Was Holland a major power?

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American Civil War

The American Civil War is taught all over the world because of the overall theme of Slavery.

Of course this was a small part of what caused the war. The south could be considered the old world. With an aristocracy with conservative attitudes that saw the black person as a means of labor in which their sprawling cotton farms could operate.

The North was the forward thinking, industrialist, capitalists. The south resented Northern attitudes. In fact Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in most Southern States.

The point was the South felt the had nothing in common with the Northern states and wished to cede from the union. At the time the US government seemed to approve of the move, until a small battle over a seemingly unimportant fort created a fervor through the Northern States.

Of course European powers were strongly against slavery especially England which was never big on slavery in the first place (Canadian colonies never used slaves)

England and France would have been more then happy to recognize Southern Independence had they simply agreed to abolish slavery. Of course we know what happened, but had they agreed to abolish slavery they would have been recognized as a nation and the U.S. would have been unable to bring the Southern States back into the fold.

I can understand how Americans would be surprised that we peoples from other countries would know so much about their history, because Americans learn so little about other countries themselves.

CBS news anchor Peter Jennings who is from Canada once said "Americans only see themselves" For the most part that is a true statement.

 

[Sumer]

Kehfee, you are wrong about one thing on your American Civil War analysis. IF the Confederates would have won Gettysburg, then Britain would have recognized the South as an independent country. I think it had very little to do with the slavery part. That's why both the North and the South needed to win Gettysburg. If the South won, Britain would recognize the Confederacy and maybe even send an expeditionary force to help them out a bit. The North had to win for the opposite reason: To keep Britain out of the war and to raise morale in the Northern states. Luckily, the North won and Britain decided not to intervene on the Confederacy's side.

 

[Pewe]

Please, don't discuss the american civil war here!!

 

[dudmont]

Hello, What I remember from tenth grade world history is little. But I discovered after high school the joy of reading.
To answer the question; yes Holland was great power. Wealth and diplomacy can more than make up for weak,or lack of,arms. I seem to recall that the economic capital of the world was once called New Amsterdam. It was seeded by a man named Stuyvesant.
I think this is perhaps the best(least divisive, least emotionally charged, and most informative) threads I've seen at the site.
dudmont

 

[Agelastus]

Originally posted by Evil Capitalist


I'm pretty sure that the Dutch weren't at the Armada. You'd be talking about the lighter, more maneuvrable English ships.

Yep, English ships beat the Armada (oh, I suppose there were a few storms around as well) BUT it was the Dutch (sea beggars?) who kept the Spanish army from coming out to join the fleet on their lovely, but not exactly battleworthy, flat bottom barges.

 

[unmerged(3440)]

The English defeated the Armada and the storms destroyed it.

 

[Pewe]

It looks like we have a little bit of conflict in history. Iwill start another thread about the armada.

 

[unmerged(860)]

just to make a reply to the original question.

the dutch had a colony in south africa then, basically only the area around cape town, or what is Table in the game. and the Dutch East/West Indies Company rules large parts of the east/west, mostly islands..

the real motivation for all of these was trade and money, the dutch were very good at this and focussed on it properly.

The dutch only lost Table when the british took it in fear of napoleon annexing it and using it to bar british ships from reaching india..

 

[unmerged(3586)]

The Dutch were indeed the leading light in Protestant Europe for quite a while and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries stole loads of ideas of the Dutch to enable their own rise to economic and colonial success i.e. most notably the Dutch system of banking and the Dutch East India company. The things that seemed tp prevent the Dutch from maintaining their position of economic pre-eminence was a lack of man power to maintain their mercantile empire, been locked on the mainland near a catholic super power (France) which resulted in all those very expensive and hard fought wars in the seventeenth century and funnily enough not having coal as a natural resource (something to do with supporting advances beyond medievel technology) someone else might be able to explain that one better.

English historians (amateur and proffesional) are well aware of Hollands exploits and successes though I am not so sure how much of that info filters into the main stream population.

