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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2022 4:48 am 
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The analysis of the wreck of the Batavia sheds light on the know-how of Dutch shipyards during the Golden Age.

How were the Dutch able to dominate world trade in the 17th century? Thanks to their mastery of shipbuilding and their wood supply network. This is what the first dendrochronological analysis of the wreck of the "Batavia", the flagship of the Dutch East India Company's fleet, which ran aground off the coast of Australia in 1629, during its maiden voyage, reveals.

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In the 17th century, the United Provinces (which would become the Netherlands in the 19th century) experienced a tremendous economic boom by acquiring a colonial empire in Southeast Asia largely removed from their Iberian, but also French and English competitors. Conquered in 1619, Jakarta, today the capital of Indonesia, was renamed Batavia, and became the destination of countless ocean-going ships. But how did the Dutch build these ships, even though there were virtually no forests on their territory and a shortage of oak trees on the European continent?

A study published in PLoS One, led by naval archaeologist Wendy van Duivenvoorde of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, provides answers to these questions by analyzing a prime source: the most iconic wreck of the Dutch East India Company, the Batavia. Stranded off the coast of Australia on its maiden voyage in 1629, it offers a unique opportunity to understand the innovative construction methods and identify the sources of timber for the shipyards of this unusual company, which was the first joint stock company and is now considered the first multinational.

Analysis of the Batavia wreck highlights the expertise of Dutch shipyards during the Golden Age
As a sign of its power, the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, abbreviated to VOC) had its own shipyards build the ships it equipped. This activity became so extensive from the 17th century onwards that timber became one of the five most important import products of the Republic.

To trace this supply, researchers have a major source: the archives of the VOC. All the transactions made during the two centuries of its existence (1602-1795) have been recorded in detail. However, despite the richness of these exceptional documents, listed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register since 2003, no mention is made of the origin of the imported wood. To shed light on what remains a mystery, one must turn to the remains of VOC ships, in this case the wreck of the Batavia, the only vessel of the company dating from the early 17th century that has been brought to the surface. Built in two and a half years, the three-masted ship took the lead of a fleet of six ships in October 1628, heading for the Dutch Indies, which it would never reach. On June 4, 1629, it ran into a reef in the Houtman Abrolhos archipelago, off the west coast of Australia.

This shipwreck gave rise to a real massacre among the survivors who had to stay on the spot while waiting for help, as evidenced by the excavations carried out in the archipelago during the 1970s. Part of the hull was reassembled and has been exhibited since 1991 at the Western Australian Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle (Australia). It is an exceptional source of information on the new shipbuilding methods of the time.

The remains of the Batavia's hull, exposed at the Western Australian Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle (Australia). :copyright: Western Australian Museum
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Read Sciences et Vie:
https://www.sciencesetavenir.fr/archeo- ... -or_163456

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PostPosted: Sun May 15, 2022 10:32 am 
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The Dutch people have a very long history and experience in ship/boat-building - long before they were even known as "Dutch".
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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2022 1:17 am 
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The replica of the Batavia, shown sailing in the top picture, is the centerpiece of the museum in Lelystad, the Netherlands, on the same spot where she was built between 1985 and 1995. She can still be visited there. My advice: don't wait too long, as she's deteriorating and visit her as soon as you can.
https://www.batavialand.nl/en/batavia

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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2022 2:44 am 
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The economic success of the 'Holland' in the 16th, 17th, and 18th century has a complex basis of internal and external reasons. One underlying reason certainly was the Calvinist work and business ethics that let to an extensive use of domestic resources and the establishment of extensive trade networks.
They also managed to turn a natural hazard - the recurrent storm-flooding due to the marshy areas of Noord-Holland into a major resource: the dyking-in of polders was a hugh 'opportunity cost' (as economists would call it) to the society, but had the benefit of creating hugh areas of fertile land and protecting the other areas. On this land agricultural products (e.g. cheese, beer) were produced that could be sold in Germany and other neighbouring areas.
In the 16th century there have been more forests, particularly in the higher areas to the West, but tree resources became quickly exhausted and the Dutch became dependent on wood imports from the Rhineland (oak, beech), the Black Forrest (fir), and Scandinavia (pine). While the wood could be floated down the Rhine river in huge quantities, the main bottle-neck became the conversion of the trees into timber.
Holland had been leading in the development of windmill-technology already for decades, if not centuries, when in 1593 a certain Cornelis Corneliszoon from Uitgeest (a village south of Alkmaar) received a patent for a wind-driven sawmill. He came up with the idea of the gang-saw with several blades in a frame that were moved up and down through connecting rods while the tree was pushed mechanically through. This multiplied the throughput per day compared to hand-sawing in a saw-pit and allowed to supply the rapidly increasing timber needs for shipbuilding and house construction (most houses were built from wood at the time).
Between the middle of the 16th and the 17th century other 'industrial' windmills were developed, to grind pigments, oil-seeds, spices, papermills, etc. that led to the first large scale industrial revolution in the Zaanstreek, the Region between Amsterdam (which was lagging behind due to the impediments by the traditional 'guilds') and Alkmaar.
The ships built with these baulk and planks then could be bigger and hence be more efficient to bring exotic raw materials from Asia etc., which then could be - after conversion, re-exported across Europe. With the cashflow thus generated, more ships could be built etc.

