Dutch people

“ The Dutch are a hard-working lot. They get up earlier than the people of any other country I have seen in Europe. And as the entire family works, from the grandmother to the dog, they accumulate wealth as a nation and as individuals. The ordinary dwelling is part of the store, the shop, the barn or the windmill, so that the women-folks can do their part of the labor and not lose much time going back and forth. Whenever the women are not attending to the farm or the shop they are scrubbing. The smell of good strong soap is one of the real Dutch landmarks as much as a windmill or a canal. ”

“ It is the rarest thing in the world to meet with a gentleman in Holland. The Dutch are equally devoid of that acquired good breeding which distinguishes the well educated English, and that native politeness and winning courtesy which is so irresistibly engaging among the French, and even the Belgic people. ”

“ The Netherlands Become an Independent Country.—Who were these Dutch, or Hollanders? How came they to wrest from Spain and Portugal a colonial empire, which they hold to-day without loss of prosperity or evidence of decline? In the north of Europe, facing the North Sea, is a low, rich land, intersected by rivers and washed far into its interior by the tides, known as Holland, the Low Countries, or the Netherlands. Its people have ever been famed for their industry and hardihood. ”

“ The Dutch are still notorious for their partiality to them, and continue to pay higher prices for them than any other people. As the rich Englishman boasts of his fine race-horses or his old pictures, so does the wealthy Dutchman vaunt him of his tulips. ”

“ Its trade, its wealth, and its prosperity, were gradually transferred to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the towns of Holland and Zealand; and the growth of Dutch commerce attained its proud maturity in the establishment of the India Company in 1596, the effects of which we shall have hereafter more particularly to dwell on.
The exciting and romantic enterprises of the Portuguese and Spanish navigators in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries roused all the ardor of other nations for those distant adventures; and the people of the Netherlands were early influenced by the general spirit of Europe. ”

“ The men are of medium stature, in no special degree distinguished from other people in Europe and America. The women are very domestic, and very cleanly in their persons and in their dwellings. The Dutch people are prudent, economical, beforehanded.
"In the brief sketch I gave you at Antwerp of the history of the Netherlands, that of Holland was included up to the period of the murder of the Prince of Orange, which occurred in 1584, while he was Stadtholder of the Seven United Provinces. At his death, his son, Prince Maurice, was elected Stadtholder in his father's place. ”

“ Of the white races in the Colony the French element has been completely absorbed in the Dutch. They and the German settlers are mainly pastoral people. The Dutch, who have retained in a debased form their own language, also engage largely in agriculture and viticulture. Of fine physique and hardy constitution, they are of strongly independent character; patriarchal in their family life; shrewd, slim and courageous; in religion Protestants of a somewhat austere type. Education is somewhat neglected by them, and the percentage of illiteracy among adults is high. ”

“ They can see over the heads of the tallest. It is strange to see those little bodies high in the air, carried about on mysterious legs. They have such a resolute look on their round faces, what wonder that nervous old gentlemen with tender feet wince and tremble while the long-legged little monsters stride past them.
You will read in certain books that the Dutch are a quiet people--so they are generally. ”

“ They are all here as advertised, and they color the lives of the people as they do the landscape of the country. To the eye they are artistic and beautiful, but in practice they are common, plain necessities, and in these signs the Dutch have conquered. ”

“ This feeling must be corrected by a study of history, and by recognizing that there are no symptoms of deterioration in the sturdy qualities of the Dutch people. Physically and morally the Netherlanders of to-day are the equals of their forefathers, but the conditions of their national life, the fortunate circumstances that have so long made them unacquainted with the terrible ordeals of war, have diverted their thoughts from a bellicose policy, and have confirmed them in their peaceful leanings. ”

“ Finally that most awful and most despondent of all sentimental meditations, that "we have been a great country once," that "we have had our time," has begun to make place for the conviction that at this very moment no other nation of such a small area and insignificant number of people is capable of performing such valuable service in so many fields of human endeavour as is the modern Dutch nation. ”

“ The fact is, the action of the Dutch Republic was the first appeal which the world has read on the duties of rulers to their people. Men have revolted a thousand times against tyranny and misgovernment, sometimes successfully, more frequently to be crushed into more hopeless servitude. The Dutch were the first to justify their action by an appeal to the first principles of justice. They were the first to assert at human institutions, and human allegiance to governments are to be interpreted and maintained by their manifest utility. ”

“ The Dutchesses Rotterdam, July 24.
The secret of the success of the Dutch is no secret at all. Everybody works, not excepting father, grandfather and grandmother. I suppose this habit began with the unceasing fight against the sea, the building of the dikes, the pumping out of the water, and the construction of a soil. It has continued until there is no other people more persistently industrious. They rise early and get busy. ”

“ Free toleration is allowed to all religious sects. Protestants are largely in the majority, the proportion being as twenty to twelve. Education is generally diffused among the people. In 1863 the revenue of the Netherlands amounted to forty-one millions of dollars. The Dutch have extensive colonial possessions in the East and West Indies, and on the west coast of Africa. The regular home army contains fifty-nine thousand officers and men. ”

“ But when the war was all over, the whole province of the New Netherlands was given up to the English. New Amsterdam's name was changed to New York (1664) , and Holland never again claimed any part of our country. But the Dutch settlers continued to occupy their farms, and there are many people now in America who proudly claim descent from the early settlers of the New Netherlands. Interesting stories are told about the Dutch settlers, the most famous of all being Washington Irving's tales of Sleepy Hollow and of Rip Van Winkle. ”

