The Fletcher School

By S. G. Borgerson (F'03),
J. C. Perry,
G. R. Weitz (F'03),
and E. Hidalgo Noriega (F'98)

Four Fletcher “Neptunes,” one recent Ph.D., two graduating students, and one professor visited The Netherlands to explore the Dutch oceanic experience, both for its intrinsic value and for how it might relate to other cultures and societies.

In our six days and 800 miles of travel, we covered the compact geographical core of oceanic Netherlands (Holland and Zeeland), visiting museums, water control projects, bookstores, and harbors, interviewing curators, professors and teachers, students, clerks, engineers, and businessmen, collecting information wherever we could, even in casual conversation.

Water

If we were to choose one word to sum up the Netherlands, we thought it might be water. But perhaps “wet” might be more descriptive than water, both in the sense of ocean as source, avenue, arena, cultural metaphor, and in a figurative sense relating to alcohol. The Dutch were pioneers in distilling liquor; their enthusiasm for its consumption would seem to be an historical constant.

The Netherlands, placed between land and water, is locked into a continuing struggle for survival against the sea even now as the land sinks and the sea rises. 65% of the nation is now shielded by dikes. But the Dutch are also alert to the possibilities the sea presents for fishing and trade. Thus the Dutch have both fought the sea and embraced it.

We were impressed by the power of water and the awesome degree of control the Dutch have come to exercise over it. The Netherlands is an “hydraulic society” (but not by sociologist Karl Wittfogel’s definition). Here water control seems to have promoted cooperation without encouraging authoritarianism, perhaps because of the geography of the challenge.  Wittfogel wrote about north China and other ancient riverine cultures where a wide riverine plain made flood prevention on a large scale essential. This was purely defensive; the objective was to preserve space. The Netherlands with its marsh and dunes formed a more complex environment. Water control was local and small scale, defensive but also creative. Making space became the objective. The result is a purposeful landscape with a Mondrian geometry, and you realize that wherever you stand and walk you are likely to be below sea level.

In the Netherlands, water, in motion, seems to offer escape from landbound isolation and poverty. The windmill is everywhere, both in its antique form and in its contemporary metallic shape grouped into wind farms for the generating of electricity. In pre-industrial times the Dutch applied wind power for pumping water but also for such tasks as sawing timber. Thus wind power spawned the pre-industrial shipyard. In the Dutch tradition there seems a clear linkage within hydraulic engineering, from  windmills to sluices, dry docks, offshore oil platforms, and the great Delta Works flood barrier.

The Delta Works is one of the largest construction projects in world history and has been called the “8th Wonder of the World,” a nice illustration of Dutch innovation as well as tradition in civil engineering. In essence the Delta Works is a vast complex of dams and locks, steel gates and towering sluice caissons forming a storm surge barrier attempting  to control the nation’s salt water frontier. The Dutch believe it reduces flood risk from once in 80 years to once in 4000.  The project was 25 years in the making and Professor George Embree (F ‘56) remarked that it was built in response to the loss of empire after World War II, as the Dutch struggled to find a new sense of national purpose. In the course of construction, plans were modified to accomodate a new realization of the ecological cost of the planned solid dam. Instead the Dutch built an open barrier which can control water flows but at the same time preserve the local ecosystem with its many rare plants and animals.

Subsequently Delta Works engineers helped build the new Hong Kong airport, and in a world increasingly conscious of the dangers of global warming, this innovative engineering may prove to be highly useful in many places.

The City

Our trip demonstrated the small distances among major cities in the Netherlands. The nation has been highly urbanized since early modern times and is now one of the world’s most densely populated nations.

Amsterdam is built on herring bones, they say, to which we might add broken clay pipes, buttons and fish hooks, nails, pewter spoons and cloth shoes. The city sprang up in early medieval times and illustrates the Dutch capacity to turn adversity to advantage. The catastrophic flooding of the Zuider Zee area made Amsterdam a sheltered seaport with ready access to the North Sea. Thus the city could grow from 50,000 people in 1600 to 200,000 in 1650.

This “temple of trade,” a place without palaces, plazas, or parks, became the nation’s largest city where people were free to pursue wealth, and the merchant became the new hero. It was a place of freedom; refugee Jews would call Amsterdam “the Jerusalem of the West. ” It became a place of prosperity where even the working class could eat eggs, butter, cheese, and fresh greens to accompany their salt herring and beer. And a spirit of egalitarianism or at least meritocracy prevailed so that Voltaire could say of Amsterdam:  “Here, nobody stands in the street to see a prince ride by.”

The city is still a port, handling traditional commodities such as coffee, sugar, timber, and half the world’s cacao, although Amsterdamers are scarcely aware of this happening. Fish auctions now take place online, on the internet while the catch is still at sea.  Herring does not appear on restaurant menus. As source the ocean seems more important now for its natural gas. The Dutch put the first oil rig in the North Sea in 1961.

Rotterdam is the second city of the Netherlands. Flattened by the Luftwaffe in May 1940, it had the benefit of a fresh start after the war.

