Amsterdam (Book Reviews)

choi

The book: Russel Shorto, Amsterdam; A history of the world's most liberal city. Knopf Doubleday, 2013.

(1) Simon Kuper,
Financial Times, Oct 19, 2013.
www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0cbc0e4c-34dc-11e3-8148-00144feab7de.html

Note:
(a) Simon Kuper
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Kuper
(born in Uganda of South African parents in 1969; moved to Leiden in the Netherlands as a child; now lives in Paris; currently a sports columnist for the Financial Times)
(i) The North German surn ame Kuper/Küper: "from Middle Low German kuper ‘cooper’"
(ii) The Jewish surname Kuper: "from Yiddish kuper ‘copper’ [for coppersmith]"

(b) "17th-century Amsterdam was tiny. From his front door, Rembrandt was a five-minute walk from the synagogue that expelled Baruch Spinoza. * * * A few minutes on was the world’s first stock exchange. Today, of course, Rembrandt would have cycled the route in a jiffy."
(i) Rembrandt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt
(Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (last name: van Rijn); 1606-1669)
(ii) Baruch Spinoza
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza
(Baruch Spinoza; 1632-1677; was raised in the Portuguese Jewish community in Amsterdam; In 1656, the Talmud Torah congregation of Amsterdam issued a writ of cherem (Hebrew for excommunication) against the 23 year old Spinoza[, henceforward using Latinized name: Benedictus de Spinoza]; a Dutch philosope who, by laying the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment, came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy)
(A) Baruch--ancient Hebrew for "blessed," same as Benedict from Latin benedictus--is a male given name mainly among Jews.
(B) For Barack Omama's given name, see Barak (given name)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barak_(given_name)
(C) The Spanish surname Espinosa (spelled as Espinoza in Latin America--where "z" is pronounced as "s") is name of places: from a collective form of espina [Spanish noun feminine, from spīna] ‘thorn’
(iii) Talmud Torah
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud_Torah
(schools as a form of parochial primary school for boys; girls excluded; "Later, certain synagogues assumed the name 'Talmud Torah' * * * This was probably because the school was held in or adjoined the synagogue")

talmud (n)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/talmud
(iv) Amsterdam Stock Exchange
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Stock_Exchange
(established in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company [1602-1799, initially to trade its own stock, the first and only stock in the world]; merged in 2002 to create Euronext)
(A) The Wiki page shows you a photo of the THIRD Amsterdam Stock Exchage (note the address "Beursplein 5" at the photo caption), The first and second Amsterdam Stock Exchange, built in two other places, no longer exist.
(B) The offcial website of the current building:

History of Beurs van Berlage. Beurs van Berlage, undated
www.beursvanberlage.nl/history/
("click on the tabs [History] above")

Quote:

"As you can see from the images, in this [1601/1602] Exchange shares were still traded in the open air. * * * Incidentally, the term ‘Beurs’ (the Dutch word for ‘Exchange’) probably originated in the 13th century in Bruges in what was then the Southern Netherlands. In those days, with Bruges the economic centre of northwest Europe, the Inn in Bruges that was owned by the Ter Burze family gradually developed into the main meeting place for various traders. Various versions of the Dutch word ‘Beurs’ are used in other languages, for instance ‘Bourse’ in French, ‘Bolsa’ in Spanish and Italian and ‘Boerse’ in German.
  
"The Beurs van Berlage was built between 1898 - 1903 under the auspices of architect HP Berlage [and opened in 1903].

(C) Bruges
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruges
(in Belgium; section 1 Origin of the name [also see Cambridge, England's ancient spelling of the name])
(D) bourse (n; Middle French, literally, purse, from Medieval Latin bursa)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bourse
(E) bourse (n):
"'stock exchange,' 1570s, burse, from Old French borse 'money bag, purse' (12c.), from Medieval Latin bursa 'a bag' (see purse (n.)). French spelling and modern sense of 'exchange for merchants' is first recorded 1845, from the name of the Paris stock exchange. The term originated because in 13c. Bruges the sign of a purse (or perhaps three purses), hung on the front of the house where merchants met"
Online Etymology Dictionary, undated.www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bourse
(v) jiffy (n; origin unknown)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jiffy

(c) "Liberalism is literally in the water here. The Netherlands is where three great rivers meet the sea, and what land there was was mostly peat bogs. When Amsterdammers began to reclaim land from the water about 1,000 years ago, it was truly theirs. No bishops or nobles could take it. And so arose a port city of free citizens. In the 16th century the Dutch began to fight off the Spanish king, and created a republic – 200 years before similar revolutions in France and the US."
(i) Netherlands
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netherlands
(Much of the Netherlands is formed by the estuary of three important European rivers, which together with their distributaries form the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta [The last two rivers originate in France]); section 1 Habsburg Netherlands (1519–1581): Eighty Years' War [1568–1648]; section 2 Dutch Republic (1581–1795))

