1.
Middelburg
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Middelburg is a municipality and a city in the south-western Netherlands and the capital of the province of Zeeland. Situated on the peninsula of the Zeeland province, Midden-Zeeland. The city of Middelburg dates back possibly to the late 8th century or early 9th century, the first mention of Middelburg was as one of three fortified towns erected on Walcheren to guard against Viking raids. In 844 a monastery was built on the site, which remained an active Catholic foundation until the Reformation, foundations for Middelburgs stately and picturesque cathedral were first laid in the 10th century, additional construction continued through the Middle Ages. Middelburg was granted city rights in 1217, during the Middle Ages, it became an important trading centre in the commerce between England and the rising cities of Flanders. The town continued to gain in power and prestige during the 13th and 14th centuries, from 1559.05.12 to 1603, Middelburg was the episcopal see of a Catholic bishopric covering all Zeeland. In the Eighty Years War, Middelburg was captured from the Spanish forces during a long siege, the northern provinces of the original Low Countries won their independence from their former Spanish Habsburg rulers and formed The Netherlands, a Protestant state. Middelburg played an important role in the 17th century slave trade, samuel Ben Israel, son of Menasseh Ben Israel, is buried in Middelburg at the Sephardic burial site located at the Jodengang outside the citywall. Menasseh Ben Israel negotiated with Cromwell the opening of England, and their colonies, Middelburg also has an Ashkenazic burial site, which is located at the Walensingel inside the city wall. In 1994 the synagogue was restored, as it was destroyed during the Second World War. This synagogue was the one to be built in the Netherlands during the Golden Age. In the hall of the station there is a plaque of remembrance for the Jews of Zeeland who started their journey to the death camps from the Middelburg train station. About a third of the old city centre was devastated by bombs and fire in the phases of World War II, on May 17,1940. The town was captured and liberated by British troops during Operation Infatuate on 5 November 1944, after the War, as much of the destroyed part of the old town center was rebuilt and restored along pre-War lines as possible. The citys archives, however, had been incinerated during the German bombardment, modern Middelburg has preserved and regained much of its historic and picturesque character. There are lavish 17th and 18th century merchant houses and storehouses standing along canals, the old city moats are still there, as are two of the city gates, the Koepoort Gate and the varkenspoort Gate. Part of the 18th century moat and defence works, however, were demolished in the 19th century to make way for a canal that crosses Walcheren from Vlissingen to Veere. The medieval abbey is still in use today, as a museum, the painter Pieter Gaal, was born and, after traveling over Europe to paint, settled and died here
2.
Dutch West India Company
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Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx, the area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and the eastern part of New Guinea. The intended purpose of the charter was to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, the company became instrumental in the Dutch colonization of the Americas. When the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602, some traders in Amsterdam did not agree with its monopolistic politics, however, he failed to find a passage. One of the first sailors who focused on trade with Africa was Balthazar de Moucheron, the trade with Africa offered several possibilities to set up trading posts or factories, an important starting point for negotiations. It was Blommaert, however, who stated that in 1600 eight companies sailed on the coast of Africa, competing with each other for the supply of copper, pieter van den Broecke was employed by one of these companies. In 1612, a Dutch fortress was built in Mouree, along the Dutch Gold Coast, Trade with the Caribbean, for salt, sugar and tobacco, was hampered by Spain and delayed because of peace negotiations. Spain offered peace on condition that the Dutch Republic would withdraw from trading with Asia, Spain refused to sign the peace treaty if a West Indian Company would be established. At this time the Dutch War of Independence between Spain and the Dutch Republic was occurring, grand Pensionary Johan van Oldenbarnevelt offered to only suspend trade with the West in exchange for the Twelve Years Truce. The result was that during a few years the company sailed under a flag in South America. However, ten years later, Stadtholder Maurice of Orange, proposed to continue the war with Spain, in 1619, his opponent Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was beheaded, and when two years later the truce expired, the West Indian Company was established. Some historians date the origins of the firm to the 1500s with arrivals of settlers in what is now called New York long before the English at Jamestown. The WIC was organized similarly to the Dutch East India Company, the board consisted of 19 members, known as the Heeren XIX. The validity of the charter was set at 24 years, only in 1623 was funding arranged, after several bidders were put under pressure. The States General of the Netherlands and the VOC pledged one million guilders in the form of capital, unlike the VOC, the WIC had no right to deploy military troops. When the Twelve Years Truce in 1621 was over, the Republic had a hand to re-wage war with Spain. A Groot Desseyn was devised to seize the Portuguese colonies in Africa, when this plan failed, privateering became one of the major goals within the WIC. The arming of merchant ships with guns and soldiers to defend themselves against Spanish ships was of great importance, on almost all ships in 1623,40 to 50 soldiers were stationed, possibly to assist in the hijacking of enemy ships
3.
