Historical story

Snow-free? Read a historical book!

Outside it is freezing that it cracks and the snow is centimeters high:real Dutch winter weather. The perfect time to sit inside on the couch and read a historical book. Here are two recommendations from the History editors of Kennislink to get through the winter.

Hans Goedkoop and Kees Zandvliet, The Golden Age (2012)

The Golden Age reads well and contains many beautiful color photos with enlarged details. Nice as a gift and beautiful for the coffee table. Or for the toilet:the 17 chapters in the book are quite short so you can get through them in no time. The book does not offer many new insights. The broad outlines that The Golden Age quotes are indispensable for an overview of the Golden Age, especially for readers with little historical knowledge, but generally known. The general public is clearly the target audience of the book. To make the book more accessible to this group of readers, the authors regularly compare the Golden Age with today's society. Recognition is always attractive so this works well. And whether historians will still draw the same conclusions in 50 years, we'll see…

Yet The Golden Age An interesting book, even for historians. Every now and then the writers go into detail on the daily life of the ordinary seventeenth-century person and provide fun facts. This is where the book gets its charm, in addition to the great visuals. So for those who see this beautiful picture book somewhere:don't just browse, but also read a bit.

Large-scale operation

The Golden Age was written for the exhibition of the same name in the Amsterdam Museum and the television series that can be seen until March 2013. The subjects that the series deals with are also discussed in the book, although television simply has other possibilities. A good example of the additional value of the series is the music fragment of the Wilhelmus in episode 1 of the series. In this case, the book could only show the written version of the song.

The positivism in the book is clearly present:we can once again be proud of our history and certainly of this special period. The subtitle of the book is not for nothing Proving ground of our world. Flourishing in the fields of art, navigation and trade, a political system that had never existed before, development and prosperity for many, our country was an example to other nations and other times. But to reach all those highlights, the seventeenth-century people did not always follow straight paths. The misdeeds against the local population by VOC officials are cited:violence was needed to establish a monopoly. If the Dutch didn't do it, their competitors would. And besides, the local savages were not taken for granted.

It is less well known that the traders who sailed to the Baltic Sea had a big finger in the local porridge. This form of trade, also known as the Mother Trade, was much larger and more lucrative than the trade in spices. The merchants had to sail their ships through the Sound, a narrow strait between Sweden and Denmark, and smooth passage was essential here. The book tells the story of Dutch merchants who interfered at the highest level with the struggles between the two Scandinavian countries. They played the kings off against each other, sold them both weapons and kept the toll low for Dutch ships. Correspondence has shown that the States General turned a blind eye when its traders violated alliances by selling weapons to the 'wrong' party. Money is money.

The merchants had another trump card in their hands:they had become rich from the Baltic Sea trade and some used their wealth for political purposes. The Swedish and Danish kings regularly needed money to go to war with each other. They received this money from the Dutch in exchange for pieces of land, mines, elevation to the peerage, and so on. Thus large parts of Sweden ended up in the hands of the Dutch arms dealer Louis de Geer. On the other side of the Sound, the Marselis family did the same and even literally got their hands on the Danish royal crown as collateral. The power of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was so great that it controlled the reins through its subjects in other kingdoms. Those are golden times.

Fik MeijerPaul. A life between Jerusalem and Rome

You may have wondered last Christmas how it is possible that almost the whole world still commemorates the birth of one man after more than 2000 years. That man is of course Jesus Christ, the main character in the largest religion in the world, Christianity.

Historians have no doubt that Jesus really existed as a historical figure. But they also agree that it is not just himself that made Jesus so famous. This is due to a figure who, also in the Bible, played at least an equally important role. That figure is known as Paulus.

After Paul's puzzling conversion to early Christianity, he traveled the then known world to spread the new faith. Paul spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire and convinced Jews, Greeks and Romans of the correctness of this doctrine of salvation. Without Paul, Christianity would have remained an insignificant split from Judaism in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. And not the world religion it is now.

But despite the enormous importance of Paul in world history, we know very little about him. Outside of the Bible (and some apocryphal writings), he is hardly mentioned in historical sources. Emeritus professor of ancient history Fik Meier listed everything we know about Paul and wrote a biography about the historical Paul.

Fanatical Christian persecutor

Before he converted to Christianity overnight, Paul was a Pharisee; a follower of a mystical, but strict religious movement within Judaism. Within the community he was known as Saul. Bizarrely, Saul was fanatically persecuting Christians. They had split from the Jewish faith to worship a 'false Messiah', Jesus of Nazareth.

Saul was on his way to Damascus with an assignment to persecute Christians there when he saw – according to the Bible – a bright light and heard a voice that convinced him that he should become a Christian, instead of persecuting them.

Be that as it may, after his conversion, Paul set out on a journey to spread the faith. Difficult, because both Jews, who saw a false Messiah in Jesus, and non-Jews, who often believed in an entire pantheon of gods, were not at all waiting for a new religion. But Paul was successful. He founded Christian congregations throughout the Roman Empire.

Very readable and with his characteristic enthusiasm, Fik Meijer tells about the many travels of Paulus. How he managed to convince various groups of the Christian faith. Meijer describes how the eloquent Paulus was particularly successful with the lower classes – and there were quite a few in antiquity. Poor, humble workers were much easier to win over to the new faith than rich townspeople. The simple message – believe in Jesus and be delivered from all misery – appealed to them.

Bounce three times

According to Christian tradition, Paul was eventually captured and beheaded in Rome. His head is said to have bounced three times, after which three springs had sprung spontaneously. His body is said to have been transferred to the estate of a Christian woman and buried there, on the spot where the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls now stands.

‘But it could also have gone differently, we will never know,’ Meijer concludes in his last chapter about the death of Paulus. In a sense this applies to his entire Paul biography. Even an excellent ancient historian like Meijer cannot tell a completely reliable story about a figure of which almost only Biblical sources exist. Most importantly, it is a consistent and very readable biography.

Meijer shows once again that he can bring antiquity to life like no other. His Paul biography fascinates and tells a wonderful story about a passionate adventurer who does everything in his power to spread his beliefs.