'Golden Age' Amsterdam proved an exciting setting for a murder mystery
After declaring independence
from Spain in 1581, the seven northern-most low country provinces formed the
Dutch Republic, with its political centre in The Hague. Amsterdam played a key role
economically and culturally, as the new nation
grew to eclipse its neighbours in engineering,
wealth, trade and art, during the so-called Dutch Golden Age.
Back then, the Zuider Zee would have teamed with ships converging on Amsterdam’s busy quay. The Dutch built the best ones in the world, using windmills to power saws to cut the wood. Enormous fluyts unloaded exotic spices from the Indian Ocean. Smaller vessels brought furs, copper and timber from the Baltic, woollen cloth and leather from England, and fish from the North Sea. All were taken to the market in Dam Square, where they were sorted, weighed, sold and reloaded with impressive efficiency. Amsterdam housed the headquarters of the Dutch East and West India Companies, and the world’s first stock exchange. A single shipment of spices could make investors rich.
The increasingly wealthy Dutch middle-class bought prestigious brick canal houses, and commissioned artists such as Rembrandt and Vermeer whose work we still admire. With the highest literacy rate in Europe, the population read copious quantities of books and pamphlets on a wide range of subjects. One of the world’s first newspapers was published in Amsterdam in 1616, and the Jewish philosopher Spinoza was born there in 1632.
With colonies stretching from Japan and Indonesia, through Cape Town, to the Americas and Caribbean, at one point it must have felt like the Dutch hegemony would never end. Yet, the Republic was declining from the 1660s, trading in Asian slaves and gradually losing ground to Portugal, England and France. Nevertheless, this cannot take away the remarkable achievement of the seven low country provinces, nor their suitability for a gripping murder mystery.
Naming in Blood is available from Sharpe Books on Kindle Unlimited and to buy at UK Link and US Link