“ Now the English who had come to Holland, having left their farms and made new homes in a Dutch city, found themselves without a way to make a living. The Dutch neighbors all around them were great workers. They worked steadily, and they worked hard. The men all had some business or trade to keep them busy. The women were fine housekeepers and kept their houses clean and neat as a pin. They were all careful and saving, and had ways of using many things which some people throw away as useless. ”

“ The influence of our Dutch ancestors can still be seen not only in New York's Hudson River Valley but also in Pennsylvania along the Schuylkill River and in communities like Holland, Michigan, where many people trace their roots to settlers from The Netherlands. Generations of Dutch immigrants have enriched the United States with the unique customs and traditions of their ancestral homeland—a country that has given the world great artists, celebrated philosophers, and leaders of international business. ”

“ She is rather tall. Dutch men and women seem to have all sizes equally distributed amongst them; it cannot be said that they are a short people, like the French and the Belgians, nor can the indication of middle size be so rightly applied to them as to their German neighbours, whereas the taller Anglo-Saxons can frequently find their match in the Netherlands.
The room in which we are seated is furnished in so-called 'old Dutch style.' My friend and his wife have collected fine old wainscots, sideboards and cupboards of richly carved oak in Friesland and in the Flemish parts of Belgium. ”

“ The inhabitants are generally Dutch. The houses are for the most part of wood, but they are of a curious fashion, having very heavy cornices, with abundance of queer ornaments. Nothing can present a stronger contrast than do the people in these streets to those of New England. In the latter place, there is great uniformity; in the former, all is variety. Here you may see the old Dutch planters, with their huge trowsers and broad-brimmed hats; sailors from all countries; soldiers, Jews, Indians and Negroes. ”

“ Whatever may be said of Dutch colonialism in the past, a new era is dawning, and the present rulers recognize that their administration must be measured by the improvement in the people rather than by the profits drained from the land by Europeans. ”

“ “I don’t know why—there are no brick gables,” said Mrs. Prest, “but this corner has seemed to me before more Dutch than Italian, more like Amsterdam than like Venice. It’s perversely clean, for reasons of its own; and though you can pass on foot scarcely anyone ever thinks of doing so. It has the air of a Protestant Sunday. Perhaps the people are afraid of the Misses Bordereau. I daresay they have the reputation of witches.” ”

“ They became, like Switzerland, and unlike Poland and Hungary, a neutral region, which it was for the interest of Europe at large to let alone. None cared to meddle with them; and, on the other hand, they had native virtue and force enough to resist being absorbed into other peoples; the character of the Dutch is as distinct to-day as ever it had been. Their language, their literature, their art, and their personal traits, are unimpaired. They are, in their own degree, remarkably prosperous and comfortable; and they have the good sense to be content with their condition. ”

“ Human enterprise has reclaimed and guards it, and has converted the whole into one of the most productive regions in Europe. Not only has it turned an expanse of foggy, unwholesome fens into a vast model farm, but it has built prosperous cities, and filled them with the products of art and civilization. The Dutch race has stretched its hands everywhere, and the earth is full of evidences of its courage and foresight. ”

“ Here in Java the Dutch have been longer settled than the English in India; they more often remain in the island, and the effect of course is more marked from generation to generation. The Dutchman is a placid, easy-going creature, even in his native Holland, except when roused by some great crisis, like a Spanish invasion, and then he fights with a courage which has given him a proud name in history. But ordinarily he is of a calm and even temper, and likes to sit quietly and survey his broad acres, and smoke his pipe in blissful content with himself and all the world beside. ”

“ In short, one-third of the crowd seemed to have stepped bodily from a collection of Dutch paintings.
Everywhere could be seen tall women, and stumpy men, lively faced girls, and youths whose expression never changed from sunrise to sunset.
There seemed to be at least one specimen from every known town in Holland. There were Utrecht water bearers, Gouda cheese makers, Delft pottery-men, Schiedam distillers, Amsterdam diamond-cutters, Rotterdam merchants, dried up herring-packers, and two sleepy-eyed shepherds from Texel. Every man of them had his pipe and tobacco-pouch. ”

“ England fills the world and civilises the world with her redundant population, and all her colonies flourish, and remind you of a swarm of bees which have just left the old hive and are busy in providing for themselves. The Dutch colonies are not what you can call thriving; they have not the bustle, the enterprise, and activity which our colonies possess. The Dutch have never conciliated the natives, and obtained their goodwill; they have invariably resorted to violence, and to a disregard of justice. ”

“ From a few existing fragments—two incantations from the 8th century, a version of the Psalms from the 9th century, and several charters—a supposed Old Dutch language has been recognized; but Dutch literature actually commences in the 13th century, as Middle Dutch, the creation of the first national movement in Brabant, Flanders, Holland and Zealand.
From the wreck of Frankish anarchy no genuine folk-tales of Dutch antiquity have come down to us, and scarcely any echoes of German myth. On the other hand, the sagas of Charlemagne and Arthur appear immediately in Middle Dutch forms. ”

“ Of some things the American traveller is to-day constantly convinced: that there is less intellectual veneer in Holland than in any other country in Europe; that there is more solid and abiding culture of the very highest kind, and that the modern Dutch family represents a repose of mind, a simplicity of living, and a contented happiness with life in general that we, as a nation, might well envy. ”

“ While the inhabitants of this island were embroiled among themselves, the power of France and Holland was every day increasing. The Dutch had overcome the difficulties of their infant commonwealth; and, as they still retained their vigour and industry, from rich grew continually richer, and from powerful more powerful. They extended their traffick, and had not yet admitted luxury; so that they had the means and the will to accumulate wealth, without any incitement to spend it. ”