Swift
11 Jul 2005, 08:54 AM
How Flanders Helped Shape Freedom in America (http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/58)
(View original page for maps.)
"It was a 30-year old adventurer from Amsterdam, Arnout Vogels, who in 1610 became the first fur trader along the Hudson river. Vogels was born in Antwerp and had fled Brabant with his parents after the Spanish conquest. In 1624 Nieuw-Amsterdam was founded by the West India Company, a Dutch trading company established by Willem Usselincx, an Antwerp businessman who had also fled to Amsterdam in 1585. According to Russell Shorto in his 2004 bestselling history of Manhattan, The Island at the Centre of the World, the Dutch gave America its cosmopolitan outlook and shaped it into the open and democratic society it is today. The democratic traditions of the Netherlands were brought to America by Adriaen van der Donck, a lawyer from Brabant.
There is a direct historical line linking Brugge to Antwerp, Antwerp to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to New York. The “centre of the world,” as a beacon of self-governing democracy and liberty where capitalism originated, evolved along this line. Brugge was the Manhattan of the 13th century, as Antwerp was the Manhattan of the 16th century and Amsterdam that of the 17th century.
A number of typically American things such as cookie (koekje), dollar (daalder) and Santa Claus (Sinterklaas) have a Dutch origin which dates back to mediaeval Flanders. The same is true for the concept that free trade liberates people and that political and economic freedom are indivisible. Professor Stephen E. Lucas of the University of Wisconsin at Madison writes in “The Plakkaat van Verlatinge: A Neglected Model for the American Declaration of Independence” (his contribution to Hofte, R., and H. Kardux, eds. The Netherlands in Five Centuries of Transatlantic Exchange. Amsterdam: VU Press, 1994) that the text of the Declaration of Independence issued by the American Continental Congress on 4 July 1776 was clearly modelled on the 1581 Dutch Plakkaat van Verlatinge. The American Declaration stated: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that […] whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [i.e. to secure the liberties of the people] it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
This is exactly what the Flemings had said in 1128 when they deposed Count William Clito of Flanders and the burghers of Brugge declared that “the appointment or election of a Count of Flanders […] is the privilege of the nobles and burghers of this land.”
(View original page for maps.)
"It was a 30-year old adventurer from Amsterdam, Arnout Vogels, who in 1610 became the first fur trader along the Hudson river. Vogels was born in Antwerp and had fled Brabant with his parents after the Spanish conquest. In 1624 Nieuw-Amsterdam was founded by the West India Company, a Dutch trading company established by Willem Usselincx, an Antwerp businessman who had also fled to Amsterdam in 1585. According to Russell Shorto in his 2004 bestselling history of Manhattan, The Island at the Centre of the World, the Dutch gave America its cosmopolitan outlook and shaped it into the open and democratic society it is today. The democratic traditions of the Netherlands were brought to America by Adriaen van der Donck, a lawyer from Brabant.
There is a direct historical line linking Brugge to Antwerp, Antwerp to Amsterdam and Amsterdam to New York. The “centre of the world,” as a beacon of self-governing democracy and liberty where capitalism originated, evolved along this line. Brugge was the Manhattan of the 13th century, as Antwerp was the Manhattan of the 16th century and Amsterdam that of the 17th century.
A number of typically American things such as cookie (koekje), dollar (daalder) and Santa Claus (Sinterklaas) have a Dutch origin which dates back to mediaeval Flanders. The same is true for the concept that free trade liberates people and that political and economic freedom are indivisible. Professor Stephen E. Lucas of the University of Wisconsin at Madison writes in “The Plakkaat van Verlatinge: A Neglected Model for the American Declaration of Independence” (his contribution to Hofte, R., and H. Kardux, eds. The Netherlands in Five Centuries of Transatlantic Exchange. Amsterdam: VU Press, 1994) that the text of the Declaration of Independence issued by the American Continental Congress on 4 July 1776 was clearly modelled on the 1581 Dutch Plakkaat van Verlatinge. The American Declaration stated: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that […] whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [i.e. to secure the liberties of the people] it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
This is exactly what the Flemings had said in 1128 when they deposed Count William Clito of Flanders and the burghers of Brugge declared that “the appointment or election of a Count of Flanders […] is the privilege of the nobles and burghers of this land.”