#province of Zeeland

[gentlemanpixelator]

Middelburg. Kanaalgezicht.

[ask-thenetherlands]

Netherlands: "I often get asked the question why I have called New Zealand this name. You see, he reminded me of one of my kids..."

A few centuries earlier...

Zeeland: "I'M COMING TO THE CARIBBEAN TOO!!"

Zeeland: "Nobody touch my fucking sausage..."

In the year 1642...

Netherlands: "Come to think of it, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that Liesje turned to pirating."

((In the year 1642, the Dutch were the first Europeans to sail to New Zealand. However, upon arrival the Aotearoans made it very clear they did not like that and clubbed four sailors to death on sight. The area was promptly named Murderer's Bay by the Dutch.))

[postcard-from-the-past]

Town Hall of Oud-Vossemeer, on the island of Tholen in the Dutch province of Zeeland, Netherlands

Dutch vintage postcard

[unmotivational-motivation]

niche complaint time:

the people that insist that new zealand is named after danish islands instead of dutch islands after being mapped by dutch sailor abel tasman, who is the namesake of the tasman sea and tasmania, and called australia new holland continues to make me unreasonably angry.

side note i over did it in the tags im sorry

[is-the-snake-video-cute]

thank you for saying aotearoa. not only is it a far cooler name, "new zealand" is kind of a stupid name in the first place. it implies the existence of an "old zealand" lmao

I believe it's extremely important to use indigenous names for places when we know them! It's an easy way to do your part to challenge colonialism.

There actually is an "old Zealand," funnily enough! The first Europeans to spot Aotearoa were Dutch, and it was ""named"" after Zeeland, a province in the Netherlands.

[merovingian-marvels]

Terp/Thorp/Wierde/Warft/Værft

Most commonly known as “Terp”, by origin a Frisian word, Terps are actually known in a few places. Hang on tight, this is a long one.

The water rich lands of Dutch provinces Zeeland/Frisia (Terp) and Groningen (Wierde) - German regions Nordfriesland and Ostfriesland (Warft) and southern Denmark (Wærft) were in need of such constructions for basic quality of life.

Because the tides could freely enter the lower lands beyond the shoreline, life was to be lived intermittently. When the land was dry, sheep could graze the salt marsh. When water rose, people would retreat to the Terp.

A Terp can be made up out of a single church or farm/house to an entire small village. Concentrations of small Terps making up a village also exist. They are often surrounded by a salt marsh rampart (Kwelderwal).

Terps were made by plaggen. The top of sandy soils was taken out in little cubes, including the vegetation. The plag was then dried and compacted and stacked on top of each other, which causes an artificial hill allowing to build on.

Terp is also the Old-Frisian word which originates the Dutch word for village. Frisian culture allowed to spread because of their specialization in sheep’s wool. With most agricultural crops not being suited for salt marshes, and with the land flooded half of the day, lots of time was spent in producing high quality and highly sought after wool. This made the Frisians and especially the Terp people very rich, as seen in treasures, burials and clerical art.

Lots of Terps have been destroyed for peat mining or lost after abandonment.

Image above: Hogebeintum (Hegebeintum (Frisian), formerly known as Westerbintheim).

The largest known Terp in the Netherlands and Germany with 8,80 m above sea level.

Central is the church, on the right the historic village, the sheep pastures during floods and the encircling salt march rampart. Everything outside the rampart used to flood.

[mapsontheweb]

The Burgundian state, 1364-1487.

« Atlas historique mondial », Christian Grataloup, Les Arènes/L'Histoire, 2e éd., 2023

by cartesdhistoire

In 1363, the king of France, John the Good, gave Burgundy as an appanage to his son Philippe the Bold. Duke until 1404, he became master of a vast area, including Charolais, Artois, Franche-Comté, Rethel, Nevers and Brabant. His power made Flanders independent and it was a solid base for expansion in the Empire, continued by Duke Philip the Good (1419-1467): Namur, Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland and Luxembourg ( in addition to a nebula of satellites like the ecclesiastical principalities of Liège, Utrecht and even Cologne).

The Burgundian “State” is therefore made up of two blocks of territories, both shared between France and the Empire: Burgundy (France) and Franche-Comté (Empire) are governed from Dijon; from Lille then from Brussels from 1430, Flanders, Artois (France) and the Netherlands (Empire). The frequent meeting of States within the framework of each province allows regular taxation, which makes the Duke one of the richest sovereigns in the West, the bulk of his income coming from Flanders and the Netherlands. The administrative structure is close to that of the French monarchy (aids, Chambers of Accounts, states, Parliament).