 

[laurent]

Originally posted by Gorion
The English defeated the Armada and the storms destroyed it.

I always read that the weather has been the major cause of the spanish defeat.

 

[TheDS]

I seem to recall being taught that the Spanish Armada was defeated by storms first, and then Drake finished them off. I don't recall hearing anything about the Duch contribution to the battle.

Dutch contributions to the European settling of the Americas was glossed over pretty well when I went to school. Sure, we'd learned a few names and events, but not 1% of what they really did. I didn't know much about them until many years ago when Sid Meier's Pirates came out. I almost always chose to assist the Dutch, because they were such underdogs, and you were really expected to prey on the Spanish most heavily. While I couldn't rid the Caribbean completely of anyone (I did almost kick the British out), it was the goal I set for myself. (I would have the medical skill so I would live longer; the other tasks I was good enough at by myself, or the skills didn't seem to do anything tangible.)

With EU, and these forums, my eyes have been vastly widened. I was already more knowledgible of history than most people I knew, but I knew almost nothing of the historical period depicted in this game. I had no real concept of what the HRE was; never learned it was anything but just another country; the remnants of the Roman Empire. But seeing that it was really a coallition of numerous states, and parts of some, it makes me wonder, what is the qualification for being part of the Empire?

I have played a French campaign a couple times, and the Russian one once, and taking HRE provinces results in adjusted borders. (Russia got tired of Poland constantly declaring war and annexed them.) I haven't played any campaign for more than half way through, but I have learned a lot. So anyway, I have noticed that only parts of Austria and Spain are considered to be part of the HRE. Why? Individual states can have religions other than Catholic. I don't know what's up with that; can some one explain please?

Anyway...
All I know about Norway is that Norse Vikings discovered Greenland, and may have sighted North America, but didn't site any colonies. All I know about Sweden (before EU) is they make meatballs and have pretty women. We learned only enough European history to determine how the USA came about, and some of the major things (mostly English history). Chinese, East Indian, Russian, and African history, I learned really only that these places existed, and Europeans tried to colonize them or conquer them.

About the charge that "Americans see only themselves":
This is mostly true. Though we have only 400 years of history (starting from establishment of Jamestown in 1607), a lot happened here. We have the oldest government currently in existence. Our culture is made up from those from all over the world; people flocked here in droves, and we have grown to be the 4th largest country in both land and population. It was possible that anyone from anywhere could make themselves into a millionaire with some hard work; our culture is filled with stories about this. The USA was basically built from scratch out of the leftovers of other peoples and countries and shaped into the strongest power the earth has ever seen, all in the space of 340 years (1607-1945). Americans (immigrants; we're ALL immigrants here, really) have invented most of the things we use today. (The Japanese have made a lot of them better.) You're damned right we're proud.

It's been a great strength, but it's also a big failing. Europeans, in their pride, had ignored the rest of the world, thinking the rest of the world to be nothing but savages. Only recently has it started to become apparent that a human is a human, no matter what color the skin. America has adopted this idea more slowly than the rest of the world, because we are STILL pissed off about a war 140 years gone.

In the South, they call this war "The War of Northern Aggression". July 4th, our "Independence Day", a day second only in importance to Christmas, was the day that Vicksburg was finally captured by General Grant. Because of this, for over 100 years, the city of Vicksburg refused to celebrate the nation's "birthday". The scars are still there. It's still taking a while for people to see each other as equals, and it's going to take even longer for people to get over the "get even" reflex. I didn't oppress anyone, and I'm ashamed of those who did, but I am going to have to live with the consequences of other people's actions.

But America is not the only country that looks inward first. As you other posters have mentioned, the views presented in your history books paint different pictures of the same events. This is human nature. But over in Europe, it's kind of like a large house full of children; you can't even pee without having some one there watching you. You have your squabbles, and you have the ability to help each other when you need to. Over here, we had to rely on ourselves almost from the start, and it's no wonder America wanted nothing to do with the rest of the world before WW2.

