What You can Learn from an Old Map

I enjoy roaming through thrift stores because it is always a quest for the unknown; you never know what you will discover. Recently I found an amazing treasure at a thrift store. My husband and I were looking at some chairs and as I turned around, my eyes fell on a map that was matted on foam core. I love maps so I studied it for a few seconds before I recognized it was an old map of Amsterdam! The writing on it was not in English and although I have never been to Amsterdam I recognized it instantly. I first noticed the canals running in a c-shape throughout the town, old ships, houses of red roofs and windmills surrounding the outside of the city. I snatched it up for $2.99 – best deal ever!

I spent the next few days studying my map and becoming familiar with its origins. I also made some connections with facts I already knew about what Amsterdam was like in the 1600s. I learned Johannes Blaeu created the map in 1649. It is titled “Celeberrimi Hollandiae Emporii Delineatio Nova” which roughly translates to “New Delineation in Amsterdam, the Most Famous Port in Holland.” The mid 1600s were the Golden Age for the Dutch, they were successfully involved in world trade and Amsterdam was the leading trade city in Europe. Blaeu made the map to celebrate Dutch independence from Spain after the Eighty Year War and show the dominance of the Dutch’s position in world trade.

Blaeu’s map is oriented with southwest at the top, which is typical for the 1500 and 1600s. With this orientation. Amsterdam is drawn above the Ij Inlet, (labeled Ya Flavius) the waterway that gave the Dutch access to the entire world, and made Holland the most famous trading post at the time. The water on the map is filled with ships of all types; large ships line the docks of the Ij Inlet and the canals are filled with smaller sloops.

Johannes Blaeu and his family were all well known for their cartography skills.  Johannes’ father Willem was a Dutch cartographer, publisher, globe, and atlas maker. He gained his expertise of being a globe maker when he worked with the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. The Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer painted Willem’s maps into the backgrounds of three of his paintings.

On Johannes’ map, the buildings of Amsterdam are tightly fit side-by-side, and covered by distinctive, maroon-red roofs. At the center of Amsterdam none of the houses have a yard. Further out from the center, many homes are without a yard but have access to a commons area. The land outside of town was for farming and divided into strips of land filled with various crops and animals.

The Amsel River runs through the center of Amsterdam and the map shows various sizes of ships, coming and going along this path. In the very center of town, the river is dammed and without canals. This area is home to the fish market and Henry Keyser’s Stock Exchange; it is covered with land and roadways instead of canals.

Around the outside of the city was a series of medieval walls in a zig-zag pattern. Inside each peak of the wall is a windmill. This system of walls and windmills was one way the Dutch fought to keep their land from being flooded. Windmills constantly pumped water out of the lowlands and back into the nearby rivers and inlets and kept land available for planting and homes.

So why does it even matter that I found an old map of Amsterdam from the 1600s? To me, it brings to life a time and a place that I have never been before. It allows me to see people living their daily lives along the streets and canals of Amsterdam more than 350 years ago. With this map I see little children sitting on the front stoop of their tidy houses waiting for a ship to come into the canal by their home. When one arrives, they excitedly jump up and down, and call their little friends to join them in the discovery, as goods from other parts of the world are unloaded.

I picture yards filled with trees and gardens, busy with activity. When the trees were loaded with fruit and the gardens filled with extra produce, families gathered the excess into baskets to bring to the market at the center of Amsterdam. I can guess that they sometimes trade their extra goods for a new painting or vase from a newly arrived ship; and these luxury items are brought home, enjoyed by all who enter the house - a unique idea for the time.

I imagine the borders of the city where windmills slowly turn keeping excess water on the outside edge of the dykes. These areas are home to families who are fishermen, and are also able to do the upkeep against the ever-encroaching water. They gather piles of long grass to put on top of the earthworks to keep the water of the Netherlands out of the farmlands and city. I visualize older children walking in their wooden shoes to bring a cloth sack filled with food to their father for his lunch. As they walk over the soggy land along the dyke, their feet do not sink because the shoes hold them up.

I see docks at the edge of the Ij Inlet lined with warehouses. During this time the Dutch East India Company bought items from all over the world, and because of the joint stock business model, they could buy more than they needed. The excess was then stored in warehouses until the demand increased for the items elsewhere in the world and they could be sold for a higher price.

The South American explorer, Alexander von Humbolt said, “The richness of your life, depends on what you are able to see.” Keep this in mind the next time you glance at a map, and take a deeper look. Dive into the details; allow the lines and labels to teach you about the people who lived out their lives there. Explore the map enough so you can understand the people who walked the paths of the map each day; places where they loved and lived and died.