I nice summary of this first industrial revolution you can find here (if you read Dutch):

BONKE, H. et al. (2004): Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest. Uitvinder aan de basis van de Gouden Eeuw.- 209 S., Uitgeest/Zutphen (Stichting Industrieel Erfgoedpark 'De Hoop'/Walburg Pers).

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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2022 6:08 am 
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Thank you, Wefalck,

For this nice summary of the achievements of the Dutch in the 17th century! And to a somewhat lesser extent in the 18th century.

But we must be fair: much of these have been made possible by the inviting atmosphere of that little country to people from other parts of Europe, mainly from what's called Belgium today (Antwerp, Leuven, Mechelen), Germany, Scandinavia and France (Hugenots). And of course many Jews from Iberia as well. The religious wars (30 years war to name one) in the rest of Europe made many people flee to a relatively safe haven, hence the many exiles with merchant, science or craftmanship experience were welcomed warmly. Still today many Dutch can trace their ancestry back to those days. I myself am from German and French ancestry (you might have guessed the first from my name :smallsmile: )

So I don't see it as a typically Dutch 'protestant' trait that made it possible, but the combined skills of all those people from Europe coming together, regardless their religion or background. 'Diversity' avant-la-lettre if you like! It were only the indigenious Dutch that made that possible, by their stubborn 'Nordic' resistance to the flamboyant 'Spanish' and 'hidalgo' nature of king Philip II, imposing very rigid Catholicism and feudalism into these northerly countries. His father, Emperor Charles V of Habsburg (born and living in Gent-Brussels!) was much more tied in with the Dutch than his 'Spanish' son!

Therefore, although ostensibly a religious issue, the roots were much more north-south than religion itself. William of Orange was also raised catholic, mind you, the issue wasn't the catholicism itself but the vicious ban on any other form of religiosity, coupled with harsh repression. This was what made the Dutch rise up, and the Netherlands flourish!

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Last edited by Maarten Schönfeld on Tue May 17, 2022 7:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2022 7:46 am 
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I knew that trying to summarise the Dutch Gulden Eeuw in just a couple of paragraphs could cause a lot of criticism :big_grin:

Indeed, the (political) history is a lot more complex and tightly interwoven with the economic, religious and environmental history.

The latter is often overlooked. The Golden Age also coincides with the 'Little Ice-Age' in Northern Europe (as we can see from the Dutch/Flemish winter paintings by Breughel etc. While it made the weather more severe, it also slightly lower the sea-level, thus making the storm-floods less damaging. The 'poldering' and longer winters also reduced the breeding areas/times for the Anopheles mosquito, which transmits Malaria that used to be endemic in many areas of the Netherlands, Belgium and right into the Hamburg area (most people are not aware of this). Which in turn increased public health in the country-side and thus economic productivity.

Religiously motivated displacements of populations across Europe have been indeed some of the driving forces for economic and technological development in the Low Countries (but also in other areas across Europe).

Philip II must have been a very strange and sinister character. His austere and rigid character and the severe religiosity still seems to throw a long shadow on certain aspects of Spanish life. I remember also how depressed I was after a visit to the El Escorial ...

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PostPosted: Tue May 17, 2022 8:11 am 
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Yes, all true what you're saying, certainly for the environmental part too. Thanks for that!

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Philip II must have been a very strange and sinister character. His austere and rigid character and the severe religiosity still seems to throw a long shadow on certain aspects of Spanish life. I remember also how depressed I was after a visit to the El Escorial ...