I've noticed in the EU games I play that I just can't keep track of all the wars and alliances starting and ending all the time. I have a hard enough time keeping track of my own game history. While playing Russia, I surely don't care what western Europe is doing to each other. I just care about where my next colony or conquest is going to be, and what to do about alliances: fight the whole thing or wait till it expires and my quarry is alone?

On a different subject, while you're playing your campaigns, you may notice that you tend to concentrate on bringing your neighbors under your control before you worry about things like conquering China. (Why can't I offer vassalship to the Incas and annex them peacefully?) Does this help to explain why it seems we quibble more with those who have similar views than with those who are totally different? With only a little effort, you can bring the one to your way of thinking and make an ally. Once you've done that to several people or countries, the united whole can tackle those with more radical views, using logical arguments, tyrades, or open warfare, depending on the scale of the conflict.

Sorry for the long post. I don't know how to write short ones. ;P

 

[unmerged(234)]

Ok, TheDS. The reason for the odd behavior of the HRE (the short version): When the other Feudal European states started to get centralized the HRE went the other way (the emperors lost the internal power struggle with the nobles), so his Dukes, Counts and other nobles ruled almost independent in all but name from latte medieval time until the end of the HRE. By the way the HRE nations represented in EU is only the biggest/most important one in reality there was hundreds and the borders between them was very mingled. The countries who had parts inside the HRE and parts outside was mostly created by inheritance, if your nation inherited a nation belonging to the HRE that part would continue to formally be a part of the HRE and the other way around. When Princes in the HRE started to switch their principalities to Protestant the Emperor tried to stop them, that caused the 30year war, and in the peace it was decided that the HRE should continue but that each prince had the right to self decide which variant of Christianity their principality should have.

I think US are number three in population, or which other nation except China and India would have more?

And No, you do not have the oldest government currently in existence (although one of the oldest), as far as I can tell from the top of my mind England have not made changes in their constitution and election systems big enough to be counted as a change of system, since before the creation of the US, I think the same may be true for Thailand. But by defining the changed required to count as a different form or not in exactly the right way you could get the result that US has oldest government currently in existence, but that goes for rather many different nation depending on how you define the change who signifies a difference. There have been a few changes in the US election system since then also.

By the way this is not in anyway a meant as critic of or an attack on either the US constitution or nation.

 

[TheDS]

Quote:
By the way this is not in anyway a meant as critic of or an attack on either the US constitution or nation.
:Unquote

Of course not. We are simply trying to educate each other.

Quote:
I think US are number three in population, or which other nation except China and India would have more?
:Unquote

Rank Land area Population
1 Russia China
2 Canada India
3 China Russia
4 USA USA

Of course, these figures are a couple years old; India may have the most population by now - they have kept increasing and China has dropped significantly. Also, in an older book written by Robert Heinlein, while he visited the USSR, he, his wife, and a friend of his independently determined, by 3 different means, that there was no way Moscow could have even half the population reported by the USSR. Based upon that evidence, I suspect the USSR had fewer people than we did, and that is probably still true, so you may be right that we are #3 in population.

The claim made about our government being the oldest is me parroting my teachers from school. Our Constitution, made into law on or about 1776 (the exact date is subject to semantics) has not had a change significant enough to be considered to have become a different government. The Constitution was intended to be incomplete, and therefore open to be changed as the world changed and new laws were needed, or old ones were not. This, as well as the loosely written terms, is a double-edged sword. While the document is quite flexible and adaptable, this also means you have to have lengthy, drawn out court battles to determine what the law is when some one wants to take advantage of the rules. (Only winners take advantage of the rules - losers don't bother to understand the limits and when they do or don't apply. Again, a double edged sword when two would-be winners contest each other.)

