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.
Amsterdam
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Amsterdam is the capital and most populous municipality of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its status as the capital is mandated by the Constitution of the Netherlands, although it is not the seat of the government, which is The Hague. Amsterdam has a population of 851,373 within the city proper,1,351,587 in the urban area, the city is located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. The metropolitan area comprises much of the part of the Randstad, one of the larger conurbations in Europe. Amsterdams name derives from Amstelredamme, indicative of the citys origin around a dam in the river Amstel, during that time, the city was the leading centre for finance and diamonds. In the 19th and 20th centuries the city expanded, and many new neighborhoods and suburbs were planned, the 17th-century canals of Amsterdam and the 19–20th century Defence Line of Amsterdam are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered a world city by the Globalization. The city is also the capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters there, and seven of the worlds 500 largest companies, including Philips and ING, are based in the city. In 2012, Amsterdam was ranked the second best city to live in by the Economist Intelligence Unit and 12th globally on quality of living for environment, the city was ranked 3rd in innovation by Australian innovation agency 2thinknow in their Innovation Cities Index 2009. The Amsterdam seaport to this day remains the second in the country, famous Amsterdam residents include the diarist Anne Frank, artists Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the oldest stock exchange in the world, is located in the city center. After the floods of 1170 and 1173, locals near the river Amstel built a bridge over the river, the earliest recorded use of that name is in a document dated October 27,1275, which exempted inhabitants of the village from paying bridge tolls to Count Floris V. This allowed the inhabitants of the village of Aemstelredamme to travel freely through the County of Holland, paying no tolls at bridges, locks, the certificate describes the inhabitants as homines manentes apud Amestelledamme. By 1327, the name had developed into Aemsterdam, Amsterdam is much younger than Dutch cities such as Nijmegen, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. In October 2008, historical geographer Chris de Bont suggested that the land around Amsterdam was being reclaimed as early as the late 10th century. This does not necessarily mean there was already a settlement then, since reclamation of land may not have been for farming—it may have been for peat. Amsterdam was granted city rights in either 1300 or 1306, from the 14th century on, Amsterdam flourished, largely from trade with the Hanseatic League
3.
Batavia, Dutch East Indies
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Batavia was the name of the capital city of the Dutch East Indies and corresponds to the present-day city of Jakarta. The establishment of Batavia at the site of the city of Jayakarta by the Dutch in 1619 led to the Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. Batavia became the center of the Dutch East India Companys trading network in Asia, monopolies on nutmeg, black pepper, cloves and cinnamon were augmented by non-indigenous cash crops like coffee, tea, cacao, tobacco, rubber, sugar and opium. To safeguard their commercial interests, the company and the colonial administration, Batavia lies on the north coast of Java, in a sheltered bay, over a flat land consisting of marshland and hills, and crisscrossed with canals. Batavia was a city for about 320 years until 1942 when the Dutch East Indies fell under Japanese occupation during World War II. During the Japanese occupation and again after Indonesian nationalists declared independence on August 17,1945, the period started with the founding of the walled city of Batavia by the Dutch East India Company following the destruction of the port city of Jayakarta. The period ends with the dissolution of the Dutch East India Company, in 1595, merchants from Amsterdam embarked upon an expedition to the East Indies archipelago. Under the command of Cornelis de Houtman, the expedition reached Bantam, capital of the Sultanate of Banten, in 1602, the English East India Companys first voyage, commanded by Sir James Lancaster, arrived in Aceh and sailed on to Bantam. There he was allowed to build a trading post that became the center of English trade in Indonesia until 1682, in 1602, the Dutch government granted a monopoly on Asian trade to the Dutch East India Company. In 1603, the first permanent Dutch trading post in Indonesia was established in Bantam, in 1610, Prince Jayawikarta granted permission to Dutch merchants to build a wooden godown and houses on the east bank of the Ciliwung River, opposite to Jayakarta. This outpost was established in 1611, as Dutch power increased, Jayawikarta allowed the British to erect houses on the west bank of the Ciliwung River, as well as a fort close to his customs office post, to keep the forces balanced. In December 1618, the relationship between Prince Jayawikarta and the Dutch escalated, and Jayawikartas soldiers besieged the Dutch fortress, containing the godowns Nassau. A British fleet of 15 ships arrived under the leadership of Sir Thomas Dale, after a sea battle, the newly appointed Dutch governor, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, escaped to the Moluccas to seek support. Meanwhile, the commander of the Dutch garrison, Pieter van den Broecke, along with five men, was arrested during negotiations. Later, Jayawikarta and the British entered into a friendship agreement, the Dutch army was on the verge of surrendering to the British when, in 1619, Banten sent a group of soldiers to summon Prince Jayawikarta. Jayawikartas friendship agreement with the British was without approval from the Bantenese authorities. The conflict between Banten and Prince Jayawikarta, as well as the relationship between Banten and the British, presented a new opportunity for the Dutch. Coen returned from the Moluccas with reinforcements on 28 May 1619 and razed Jayakarta to the ground on 30 May 1619, only the Padrão of Sunda Kelapa remained
4.
