Comments by "Lynott Parris" (@DenUitvreter) on "Dutch Ships of the Golden Age" video.

It's generally known as proto-industrialization but Britain didn't add much but steam power and steel. There was already proper industrial organization, with standardization and a high degree of specialization. There were other big industries like printing, lens manufacturing, cloth, weapons, fake china. The Dutch also already designed the internal combustion engine, on gunpowder, but that was too far ahead of it's time to go beyond a concept. It was the kick off of modern capitalism as we know it.
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I don't know this channel, but I give him an A for not being anglocentric, not regurgitating English propaganda from the past as serious history but make a well researched video that shows understanding of the Dutch Republic, unlike most YT video's on the subject.
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@vbscript2 Those two probably made it into a revolution because of it's impact on ordinary people's lives, but there's the industrial revolution and there's industrialization. The latter, as an approach to production, already existed, just like modern capitalism. The steam power allowed for production to pick any location and for the power to be fully controlled, the steel allowed for smaller tolerances. That's a big change so it seems fair to me to make the distinction between the industrialization of the industrial revolution and the proto-industrialization from before, which many historians do. That was what I was saying.
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The VOC as it's called didn't dominate world trade. It was dominant in Asian trade, also between Asian nations often, but the vast majority of the trade was much closer to and within European seas and that was done by individual merchants or small companies. But because the risk, the one year journeys and the war effort, Asian trade was organized in one big state supported company with a monopoly on trade East of the Cape. It was very important culturally, strategically and for the history of finance, but only a tiny part of the Dutch Republic's economy. Even in it's peak year it wasn't as profitable as the good old herring fishery. The VOC is a bit of a British obsession, but if the English hadn't been outcompeted on the Baltic, North Sea and Mediterranean, they would have encountered the real moneymakers a lot more often.
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The land of fries is south of the Netherlands. Friesland is where the Frysians live.
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@sparqqling The initial plan for the VOC was to kick some Portuguese ass and bring back silk. But it soon saw the potential and wanted to reinvest money rather than pay dividend. It only started paying dividend in 1631, almost 30 years after it's foundation. But it was also a nationalistic enterprise right after the Dutch Republic had it's borders stabilized. So a lot of very ordinary people bought shares at one of the offices in their own city. Craftsmen, maids, people like that. But of course those people could not wait 30 years for ROI so the invention of the stock exchange was a neccesity for the VOC to grow and escape the legal obligation of paying dividend.
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Many other philosophers of the enligthenment had their works printed in the Dutch Republic too, because it had freedom of thought and the Dutch printed more than half of Europe's books.
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Relative? The Azkhenazi jews and the Sephardic jews had a street fight with eachother once, but I'd say the peace was as absolute as for the protestants. The catholics were kept on a tight leash so they didn't get any ideas of ruling and end freedom of religion, but the jews were no threat. Simon Schama claims they were seen as a kind of brother people, because the Dutch protestants saw themselves as the New Testament's chosen people with little garden of Eden carved out of the North Sea. You only have to take a look at the 'Portuguese Synagoge' in Amsterdam from the 17th century to know this was not a community that was somehow under threat.
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@TheHistoryGuyChannel It's a bloody job but someone had to do it. Just good freedom loving people defending their nation on the high seas.
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@stevedietrich8936 What impressed me, in comparison with most YT video's is that he didn't portray the Dutch Republic as some miniature British Empire with an unjustified focus on what the British encountered, the VOC. He also researched the Oresund toll myth regarding the fluyt's design, which requires some depth. And allthough getting it wrong because getting the wrong video, he actually researched the pronunciation of Friesland. So that's pretty thorough for a first impression. In return I like to mention Defragged history. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5kdplBvGykUDWHX8m5HwPfn-h302Oe7d It's more of a podcast, it's much longer and much more detailed, but it's fun and very accurate.
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