Duke Charles the Bold (1467-1477) tried to reunite the two blocks, barely 60 km apart after 1441. He centralized, increased taxes and borrowed enormous sums from banks to obtain an imposing army and artillery. He then aimed for Lorraine and the archbishopric of Cologne but his ambitions united his enemies against him: Louis XI, the emperor, Lorraine, Savoy and the Swiss. In 1475, the Swiss crushed Charles's army at Grandson and Morat then the duke died in 1477, trying to retake Nancy. He is succeeded by his daughter Marie who married Maximilien, son of the emperor. She died on March 27, 1482 and on December 23, the Treaty of Arras divided her inheritance between Valois and Habsburg.

[lionessfeather]

So last night as I was starting to slowly drift off to sleep, my brain suddenly stuck on something (I promise this is Temeraire related). You see, the Netherlands have used "can't get an army across lots of water" as a basic defence strategy pretty much from Roman times until we got airplanes. The extent of it has varied; sometimes it was as simple as "well the river is too big" (Romans), sometimes it was "if we break this dike right here, the polder will flood and the Spanish can't get at the city". But, from the end of the 17th century, there was a systematic line of forts along the polders and rivers that could protect the province of Holland (specifically), here shown in purple. To the south there's big rivers leading into an estuary, and then it protects the province from invasion to the east. From about 1870, it was replaced by the orange parts, as well as the brownish line around Amsterdam specifically. The yellow area is from the mid-18th century. It is basically a collection of forts, and a series of locks. Together, these can make it so the coloured areas flood to a depth of 30-60 cm. Too deep for infantry, not deep enough for boats. It protects the capital of Amsterdam (with its important harbour), and the big cities of The Hague, Utrecht and Rotterdam.

And again, until we developed airplanes and parachutists and airplane bombs and so on, this worked really well.

Now, since I've been rereading the Temeraire books, the drifting off to sleep made me suddenly realise - how would dragon aerial warfare interact with this? Which morphed into a discussion with my partner (who hasn't read the books) about how Dutch dragons would work.

The first thing I'd like to do is point out the size of the Netherlands, compared to the British Isles and to the United States:

In other words, very small. And, very importantly, it used to be even smaller; a lot of the current land was reclaimed from the sea or large lakes between roughly 1650 and 1950. Most of the west of the country is below sea level, and very wet. A fair part of the east of the country isn't very rich soils and thus not great for farming (until chemical fertiliser is invented in the 1900s) (though they did use sheep dung as fertiliser, and they would almost certainly have thought of using dragon dung as well, eventually).

So I propose that actually, the Netherlands probably would have mostly had middle- and lightweights. There just isn't the area to support a large enough population of heavyweights that they aren't all inbred. My partner suggested there is probably one heavyweight breed, and I like that idea. I think that - militarily - the Netherlands would probably have figured out a strategy for using middle-weights against heavy-weights when they are fighting alone, but preferentially use their middle-weights as support in battles when there is a larger coalition, joining whoever is on their side.

However. There may only be middle-weight dragons, there would be a fairly large number of different breeds, with different strengths. You see, unlike the United Kingdom, where England was mostly united by around 900 CE, and then the Normans strengthened that, or France, which has a similar time scale, the Netherlands is a collection of loose duchies and counties and prince-bishoprics and so on, pretty much until the 1550s. The map pictured is from 1670, after a fair amount of the lands have been united into a republic; there would likely have been more divisions before then.