Passenger ship
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A passenger ship is a merchant ship whose primary function is to carry passengers on the sea. The type does however include many classes of ships designed to transport substantial numbers of passengers as well as freight, only in more recent ocean liners and in virtually all cruise ships has this cargo capacity been eliminated. While typically passenger ships are part of the merchant marine, passenger ships have also used as troopships. An ocean liner is the form of passenger ship. Once such liners operated on scheduled line voyages to all inhabited parts of the world, with the advent of airliners transporting passengers and specialized cargo vessels hauling freight, line voyages have almost died out. Her success demonstrated that there was a market for large cruise ships, successive classes of ever-larger ships were ordered, until the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth was finally dethroned from her 56-year reign as the largest passenger ship ever built. Both the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 and her successor as Cunards flagship RMS Queen Mary 2, QM2 was superseded by the Freedom of the Seas of the Royal Caribbean line as the largest passenger ship ever built, however, QM2 still hold the record for the largest ocean liner. The Freedom of the Seas was superseded by the Oasis of the Seas in October 2009, by convention and long usage, the size of civilian passenger ships is measured by gross tonnage, which is a dimensionless figure calculated from the total enclosed volume of the vessel. Gross tonnage is not a measure of weight, although the two concepts are often confused, weight is measured by displacement, which is the conventional means of measuring naval vessels. Often a passenger ship is stated to weigh or displace a certain tonnage, but the figure given nearly always refers to gross tonnage, gross tonnage normally is a much higher value than displacement. However, by the conventional and historical measure of gross tonnage, the Oasis of the Seas measures over 225,000 GT, over twice as large as the largest cruise ships of the late 1990s. Power is also unavailable to the crew of the ship to operate electrically powered mechanisms, lack of an adequate backup system to propel the ship can, in rough seas, render it dead in the water and result in loss of the ship. It is believed some owners and operators of ships built before 1980, fred Olsens Black Prince, built in 1966 was one such ship, but was reported to be headed for inter-island service in Venezuelan waters. The International Ice Patrol was formed in 1914 after the sinking of the RMS Titanic to address the issue of iceberg collision
5.
