Conflicting images of the Zuider Zee around 1900: Nation-building and the struggle against water

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 37, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 82-94

  de Pater, Ben ^a  

^a UTRECHT UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

Internal Other; Netherlands; Reclamation; Regional images; Zuider Zee

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL HERITAGE; DEVELOPMENT PROJECT; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; MODERNIZATION; RECLAIMED LAND; REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT; STATE BUILDING;

NETHERLANDS;

EID: 78650953918     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2010.04.002     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. L.T. van der Wal, Geschiedenis van de Plannen tot Afsluiting en Droogmaking van de Zuider Zee, met chronologische lijst van geschriften tot en met het jaar 1922. Rapporten en Mededeelingen betreffende de Zuider Zeewerken 1, Den Haag, 1923.
2. S. Oliver, The Thames Embankment and the disciplining of nature in modernity, The Geographical Journal 166 (2000) 227-238, 236.
3. Wishful calculating, such as one still encounters with the implementation of major infrastructural projects; see B. Flybjerg, N. Bruzelius and W. Rothengatter, Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition, Cambridge, 2003.
4. A fourth island, Schokland, was abandoned in 1859 by its 588 occupants. Persistent flooding had made their island uninhabitable, especially in the winter months. At their request, the state enacted a law calling for mandatory evacuation and resettlement on the mainland where the Schoklanders could rely on government support. Nowadays, Schokland is part of the Noordoostpolder and was given the status of World Heritage Site by UNESCO (whc.unesco.org). See: G. van Hezel and A. Pol, Schokland en omgeving, Utrecht, 2008; B. van Gorp and H. Renes, The Dutch landscape: a way of seeing, in: B. van Gorp, M. Hoff and H. Renes (Eds), Dutch Windows: Cultural Geographical Essays on the Netherlands, Utrecht, 2003, 55-75.
5. See for an extended review and hundreds of maps: E. Walsmit et al., Spiegel van de Zuiderzee. Geschiedenis en Cartobibliografie van de Zuiderzee en het Hollands Waddengebied, Houten, 2009, especially Chapter Five (with an English summary). The idea of enclosure goes back as far as 1667, when Hendrik Stevin proposed the construction of a series of dikes between the Wadden islands.
6. Verslag der Staats-commmissie, 1873, 64.
7. The history of the Zuider Zee Society is described quite extensively in: G.L. Cleintuar, Wisselend getij. Geschiedenis van de Zuiderzeevereniging 1866-1949, Zutphen, 1982.
8. Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant, 12 February 1893.
9. Caprotti and Kaïka, Producing the ideal fascist landscape (note 5), 619.
10. Zimmerman, cited in H.E.A. Smissaert, Nederland in den Aanvang der Twintigste Eeuw, Leiden, 1910, VIII.
11. H.A. van Ysselstein, De Haven van Rotterdam, Rotterdam, 1908, 75 and 94.
12. A. Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation. Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968.
13. In her book Holland Mania. The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture, Woodstock, 1998. This paragraph is based on her book. See also: B. van Gorp and T. Béneker, Holland as other place and other time: alterity in projected tourist images of the Netherlands, GeoJournal 68 (2007) 293-305.
14. H. Roodenburg, Marken als relict. Het samengaan van schilderkunst, toerisme, schedelmeterij en volkskunde rond 1900, Volkskundig Bulletin 25 (1999) 197-224.
15. M. Grever, Visualisering en collectieve herinneringen. 'Volendams meisje' als icoon van de nationale identiteit, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 117 (2004) 207-229.
16. Jac. P. Thijsse, Langs de Zuiderzee, Zaandam, 1914, 59.
17. Quotation from the Dutch translation, Nederland en zijn Bewoners, Utrecht, 1982, 254-256.