I've never been to the Escorial myself, but what I've seen in documentaries etc. it appears to be very strong, massive and maybe indeed depressing. Most convents seem to be more enlightening than that! Philip seemed to have been deeply religious, maybe even manic. I thought I've read he used to chastice himself fysically. My thought: might he have been tempted into religious extremism, because of his father wasn't Spanish, so maybe (unconsciously) trying to exceed the Spanish clergy around him?

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PostPosted: Wed May 18, 2022 5:14 am 
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Glad to have stumbled across this topic. A rather unknown piece of history.

One wonders what went wrong though, they seemed at least smart back in those days, if you look at the present... :big_grin: :heh: :heh: :heh:

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PostPosted: Wed May 18, 2022 6:57 am 
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Neptune wrote:
Glad to have stumbled across this topic. A rather unknown piece of history.

One wonders what went wrong though, they seemed at least smart back in those days, if you look at the present... :big_grin: :heh: :heh: :heh:

Hi Neptune,

You and I both live in Belgium, I went to school in the Netherlands. Since I live here, I have discovered Belgians and Dutch get in school a quite different view of their shared history presented! The reason of that has been caused not by the uprising and separation in 1830, but much earlier: the success of the northerly provinces in their resistance against the Spanish oppression/retaliation, while the southerly provinces fell back under Spanish control (1581 Fall of Antwerp, from 1595 archeduke Albrecht/Isabella) which was in fact old style feudalism. That situation remained until 1814, when all of a sudden the two parts were again thrust together into one new united kingdom! Which didn't last very long, only 'til 1830. So we really never got the time to get really merged again. It even left its traces in how Belgians and Dutch feel and behave differently.

I must very warmly recommend to read 'The Burgundians' (De Bourgondiërs) by Bart Van Loo. A Belgian writer indeed, but he managed to summarise extremely well how 'the Low Countries' as one unity became into being (ca 1370-1470). It has been translated into English and French as well. The history of the uprising of the Low Countries to the Spanish (The Eighty Years War in Dutch history books, but in Belgium called The Uprising) is very well documented from multiple perspectives, but one needs to read a little bit from other perspectives to get a correct end complete view on it.

Back to your remark:
After 1580 Protestantism was fully quenched by the Contrareformation. Beware that for some decades (1540-1570) Northern France, Wallonia, Flanders and Brabant had become more Calvinistic than the northern provinces! Valenciennes/Cambrai was the centre of that movement. Belgium a Catholic country? today yes, but not so in the past! People were smart back then, and many (several hundreds of thousands) fled after 1580 from Antwerp/Brugge/Leuven etc. to mainly Amsterdam/Leiden/Delft to escape the Spanish oppression - leaving the remaining Flemish/Brabant and Walloon provinces sunk back into medieval times, and drained from skills, resources and intelligentsia. Wikipedia (in Dutch) https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migratiestroom_in_de_Nederlanden

And those refugees played a vital role in the creation of the Dutch Golden Age, as scientists (at the new Leiden university) (f.e. Simon Stevin), merchants, bankers, tradesmen, artists (Frans Hals, Van de Velde father & son), printers (Plantijn, Elsevier), and many, many others.

For Belgium the situation only changed slowly again after ca 1800, towards the Industrial Revolution on the Continent, with influx of people like John Cockerill and others.

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Even now I see the foreign flag a-raising, their guns on fire as we sail into hell"
Roger Whittaker +9/13/2023


Last edited by Maarten Schönfeld on Wed May 18, 2022 8:15 am, edited 3 times in total.

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PostPosted: Wed May 18, 2022 7:32 am 
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wefalck wrote:
... In the 16th century there have been more forests, particularly in the higher areas to the West, but tree resources became quickly exhausted and the Dutch became dependent on wood imports from the Rhineland (oak, beech), the Black Forrest (fir), and Scandinavia (pine). While the wood could be floated down the Rhine river in huge quantities, the main bottle-neck became the conversion of the trees into timber...

Let me add also the Baltic as a main source of timber: oak and beech from Denmark and Pommeria, tar from Finland and Sweden.

It's good to note that while the VOC (Dutch East India Company) caught the limelight, the Baltic sea trade was in volume and benefit always larger than the Far East trade. Remember the hundreds of 'flute' ships. Some of these were built with a large 'visor' hatch in their transom to load oak and fir tree trunks for the shipping industry.
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Wefalck, your summary about the saw mills is excellent! :thumbs_up_1:

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Even now I see the foreign flag a-raising, their guns on fire as we sail into hell"
Roger Whittaker +9/13/2023


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