Day of Empire

by Amy Chua

  The Black Death was so devastating that it simply had to be a conspiracy against mankind. And who could be behind that if not the Jews, who—as every Christian by then knew—were the enemies of the Church and…were seeking to destroy Christianity and rule the world in its stead? The Jews were the culprits: they had, it was reported, contaminated the wells with poison prepared from spiders, owls, lizards, basilisks, the blood of children, and the consecrated Host. The poison had been concocted in Toledo by rich Spanish Jews, and then been brought over in pouches and pieces of leather and thrown down the wells.4

  Even after the plague passed, the few Jews left in the Low Countries were stigmatized and persecuted. As in England and France, Jews in the Netherlands were forced to wear identifying yellow patches (as opposed to the pointy red hats they were made to wear in Germany at around the same time). In 1439, a handsome Jewish man was accused of “turning the heads” of young girls. Known as “the Jew with the beautiful hair,” he was imprisoned in a castle by the Duke of Rozendaal and eventually expelled from Arnhem. Starting in the fifteenth century, laws were passed restricting Jewish money-lending practices, effectively closing off the only source of livelihood available to Jews. Until the late sixteenth century, the Jewish population in the Low Countries remained negligible.5

  CATHOLICS AGAINST PROTESTANTS: THE

  FORMATION OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC

  For most of the sixteenth century, the Low Countries were part of the Hapsburg Empire, which at the time stretched from Austria to Spain. How Spain came under Hapsburg control is worth a brief digression. Ferdinand and Isabella had five children, one of whom came to be known as Joanna the Mad. Joanna married Philip the Handsome, heir to both the Hapsburg and Burgundian territories, and gave birth to Charles V. After his grandfather Ferdinand of Aragon died in 1516, Charles became the first Hapsburg king of Spain. By 1519, as a result of his various royal bloodlines, Charles was ruler of Burgundy, archduke of Austria, and sovereign of the Netherlands. The same year he was also crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

  Charles, who was born in Ghent, was sympathetic to the Dutch. Under his rule, the Low Countries received unrestricted trading rights and came to control a majority of the world's trading volume. The advent of the Reformation, however, proved as divisive in the Netherlands as it was throughout Europe. Calvinism swept with intoxicating force across the Low Countries, pitting Protestants against Catholics in both the northern and southern provinces. This rift was exacerbated in 1556, when Charles abdicated his claims to the Netherlands and Spain in favor of his son Philip II.

  Unlike his father, Philip was born and raised in Spain, spoke no Dutch, and openly disdained the Low Countries. He was also a far more zealous Catholic. Making it his holy mission to stop the expansion of the Reformation, Philip launched “one of the most dramatic, bloody, and confused episodes of early modern European history.”6

  Philip demanded absolute loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church and appointed Catholic, non-Dutch-speaking governors all over the Netherlands. In the 1560s, led by William the Silent of Orange, many of the northern provinces began agitating against the Spanish yoke. Philip responded by sending 10,000 troops, led by the Spanish Duke of Alva, to deal with the troublemakers. As one author describes him, the Duke of Alva was “unswerving, even fanatical, in his detestation of Protestant heresy…Capable of great cruelty but always out of calculation, his outlook was a strange mixture of humanist cosmopolitanism and xenophobic bigotry…His deeply suspicious attitude towards the Netherlands nobility and population was tinged with scarcely veiled contempt.”

  Evidently in one of his less humanist moods, Alva, upon arriving in the Netherlands, promptly convened a tribunal—nicknamed “The Council of Blood”—and proceeded to execute one thousand Dutch, including many prominent citizens, while imprisoning and confiscating the property of many more. He also levied heavy new taxes. Starting in 1572, popular revolts erupted throughout the north Netherlands. Alva retaliated brutally, devastating Haarlem and massacring the townspeople of Mechelen, Naarden, and Zut-phen. Aggravated by the arrival of the Dutch “Sea Beggars”— fiercely anti-Catholic, piratelike forces recently expelled from England's ports—violence stretched on for four years. What happened next was unexpected.7

