg, cloves, pepper and cinnamon to the shores of Europe.
A chain of Dutch dots eastward – Cape Town, Ceylon and Indonesia. Leaving behind a heritage of names and signs – Afrikaners and Boers and the consequent history of South Africa, the wealthy burghers in Colombo; even today the Sri Lankan cricket team has a Van Dort and the literary fraternity a booker prize winning writer, Michael Ondaatje.
Westward their fate was impoverished and paltry. Attempting to lay the foundations of a New Netherlands, they just about scraped together the trading outpost of New Amsterdam which they let go of impotently after forty years of rule, to the English who promptly renamed it New York in 1664.
But still when I sat peacefully chugging in a NJ Transit train from Short Hills, New Jersey (where my brother lives) to New York; I passed by stations named Orange and South Orange, smattered remnants of Holland. Getting off at Penn station in New York and roaming the megalopolis there were Dutch remnants everywhere. The Bowery in downtown Manhattan, from the Dutch Bouwerij or farm; in fact the place used to be a stretch of road leading to the last Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant’s farm. Then, of course was the Dutch village of Breukelen – you guessed it – today’s buzzing borough of Brooklyn. The Dutch named Haarlem river is the name of today’s famous African-American area of Harlem. And, of course, Wall Street, the street which earlier had a strong Dutch wall built across the Island to protect the Dutch traders.
Last but not least, from that Dutch stock came a family whose descendants had such a role to play in shaping America’s history – the Roosevelts!
They were a strict Calvinist bunch these Dutchmen. Iron discipline, racism and a belief in divine destiny were marked characteristics in them, even more than the Spaniards and Portugese who mixed merrily with local tribes in their colonies in South and Central America leaving us millions of mixed Aztec, Inca, Spanish hybrids and stunning Brazilian mullatoes. The Dutch too have left us their Cape Coloureds, who now form the majority population in the Western Cape province in South Africa, but they abhorred their half-caste progeny. They kicked them out of their long established homes in Cape Town during the apartheid era and treated them only marginally better than the blacks.
So today if a commentator during a Liverpool football club match talks about the fanatical home support the club get from the Kop (a section of the stadium so named due to its resemblance to the steep Spion Kop literally meaning spy’s hill in Afrikaans, a site where the English were embarrassed by the rustic Boers in the second Anglo-Boer war) or you come across a Sri Lankan batsman with the surname Van Dort or look at a South African map and skim through town names like Pietermaritzburg or Bloemfontein; if you hear Afrikaans spoken at the Cape Town airport or get a call from your boss (an Americanisation of the Dutch ‘baas’) you know that this famous and infamous race has tossed you some souvenirs from its four hundred year old colonial history.
The Dutch entered the fray around the same time as the other two and like the other two fanned out east and west. To the east they sailed around the Cape of Good Hope laying the foundation for the future Afrikaners of South Africa, their next stop was Ceylon which they wrested from the hapless Portugese who the Dutch now followed to the priceless spice fields of modern day Java and took over that spice infested paradise.
Bathed in pomp, splendour and riches they carried the fragrances of nutmeg, cloves, pepper and cinnamon to the shores of Europe.
A chain of Dutch dots eastward – Cape Town, Ceylon and Indonesia. Leaving behind a heritage of names and signs – Afrikaners and Boers and the consequent history of South Africa, the wealthy burghers in Colombo; even today the Sri Lankan cricket team has a Van Dort and the literary fraternity a booker prize winning writer, Michael Ondaatje.
Westward their fate was impoverished and paltry. Attempting to lay the foundations of a New Netherlands, they just about scraped together the trading outpost of New Amsterdam which they let go of impotently after forty years of rule, to the English who promptly renamed it New York in 1664.
But still when I sat peacefully chugging in a NJ Transit train from Short Hills, New Jersey (where my brother lives) to New York; I passed by stations named Orange and South Orange, smattered remnants of Holland. Getting off at Penn station in New York and roaming the megalopolis there were Dutch remnants everywhere. The Bowery in downtown Manhattan, from the Dutch Bouwerij or farm; in fact the place used to be a stretch of road leading to the last Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant’s farm. Then, of course was the Dutch village of Breukelen – you guessed it – today’s buzzing borough of Brooklyn. The Dutch named Haarlem river is the name of today’s famous African-American area of Harlem. And, of course, Wall Street, the street which earlier had a strong Dutch wall built across the Island to protect the Dutch traders.
Last but not least, from that Dutch stock came a family whose descendants had such a role to play in shaping America’s history – the Roosevelts!
They were a strict Calvinist bunch these Dutchmen. Iron discipline, racism and a belief in divine destiny were marked characteristics in them, even more than the Spaniards and Portugese who mixed merrily with local tribes in their colonies in South and Central America leaving us millions of mixed Aztec, Inca, Spanish hybrids and stunning Brazilian mullatoes. The Dutch too have left us their Cape Coloureds, who now form the majority population in the Western Cape province in South Africa, but they abhorred their half-caste progeny. They kicked them out of their long established homes in Cape Town during the apartheid era and treated them only marginally better than the blacks.
So today if a commentator during a Liverpool football club match talks about the fanatical home support the club get from the Kop (a section of the stadium so named due to its resemblance to the steep Spion Kop literally meaning spy’s hill in Afrikaans, a site where the English were embarrassed by the rustic Boers in the second Anglo-Boer war) or you come across a Sri Lankan batsman with the surname Van Dort or look at a South African map and skim through town names like Pietermaritzburg or Bloemfontein; if you hear Afrikaans spoken at the Cape Town airport or get a call from your boss (an Americanisation of the Dutch ‘baas’) you know that this famous and infamous race has tossed you some souvenirs from its four hundred year old colonial history.
1 comment:
Keep up the good work.
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