1.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
2.
Portuguese people
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Portuguese people are an ethnic group indigenous to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and their predominant religion is Christianity, Portuguese people were a key factor to the Age of Exploration, discovering several lands unknown to the Europeans in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania, helping to pave the way for Globalization. There are around 10 million native Portuguese in Portugal, out of a population of 10.34 million. A small minority of about 15,000 speak the Mirandese language, in the municipalities of Miranda do Douro, Vimioso, all of the speakers are bilingual with Portuguese. An even smaller minority of no more than 2,000 people speak Barranquenho, some people from the former colonies have been migrating to Portugal since the 1900s. More recently, a number of Slavs, especially Ukrainians, Moldovans, Romanians and Russians. There is also a Chinese minority, in addition, there is a small minority Gypsies of about 40,000 people, Muslims about 34,000 people and an even smaller minority of Jews of about 5,000 people. Between 1886 and 1966, Portugal lost to more than any West European country except Ireland. From the middle of the 19th century to the late 1950s, about 40 million Brazilians have relatively recent Portuguese background, due to massive immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. About 1.2 million Brazilian citizens are native Portuguese, significant verified Portuguese minorities exist in several countries. Portuguese Sephardic Jews are also in Israel, the Netherlands, the United States, France, Venezuela, Brazil, in Brazil many of the colonists were also originally Sephardic Jews, who, converted, were known as New Christians. In the United States, there are Portuguese communities in New Jersey, the New England states, in the Pacific, Hawaii has a sizable Portuguese element that goes back 150 years, Australia and New Zealand also have Portuguese communities. Canada, particularly Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia, has developed a significant Portuguese community since 1940, argentina and Uruguay had Portuguese immigration in the early 20th century. So has Chile where an estimated 50,000 descendants live, an estimated 800,000 Portuguese returned to Portugal as the countrys African possessions gained independence in 1975, after the Carnation Revolution, while others moved to Brazil and South Africa. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Equatorial Guinea, in 1989 some 4,000,000 Portuguese were living abroad, mainly in France, Germany, Brazil, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, Venezuela, and the United States. Portuguese constitute 13% of the population of Luxembourg, in areas such as Thetford and the crown dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey, the Portuguese form the largest ethnic minority groups at 30% of the population, 20% and 3% respectively. The British capital London is home to the largest number of Portuguese people in the UK, with the majority being found in the boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Lambeth and Westminster. The Portuguese diaspora communities still are very attached to their language, their culture and their national dishes, in colonial times, over 700,000 Portuguese settled in Brazil, and most of them went there during the gold rush of the 18th century
3.
Portugal
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Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. It is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, to the west and south it is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east and north by Spain. The Portugal–Spain border is 1,214 kilometres long and considered the longest uninterrupted border within the European Union, the republic also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous regions with their own regional governments. The territory of modern Portugal has been settled, invaded. The Pre-Celts, Celts, Carthaginians and the Romans were followed by the invasions of the Visigothic, in 711 the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Moors, making Portugal part of Muslim Al Andalus. Portugal was born as result of the Christian Reconquista, and in 1139, Afonso Henriques was proclaimed King of Portugal, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal established the first global empire, becoming one of the worlds major economic, political and military powers. Portugal monopolized the trade during this time, and the Portuguese Empire expanded with military campaigns led in Asia. After the 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy, the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic was established, democracy was restored after the Portuguese Colonial War and the Carnation Revolution in 1974. Shortly after, independence was granted to almost all its overseas territories, Portugal has left a profound cultural and architectural influence across the globe and a legacy of over 250 million Portuguese speakers today. Portugal is a country with a high-income advanced economy and a high living standard. It is the 5th most peaceful country in the world, maintaining a unitary semi-presidential republican form of government and it has the 18th highest Social Progress in the world, putting it ahead of other Western European countries like France, Spain and Italy. Portugal is a pioneer when it comes to drug decriminalization, as the nation decriminalized the possession of all drugs for use in 2001. The early history of Portugal is shared with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula located in South Western Europe, the name of Portugal derives from the joined Romano-Celtic name Portus Cale. Other influences include some 5th-century vestiges of Alan settlements, which were found in Alenquer, Coimbra, the region of present-day Portugal was inhabited by Neanderthals and then by Homo sapiens, who roamed the border-less region of the northern Iberian peninsula. These were subsistence societies that, although they did not establish prosperous settlements, neolithic Portugal experimented with domestication of herding animals, the raising of some cereal crops and fluvial or marine fishing. Chief among these tribes were the Calaicians or Gallaeci of Northern Portugal, the Lusitanians of central Portugal, the Celtici of Alentejo, a few small, semi-permanent, commercial coastal settlements were also founded in the Algarve region by Phoenicians-Carthaginians. Romans first invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 219 BC, during the last days of Julius Caesar, almost the entire peninsula had been annexed to the Roman Republic. The Carthaginians, Romes adversary in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their coastal colonies and it suffered a severe setback in 150 BC, when a rebellion began in the north
4.