  In 1576, mutinous, starving Spanish troops—unpaid by the financially strained Philip II—left the rebellious north for the prosperous south, where they plundered Antwerp and slaughtered as many as seven thousand citizens. This incident became known as the Spanish Fury. Although the massacre occurred in the south, it had a far more lasting influence in the north, where it was captured in apocalyptic detail by contemporary poets and artists, becoming part of the Netherlands’ national birth story. In one famous account by the Amsterdam poet Pieter Hooft, a bride is raped and murdered on her wedding day by a sadistic Spanish captain: “He stripped her, chains, clothing, underthings, everything from top to bottom taken from that pure body.” Having abused her, the captain “hunted her, mother-naked, dripping with the blood of her innumerable wounds, through the city.”

  The Spanish Fury prompted the signing of the Pacification of Ghent, in which the northern and southern provinces of the Netherlands united to drive out the Spanish troops. But the Pacification was short-lived. In 1579, led by influential Catholic nobles, the southern provinces declared anew their loyalty to Philip II, Spain, and the Catholic Church. In response, the northern provinces proclaimed their autonomy and their right to religious freedom. Two years later, they enacted the Oath of Abjuration, a declaration of independence with an opening sentiment that found a striking echo in American history two hundred years later:

  As ‘tis apparent to all that a prince is constituted by God to be ruler of a people, to defend them from oppression and violence as the shepherd his sheep; and whereas God did not create the people slaves to their prince, to obey his commands, whether right or wrong, but rather the prince for the sake of the subjects…[When a prince] does not behave thus, but, on the contrary, oppresses them, seeking opportunities to infringe their ancient customs and privileges, exacting from them slavish compliance, then he is no longer a prince, but a tyrant, and the subjects…may not only disallow his authority, but legally proceed to the choice of another prince for their defense. This is…what the law of nature dictates for the defense of liberty, which we ought to transmit to posterity, even at the hazard of our lives.

  Thereafter, the seven northern provinces became the United Provinces of the Netherlands, while the ten southern provinces remained under the rule of Spain.8

  Philip II, however, had by no means conceded defeat. On the contrary, he put a bounty of 25,000 gold coins on William the Si-lent's head and sent more troops to subdue the rebellious north. Recognizing Spain's superior military force, William responded by offering leadership of the new republic, limited by a host of constitutional safeguards, to the Duke of Anjou, the younger brother of the king of France. The duke accepted, but he fled after less than two years in the face of a mounting Spanish advance. In 1584, William the Silent was assassinated by a Spaniard named Balthazar Gerard. Gerard, however, never collected his reward. The Dutch were not above cruel and unusual punishment for assassins, and Gerard met a painful end involving the creative use of hot irons and boiling bacon fat.

  Following William's death, the Dutch offered sovereignty over the Netherlands to the king of France himself. Preoccupied with civil war and reluctant to take on Spain, Henri III refused. The Dutch next offered themselves to England's Queen Elizabeth, who also eventually declined.9

  MONGRELS AND SERPENTS: THE BIRTH OF

  TOLERANCE IN THE DUTCH REPUBLIC

  We are now at the year 1588. The United Provinces, incapable of their own self-defense, have tried unsuccessfully to give away their country to both France and England. The Dutch do not exactly seem world dominant. Yet by 1625, the Dutch Republic had become the “hegemonic power of the capitalist world-economy”— the “first truly global” empire.10 What happened?

  The tiny Du
tch Republic became the world's economic hyper-power in the seventeenth century by turning itself into a haven for enterprising outcasts from the rest of Europe. To be sure, several other coincidental developments helped make this possible. War among Spain, England, and France, for example, kept those nations preoccupied, draining them financially and giving the Dutch a respite from Spanish aggression. But by far the most crucial factor underlying the Dutch surge to global primacy was an extraordinary economic explosion. It was here that the Dutch Republic's exceptional policies of religious tolerance proved indispensable.