18. H. Blink, Van Eems tot Schelde. Wandelingen door Oud en Nieuw Nederland, volume I and volume II, Amsterdam, 1903/1905, 29-30 resp. 76-78.
19. Blink, Van Eems tot Schelde (note 25), volume IV, 1907, 54.
20. Anonymous, Het eiland Marken, De Aarde en haar Volken 20 (1884) 2.
21. Objections to this way of thinking were raised by one person, namely the writer and journalist Frank Netscher. He saw that, with the arrival of tourists, the authenticity of the culture of Volendam and Marken had become a sham. The original culture had been degraded to a touristic commodity, and thereby actually no longer formed a contrast to modern times. The inhabitants dished up 'a piece of the Netherlands in theatrical form' to the tourists for the sake of earning a livelihood. F. Netscher, Tusschen de zeeën en achter het duin, Den Haag, 1908, 39.
22. H.C. Van der Houven van Oordt and G. Vissering, De Economische Beteekenis van de Afsluiting en Drooglegging der Zuiderzee, geschreven in opdracht van het bestuur der Zuiderzee-Vereeniging (First edition 1898), Leiden, 1901, 302.
23. See also H. te Velde, Gemeenschapszin en Plichtsbesef. Liberalisme en Nationalisme in Nederland, 1870-1918, Den Haag, 1992, 260-263.
24. Van der Houven van Oordt and Vissering, De Economische Beteekenis (note 29), 244.
25. A.A. Beekman, De Afsluiting en Droogmaking van der Zuiderzee, Amsterdam, 1914, 4.
26. Cited in K. Jansma, Lely, de Bedwinger der Zuiderzee, Amsterdam, 1948, 244.
27. Van der Houven van Oordt and Vissering, De Economische Beteekenis (note 29), 230-231; italicized in the original.
28. Van der Houven van Oordt and Vissering, De Economische Beteekenis (note 29), 253; italicized in the original.
29. Handelingen der Eerste Kamer, 31 januari 1906, www.statengeneraaldigitaal.nl. Also in: W. van der Ham, Verover mij dat Land. Lely en de Zuiderzeewerken, Amsterdam, 2007, 258.
30. Pro en Contra betreffende Vraagstukken van Algemeen Belang. Droogmaking der Zuiderzee; Pro: A.A. Beekman, Contra: B.J. van Gelder, Series VII, no. 7, Baarn, 1912, 32.
31. Since the end of the 19th century, for example, the industrial take-off was in full swing; see for instance J.L. van Zanden (Ed.), The Economic Development of the Netherlands Since 1870, Cheltenham & Brookfield, 1996. In the natural sciences, there was a 'Second Golden Age'; and in the field of the arts, there was a flowering of religious culture but also of a secular one. See: J. Bank and M. van Buuren, 1900: The Age of Bourgeois Culture (Dutch Culture in a European Perspective Volume 3), Assen, 2004.
32. Van der Houven van Oordt and Vissering, De Economische Beteekenis (note 29), 31.
33. F. Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism 15th-8th Century, volume 3, The Perspective of the World, London, 1984, 175-276.
34. J.R. Short, Imagined Country. Environment, Culture and Society, London and New York, 1991.
35. R.J. de Vries, Enkhuizen 1650-1850. Bloei en achteruitgang van een Zuiderzeestad, Amsterdam, 1987, 71-75.
36. A.A. Beekman, Nederland's Twaalfde Provincie, Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap 35 (1918) 745-746.
37. Thijsse, Langs de Zuiderzee (note 23), 63.
38. Van Houven van Oordt and Vissering, Economische betekenis (note 29), 191.
39. Beekman, De Afsluiting en Droogmaking (note 31), 42.
40. de Vries, Enkhuizen 1650-1850 (note 40), 77 and Census 1899, 1909.
41. Beekman, Nederland's Twaalfde Provincie (note 41), 744.
42. Jansma, Lely, de bedwinger (note 32), 231.
43. P.H. Gallé, Voor honderd jaren: 3, 4 en 5 Februari 1825. Brochure Zuiderzee Society, also appearing in the newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad, 3-5 February 1925.
44. Beekman, De Afsluiting en Droogmaking (note 31), 4.
45. F. Caprotti and M. Kaïka, Producing the ideal fascist landscape: nature, materiality and the cinematic representation of land reclamation in the Pontine Marshes, Social & Cultural Geography 5 (2008) 613-634.
46. H.S.M. van Wickevoort Crommelin, Holland's War with the Sea: the Enclosing and Reclaiming of the Zuider Zee, Amsterdam, 1930, 38.
