Peter the Great
Peter the Great, Peter I or Peter Alexeyevich ruled the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire from 7 May 1682 until his death in 1725, jointly ruling before 1696 with his elder half-brother, Ivan V. Through a number of successful wars, he expanded the Tsardom into a much larger empire that became a major European power and laid the groundwork for the Russian navy after capturing ports at Azov and the Baltic Sea, he led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific and based on the Enlightenment. Peter's reforms made a lasting impact on Russia, many institutions of Russian government trace their origins to his reign, he is known for founding and developing the city of Saint Petersburg, which remained the capital of Russia until 1917. The imperial title of Peter the Great was the following: By the grace of God, the most excellent and great sovereign prince Pyotr Alekseevich the ruler of all the Russias: of Moscow, of Kiev, of Vladimir, of Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan and Tsar of Siberia, sovereign of Pskov, great prince of Smolensk, Yugorsk, Vyatsky and others, sovereign and great prince of Novgorod Nizovsky lands, Chernigovsky, of Ryazan, of Rostov, Belozersky, Udorsky and the sovereign of all the northern lands, the sovereign of the Iverian lands, of the Kartlian and Georgian Kings, of the Kabardin lands, of the Circassian and Mountain princes and many other states and lands western and eastern here and there and the successor and sovereign and ruler.
Named after the apostle, described as a newborn as "with good health, his mother's black, vaguely Tatar eyes, a tuft of auburn hair", from an early age Peter's education was put in the hands of several tutors, most notably Nikita Zotov, Patrick Gordon, Paul Menesius. On 29 January 1676, Tsar Alexis died, leaving the sovereignty to Peter's elder half-brother, the weak and sickly Feodor III of Russia. Throughout this period, the government was run by Artamon Matveev, an enlightened friend of Alexis, the political head of the Naryshkin family and one of Peter's greatest childhood benefactors; this position changed when Feodor died in 1682. As Feodor did not leave any children, a dispute arose between the Miloslavsky family and Naryshkin family over who should inherit the throne. Peter's other half-brother, Ivan V of Russia, was next in line for the throne, but he was chronically ill and of infirm mind; the Boyar Duma chose the 10-year-old Peter to become Tsar with his mother as regent. This arrangement was brought before the people of Moscow, as ancient tradition demanded, was ratified.
Sophia Alekseyevna, one of Alexis' daughters from his first marriage, led a rebellion of the Streltsy in April–May 1682. In the subsequent conflict some of Peter's relatives and friends were murdered, including Matveev, Peter witnessed some of these acts of political violence; the Streltsy made it possible for Sophia, the Miloslavskys and their allies to insist that Peter and Ivan be proclaimed joint Tsars, with Ivan being acclaimed as the senior. Sophia exercised all power. For seven years, she ruled as an autocrat. A large hole was cut in the back of the dual-seated throne used by Peter. Sophia would sit behind the throne and listen as Peter conversed with nobles, while feeding him information and giving him responses to questions and problems; this throne can be seen in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow. Peter was not concerned that others ruled in his name, he engaged in such pastimes as sailing, as well as mock battles with his toy army. Peter's mother sought to force him to adopt a more conventional approach and arranged his marriage to Eudoxia Lopukhina in 1689.
The marriage was a failure, ten years Peter forced his wife to become a nun and thus freed himself from the union. By the summer of 1689, Peter age 17, planned to take power from his half-sister Sophia, whose position had been weakened by two unsuccessful Crimean campaigns against the Crimean Khanate in an attempt to stop devastating Crimean Tatar raids into Russia's southern lands; when she learned of his designs, Sophia conspired with the leaders of the Streltsy, who continually aroused disorder and dissent. Peter, warned by the Streltsy, escaped in the middle of the night to the impenetrable monastery of Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra. Sophia was overthrown, with Peter I and Ivan V continuing to act as co-tsars. Foy de la Neuville records that Sophia requested influential members of Peter's family, notably her aunts Tatyana and Anna, to mediate with him. Peter forced Sophia to enter a convent, where she gave up her name and her position as a member of the royal family. Still, Peter could not acquire actual control over Russian affairs.