The world’s largest seaport now proudly calls itself  “main port and brain port,” a superport for the supership. Rotterdam enjoys a deep channel 10 miles to Europort and the open sea, the tidy spaces along the banks crowded with fuel storage tanks, refineries, drydocks, piers, and warehouses illustrating the Dutch genius for planning and organization. Rotterdam serves as Europe’s fuel pump, not just for oil and gas but also for vitamins.  Importing fruit juice concentrate from Brazil, the world’s largest producer, the Dutch blend, pack, and ship it to consumers.  We note that the Dutch now, as before, concentrate on process, not product. They are the quintessential middlemen, highly dependent both on supplier and customer.

Europort is remote from where people live. Because big ships require big ports, shipping is remote from popular view. And the whole process has become highly automated, directly involving very few people. The 19th century age of steam began this separation because steam power required fewer people to run bigger ships. Today children no longer see ships.  Barges yes, but not seagoing vessels. (Nor do they see cows, despite the fact that the Netherlands is the world’s third largest agricultural exporter and the dairy industry is part of that.)

 The Dutch like to think that Rotterdam is part of a new role for the Netherlands as a comprehensive transport center.  But Schipol, a world class airport, built below sea level on the bed of a former lake, is now developed to the maximum, any expansion is stymied by resistence to noise pollution. Andour Dutch friends complain of transport inefficiencies, of roads subject to traffic jams, of disrupted and undependable train service. The nation needs high speed rail but environmentalists are fighting it.

An intense struggle between environmentalism and the economy across a wide variety of activities seems to characterize the Netherlands today.

Commerce and the Golden Age

In our investigation of the 17th century Golden Age when the Netherlands was the richest part of Europe and active globally, we noted three characteristics of Dutch success: technology, commercial skills, and an acceptance, even embrace, of social, ethnic, and cultural diversity. Dutch ships were extraordinarily cheap to build and to operate. The Dutch developed Europe’s leading armaments industry, standardizing weapons and munitions, and selling even to their Spanish enemies. Despite politics, the Dutch simply went about their business. Joost Schokkenbroek, curator at the Scheepvaart museum, suggested that Dutch opportunism was analogous to the American military-industrial complex selling weapons to Iraq and then going to war against it.

Dutch commerce  began with the sale of herring caught in the North Sea, spread to the Baltic for buying timber and wheat, to the Mediterranean for salt, olive oil, and wine, and to far Asia for acquiring spices and luxury textiles. With government encouragement, merchants formed the East India Company (VOC), the largest trading and transport organization in the world, in which even carpenters, preachers, and professors could be shareholders. Limited liability encouraged risk taking.  Since the Dutch produced little themselves to sell, theirs was an economy of buying, holding, and selling.  They were adept at waiting for the tide of good prices, and their business was aided by the relative cheapness of capital. Whaling, the Baltic trade, and herring fisheries were characterized by small highly competitive companies and this stimulated innovation and improvement. For the Dutch, acquiring territory and proselytizing Christianity were always secondary to trade.  Mercury took precedence over Mars.

Marine Arts

We were struck by how many Dutch paintings regardless of subject have an oceanic dimension. Beside landscapes with sea or river in the background and ships sailing therein, other paintings frequently carry maritime references. A portrait might depict a window in the background showing ships on the North Sea; a subject might be leaning on a globe or holding a map, with nautical instruments lying on a table beside him.  Still-lifes might show a plate of herring as well as a bowl of fruit.  And the museum itself is located on the banks of a canal, with a watery view from the giftshop window. In Holland marine painting emerged shortly before 1600  and became a preeminent expression of oceanic culture. 

Painting on a wide variety of themes was then popular.  Artists produced literally millions of canvases. Butchers  and cobblers hung them in their shops. Ordinary people lined the walls of their homes from floor to ceiling with art. Perhaps seamen and ships showed a collective identity for the nation when little else did in the republic of Seven Provinces.

Dutch marine art peaked simultaneously with the Dutch economy  (1620-1680)  but continued its presence in the fabric of Dutch life, expressed in painted tiles, prints, sculpture, tapestries, book illustrations, globes and weathervanes.  We saw a large office building closely resembling a ship and a museum of science and technology built in the shape of a ship emerging from the water.

Reinvention

Like New England the Netherlands, lacking the requisite natural resources, was bypassed by the industrial revolution and it lost its economic leadership to others. The 18th and 19th centuries were a time of quiet, of decay the pessimist might say. But the Dutch have exhibited a remarkable capacity for reinvention and could we say that they are entering a “platinum age?” A recent article in the Financial Times characterizes the Dutch as dealing wisely with paradox: “they are a monarchy but behave like republicans; they are thrifty yet generous, blunt but caring, protesting yet tolerant. Above all they encourage the long-term view.”

Dutch trade and finance continue to flourish. The Netherlands is a great complex of money, goods, and information, handled with precision, speed, and trust. Dutch society seems to continue to be ahead on social issues. The oceanic experience, although less pervasive than it was in the past, continues to be critical to the economy and society, and offers an inspiring example to others.