Indo people
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It was used to describe people acknowledged to be of mixed Dutch and Indonesian descent, or it was a term used in the Dutch East Indies to apply to Europeans who had partial Asian ancestry. The European ancestry of people was predominantly Dutch, and also Portuguese, British, French, Belgian, German. Other terms used were Indos, Dutch Indonesians, Eurasians, Indo-Europeans, Indo-Dutch, in the Indonesian language, common synonymous terms are Sinjo, Belanda-Indo, Indo-Belanda, and Indo means Eurasian, a person with European and Indonesian parentage. Indo is an abbreviation of the term Indo-European which originated in the Dutch East Indies of the 19th century as a term to describe the Eurasians. Indische is an abbreviation of the Dutch term Indische Nederlander, Indische was a term that could be applied to everything connected with the Dutch East Indies. In the Netherlands the term Indische Nederlander includes all Dutch nationals who lived in the Dutch East Indies, to distinguish between the two, Eurasians are called Indo and native Dutch are called Totok. In the Dutch East Indies, these families did not form a racially, culturally and socially homogenous community between the Totoks and the indigenous population and they were historically Christians and spoke Dutch, Portuguese, English and Indonesian. They were compared to Afrikaners from South Africa, who also share Dutch ancestry, in the 16th-18th centuries, Eurasians were referred to by a Portuguese term mestiço or as coloured. Additionally a wide range of more terms, such as liplap can be found in the literature. Eurasians and Europeans in the Dutch East Indies were descendants of Europeans who travelled to Asia between the 16th and the 20th century, the earliest Europeans in South East Asia were Portuguese and Spanish traders. Portuguese explorers discovered two trade routes to Asia, sailing around the south of Africa or the Americas to create a commercial monopoly, a main Portuguese stronghold was in the Maluku Islands, the fabled Spice Islands. The Spanish established a dominant presence further north in the Philippines and these historical developments were instrumental in building a foundation for large Eurasian communities in this region. Old Eurasian families in the Philippines mainly descend from the Spanish, while the oldest Indo families descend from Portuguese traders and explorers, some family names of old Indo families include Simao, De Fretes, Perera, Henriques, etc. During the 1620s Jan Pieterszoon Coen in particular insisted that families, as a result, a number of single women were sent and an orphanage was established in Batavia to raise Dutch orphan girls to become East India brides. Around 1650, the number of mixed marriages, frequent in the years of the Dutch East India Company. There was a number of women from the Netherlands recorded as marrying in the years around 1650. At least half the brides of European men in Batavia came from Europe, many of these women were widows, already previously married in the Indies, but almost half of them were single women from the Netherlands marrying for the first time. There were still considerable numbers of women sailing eastwards to the Indies at this time, the ships passenger lists from the 17th century also evidence this
5.