Power was instead exercised by Natalya Naryshkina. It was only. Formally, Ivan V remained a co-ruler with Peter. Peter became the sole ruler when Ivan died in 1696. Peter was 24 years old. Peter grew to be tall as an a
Zaanse Schans
Zaanse Schans is a neighbourhood of Zaandam, near Zaandijk, Netherlands. It is best known for its collection of houses. From 1961 to 1974 old buildings from all over the Zaanstreek were relocated using lowboy trailers to the area; the Zaans Museum, established in 1994 near the first Zaanse Schans windmill, is located south of the neighbourhood. Zaanse Schans derived its name from the river Zaan and its original function as sconce against the Spanish troops during the Eighty Years' War of Dutch independence, it is one of the popular tourist attractions of the Netherlands and an anchor point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage. The neighbourhood attracted 1.6 million visitors in 2014. It is served by Zaandijk Zaanse Schans railway station, 18 minutes away from Amsterdam Centraal station; the Zaanse Schans houses seven museums — the Weavers House, the Cooperage, the Jisper House, Zaan Time Museum, Albert Heijn Museum Shop and the Bakery Museum. The whole neighbourhood is a popular tourist attraction and there is a debate in local politics on how to reduce overcrowding.
The windmills were built after 1574. Official website
Verkade
Royal Verkade is a Dutch manufacturing company, owned by a Turkish conglomerate. The company is headquartered in Zaandam and was one of the oldest existing family companies in the Netherlands. In November 2014 the company was acquired by Pladis, a global biscuit and confectionery company owned by Yıldız Holding, it was founded in 1886 by Ericus Verkade to make bread and rusk, expanded to produce cookies and chocolates. The company was first named "De Ruyter" for a mill in Zaandam which milled flour—the original "ruiter" was on the company logo until 1994, when it was removed to make way for a newly designed logo, intended to give the company and its products a more contemporary look; the horseman is still found on Verkade rusk, made by the competitor, the Bolletje factory in Almelo, using the Verkade recipe. The company acquired the right to bear the "royal" mark in their name in 1950, employs some 450 people in Zaandam; the last members of the Verkade family, Ericus's great-grandsons Erik and Arnold, left the company in 1992.
Commercial success came about through marketing, starting in 1906, when the company began issuing picture cards with its products, which could be collected in albums. Co Verkade, a grandson of Ericus, was instrumental in this strategy, the albums, most of them written by Jac. P. Thijsse were popular; the albums generated a kind of collection mania among the Dutch population before World War II: 27 albums were made, a total of 3.2 million copies. In the company's early days, the main part of the workforce consisted of young women who walked in their company uniform to work; the Zaanstreek was a regional center of industry, women workers were employed at many of the factories in the area, including Honig and Albert Heijn. The history of these factory workers was published in Ruytermeisjes and Verkadevrouwen in 1997. Many of them came from the poor areas of Amsterdam, most talked about the pleasant social interactions: "We sang all the time," one of them said, they were allowed to chat during work.
Distinct regional and class differences were noted: girls from Amsterdam were deemed to be outspoken vulgar, compared to their counterparts from Zaandam. For Verkade, the benefit of hiring female workers was twofold: women were thought to have more delicate hands and be better at packaging brittle materials such as cookies and rusk, they commanded lower wages than their male counterparts. In a tradition of paternalism, the company felt a kind of responsibility toward the younger girls, who came from uneducated backgrounds; the girls quit their jobs when they got married, thought of their old jobs and colleagues with nostalgia. After World War II Verkade found itself competing for scarce labor, it drastically changed its policies, now employing married and older women, it began to run advertisements in the Amsterdam public transportation system: Meisjes komt werken bij Verkade en neem vooral je moeder mee. In the 1960s and 1970s, Verkade benefited from the influx of migrant workers, who were just coming onto the Dutch labor market, began hiring and employing the wives of those workers.
The end of the Verkademeisjes came in the 1970s and 1980s, when machines started doing the work done by delicate women's fingers. The Zaans Museum has a section dedicated to the girls, it is sponsored for an amount of €60,000 by PDZ, one of the country's largest temp agencies, one of the main providers of women to Verkade's work force since the 1960s. Today's Verkademeisjes are a group of singers/actresses founded in 2005 who have revived one notable tradition of the original Verkade girls: singing cheerful songs. Dutch author and songwriter Willem Wilmink named one of his collections for them, Brief van een Verkademeisje en andere liedjes. Company website
Jan Verkade
Johannes Sixtus Gerhardus Verkade, afterwards Willibrord Verkade O. S. B. was Christian Symbolist painter. A disciple of Paul Gauguin and friend of Paul Sérusier, he belonged to the circle of artists known as'Les Nabis.' Of a Dutch anabaptist background, his artistic and spiritual journey led him to convert to Roman Catholicism, to take Holy Orders as a Benedictine monk, taking the religious name Willibrord. He entered the Archabbey of Beuron and continued his work in a religious context, working with Desiderius Lenz, leader of the Beuron Art School, he worked throughout Europe and had an important influence on the continuing development of the new Benedictine Art. Jan Verkade was born one of twins in Zaandam, the son of Ericus Verkade, founder of a well-known baker's confectionery business, his father belonged to the Mennonite sect, a religious group which regarded Catholicism with hostility. In 1877 the family moved to Amsterdam, the twins were sent to a religious boarding school in Oisterwijk where they were considered slow.