As an example, in the Bill of Rights (one of the first ten Amendments, which were agreed upon by all the states) is the stipulation that we are allowed to arm ourselves and to rise up against an unjust government. This causes a lot of consternation, from so-called militia groups to people who simply live in a dangerous part of town and wish to be protected when the never-present cops are not around. There are many who feel that we no longer need guns. I even have a friend who is so afraid of them that she would rather let a burglar murder her and her children than defend herself with a gun. I can scarcely believe this myself, but I am not eager to test her on this. There are others who feel that the government, or maybe a foreign government, wishes to have us disarmed to make it easier to conquer us. Clinton's traitorous acts have made this all the more likely to happen in the near future, but of course, not many people are afraid of WW3 since the Soviets are not around.

Back in the early 80's, when I was young and afraid of the Soviets, I had heard of a Nostrodamous prediction that we and the Russians would team up to defeat an enemy in the Middle East or Far East. Of course, that was ludicrous at the time, but it was only a few years later that the Berlin wall fell and the Soviets collapsed, and in 1991, while not exactly allies, the former Soviets did not prevent us from attacking one of their former solid customers.

Not exactly WW3, but that's come very close to happening more than a couple times, and it's sure to happen soon. The major obsticle to invading us (or anyone else) is having a bunch of citizens with a reputation for being crazy about and with guns. There are quite a few places I would not wander into even if I was armed, for fear of being picked off because some one didn't like me walking where I was walking. Would you want to wander into the Bronx without a large army to back you up? Would you want to go cross county, worrying about every little hill or house having a few angry citizens hiding behind it, waiting to get off a pot-shot?

So as you can tell, I am in favor of citizens carrying guns. But it goes so much deeper than this, and I am sorry for having whipped out so much already, so I'll desist.

Getting back to what I was starting to talk about...... Your example of England was, IMHO, not a good one. The king was still quite in power at the time of the American Revolution, making the country a monarchy. There weren't many people allowed to vote on much there. The King and Parliment took care of it all. Over here though, most everyone who was considered a citizen was allowed to vote on their leader. Notice I qualified the everyone thing. Slaves, criminals, and women were not allowed to vote, but I don't know how to express the reasons why in a few words. But voting was not restricted by class or financial well-being.

This idea did not reach England until later, though I don't know exactly when. I do know they are considered a Socialist state now, and the citizenry is allowed to vote on its leaders. The Prime Minister has a healthy share of the power, in the same way as our President does, and the royals are virtually powerless (and really seen as a laughing stock now; if not in England, then elsewhere, much as our presidential elections will forever be.)

Final note:
Thanks for the HRE explanation. I hate to drag this topic so far off topic like this, but it seems there was already a consensus that Holland was indeed a cool place to be, and the Dutch hid their scientists all over my history books and never told me where they came from.

 

[unmerged(2833)]

I don't know if it's going to make you happy, but you're definitely number 3, Russia now has under 140m people and i believe that USA are well above 270, 4th is Indonesia i think, they must have around 220 now
And i can't tell if it's a difference you had blacks excluded, Britain poor. it's all the same regarding to size of changes

 

[unmerged(234)]

Originally posted by TheDS
Quote:
By the way this is not in anyway a meant as critic of or an attack on either the US constitution or nation.
:Unquote

Of course not. We are simply trying to educate each other.

Sorry, before EU was relased in the US and the americans where underepresented on the forum some had a tenedcy to defend the US from anything aven remotly looking as bad-mouthing the US. That have been much better since the amounts of americans on the forum increased, but I have still not completely got used to that.

Quote:
I think US are number three in population, or which other nation except China and India would have more?
:Unquote

Rank Land area Population
1 Russia China
2 Canada India
3 China Russia
4 USA USA

USA about 275 milions, Russia about 150 millions. You are number 3

Of course, these figures are a couple years old; India may have the most population by now - they have kept increasing and China has dropped significantly. Also, in an older book written by Robert Heinlein, while he visited the USSR, he, his wife, and a friend of his independently determined, by 3 different means, that there was no way Moscow could have even half the population reported by the USSR. Based upon that evidence, I suspect the USSR had fewer people than we did, and that is probably still true, so you may be right that we are #3 in population.

USSR probably had slighlty larger poulation than US (even if the diference was closing all the time, so US may have passed them before the USSR was dissolved). But Russia has only about half of the polulation of the nations formerly forming the USSR.