Dutch Republic
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It preceded the Batavian Republic, the Kingdom of Holland, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, and ultimately the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands. Alternative names include the United Provinces, Seven Provinces, Federated Dutch Provinces, most of the Low Countries had come under the rule of the House of Burgundy and subsequently the House of Habsburg. In 1549 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V issued the Pragmatic Sanction, Charles was succeeded by his son, King Philip II of Spain. This was the start of the Eighty Years War, in 1579 a number of the northern provinces of the Low Countries signed the Union of Utrecht, in which they promised to support each other in their defence against the Spanish army. This was followed in 1581 by the Act of Abjuration, the declaration of independence of the provinces from Philip II. In 1582 the United Provinces invited Francis, Duke of Anjou to lead them, but after an attempt to take Antwerp in 1583. After the assassination of William of Orange, both Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England declined the offer of sovereignty, however, the latter agreed to turn the United Provinces into a protectorate of England, and sent the Earl of Leicester as governor-general. This was unsuccessful and in 1588 the provinces became a confederacy, the Union of Utrecht is regarded as the foundation of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, which was not recognized by the Spanish Empire until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. During the Anglo-French war, the territory was divided into groups, the Patriots, who were pro-French and pro-American and the Orangists. The Republic of the United Provinces faced a series of revolutions in 1783–1787. During this period, republican forces occupied several major Dutch cities, initially on the defence, the Orangist forces received aid from Prussian troops and retook the Netherlands in 1787. After the French Republic became the French Empire under Napoleon, the Batavian Republic was replaced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Holland, the Netherlands regained independence from France in 1813. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 the names United Provinces of the Netherlands, on 16 March 1815, the son of stadtholder William V crowned himself King William I of the Netherlands. Between 1815 and 1890 the King of the Netherlands was also in a union the Grand Duke of the sovereign Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. After Belgium gained its independence in 1830, the state became known as the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The County of Holland was the wealthiest and most urbanized region in the world, the free trade spirit of the time received a strong augmentation through the development of a modern, effective stock market in the Low Countries. The Netherlands has the oldest stock exchange in the world, founded in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company, while Rotterdam has the oldest bourse in the Netherlands, the worlds first stock exchange, that of the Dutch East-India Company, went public in six different cities. Later, a court ruled that the company had to reside legally in a city so Amsterdam is recognized as the oldest such institution based on modern trading principles
4.