Water

In my World History class I spend quite a bit of time teaching about Medieval Europe and the feudal triangle. During this period in history, the feudal triangle helped many people during a time of stress and war. At the bottom of the triangle were the peasants, they were protected from marauding neighbors by the knights; the Lords, who were higher up on the triangle, gave the knights land as payment for protecting the peasants. One drawback with this system was that the differing levels of society could not be breached. If you were born into a family of peasants, you and your family would always stay there, for centuries; there was no way of escaping your placement on the ladder of society. This was the method used throughout Europe to survive, except in one place - the Netherlands.

In Russell Shorto’s book, “Amsterdam: The Most Liberal City in the World” the idea of the Dutch not using the Feudal Triangle is discussed. Since most of the Netherlands is below sea level, their common enemy was not human instead it was water. The Dutch had to work together and continually fight the water so they could continue to plant and live in the Netherlands. This was a group effort for centuries so there were no levels of power within their society. Anyone could plant crops or sell land; you did not need to hold a high position to be the one to make decisions for those in the Netherlands. Anyone who was willing to help and problem solve against the ever pressing water was just as important as any leader in the country. The idea was that they all worked together against a common enemy, so EVERYONE, made a difference in how their society developed, not just those making the major political decisions. Since they saw the value in each individual and their ideas, the Netherlands respected and welcomed those who were different from themselves and appreciated their ideas. The Dutch still hold this value today.

The Dutch’s unique way of fighting water is now influencing the area of New York. Ironically, the Dutch established the Colony of New Netherlands in the 1600s, in what today is New York and the surrounding areas. The issue of the Dutch controlling water has now come full circle here. In a recent article by Russell Shorto, in the New York Times, I learned about Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the United States. President Barack Obama asked Donovan to find a solution to the New York area’s issues with severe flooding during Hurricane Sandy. He wanted Donovan to “radically rethink” the setup of the area with climate change in mind. While on vacation to Germany, Donovan decided to take a detour to the Netherlands and visit the world experts on water control. Here he met Henk Ovink who was the director of Spatial Planning and Water Management in the Netherlands. Ovink offered to come to the United States and assist Donovan with this issue of controlling the water. His idea was to help the United States “live with water not simply resist it.”

Ovink has his work cut out for him as the United States in not as open to new ideas as the Dutch have always been. As he walked along the shorelines of New York, the American engineers talked about their plans to rebuild the same walls that protected the areas, which had been destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. Ovink asked what they would do if the walls were broken again by the water and the engineers simply answered they would rebuild them again. Ovink saw that a new thought pattern needed to be introduced. When Ovink discussed climate change, many American water management workers looked at him like he was crazy; they have not yet grasped the reality of this looming problem.

The Water Boards established in the Netherlands during the Middle Ages are a main reasons that the Netherlands established as such a cooperative society where everyone worked together. They used dams, windmills and dikes to live with the water and make land for themselves to live on during medieval times. Now faced with the effects of climate change, the Dutch have changed their strategy again. The windmills and dams are no longer effective with the new forces of water that have kept coming their way; they realized they need to once more “think outside of the box” and drastically change how their city is built to withstand water. One example is the city of Rotterdam; here they have built houses and office building that float as well as making a hole under city squares. These are mainly used as basketball courts, but when the water is high, they can be flooded with the addition runoff.

As Ovink has continued the water fight in the New York area, people have begun to listen and think outside of the box - more like the Dutch who settled the area centuries ago. However, they are still not as willing to reach out to other neighboring states affected by Hurricane Sandy; instead they have simply decided to let them figure out their own plan. Many homeowners in neighboring states are struggling to put their homes on stilts for protection from future water disasters. This is a very expensive and difficult task, especially accomplishing this one house at a time. Ovink suggested the entire area work together and help each other financially and materially to make it a more effective and affordable task. Their response was that it was too socialistic. They have not understood as the Dutch have learned, that when fighting water, you need to work together to win.

The Dutch have always been at the forefront of “weird” ideas. Things like the thought that the sun was the center of our solar system and that there are microscopic “animals" (today we call them bacteria and viruses) in us that make us ill. They have also continually worked together to tackle big problems, like the water, allowing everyone to be equal in fighting the challenge. In European museums there are portraits of kings and great leaders from the 1600s-1700s. The portraits from the Netherlands are a bit different from this time. Instead of only royalty, we see faces of the members of baker’s guilds and builders alongside the political leaders of the day.

 

It is hoped that the residences of New York and the United States, can take a risk on the Dutch way of thinking and work together and use different ideas to solve their water issues. As we examine a picture of New York from the Costello Plan map from around 1660, we can see that New York looked much different then it does now. When overlaid with a current Yahoo Map, it is obvious that throughout the past centuries, New York citizens have taken over a part of the water just as their ancestors from the Netherlands. It seems that things have come full circle and New York could benefit if they used their “Dutch sense” to keep the land they have claimed from the water around them and live at peace with water, as the Dutch have done for centuries.