  Given the religious warfare, persecution, and zealotry all over seventeenth-century Europe, the tolerant policies of the Dutch Republic are all the more remarkable. Almost unique in Europe, the United Provinces had no established state church. Its founding charter, the 1579 Union of Utrecht, mandated, “Each person shall remain free in his religion and … no one shall be investigated or persecuted because of his religion.” The state did not compel adherence to the Reformed Church, impose fines for nonconformity, or punish dissenters.

  Of course, plenty of ministers preached orthodoxy from their pulpits, fulminating against the abomination of organ music in church, the persistence of “pagan” festivals and village fairs, and the scandalous rage “for curled long hair that swept the Republic in the 1640s.” Moreover, the Dutch Reformed Church always occupied a privileged status. Nonmembers were officially barred from holding government positions, and other religions could not be professed “in public.”

  In practice, however, religious heterodoxy and lenience prevailed. Local parishes were permitted to choose how doctrinally pure they wanted to be, and most chose flexibility. Alongside the Calvinist majority, Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, Mennonites, and Remonstrants all were permitted to establish private, “inconspicuous” places of worship, to open seminaries, and to print their own sacred and scholarly books. In addition, many government officials were only nominal members of the Reformed Church and barely tried to conceal their true anti-orthodox inclinations.”

  Thus, in 1616, when Jews in the rest of Christian Europe were being attacked and terrorized, Rabbi Izak Uziel wrote to a correspondent: “At present, [our] people live peaceably in Amsterdam. The inhabitants of this city, mindful of the increase in population, make laws and ordinances whereby the freedom of religions may be upheld. Each may follow his own belief but may not openly show that he is of a different faith from the inhabitants of the city.” Although Jewish prayer sessions were initially held in private homes, by the 1620s several synagogues existed in Amsterdam. Indeed, as early as 1612, Amsterdam's city council “acted as if the Jews had the full right to practice their religion openly.” In 1675, Amsterdam's splendid Sephardic synagogue was constructed. Inspired by the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and accommodating two thousand people, the synagogue, with its soaring columns, dark oak pews, and great brass chandeliers, was not exactly “inconspicuous.” Around the same time, Ashkenazi Jews founded their own synagogue directly across the street, along with their own rabbinical authorities, dietary regulations, and Yiddish publishing houses.12

  The Dutch Republic's extraordinary religious freedom became the talk of Europe. There were a few admirers, including one who wrote to Descartes in 1631, “[Is there another] country where you can enjoy such a perfect liberty…and where there has survived more of the innocence of our forefathers?” But most foreigners were appalled by what they saw as the Dutch Republic's religious debauchery. “Is there a mongrel sect in Christendom,” demanded one English propagandist, “which does not croak and spawn and flourish in their Sooterkin bogs?” “Sometimes seven religions are found in one family,” deplored another. Even those who benefited from asylum in the Dutch Republic expressed dismay at what the historian Simon Schama calls “the bargain basement of faiths” in which they found themselves—a “Den of several Serpents,” as one Englishman put it, in which “you may be what Devil you will so long as you push not the State with your horns.”13

  There was a keenly calculating side to Dutch toleration. Many of the republic's leading political figures explicitly advocated religious freedom on the grounds that it would be economically advantageous. Pieter de la Court, for example, wrote in his Interest of Holland that “toleration was essential” to “stimulate the immigration so urgently needed to sustain the economy and population of Holland's cities.” Insofar as Dutch tolerance was instrumentally motivated, it was enormously successful.

  The Dutch Republic became a magnet for streams of religious refugees from all over Europe—Protestants from the south Netherlands, Huguenots from France, German Lutherans, Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal, Ashkenazi Jews from eastern Europe, and Quakers and Pilgrims from England. (The Pilgrims, a separatist branch of Puritans singled out for persecution in England, found a haven in Holland for twelve years before setting out on the Mayflower in 1620 for New England.) Many other immigrants came for purely economic reasons. Between roughly 1570 and 1670, while many European cities were stagnating, Amsterdam's population shot up from 30,000 to 200,000; Leiden's, from 15,000 to 72,000; Haarlem's, from 16,000 to 50,000; and Rotterdam's, from 7,000 to 45,000. Collectively, these immigrants formed the engine that propelled the Dutch Republic—for a brief half century—to global economic dominance in every economic sphere.14

  THE “SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM”: SPAIN'S

  LOSS AND HOLLAND'S GAIN

  The Dutch economic explosion was fueled principally by Jews and, to an even greater extent, Protestants—both fleeing persecution from Hapsburg Spain. As these two groups built flourishing communities in Holland, they made the Dutch Republic the center of global trade, industry, and finance.