The claim made about our government being the oldest is me parroting my teachers from school. Our Constitution, made into law on or about 1776 (the exact date is subject to semantics) has not had a change significant enough to be considered to have become a different government. The Constitution was intended to be incomplete, and therefore open to be changed as the world changed and new laws were needed, or old ones were not. This, as well as the loosely written terms, is a double-edged sword. While the document is quite flexible and adaptable, this also means you have to have lengthy, drawn out court battles to determine what the law is when some one wants to take advantage of the rules. (Only winners take advantage of the rules - losers don't bother to understand the limits and when they do or don't apply. Again, a double edged sword when two would-be winners contest each other.)
...
Getting back to what I was starting to talk about...... Your example of England was, IMHO, not a good one. The king was still quite in power at the time of the American Revolution, making the country a monarchy. There weren't many people allowed to vote on much there. The King and Parliment took care of it all. Over here though, most everyone who was considered a citizen was allowed to vote on their leader. Notice I qualified the everyone thing. Slaves, criminals, and women were not allowed to vote, but I don't know how to express the reasons why in a few words. But voting was not restricted by class or financial well-being.

This idea did not reach England until later, though I don't know exactly when. I do know they are considered a Socialist state now, and the citizenry is allowed to vote on its leaders. The Prime Minister has a healthy share of the power, in the same way as our President does, and the royals are virtually powerless (and really seen as a laughing stock now; if not in England, then elsewhere, much as our presidential elections will forever be.)

You have the oldest written constituition, but England/UK is still using the same unwritten one they did 1776 and a few hundead years before. The king still elect the PM and the Parlament can still have the PM removed. The Parlament still is made of two chambers one representing the Nobles and one the Commoners. Yes they have been dramatically changes of who may vote to the house of "commoners", but change wich are allowed to vote has been made in US also since then. A considerable change in powerbalance bewteen the two houses and parlament and the monarch has also talking part (nowdays the house of "commoners" has almost all power during 1776the King and the house of "Nobles" had the most), but then again the power betwen thePresident, Congress and the states in the US have also changed some during the years (although not nearly as much).

So as I mentioned; you can define US to have the oldest goverment still in work but then you are subjectivly deciding that the changes US have done is not big enough to have counted as a change and the ones England/UK have done is. I think your teacher did that to get a better respons and respect for your constitution (or someone gave him/her the same biased information and he/she did not check it) .

By the way as far as I know all other nations in Europe have completley changed the constitution/goverment since that, so England id probably the only viable example, may be some of the old Asian countries who that is trie for also. But I think I can account for changes in every country except maybe Thailand, Neaple and Bhutan. Oh and yes if defining the Chinese inavsion of Tibet as unlawful they still have the same theocratic goverment they had since the middle agged

Final note:
Thanks for the HRE explanation. I hate to drag this topic so far off topic like this, but it seems there was already a consensus that Holland was indeed a cool place to be, and the Dutch hid their scientists all over my history books and never told me where they came from.

Agreed Netherlands was a Cultural and Financial major power from that they got Independence until the end of the EU period, and a naval during much of the same period.

 

[Agelastus]

At the least you can argue that the British system has been the same despite its evolution since at least 1689, probably since 1660, and even possibly since the thirteenth century. That definitely beats the USA. It has always amused me that many of the texts used to inspire the revolution were either reprints or straight plagiarisms of British Whig texts from the Seventeenth century!

As for who could vote, that varied. For example, in some constituencies you had to own a cooking pot of a certain dimension. In others anyone who slept in the town the night before the election could vote. In other places the advance of the sea had swallowed some areas leading to the creation of "Rotten Boroughs" where only a couple of voters elected the MP due to property qualifications (Old Sarum is one of the best examples.) The most common qualification was to be a "forty shilling freeholder". Unfortunately for the Britain of the time the expansion of the franchise to include Americans in this fashion would have more than tripled the electorate, due to the larger average size of landholdings in the Colonies. This was unacceptable to those in power at the time, supposing they even gave it any serious consideration.