IJmuiden
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IJmuiden is a port city in the Dutch province of North Holland and is the main town in the municipality of Velsen. It is located at the mouth of the North Sea Canal to Amsterdam, the internal capitalization in the citys spelling is because IJ is a digraph in Dutch, and is therefore sometimes considered to be a ligature, rendering it a single letter. The port of IJmuiden is a port suited to fully laden Panamax ships. In the Roman era, this Velsen district was already inhabited, present day IJmuiden includes four harbors, the vissershaven, a fishing dock, the haringhaven, the IJmondhaven and the Seaport Marina IJmuiden, a harbour for pleasure craft. IJmuiden became the largest fishing port of the Netherlands after the island of Urk became closed in by the Afsluitdijk, the town suffered heavy damage and demolition during World War II, because of its maritime importance. Before the present IJmuiden was built, the area was known as Breesaap, the first spade hit the ground on 8 April 1865. He dubbed the town IJmuiden after passing the locks from the North Sea into the canal, the workers who dug the canal later settled there, they found work after the canal was finished in the fishing industry, but many also suffered extreme poverty. The IJmuiden name literally means “mouth of the IJ”, which is a hint to the importance the town has for the Amsterdam harbour, the name “IJmuiden” first appeared as IJ-muiden in lines written in 1848 by the professor and journalist Simon Vissering. The present IJmuiden form was adopted in 1876, as the North Sea Canal was being completed in this section. In 1890 it had about 1,500 inhabitants, but boomed when the Koninklijke Nederlandse Hoogovens steelworks settled in IJmuiden in 1918, at that time shipping was at a low, because during World War I minesweepers laid many mines off the coast of IJmuiden. The quays at IJmuiden were crowded at that time with people desperate to be transported across the channel, IJmuiden became the site of two separate fortified pens constructed by the German navy to house their Schnellboote and Biber midget submarines. The older structure, codename Schnellbootbunker AY, was protected by a 10-foot thick concrete roof, the newer one, codename Schnellbootbunker BY, had 10–12 feet of concrete, with a further 2–4-foot layer separated by an air–gap. The E-boats laid up in the shelters during the day, safe from air–attack and this included four attacks by No.9 Squadron and No.617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force, during which a total of 53 of the five–ton, Tallboy earthquake bombs were dropped. The story of IJmuiden during the war is told in the Bunker Museum IJmuiden, after the war, the town was rebuilt according to a plan by the architect Willem Marinus Dudok. The statistical area IJmuiden, which includes the surrounding countryside, has a population of 30,466, the headquarters of the KNRM, Royal Netherlands Sea Rescue Institution is located in IJmuiden. The IJmuiden harbour coast line remains the point for the equidistantly set UK-Netherlands sea boundary. The places to see on this route are the Hoogovensmuseum, the system of gates at the mouth of the canal. IJmuiden is home to two of the worlds most powerful water pumps capable of pumping 60,000 litres/second
6.
North Holland
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North Holland is a province in the northwest of the Netherlands. It is situated on the North Sea, north of South Holland and Utrecht, in 2015, it had a population of 2,762,163 and a total area of 2,670 km2. From the 9th to the 16th century, the area was a part of the County of Holland. During this period West Friesland was incorporated, in the 17th and 18th century, the area was part of the province of Holland. At that time, the distinction between the Noorderkwartier and the Zuiderkwartier became common, in 1840, the province of Holland was split into the two provinces of North Holland and South Holland. In 1855, the Haarlemmermeer was drained and turned into land, the capital and seat of the provincial government is Haarlem, and Amsterdam, the Netherlands capital city, is the provinces largest city. The Kings Commissioner of North Holland is Johan Remkes, there are 51 municipalities and three water boards in the province. For most of its history, the province of North Holland was an integral part of Holland. From the 9th century to the 16th century, Holland was a county ruled by the counts of Holland, during this period an area known as West Friesland was conquered and integrated into Holland. For centuries afterwards Holland would be officially called Holland and West Friesland, the people of West Friesland had a strong sense of identity as a region within Holland. From the 16th century to 1795, Holland was the wealthiest and most important province in the United Provinces in the Dutch Republic, as the richest and most powerful province, Holland dominated the union. During this period a distinction was made between the North Quarter and the South Quarter, areas that roughly correspond to the two modern provinces. The province of North Holland as it is today has its origins in the period of French rule from 1795 to 1813 and this was a time of bewildering changes to the Dutch system of provinces. In 1795 the old order was swept away and the Batavian Republic was established, in the Constitution enacted on 23 April 1798, the old borders were radically changed. The republic was reorganised into eight departments with roughly equal populations, Holland was split up into five departments named Texel, Amstel, Delf, Schelde en Maas, and Rijn. The first three of these lay within the borders of the old Holland, the two were made up of parts of different provinces. In 1801 the old borders were restored when the department of Holland was created and this reorganisation had been short-lived, but it gave birth to the concept of breaking up Holland and making it a less powerful province. This time the two departments were called Amstelland and Maasland and this also did not last long
Netherlands, Amsterdam