They get united under the dukes of Burgundy, eventually, but even at that time, it is still the Duchy of Brabant and the County of Holland and so on. But until they come together against Spanish rule, the separate parts regularly fight with each other. Which means that each of them would have their own breeds. (Likely, Holland and Zeeland would have very similar dragons, with aquatic adaptations, who get fed on a mixture of fish and meat; the more inland regions would have more "standard" breeds. To outsiders they all look incredibly alike, but if you mention to someone from Guelders that you cannot tell their Zwarte van Gelre apart from the Brabants Blauwtje, they would be so insulted. Can you not tell that theirs is a pure midnight black while the Brabants Blauwtje is blue? However, the breeds are so alike that most of them follow a continuum. Except the Fryske Grutskens, which looks very distinct). This is also where the single heavy-weight breed comes in - I think it would have been Flanders. Flanders is a part of the kingdom of France (rather than the Holy Roman Empire, which is the power the rest of the motley collection belongs to). One of the counts of Flanders probably got a breeding pair of heavy-weights from the king of France; maybe during one of the (many) revolts. These were crossed with the native middle-weights until a new breed of heavy-weights was developed. And finally, purely for my own amusement, William the Silent/William of Orange, who led the 1548 revolution against the Spanish, would have a dragon that is actually orange. No one knows how or why it came out that colour, none of its progenitors was, it just did and he was named for it (the fact that he is Prince of Orange is a bonus).

I also think that the Dutch would be using dragons for shipping, at least within the country. It is efficient and cheap (especially the dragons that grew up having fish as part of their diet), and the Dutch have always been fans of efficient and cheap and trade. And since it's all middle-weights, that is less scary than heavyweight breeds dropping in. I don't think dragons would be used for passenger-work, but loading the big ships, that can't quite reach the harbour? Definitely. And if you have large-ish ships, but only middle-weight dragons, it's probably much easier to ship dragons across the world, so you can also have a dragon when you arrive at your destination.

To bring it back to the idle thought that started this all - the Waterlinie, aka using the water to prevent invasion. My partner and I think it would still have worked, mostly. The Romans start taming the native European breeds, so they probably could cross the Rhine. In our world, the Rhine was the limes, the border, because they can't cross it in large enough numbers; but if they have dragons and the native Germanic tribes don't, then they can. I don't think they'd have been able to hold the land, not for long, and it's not interesting enough to bother anyway. But after that, when the playing field is levelled by everyone having dragons, the water would still be a workable defence. Yes, the aerial forces can come over and wreak havoc - except everyone has dragons now and so they will try to defend it - but the infantry still has trouble crossing the water. And then, when artillery gets developed, it's still the same. You can shoot at the enemy dragons, they can shoot at yours - and the infantry still can't cross the water. I think an enemy (often the French) would try to use dragons against the forts, before they can inundate the land, but that it wouldn't work as well after.

Anyway, here are some rambly thoughts about Dutch dragons in the Temeraire universe. (Sidenote but I can't make heads nor tails of the Dutch names that are used once or twice in the books. They just don't work.)

[clemswinecorner-socials]

Zealand [1: y/n’s posts]

Marcus Armstrong x (Dutch) Reader

Reader works at MP, and for the non-dutchies, Zealand (or Zeeland) is the name of a Dutch province :)

see all of my fics

Yourusername

Zeeland, Netherlands

liked by jamesharveyblair, parisarmstrong and 162 others

yourusername end of summer in zealand

posted september 5th, 2022

yourbestie i loved spending time with you i’ve missed you

yourusername I’ve missed you so much as well!! you should come visit a race soon :) yourbestie I'll try!! also why am I not in the post🤨 yourusername don’t worry you’ll get your own

felipedrugovich looks lovely mate! hope you enjoyed a couple of days off before chaos in Monza ;)

yourusername we did :) but omg i’m so excited to go to italy!!

... view more comments

Yourusername

Westmaas, Netherlands

liked by felipedrugovich, officialmpmotorsport and 12,384 others

yourusername spectacular day at the office ft. the boys tagged: officialmpmotorsport, felipedrugovich, clementnovalak

posted september 9th, 2022

richardverschoor did you teach them any dutch in the mean time?

yourusername they only wanted to know swearwords 🙄🙄

marcusarmstrong with an outfit like that i don’t think i can beat you in monza next week @/clementnovolak officialmpmotorsport days at the office are always spectacular! ... view more comments

Yourusername

liked by clementnovalak, caiocollet and others

yourusername this is *definitely* not in the order of who i’d trust most to least to take a good picture of me when given a camera

posted november 7th, 2022

jamesharveyblair can’t really blame you on that one marcusarmstrong excuse me🤨🤨

yourusername sorry xx all jokes xx youre the best one xx fanaccount hate to break it to you marcus, but thats too many xx’es

yourbestie would prefer to see the other side of the shot i miss your face yourusername stop it ily ... view more comments

Yourusername

Auckland, New Zealand

liked by mosesarmstrong, jamesharveyblair and others

yourusername middle of the summer in zealand (but make it new) tagged: marcusarmstrong

posted January 23rd, 2023

comments disabled.

