On This Day in History: March 13

The Battle of Oosterweel

AUDIO VERSION HERE

The Dutch are confusing. The country is called the Netherlands, but often referred to as Holland. The people are Dutch. In some parts, the Dutch language is also called Flemish. Jesus Christ. If I were Spain, I’d want to kick their asses too.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: March 13, 1567--

History has many examples of the [pick X number] Years’ War. “Hundred” had Joan of Arc. “Seven” was about colonial rivalries. “Thirty” had up to eight million dead in the name of the right way to pray to Jesus. The Eighty Years’ War, however, is often overlooked. It’s also known as the Dutch War of Independence. So fucking what? Did they fight over windmills? The fucking what is that it saw the decline of one powerful empire and the rise of another that embraced the shit out of capitalism to screw over a big chunk of the world, creating negative ripples of colonial fuckery across the centuries. It all began in a town called Oosterweel.

In the 16^th century, the area known as the Netherlands-Holland-Clogland was ruled by Spain. The Dutch were getting pissy about the lack of self-rule, the taxes imposed by the Spanish, and also that they preferred that new Protestant thing and the Spaniards were all we’d really prefer if you did the Catholicism thing.

To display their anger, Protestant mobs across the Netherlands began to destroy Catholic art. Sixteenth-century Spanish Catholics weren’t so tolerant of that sort of thing and launched a surprise attack on the rebels on March 13, 1567 at Oosterweel in the Antwerp province. And they kicked Dutch ass. It was a fucking slaughter.

But the Dutch wouldn’t give up. The secret to their victory? Fucking finance it. Capitalism was becoming more of a thing, so the Dutch got loans to hire mercenary armies and build fleets. And they were real good customers. Their credit-purchased ships got control of valuable trade routes, so they had the money to pay back those loans, get more credit, build more fleets, hire more mercenaries, and kick some Spanish ass.

The Spanish failed to contain the rebellion because they sucked at paying back loans, so guess where the money flowed? And it didn’t end there. The Dutch Empire that followed wasn’t built by the state, but by the merchant class looking to make money. The British had their evil East India Company colonizing swaths of Asia; the Dutch version of that was just as shitty. The Dutch company ruled Indonesia for two centuries, and then the Dutch state took over and ruled it for another 150 years. The company also conquered to the west.

As an example, you know how Wall Street is the center of the financial world for the west? Before it was called New York, it was called New Amsterdam.

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