The American Revolution is also an interesting study in the power of paranoia in politics, since one of the triggers was a British proposal to allow the East India company to sell tea in the America's for a brief period, to cover for a period of financial difficulty. The government altered the duties to make tea cheaper so that the Americans wouldn't complain. Of course, the Colonists saw this temporary measure as an attempt to put local busineesmen out of business and enslave their economy (or something like that.) Some parts of TheDS post suggest that, worryingly, this paranoia has never entirely gone away!

 

[unmerged(469)]

Originally posted by Agelastus
The American Revolution is also an interesting study in the power of paranoia in politics, since one of the triggers was a British proposal to allow the East India company to sell tea in the America's for a brief period, to cover for a period of financial difficulty. The government altered the duties to make tea cheaper so that the Americans wouldn't complain. Of course, the Colonists saw this temporary measure as an attempt to put local busineesmen out of business and enslave their economy (or something like that.) Some parts of TheDS post suggest that, worryingly, this paranoia has never entirely gone away!

This is interesting. Does this mean that the version we are taught on this side of the pond, i.e. that one of the spurs for the rebellion was the imposition of new taxes to defray expenses during the 7 Years War, is incorrect, or are you talking about something else that was happening simultaneously?

 

[Agelastus]

Admiral Yi
Their were indeed many other issues. That is merely the one that always springs to the front of my mind when I begin thinking of them.
As for the taxation issue the new taxes were mainly concerned with the maintenance of the British forces currently stationed in the Colonies rather than as a result of the expenses of the seven years war. Prior to this funds for the regulars had come almost entirely from the British exchequer, not entirely unfairly as the costs were mainly due to the ongoing struggle around the world with France. Following the elimination of the French presence the troops were required for more local concerns (eg. protection against Indian raids etc.) The British Government decided at this point that the Colonies really ought to pay part of the cost of their defence. It is interesting to note that the proposed taxes would not have covered more than 10% of the costs of the troops in question, but given the 150 years when no such taxes were levied the Colonial population was a little aggrieved. The troops in qusestion were not an appreciably larger force than the United States retained later (and paid for 100%) for its own defence.

I now wait with trepidation for the indignant American responses. Or for the more reasoned responses of the professional historians I know frequent these pages. I am just a BA after all.

 

[unmerged(469)]

I lifted my analysis of the new taxes straight from John Keegan, so there is not much more I can offer. It seems our point of difference there is whether the new taxes were imposed to pay for the previous war (in which, like you said, the vast majority of expenses were for European operations) or to pay for current protection. Since money is fungible it's hard to prove either way.

I would take issue with the protection against Indians point as well. It is my understanding that Indian raids had more or less dried up once they were deprived of their French patrons. And even if one accepts this as true, I don't see how a few regiments of lobsters in Boston Common provides much protection for colonists in the Hudson valley.

As to your claim that for 150 years the colonists had not paid any taxes to the Crown, it seems counterintuitive but I have no documentation on that.

 

[Agelastus]

Originally posted by Admiral Yi

As to your claim that for 150 years the colonists had not paid any taxes to the Crown, it seems counterintuitive but I have no documentation on that.

Sorry, I was unclear. The colonists had of course been paying duties and other taxes etc. but their overall rates and numbers affected were small when compared to European nations. That is why what the British government saw as a modest increase was seen as such an intolerable burden by the Colonists. As for the need for troops the United States were forced to raise new regulars soon after independence because of an Indian problem (1790/1791, in the Ohio valley.) Admittedly the main reason for the retention of British troops was precautionary, either against a European foe, the Spanish possessions or internal unrest (as, of course, developed.)

As for the American Revolution, I of course have mixed feelings. I have an enormous amount of respect for the United States of today. I like and admire the country. However, whenever I think of how much better off my country might be absent the American Revolution, all I can think of American heroes like George Washington is what a bunch of miserable traitors they were. Not only Americans can be patriots.

The above dichotomy is not mentally healthy, I know.