See Marcus' posts

[victorysp]

King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands during their visit to the region of Walcheren in the province of Zeeland on Tuesday, where they learned more about the development of the district and the constructions that are being carried out to modernise and urbanise the area. August 27, 2024.

📷 hola.com

[learningdutch]

Mina en Mevrouw

Wanted to share this podcast! It's not very simple Dutch, but if you just want to listen to more Dutch (or are Dutch), I really recommend it!

It's about the lives of Mina en Mevrouw (madam). Mevrouw is a gravin (countess seems to be about the equivalent) in the province Zeeland and Mina started working for her as an inwonende dienstbode (live in maid) in 1937.

It's about history, personal lives, class differences and episode 6 (mostly that one) talks about sexuality. There's also a bit about the second world war. The story is told through diary entries by Mevrouw, interviews with the family of both women (the podcast maker is family of mevrouw), and interviews with experts about certain topics.

Give it a listen at:

[ask-thenetherlands]

Zeeland new design!

((I've revamped Liesje's appearance, I gave her wild curly hair and a slight snub nose! Her hair colour is strawberry blonde, so a slightly more reddish tone to it. Her first name fully reads Elisabeth, but is shortened to Liesje in Dutch.))

[laurasimonsdaughter]

@baduhennasraven asked for my thoughts on the tooth fairy, since they discovered that one of the Dutch provinces has a little bat collecting lost teeth instead. So here is a little ramble~

The idea of the tooth fairy who comes to give children money in exchange for their milk teeth, is fairly modern folklore (early 20th century), and from the United States. But having a creature to collect milk teeth seems older.

In Europe it’s actually more common to have a little mouse come to collect the tooth, especially in the French speaking countries and the other Romance languages. The mouse leaves a little gift behind, but this isn’t always money. The Dutch bat from Zeeland (we call a bat a mouse with wings) is probably related to her.

I don’t remember ever being told about either the tooth fairy or a tooth mouse when I was little. I think my mother paid me for my lost tooth and saved them in a special wooded box. Several of my friends had a similar box. Somehow the idea that you ought not to let your teeth lying around to get lost on you has stuck... Of course that’s a very old (European) belief, tied to concepts of magic that needed a piece of someone to gain power over them.

Perhaps that’s why this Christian custom recorded in a 1938 publication on folklore from the Dutch province Brabant is deliberately callous about throwing the tooth away. It describes having to toss the tooth over your head while praying:

“Little Jesus, give me a different tooth, Not one of wood, not one of stone, but one of bone.”

I’ve heard bits and pieces of other customs, like burying the teeth, throwing them onto a roof, or leaving them for specific animals to find so that you would gain something of that animal in return. But I have to say that this is the part of folklore where there aren’t really any full stories, but mostly saying and anecdotes, so I do not know a lot about it.

I’m very curious to know how my followers dealt with their baby teeth though, so please feel free to comment on this post!

[flagwars]

Flag Wars Bonus Round

[justasmallbloginabigklainefandom]

if you're still taking questions from the non us asks:

7. three words from your native language that you like the most?

Enne

This is technically a term that's only used in the southern provinces of the Netherlands (except... maybe Zeeland? I actually do not know. @cerriddwenluna help me!). I actually didn't know enne was southern till a few years ago, after I moved to the east, because I use it all the time. Enne is so versatile. Depending on the context or tone, it could mean:

"How are you?"

"What happened?"

"WHAT THE FUCK?"

"Oh, really?"

"Did it work?"

"I didn't know that! Tell me more!"

and probably more.

Kut

It has recently made the rounds on tumblr in a swearing bracket and yes, kut is great. It's just very easy to say as a swear. I suppose the best way to translate it, is cunt, but that also doesn't feel right, because kut and cunt are used in different ways. You can also add kut to other words to drive your angry point home.

Gezellig

Yes, I know, it's the Dutch word. It's famous because there is not appropriate English translation for it and I do like that. Gezellig is a vibe of being together with people you love and having fun.

Thanks for asking! Or as we say, dank je wel!

[theninjabozo]

americans specifying only states are stupid. "but they'll know it's the us!" georgia.

like saying a dutch province too, no one knows gelderland.

and there's also zeeland.