Iranians in the Netherlands
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Iranians in the Netherlands form one of the newer and larger populations of the Iranian diaspora in Europe. Iranians in the Netherlands are sometimes referred to by hyphenated terms such as Dutch-Iranians, Iranian-Dutch, Dutch-Persian, similar terms Iraanse Nederlanders, Nederlandse Iraniërs, and Perzische-Nederlanders may be found in Dutch-language media. Other collective terms used to refer to the community include Iraanse gemeenschap, Perzische gemeenschap, however, from 1981 to 2001, only 1,292 were formally recognised as invited refugees, the vast majority in the period 1987-1990. This represented nearly double the 1996 total of 16,478 persons, Iran is a largely Muslim country, a fact reflected in the backgrounds of Iranian migrants to the Netherlands. However, most migrants do not continue to practise their religion and those who do often find themselves viewed as threats and suffer exclusion from Dutch society, this trend strengthened with the growth of political Islam in the 1980s. In 2007, Ehsan Jami, a Dutch politician of Iranian descent, criticised the Islamic prophet Muhammad, together with Loubna Berrada, Jami founded the Central Committee for Ex-Muslims in 2007. The organisation, supported by Afshin Ellian, aims to support apostates from Islam, on 4 August 2007, Jami was attacked in his hometown Voorburg by three men. The attack was believed to be linked to his activities for the committee. There were controversial happenings regarding Iranian students in the Netherlands, however, the government later backed away from this policy. In July, they announced that Iranian students could be admitted but would be restricted from taking certain courses, a local court ruled in February 2010 that the University of Twente discriminate against Iranians by refusing their admission due to their nationalities. The case went up to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands in The Hauge, in 1974, a group of Iranians based in the Netherlands and other European countries occupied the Embassy of Iran in Wassenaar. Another group occupied the embassy in August 1978, and were arrested by the police and their lawyer stated to Dutch daily Nieuwsblad van het Noorden that Wassenar Police gives information to Persia. The social environment created by that event has resulted in difficulties for later academic research. Since the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests, the Iranian community in the Netherlands organised many solidarity demonstrations in Amsterdam, The Hague, Delft and Groningen. In April 2010 a group of Iranian and Dutch protesters occupied parts of Islamic Republic Embassy in the Hague in protest to Irans oppressive and violent policies. In June 2010 the Dutch TV Channel NOS organized a visit for Ezzatollah Zarghami, director of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, Radio Zamaneh revealed this news, creating a wave of anger in the Iranian community. The Hague-based Iranian Progressive Youth Network also published a release entitled NOS Welcomes the Terrorist. The event was canceled a few days before the visit, the whole affair was reported in mainstream Dutch media such as NRC Handelsblad
6.
Dutch people
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The Dutch, occasionally referred to as Netherlanders—a term that is cognate to the Dutch word for Dutch people, Nederlanders—are a Germanic ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a culture and speak the Dutch language. The high degree of urbanization characteristic of Dutch society was attained at an early date. During the Republic the first series of large scale Dutch migrations outside of Europe took place, despite the small size of the Netherlands, the Dutch left behind a legacy in excess of their mere numbers. The traditional art and culture of the Dutch encompasses various forms of music, dances, architectural styles and clothing. Internationally, Dutch painters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Van Gogh are held in high regard, the dominant religion of the Dutch is Christianity, although in modern times the majority is no longer religious. Significant percentages of the Dutch are adherents of humanism, agnosticism, atheism or individual spirituality, as with all ethnic groups the ethnogenesis of the Dutch has been a lengthy and complex process. The text below hence focuses on the history of the Dutch ethnic group, for Dutch national history, for Dutch colonial history, see the article on the Dutch Empire. Following the end of the period in the West around 500, with large federations settling the decaying Roman Empire. In the Low Countries, this began when the Franks, themselves a union of multiple smaller tribes. Eventually, in 358, the Salian Franks, one of the three main subdivisions among the Frankish alliance settled the areas Southern lands as foederati, Roman allies in charge of border defense. On a political level, the Frankish warlords abandoned tribalism and founded a number of kingdoms, however, the population make-up of the Frankish Empire, or even early Frankish kingdoms such as Neustria and Austrasia, was not dominated by Franks. Though the Frankish leaders controlled most of Western Europe, the Franks themselves were confined to the Northwestern part of the Empire, the current Dutch-French language border has remained virtually identical ever since, and could be seen as marking the furthest pale of gallicization among the Franks. The medieval cities of the Low Countries, which experienced major growth during the 11th and 12th century, were instrumental in breaking down the already relatively loose local form of feudalism, as they became increasingly powerful, they used their economical strength to influence the politics of their nobility. While the cities were of political importance, they also formed catalysts for medieval Dutch culture. The various city guilds as well as the necessity of water boards in the Dutch delta and it is also around this time, that ethnonyms such as Diets and Nederlands emerge. This process marked a new episode in the development of the Dutch ethnic group, as now political unity started to emerge, consolidating the strengthened cultural, despite their linguistic and cultural unity, and economic similarities, there was still little sense of political unity among the Dutch people. However, the centralist policies of Burgundy in the 14th and 15th centuries, at first violently opposed by the cities of the Low Countries, had a profound impact and changed this
Netherlands