From 1883 they attended the Handelsschule in Amsterdam. Throughout childhood they were always close companions. A family visit to Cologne Cathedral and Trier, at the Porta Nigra, awakened Verkade's artistic passion for the Primitive and Classical. Jan took every opportunity to study and draw in the galleries of the Rijksmuseum, skipped school to sketch at the Zoological Gardens, he resisted expectations to join the family business and to be confirmed as Mennonite, his father accepted Jan's decision to study at the Amsterdam State Academy of Fine Arts. His twin brother was sent to England for business training, he found two and a half years' study at the Rijksakademie, 1887–1889, technical but without spirit: seeking an artistic voice for his awakening religious sentiments in an age which glorified technology and city life, he courted rural solitude. He lived in Hattem for two years where, disappointed by much contemporary literature, he began to find answers in Tolstoy's A Confession, Huysmans's A Rebours, the works of Baudelaire and Verlaine.
Verkade moved to Paris in February 1891. His stay in Paris was short but intense; the Symbolist revolt against Naturalism and Realism was at work, at the Café Voltaire he met literary Symbolists surrounding the figure of Jean Moréas, including the critic Charles Morice, Albert Aurier, Julien Leclercq and the poet Adolphe Retté. Paul Verlaine appeared. Jan sought out Paul Sérusier, Gauguin's pupil and disciple, painted with him in his studio, he produced a group of still lifes based upon Gauguin's principles, on which Gauguin gave him advice and opened his thought. He explained to Verkade that aesthetic understanding must imbue the representation of Nature, that art-work must be both a material and a spiritual birth. Verkade saw this as an insight into the divine Creation. Sérusier and de Haan brought him among'Les Nabis' those who met at Paul Ranson's studio, including Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard and his friend Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Ranson dubbed him'le nabi obéliscal.'Ranson and Sérusier followed a form of orientalized Theosophy, Verkade was exposed to the resurgent esoteric mysticism, interest in the Kabbalah and magic arts, which the Symbolists absorbed.
He adhered to Christian beliefs. He acknowledged Jørgensen's view that the Symbolist movement had inherited social preoccupations emerging into the void created between loss of belief in the Christian miraculous, the spiritual bankruptcy of material science. At the time of Gauguin's departure for Tahiti, April 1891, Verkade met Mogens Ballin, who joined Verkade and Sérusier in a sojourn in Brittany, where Paul had worked at Pont-Aven in the preceding years. Responding to the landscape and the embedded religious customs of the country people, urged on by Sérusier's spiritual expositions, Verkade's religious feelings grew. At Huelgoat he became meditative, attending Mass for the first time. After some time at Le Pouldu, he went home to Amsterdam for four months, immersed in Balzac's Seraphita, first read through the Credo while listening to Bach's Mass in B Minor. Sérusier visited, they returned to Paris together. Verkade exhibited with the Nabis in the'Indépendents' Exhibition of March 1892. Nabi gatherings at Ranson's studio continued, but he soon returned to Saint-Nolff, armed with a Bible, a Catechism, Edouard Schuré's Les Grands Initiés and the Confessions of St Augustine.