47. K. Jansma, De droogmaking en het buitenland, De Drooglegging der Zuiderzee. Extra nummer van De Amsterdammer (1918) 38.
48. van der Ham, Verover mij dat Land (note 35), 60.
49. Cited in De Afsluiting en Gedeeltelijke Droogmaking van de Zuiderzee, sixth album. Amsterdam, 1934, 3. Words with the same gist would be heard again in 2008 from the mouth of a successor to Colijn, namely from the current Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. He let it be known how charmed he was by the idea of an artificial island in the North Sea of roughly 50,000-100,000 hectares in size and in the shape of a tulip. Balkenende too advocated embarking on major national projects resonating with vision, daring, and energy. At the time of writing, the big ideas were not primarily concerned with new islands in the North Sea but with hauling in the Olympic Games in 2028.
50. Quoted from the unpublished class notes written up by one of Ter Veen's former students, Mies Brouwer. Ter Veen was one of the central figures in the state-led socio-spatial organization of the new land; see Ben de Pater, Geography and geographers in the Netherlands since the 1870s: serving colonialism, education and the welfare state, in: G.S. Dunbar (Ed.), Geography: Discipline, Profession and Subject Since 1870. An International Survey, Dordrecht, 2001, 169-173; W. Heinemeijer, Contribution of applied geography to the colonisation policy in the IJsselmeerpolders, in: V. Berdoulay, J.A. van Ginkel (Eds), Geography and Professional Practice, Netherlands Geographical Studies 206, Utrecht, 1996, 205-208. See, on the planning of settlements on the new land, which were intended primarily for farmers: Coen van der Wal, In Praise of Common Sense. Planning the Ordinary: a Physical Planning History of the New Towns in the IJsselmeerpolders, Rotterdam, 1997.
51. D.R. Jansson, Internal Orientalism in America: W.J. Cash's The mind of the South and the spatial construction of American national identity, Political Geography 32 (2003) 293-316; American national identity and the progress of the New South in National Geographic Magazine, Geographical Review 93 (2003) 350-369. In fact, the Zuider Zee region was not the only 'internal Other'; a second internal Other was the Catholic South of the Netherlands, against which the dominant Protestant North profiled itself in opposition.
52. M.C. Dekhuyzen, Waarom eene Zuiderzee-Expeditie?, Utrecht, 1905, 10.
53. C. Brace, Looking back: the Cotswolds and English national identity, c. 1890-1950, Journal of Historical Geography 25 (1999) 502-516; Gardenesque imagery in the representation of regional and national identity: the Cotswolds garden of stone, Journal of Rural Studies 15 (1999) 365-376.
54. For instance, by the construction of large-scale water control projects; see D. Cosgrove, B. Roscoe and S. Rycroft, Landscape and identity at Ladybower Reservoir and Rutland Water, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers New Series 21 (1996) 534-551.
55. D. Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature. Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany, London, 2006, Chapter Five.
56. E. Swyngedouw, Modernity and hybridity: nature, regeneracionismo, and the production of the Spanish waterscape, 1890-1930, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89 (1999) 443-465
57. Technonatural revolutions: the scalar politics of Franco's hydro-social dream for Spain, 1939-1975, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers New Series 32 (2007) 9-28.
58. D. Speich, Draining the marshlands, disciplining the masses: the Linth Valley Hydro Engineering Scheme (1807-1823) and the genesis of Swiss national unity, Environment and History 8 (2002) 429-447, 443.
59. M. Kaïka, Dams as symbols of modernization: the urbanization of nature between geographical imagination and materiality, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96 (2006) 276-301.