Terra Australis
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Terra Australis is a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. The existence of Terra Australis was not based on any survey or direct observation and this theory of balancing land has been documented as early as the 5th century on maps by Macrobius, who uses the term Australis on his maps. Terra Australis was one of names applied to the largest landmass of what is now known as the continent of Australia. Other names for the hypothetical landmass have included Terra Australis Ignota, other names for the hypothetical continent have included Brasiliae Australis, Magallanica or Magellanica, La Australia del Espíritu Santo, and La grande isle de Java. Other names actually used for the continent were New Holland and Australia, Aristotle speculated, Now since there must be a region bearing the same relation to the southern pole as the place we live in bears to our pole. His ideas were expanded by Ptolemy, who believed that the Indian Ocean was enclosed on the south by land. Marcus Tullius Cicero used the term cingulus australis in referring to the Antipodes in Somnium Scipionis, the land in this zone was the Terra Australis. Christian thinkers did not discount the idea that there might be land beyond the southern seas, the first depiction of Terra Australis on a globe was probably on Johannes Schöners lost 1523 globe on which Oronce Fine is thought to have based his 1531 double cordiform map of the world. On this landmass he wrote recently discovered but not yet completely explored, the body of water beyond the tip of South America is called the “Mare Magellanicum, ” one of the first uses of navigator Ferdinand Magellans name in such a context. Schöner called the continent Brasiliae Australis in his 1533 tract, Opusculum geographicum, explorers of the Age of Discovery, from the late 15th century on, proved that Africa was almost entirely surrounded by sea, and that the Indian Ocean was accessible from both west and east. These discoveries reduced the area where the continent could be found, however, as new lands were discovered, they were often assumed to be parts of the hypothetical continent. Where Schöner departs most conspicuously from Waldseemüller is in his globes depiction of an Antarctic continent, the Zeytung described the Portuguese voyagers passing through a strait between the southernmost point of America, or Brazil, and a land to the south west, referred to as vndtere Presill. This supposed “strait” was in fact the Rio de la Plata, on this slender foundation he constructed his circum-Antarctic continent to which, for reasons that he does not explain, he gave an annular, or ring shape. Further, the distance is only moderate from this Region of Brazil to Malacca, on this scrap of information, united with the concept of the Antipodes inherited from Graeco-Roman antiquity, Schöner constructed his representation of the southern continent. His strait served as inspiration for Ferdinand Magellans expedition to reach the Moluccas by a westward route and it was taken up by his followers, the French cosmographer Oronce Fine in his world map of 1531, and the Flemish cartographers Gerardus Mercator in 1538 and Abraham Ortelius in 1570. Schöners concepts influenced the Dieppe school of mapmakers, notably in their representation of Jave la Grande, there was much interest in Terra Australis among Norman and Breton merchants at that time. In 1566 and 1570, Francisque and André dAlbaigne presented Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, although the Admiral gave favourable consideration to these initiatives, they came to nought when Coligny was killed in 1572. Adjoining Guinea on the right are the numerous and vast Solomon Islands which lately became famous by the voyage of Alvarus Mendanius, juan Fernandez, sailing from Chile in 1576, claimed he had discovered the Southern Continent
5.
Easter Island
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Easter Island is a Chilean island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle. Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, in 1995, UNESCO named Easter Island a World Heritage Site, with much of the island protected within Rapa Nui National Park. However, human activity, the introduction of the Polynesian rat, by the time of European arrival in 1722, the islands population had dropped to 2, 000–3,000 from an estimated high of approximately 15,000 just a century earlier. European diseases and Peruvian slave raiding in the 1860s further reduced the Rapa Nui population, Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world. Easter Island is a territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888. Administratively, it belongs to the Valparaíso Region, and, more specifically, according to the 2012 Chilean census, the island has about 5,800 residents, of whom some 60 percent are descendants of the aboriginal Rapa Nui. Easter Island is considered part of Insular Chile, the islands official Spanish name, Isla de Pascua, also means Easter Island. However, Norwegian ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl argued that Rapa was the name of Easter Island. William Churchill inquired about the phrase and was told there were three te pito o te henua, these being the three capes of the island. The phrase appears to have used in the same sense as the designation of Lands End at the tip of Cornwall. He was unable to elicit a Polynesian name for the island itself, according to Barthel, oral tradition has it that the island was first named Te pito o te kainga a Hau Maka The little piece of land of Hau Maka. However, there are two words pronounced pito in Rapa Nui, one meaning end and one navel, and the phrase can also mean the Navel of the World. This was apparently its actual meaning, French ethnologist Alphonse Pinart gave it the actual translation the Navel of the World, another name, Mata ki te rangi, means Eyes looking to the sky. Islanders are referred to in Spanish as pascuense, however it is common to refer to members of the community as Rapa Nui. Estimated dates of initial settlement of Easter Island have ranged from 300 to 1200, rectifications in radiocarbon dating have changed almost all of the previously posited early settlement dates in Polynesia. Rapa Nui is now considered to have settled in the narrower range of 700 to 1100 CE. Significant ecological impacts and major cultural investments in monumental architecture and statuary thus began soon after initial settlement, according to oral tradition, the first settlement was at Anakena. The island was most likely populated by Polynesians who navigated in canoes or catamarans from the Gambier Islands or the Marquesas Islands,3,200 km away
6.