(d) "Amsterdam traded worldwide. The 17th-century city had four times the income per capita of Paris. Foreigners flocked here, and were left largely unbothered. * * * 17th-century Amsterdam published perhaps 30 per cent of all books on earth. * * * Shorto nicely links him [Rembrandt] with Anne Frank: her diary is mostly 'a story of interiority, as much as a Rembrandt portrait of a 17th-century Amsterdammer.' * * * What’s distinctive, says Shorto, are Amsterdam’s canal houses: some of the first buildings anywhere meant to house nuclear families. This is a city built for people. Amsterdam also fathered New York, originally a tolerant, diverse Dutch colony. Shorto himself runs an American cultural centre from his office in the 17th-century West India House – 'in effect, the place where New York City was conceived.'  * * * because Amsterdammers have had to work together to maintain the dikes, society has been strong. * * * After 1672, a year of Dutch military disasters, Amsterdam went into decline."
(i) interiority (n)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/interiority
(ii) canal house
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_house
(iii) Dutch Golden Age
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Golden_Age
("roughly spanning the 17th century, in which Dutch trade, science, military, and art were among the most acclaimed in the world. The first half is characterized by the Eighty Years' War until 1648")
(iv)
(A) For West India House at Amsterdam, see West-Indisch Huis (Amsterdam)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West-Indisch_Huis_(Amsterdam)
(former headquarters of the Dutch West India Company [1621-1792]; In this building, the Dutch West India Company's governors in 1625 ordered the construction of a fort on the island of Manhattan, laying the foundations for New York City)
(B) Fort Amsterdam
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Amsterdam
(1625-1790 when it was torn down)
(v) Franco-Dutch War
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Dutch_War
(1672–1678; The year 1672 in Dutch is often referred to as Het Rampjaar, meaning the year of disaster)

(e) miscellaneous
(i) Benno Premsela (1920-1997) was a Dutch designer, Jewish and gay.
(ii) "the English philosopher John Locke had fled to Amsterdam in 1683"

John Locke
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke
(1632-1704; one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers; Locke fled to the Netherlands in 1683, under strong suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot, although there is little evidence to suggest that he was directly involved in the scheme)
(iii) "In 2001 the world’s first legal gay weddings were performed in Amsterdam."
same-sex marriage
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage
(The Netherlands was the first country to extend marriage laws to include same-sex couples)

choi

(2) Janet Maslin, A City Built on a Paradox: Cooperative Individualism, New York Times, Nov 11, 2013.
www.nytimes.com/2013/11/11/books/amsterdam-by-russell-shorto.html

Note:
(a) "One of the best-known fables about the Dutch is the story of the boy who wards off disaster by putting his finger in a leaky dike. As Russell Shorto points out in his new history of Amsterdam, this tale was made up by an American (Mary Mapes Dodge, who had never been to Holland when she wrote her 1865 book, “Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates,” in which the account of the boy’s wondrous feat appears). And it is a nonsensical story in the Netherlands, where heroism is often a communal effort. 'Were the Dutch to construct such a fairy tale,' Mr Shorto writes, 'the "hero" would probably be the town water board.'”

Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Brinker,_or_The_Silver_Skates
(section 4 Popular culture: the legend of the boy and the dike)

(b) "It’s fitting that Mr. Shorto uses Amsterdam’s water problems as a prime example of what cooperative effort can accomplish. About a thousand years ago, inhabitants of the region began building dikes to keep out the sea and cut water channels into peat bogs: They 'thus set off a never-ending struggle against nature, one that continues today.'”
(i) Amsterdam
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam
(Amsterdam's name derives from Amstelredamme, indicative of the city's origin as a dam of the river Amstel)
(ii) Amstel
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstel
(The river's name is derived from Aeme stelle, old Dutch for "area abounding with water;"  map)

(c) "There is [in the book] a chronology of Holland’s rulers and military commanders, like William the Silent."

William the Silent
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Silent
(William I, Prince of Orange; 1533-1584; House of Nassau [named after Nassau Castle, located in present-day Nassau, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany)

Quote:

"When his cousin, René of Châlon, Prince of Orange, died childless in 1544, the eleven-year-old William inherited all Châlon's property, including the title Prince of Orange

"During a [1559] hunting trip to the Bois de Vincennes with King Henry II of France, William and [Spanish nobility Duke of  Alba or] Alva had openly discussed a secret understanding between Philip [II of Spain] and Henry which aimed at the extermination of the Protestants in both France and the Netherlands. William at that time had kept silent [hence the nickname], but had decided for himself that he would not allow the slaughter of so many innocent subjects.

(i) The German, Dutch, and Jewish (western Ashkenazic) surname Nassau: "from the town of Nassau, formerly the seat of an independent duchy. The place name derives from Old High German naz ‘damp,' ‘wet’ + ouwa ‘water meadow’"
Dictionary of American Family Name, by Oxford University Press.
(ii)
(A) Prince of Orange
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Orange
(The title originally referred to Orange, Vaucluse in the Rhone valley in southern France)
(B) Orange, Vaucluse
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange,_Vaucluse
("Roman Orange was founded in 35 BC by veterans of the Second legion as Arausio (after the local Celtic water god) * * * The name was originally unrelated to that of the orange fruit, but was later conflated with it (see Orange (word))")
(C) Orange (NOT orange)
(etymology: From French Orange, from Old French Orenge, from Medieval Latin Aurasica, from Latin Aurasiō, from Gaulish *arausi 'temple (head), cheek' (cf. Old Irish ara, arae 'temples'): "a town in France"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Orange

This "temple" is not a place of worship, but the side of head just above an ear.
(d) There is no need to read the rest