Resuming work, he read Schuré and realised its insufficiency for him. At Saint-Nolff he and Ballin grew towards Catholicism together: Verkade took formal instruction and was baptized at Vannes. Verkade and Ballin next travelled to Italy, staying first in Florence, visiting Siena and Pistoia. Attracted by the life of the Franciscan monastery at Fiesole, by the Franciscan ideal, Ballin was baptized there, they sought a period of residency, they were directed to Rome to seek assent, where they fell under the City's spell. Returning north by way of Assisi they awaited permission from the Provincial. Sérusier was in Florence, was surprised by, but not unappreciative of their conversion. Ballin was recalled to Denmark for military service, in May 1893 Verkade undertook his months of retreat at Fiesole alone, he found deep refreshment in the monastic life, peace in the order of holy service, simplicity of heart and faith among the residents. While there he painted two murals, including one of St Francis, heard warm reports of the artist-m
Oostzaan
Oostzaan is a municipality and a town in the Zaanstreek, Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. The municipality had a population of 9,705 in 2017. Oostzaan has a total area of 16.08 km2. Oostzaan—together with Westzaan and Assendelft—are considered the "mother towns" of the Zaanstreek, of which they are the three oldest towns. Oostzaan played a role in the VOC and WIC shipping and shipbuilding. In the 17th century Oostzaan had its own pirate, named Claes Compaen. Sailing from the Netherlands as a legal pirate captain, in the possession of pirate letters, he soon began to raid ships for his private account, from the English Channel, to the Mediterranean Sea and the African-Atlantic coast into the Caribbean Sea, he liquidated the booty on the coast of Ireland in Salé and the Barbary Coast. A street in Oostzaan is named for Claes Compaen; the town has a Reformed church with a cruciform groundplan, the Great Church, which contains two ship models that recall the days when Oostzaan was an important sea-faring community.
In the Oostzijderveld area of Oostzaan stands a windmill, De Windjager. Oostzaan consists of several hamlets, Achterdichting, De Heul, Noordeinde, Zuideinde. Kerkbuurt and the northern part of Zuideinde are the center of Oostzaan; the municipal council of Oostzaan consists of 13 seats, which are divided as follows: Gemeente Belangen - 3 seats GroenLinks - 3 seats VVD - 3 seats CDA - 1 seat D66 - 1 seat Partij Luijendijk - 1 seat PvdA - 1 seat Media related to Oostzaan at Wikimedia Commons Official website
Zaandam Kogerveld railway station
Zaandam Kogerveld is a railway station located in Zaandam, Netherlands. The station opened in 1989 on the Zaandam–Enkhuizen railway; the station is 2 km north of Zaandam railway station, is in the Kogerveld estate. This station is a suburb station of Zaandam. Other estates nearby are Hoornseveld and't Kalf. Residents from Koog aan de Zaan use this station for Purmerend and Hoorn; the following services call at Zaandam Kogerveld. 2x per hour local service Hoofddorp - Zaandam - Hoorn Kersenboogerd 63 64 391 395 N62
Zaan
The Zaan is a small river in the province of North Holland in the northwestern Netherlands and the name of a district through which it runs. The river was a side arm of the IJ bay and travels 13.5 kilometers through the municipalities of Zaanstad and Wormerland north of Amsterdam, from West-Knollendam in the north to Zaandam in the south, where it empties into the IJ. The municipality of Zaanstad and several towns along the Zaan are named for the river: Koog aan de Zaan, Oostzaan and the city of Zaandam; the river runs past the Zaanse Schans, a village with historic windmills and houses. It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Netherlands; the region through which the river runs is called the Zaan district. It comprises the municipalities of Zaanstad and most of Wormerland. During the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century, the Zaan district was dotted with windmills with a variety of functions and it is considered to be one of the world's first industrialized areas. Joining an considerable number of flour mills were, for example, from 1592 "wood mills" for sawing wood, from 1600 "hemp mills" for extracting fibers from flax and hemp, from 1601 oil mills for crushing oil-bearing seeds and "paint mills" producing dyes and paint, shortly after paper mills for the production of paper.
By the mid-17th century 900 windmills could be found along the river, some of them still preserved in the Zaanse Schans. The Zaan district continues to be a industrialized area with many factories around the city of Zaandam. A number of major Dutch companies, like Verkade, were founded in the Zaan district; the dialect spoken in the Zaan area is known as Zaans. It has some similarities with the West Frisian dialect. French impressionist painter Claude Monet stayed in Zaandam in the summer of 1871 and produced a series of 24 paintings of the Zaan district, writing to his friend Camille Pissarro that, "there is enough here to paint for an entire lifetime." Monet returned to the Zaan district to paint during visits to the Netherlands in following years. The name of the Alkmaar-based football club AZ is short for Alkmaar Zaanstreek
listen)) is a city in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. It is the main city of the municipality of Zaanstad, and received city rights in 1811, it is located on the river Zaan, just north of Amsterdam.