Samoa
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The Independent State of Samoa, commonly known as Samoa and, until 1997, known as Western Samoa, is a unitary parliamentary democracy with eleven administrative divisions. The two main islands are Savaii and Upolu with four smaller islands surrounding the landmasses, the Lapita people discovered and settled the Samoan islands around 3,500 years ago. They developed a language and cultural identity. Samoa is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, Western Samoa was admitted to the United Nations on 15 December 1976. The entire island group, which includes American Samoa, was called Navigator Islands by European explorers before the 20th century because of the Samoans seafaring skills. The oldest date so far for remains in Samoa has been calculated by New Zealand scientists to a true age of circa 3,000 years ago from a Lapita site at Mulifanua during the 1970s. The origins of the Samoans are closely studied in research about Polynesia in various scientific disciplines such as genetics, linguistics. Contact with Europeans began in the early 18th century, jacob Roggeveen, a Dutchman, was the first known European to sight the Samoan islands in 1722. This visit was followed by French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, who named them the Navigator Islands in 1768, contact was limited before the 1830s, which is when English missionaries and traders began arriving. Christian missionary work in Samoa began in 1830 by John Williams, of the London Missionary Society arriving in Sapapalii from The Cook Islands and Tahiti. However, Robert Louis Stevenson, who lived in Samoa from 1889 until his death in 1894, wrote in A Footnote to History, Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa, … the Samoans are gentle people. The Germans in particular began to show great commercial interest in the Samoan Islands, especially on the island of Upolu, the United States laid its own claim and formed alliances with local native chieftains, most conspicuously on the islands of Tutuila and Manua. Britain also sent troops to protect British business enterprise, harbour rights and this was followed by an eight-year civil war, during which each of the three powers supplied arms, training and in some cases combat troops to the warring Samoan parties. The Samoan crisis came to a critical juncture in March 1889 when all three colonial contenders sent warships into Apia harbour, and a larger-scale war seemed imminent, a massive storm on 15 March 1889 damaged or destroyed the warships, ending the military conflict. The Second Samoan Civil War reached a head in 1898 when Germany, the United Kingdom, the Siege of Apia occurred in March 1899. Samoan forces loyal to Prince Tanu were besieged by a force of Samoan rebels loyal to Mataafa Iosefo. Supporting Prince Tanu were landing parties from four British and American warships, after several days of fighting, the Samoan rebels were finally defeated. American and British warships shelled Apia on 15 March 1899, including the USS Philadelphia, the eastern island-group became a territory of the United States and was known as American Samoa
7.
Astronomy
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Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, more generally, all astronomical phenomena that originate outside Earths atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole, Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, during the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain the results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can play an active role, especially in the discovery. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, Astronomy means law of the stars. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, the system which claims that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects. Although the two share a common origin, they are now entirely distinct. Generally, either the term astronomy or astrophysics may be used to refer to this subject, however, since most modern astronomical research deals with subjects related to physics, modern astronomy could actually be called astrophysics. Few fields, such as astrometry, are purely astronomy rather than also astrophysics, some titles of the leading scientific journals in this field includeThe Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. In early times, astronomy only comprised the observation and predictions of the motions of objects visible to the naked eye, in some locations, early cultures assembled massive artifacts that possibly had some astronomical purpose. Before tools such as the telescope were invented, early study of the stars was conducted using the naked eye, most of early astronomy actually consisted of mapping the positions of the stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotating around it. This is known as the model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic system. The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a cycle known as a saros
8.