  Take, for instance, the diamond trade. Before 1725, when diamonds were discovered in Brazil, virtually all of the world's raw diamonds came from India. Some of the most famous diamonds in history hail from India, including the legendary Hope, a rare blue diamond weighing 44.5 carats, the 280-carat Great Mogul (current whereabouts unknown), and the 100-plus-carat Kohinoor, now one of England's crown jewels. (In 2000, members of India's parliament demanded that the British government return the Kohinoor; for the moment, it is still embedded in the queen's crown in the Tower of London.) The early mining methods used in India were primitive. Poor laborers from the lowest castes, sometimes 60,000 at a site, dug shallow pits along riverbeds. The excavated gravel was then hand-sifted for diamonds.

  The business of transforming these rough stones from India into the gorgeous, sparkling multifaceted gems that adorned the necks of Europe's aristocracy was dominated by Jews. As early as AD 1000 a network of Jewish merchants extending from Madras to Cairo to Venice had controlled the world's diamond trade. Moneylenders since antiquity (because they were barred from most other forms of livelihood), Jews had developed an expertise in appraising, cutting, and selling gems, which were often put up as collateral for loans. As a result, where the Jews settled, they brought the diamond business with them, together with an ever-expanding trading and financing network linking Europe and the Mediterranean to Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

  When Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, many of them settled in Lisbon and later in Antwerp (at that time still under Hapsburg rule). Not coincidentally, both cities became booming hubs of international trade and finance. Lisbon became the entry point for almost every diamond destined for Europe, and Antwerp became the world's preeminent diamond-cutting center. By 1550, the port of Antwerp was so crowded that incoming merchant ships had to wait in long queues before unloading their cargo: The city had become the securities exchange for the entire Hapsburg Empire— indeed, the “supreme money market” for all Europe.15

  But rising intolerance cost the Hapsburgs dearly. When the Inquisition hit Portugal in earnest in the 1540s, and as expulsion efforts mounted in Antwerp in the 1550s, Jews and conversos began fleeing to the more tolerant towns of Holland. These Iberian Jews and conversos, in contrast to the large numbers of impoverished and poorly educated Ashkenazi Jews flooding into
the Netherlands to escape pogroms in Poland and Germany, were among the wealthiest merchants and financiers in the world. Elegant, erudite, and aristocratic—and many of them eventually ennobled—these Sephardic Jews poured capital into the Dutch Republic, infusing bank reserves, augmenting state funds, fueling Dutch colonialism, and playing a central role in the establishment of the famous Amsterdam Stock Exchange. By the mid-seventeenth century, Amsterdam had replaced Lisbon and Antwerp as the diamond center of Europe and the hub of the worldwide Jewish banking and trading network.

  Jewish families also became prominent in lucrative industries such as tobacco spinning, sugar refining, silk weaving, chocolate making, and civet and diamond production. (It was common for Ashkenazi Jews to work as menial laborers for Sephardic employers. Poor Ashkenazi Jews, for example, were often seen outside Amsterdam scrounging up cheap meat to feed civet cats.) Many, including the Belmonte, Lopes Suasso, Nunes de Costa, and Pinto families, were also great philanthropists. They served as patrons for artists, poets, and musicians, established welfare programs, and funded both religious and secular scholarly academies. Concerts and operas were held at their magnificent homes, which were filled with artworks and rare books and manuscripts.16

  The economic benefits brought by the Jews to the Dutch Republic hardly went unnoticed by the Spanish. Many advisors even urged the Spanish crown to reverse the Inquisition and to recruit conversos back to Spain. Diego de Cisneros, for example, warned in 1637 that Amsterdam's newly arrived Jews were making the republic too powerful: