Israel as the Dutch Republic in the Thirty Years War

Asia Times Online ^ | 13 Sept 2011 | Spengler

[Palter]

A small country, its land reclaimed from a hostile nature, fights for survival against overwhelming odds for 80 years. Surrounded by enemies dedicated to its destruction, it fields the world's most innovative army and beats them. Despite three generations of war, the arts, sciences and commerce flourish. Its population grows quickly while the conflict empties the failed states that surround it. And it becomes a beacon of hope for the cause of freedom.

I refer not to Israel, but to the Dutch Republic of the 17th century, whose struggle for freedom against Spain set the precedent for the American Revolution. The final three decades of the Eighty Years War (1568-1648) coincided with the terrible Thirty Years War.

In 1600, a million-and-a-half Dutchmen faced an Austrian-Spanish alliance with more than 10 times their population; by 1648, the people of the Netherlands numbered two million, while the Spanish and Austrians had perhaps a quarter of their people. Holland had become the richest land in the world, with 16,000 merchant vessels supplying a global trading empire, graced by artists like Rembrandt and Vermeer and scientists like Huygens and Leeuwenhoek.

We might speak of the "isolation" of the Dutch at the outset of the Thirty Years War, although England backed them from the outset; that is why Philip II of Spain launched the Great Armada in 1588. Holland faced more formidable enemies than modern Israel; in place of the feckless Third World armies of Egypt and Syria, the Dutch fought Spain, the superpower of the 16th century, with the world's best professional infantry bought with New World loot. The superior Dutch navy disrupted Spanish lines of communication, and a new kind of mobile infantry defeated the static Spanish square with continuous musket fire.

[redpoll]

A fabulous thing to read this afternoon. There is always hope.

[Tennessee Nana]

Looking at my Dutch born ancestors connected to the navy and shipping in the early 1600s I find:

Caspar Mabille Van Naerden (Mabie) born 1575 was a sergeant on a Dutch cruiser which took a Spanish “prize” (ship) off the coast of North America in 1595. Before 1650 he and his family settled in New Amsterdam.

Hendrick Ruloffzsen Kype (Kipp) born 1576 was a member of the Company of Foreign Countries Association formed for the purpose of obtaining access to the Indies. In 1609, the CFC employed Henry Hudson to sail westward in the Half Moon. Hudson discovered the mouth of the river that would bear his name. Kype was one of the active means that led to the settlement of New York by the Dutch. Kype came to New Amsterdam in 1635 with his wife and family. He could not become accustomed to the ways of the New World so he returned to the old country with his wife where they ended their days. The children stayed in the New World.

Symon Symonse de Groot (Groot) born 1620 was a boatswain on the Prince Maurice for the Dutch West India Company He traveled back and forth to the New World and settled in New Amsterdam (New York) before 1645

[gusty]

To say that the Dutch were isolated in the late 16th and early 17th Centuries is not historically accurate. The Dutch were allied with England, France, the Protestant German states, Denmark, and Sweden. The dynamic of support usually was one of the Dutch aiding their allies in financial terms.

[Spengler]

Israel isn’t isolated, either; it’s got the United States. During the first stages of the war (1624) it was Holland that got a subsidy from France (for which it sold out the Huguenots at La Rochelle — the Dutch played dirty when they had to). But the German Protestants were crushed by 1625, and the Swedes were crushed by 1634 after Nordlingen. It was the Mantuan War in 1628 that diverted Spanish resource sufficiently for Maurice to invade the Catholic Netherlands. Nonetheless, the Dutch beat the Spanish in Flanders with their own land army, and on the sea with their own navy.