Geography
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Geography is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of Earth. The first person to use the word γεωγραφία was Eratosthenes, Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of the Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. It is often defined in terms of the two branches of geography and physical geography. Geography has been called the world discipline and the bridge between the human and the physical sciences, Geography is a systematic study of the Earth and its features. Traditionally, geography has been associated with cartography and place names, although many geographers are trained in toponymy and cartology, this is not their main preoccupation. Geographers study the space and the temporal database distribution of phenomena, processes, because space and place affect a variety of topics, such as economics, health, climate, plants and animals, geography is highly interdisciplinary. The interdisciplinary nature of the approach depends on an attentiveness to the relationship between physical and human phenomena and its spatial patterns. Names of places. are not geography. know by heart a whole gazetteer full of them would not, in itself and this is a description of the world—that is Geography. In a word Geography is a Science—a thing not of mere names but of argument and reason, of cause, just as all phenomena exist in time and thus have a history, they also exist in space and have a geography. Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main fields, human geography and physical geography. The former largely focuses on the environment and how humans create, view, manage. The latter examines the environment, and how organisms, climate, soil, water. The difference between these led to a third field, environmental geography, which combines physical and human geography. Physical geography focuses on geography as an Earth science and it aims to understand the physical problems and the issues of lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, pedosphere, and global flora and fauna patterns. Physical geography can be divided into broad categories, including, Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of patterns. It encompasses the human, political, cultural, social, and it requires an understanding of the traditional aspects of physical and human geography, as well as the ways that human societies conceptualize the environment. Integrated geography has emerged as a bridge between the human and the geography, as a result of the increasing specialisation of the two sub-fields. Examples of areas of research in the environmental geography include, emergency management, environmental management, sustainability, geomatics is concerned with the application of computers to the traditional spatial techniques used in cartography and topography
9.
Navigation
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Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another. The field of navigation includes four categories, land navigation, marine navigation, aeronautic navigation. It is also the term of art used for the specialized knowledge used by navigators to perform navigation tasks, all navigational techniques involve locating the navigators position compared to known locations or patterns. Navigation, in a sense, can refer to any skill or study that involves the determination of position and direction. In this sense, navigation includes orienteering and pedestrian navigation, for information about different navigation strategies that people use, visit human navigation. In the European medieval period, navigation was considered part of the set of seven mechanical arts, early Pacific Polynesians used the motion of stars, weather, the position of certain wildlife species, or the size of waves to find the path from one island to another. Maritime navigation using scientific instruments such as the mariners astrolabe first occurred in the Mediterranean during the Middle Ages, the perfecting of this navigation instrument is attributed to Portuguese navigators during early Portuguese discoveries in the Age of Discovery. Open-seas navigation using the astrolabe and the compass started during the Age of Discovery in the 15th century, the Portuguese began systematically exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa from 1418, under the sponsorship of Prince Henry. In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias reached the Indian Ocean by this route, in 1492 the Spanish monarchs funded Christopher Columbuss expedition to sail west to reach the Indies by crossing the Atlantic, which resulted in the Discovery of America. In 1498, a Portuguese expedition commanded by Vasco da Gama reached India by sailing around Africa, soon, the Portuguese sailed further eastward, to the Spice Islands in 1512, landing in China one year later. The fleet of seven ships sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Southern Spain in 1519, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, some ships were lost, but the remaining fleet continued across the Pacific making a number of discoveries including Guam and the Philippines. By then, only two galleons were left from the original seven, the Victoria led by Elcano sailed across the Indian Ocean and north along the coast of Africa, to finally arrive in Spain in 1522, three years after its departure. The Trinidad sailed east from the Philippines, trying to find a path back to the Americas. He arrived in Acapulco on October 8,1565, the term stems from 1530s, from Latin navigationem, from navigatus, pp. of navigare to sail, sail over, go by sea, steer a ship, from navis ship and the root of agere to drive. Roughly, the latitude of a place on Earth is its angular distance north or south of the equator, latitude is usually expressed in degrees ranging from 0° at the Equator to 90° at the North and South poles. The height of Polaris in degrees above the horizon is the latitude of the observer, similar to latitude, the longitude of a place on Earth is the angular distance east or west of the prime meridian or Greenwich meridian. Longitude is usually expressed in degrees ranging from 0° at the Greenwich meridian to 180° east and west, sydney, for example, has a longitude of about 151° east. New York City has a longitude of 74° west, for most of history, mariners struggled to determine longitude
10.
Civil law notary
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Civil-law notaries are limited to areas of private law, that is, domestic law which regulates the relationships between individuals and in which the State is not directly concerned. Ordinarily, they have no authority to appear in court on their clients behalf, their role is limited to drafting, authenticating, and registering certain types of transactional or legal instruments. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, France or Italy, among others, they also retain and keep a copy of their instruments—in the form of memoranda—in notarial protocols. Notaries generally hold undergraduate degrees in law and graduate degrees in notarial law. Notarial law involves expertise in a spectrum of private law including family law, estate and testamentary law, conveyancing and property law, the law of agency. Any such practice is usually regulated, and most countries parcel out areas into notarial districts with a set number of notary positions. This has the effect of making notarial appointments very limited, as a lawyer, a civil-law notary draws up and executes legal instruments called notarial instruments. Traditionally, notarial instruments trigger a præsumptio veritatis et solemnitatis entailing two consequences—regularity and probativity, first, being an official act, a presumption of regularity attaches to the instrument, meaning all prescribed formalities have been carried out, including the reading over of the instrument. Second, an instrument is self-authenticating and probative, i. e. it constitutes full proof of the agreement it contains, as against the parties, their heirs. It also means the notarys firsthand narrations of fact are conclusively presumed true and correct, whereas secondhand narrations are merely assertio notarii which are rebuttably presumed valid. In either case, the appearer always walks away with an instrument that is self-executing, finally, notarial instruments have a fixed effective or signature date that cannot be ante- or postdated, or left blank and filled in after signing. Notarial instruments cannot be altered or overridden by prior or subsequent instruments under hand, in other words, for example, a notarial will could not be amended or superseded by a non-notarial codicil or will. An unexecuted minute is deemed proof of an instrument and considered the original. The minute is therefore the authenticum, or original instrument of writing, as distinguished from the self-executing copy, or instrumentum. This presumption stems from the fact that a notary is expected to verify the facts, assertions, or events mentioned in his act, thereby assuming liability for, a successfully improbated instrument is null and set aside. Nowadays, an instrument is prepared first as an unexecuted original called a minute. The minute is archived in the draftsman notarys protocol, the instruments particulars—appearer, fees, subject matter, witnesses, date, and so forth—are noted or minuted in a register or logbook. It is also the only copy that has fresh signatures and seals on it, the engrossed copy is issued directly to the appearer
11.
Zeeland
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Zeeland is the westernmost province of the Netherlands. The province, located in the south-west of the country, consists of a number of islands and peninsulas and its area is about 2,930 square kilometres, of which almost 1,140 square kilometres is water, and it has a population of about 380,000. Large parts of Zeeland are below sea level, the last great flooding of the area was in 1953. Tourism is an important economic activity, in the summer, its beaches make it a popular destination for tourists, especially German tourists. In some areas, the population can be two to four times higher during the summer season. The coat of arms of Zeeland shows a lion half-emerged from water, the country of New Zealand is named after Zeeland - not Zealand in Denmark, as sometimes claimed. Nehalennia is a goddess of the ancient religion known around the province of Zeeland and her worship dates back at least to the 2nd century BC, and flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. She was possibly a goddess, either Celtic or pre-Germanic – sources differ on the culture that first worshipped her. During the Roman Era, her main function appeared to be the protection of travelers, most of what is known about her comes from the remains of over 160 carved stone offerings which have been dredged up from the Eastern Scheldt since 1970. Two more Nehalennia offering stones have also found in Cologne. Zeeland was an area between the counts of Holland and Flanders until 1299, when the last count of Holland died. Followed by the counts of Bavaria, Burgundy and Habsburg, after 1585 Zeeland followed, as one of the 7 independent provinces, the fate of the Northern part of The Netherlands. In 1432 it became part of the Low Countries possessions of Philip the Good of Burgundy, through marriage, the Seventeen Provinces became the property of the Habsburgs in 1477. In the Eighty Years War, Zeeland was on the side of the Union of Utrecht, the area now called Zeeuws-Vlaanderen was not part of Zeeland, but a part of the county of Flanders that was conquered by the United Provinces, hence called Staats-Vlaanderen. After the French occupation and the formation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815, during World War II, Zeeland was occupied by Nazi Germany between June 1940 and November 1944. In 1944, Zeeland was devastated by the Battle of the Scheldt, the catastrophic North Sea flood of 1953, which killed over 1800 people in Zeeland, led to the construction of the protective Delta Works. The province of Zeeland is a river delta situated at the mouth of several major rivers, namely Scheldt, Rhine. Most of the province lies below sea level and was reclaimed from the sea by inhabitants over time, what used to be a muddy landscape, flooding at high tide and reappearing at low tide, became a series of small man-made hills that stayed dry at all times
12.
Dutch East India Company
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It is often considered to be the worlds first truly transnational corporation and the first company in history to actually issue bonds and shares of stock to the general public. In other words, the VOC was officially the first publicly traded company of the world, the company was also considered by many to be the very first major and the greatest corporation in history. Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in international trade for almost 200 years of existence. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, the VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 17th century. Having been set up in 1602, to profit from the Malukan spice trade, in 1619 the VOC established a capital in the city of Jayakarta. Over the next two centuries the Company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory and it remained an important trading concern and paid an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years. Around the world and especially in English-speaking countries, the VOC is widely known as the Dutch East India Company, the name ‘Dutch East India Company’ is used to make a distinction with the East India Company and other East Indian companies. The abbreviation VOC stands for Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie in Dutch, the VOC monogram was possibly the first globally-recognized corporate logo. The logo of the VOC consisted of a large capital V with an O on the left and it appeared on various corporate items, such as cannon and coins. The first letter of the hometown of the conducting the operation was placed on top. An Australian vintner has used the VOC logo since the late 20th century, the flag of the company was orange, white, and blue, with the company logo embroidered on it. Before the Dutch Revolt, Antwerp had played an important role as a centre in northern Europe. At the same time, the Portuguese trade system was unable to supply to satisfy growing demand. Demand for spices was relatively inelastic, and therefore each lag in the supply of pepper caused a rise in pepper prices. These three factors motivated Dutch merchants to enter the spice trade themselves. Further, a number of Dutchmen like Jan Huyghen van Linschoten and Cornelis de Houtman obtained first hand knowledge of the secret Portuguese trade routes and practices, thereby providing opportunity. The stage was set for Houtmans 1595 four-ship exploratory expedition to Banten, the main pepper port of West Java. Houtmans expedition then sailed east along the north coast of Java, losing twelve crew to a Javanese attack at Sidayu, half the crew were lost before the expedition made it back to the Netherlands the following year, but with enough spices to make a considerable profit
