In the 1440s a goldsmith from Mainz called Johannes Gutenberg developed a movable type printing press which catalysed the European printing revolution. It heralded a technological leap in communication tools which had far reaching consequences for the societies of the Low Countries, particularly in urban centres where print shops were established. A large market for books already existed in the Low Countries, in no small part because of the existence of Common Life schools and subsequent high rates of general literacy. With the copying and widespread distribution of texts becoming so much quicker and easier, other fields of work began to shift and develop, as different skills and networks were needed to smoothly bring content to the public. In this episode we are going to first take a look at what a 15th century printing workshop might have been like, before meeting some of the pioneers who would pull the printing presses and perfect the processes pertaining to the profitable publication of pamphlets, prayer books and other pre-16th century paper imprinted particularities.

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We meet Simon Gronowski, a 92 year old jazz pianist, lawyer and Holocaust survivor. At the age of eleven, Simon was locked in a cattle wagon with his mother and around 50 other people after a month’s imprisonment at the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen for the crime of being Jewish. The train they had been herded onto was bound for the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the 20th such mass deportation of Jews from Belgium. But this train trip would be unique in world war two. The 20th convoy became the only deportation train in the entire continent which was attacked and stopped by resistance fighters, allowing around a hundred people to escape. Simon Gronowski was one of these people and it is his story that we are going to explore in today’s episode.

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We chat with author and academic Christine Kooi, whose book Reformation in the Low Countries 1500-1620 was released last year by Cambridge University Press. As its title suggests the book encompasses a vast and tumultuous period which served to greatly shape the modern nations of Belgium and the Netherlands. It is a sweeping and extremely useful narrative and we are lucky enough today to have Christine join us online from her home in the US to help us unpack it.

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We dig up the bulbs of the past, trim the stems of historical myth and hopefully emerge with a lustrous vase of understanding as to where the tulip came from, how it became infectiously vogue in the Dutch Republic and what place it holds in modern calculations of economics.

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Long time listeners will be aware that, alongside being passionate about the history of our boggy swamp, we also carry a deep love for the game of cricket. The venn-diagram intersection between those two things can often leave a lot to be desired. However, somehow Julian Smith, our intrepid co-creator, producer and frequent voice of excitement in the background, managed to find a small but wondrous plot of podcasting turf from which to tell an amazing story about cricket being played in the Netherlands during World War One. This opportunity came on one of our all-time favourite podcasts, called The Final Word, which is a cricket-themed podcast that delves deeply into the many fascinating stories that abound through the long history of the game. So in this small piece, you will hear the two Final Word podcast hosts, Adam and Geoff, talking with Julian, who unravels the story for us. You do not need to know anything about or have any interest in cricket to enjoy this story, which we hope you do.

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At the end of episode 49, we said that we were going to move away from the political part of the story of the History of the Netherlands for a while to instead focus on some of the other important societal developments that were happening concurrently at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries. To be honest, perhaps it is because we have taken quite a long break, or maybe because of the change of direction we want to make now, but we have found it rather difficult to write this episode. The 16th century saw so many radical developments in such a vast variety of subjects that the prospect of somehow covering this all in a satisfactory way in this podcast without being forever consumed by it is, to put it lightly, daunting, bordering on overwhelming. So bear with us over the next few episodes as we, in our typical way, blithely set off in a new direction and attempt to lay foundations to explain how a new zeitgeist of education and learning that had originated in the Italian peninsula in the 14th century, took hold in the Low Countries in the 15th. As usual, it is not possible nor is it our intention to cover every single facet of every single topic which we bring up in this podcast, so please don’t be too disappointed if we fail to bring up your favourite 15th/16th century Renaissance humanist. Cool? Alright. Let’s go.

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There are few landscapes as immediately identifiable as those of the Low Countries. Calling it a “land” scape is problematic, however, as it could just as easily be called a “water” scape. The meandering rivers, the green blocks of soggy land separated by canals and ditches and a row of dunes down the coast all lend to an overwhelming understanding of why one of the modern nations that make up the region is called the “nether” lands. They most certainly are low. The name “Flanders” derives from a very old German word flaum, meaning flood - “flood lands”. The Low Countries are a huge wetland, a vast river delta known as the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta, a place where land and water meet and interact. As such, the societies which developed here have often reflected their engagement with the rivers which flow from far-away mountains and the seas which consistently pummel the coastline with an ancient ferocity. Living on these water-logged lands has presented them with opportunities for trade, urbanisation, agriculture and much more, but has also meant living under the constant threat of devastating and deadly floods. These events have been scarred into the psyche of the societies there and their impacts resonate through to the present day, like a kind of collective, multi-generational trauma. There is a concept in popular psychology that, in processing trauma or grief, one goes through five stages: Denial; Anger; Bargaining; Depression; Acceptance. Although this idea is oversimplified and doesn’t take into account the wide ranging emotional experiences individual humans go through, we still think it provides a useful framework through which to look at how, collectively and over a span of time, the peoples inhabiting the low countries have dealt with the cultural and social trauma of repetitive flood disasters that have drowned entire towns, swept away large tracts of land and taken hundreds of thousands of lives. In this episode of the Low Countries Radio, we are going to go through these five stages (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance) and take a look at how they can be applied to the relationship between humans and water in this part of the world.

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The double marriage between the Habsburg and Spanish dynasties organised in the creation of the Holy League in 1495 was part of a larger plan driven by the Spanish monarchs to create a general European-wide alliance against the French. To further these aims, Ferdinand and Isabella also arranged for their other children to marry into the Portuguese and English royal families as well. Such good family planning, however, was not to yield anywhere near the results that Ferdinand and Isabella sought. In this episode we will track the tumultuous journeys leading up to the weddings which brought Spain and the Low Countries together, the devastating repercussions the Spanish monarchs’ religiosity would have for the Jews of the Iberian peninsula, as well as a series of untimely deaths which would see the Spanish succession repeatedly shuffle down the line. When the music stopped in this dynastic game of musical chairs, Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile’s five month old baby son, Charles, would found himself perched on the stool which held possession of a ridiculous amount of Spanish, Imperial and Burgundian titles, all of which would eventually make him the most powerful person in Europe.

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When French king Charles VIII laid claims to the Kingdom of Naples and invaded Italy in September, 1494, an anti-French coalition called the League of Venice was formed, with the aim of kicking France out of the Italian peninsula. “Hang on a second, what does this have to do with the Netherlands?”, I hear you ask. Bear with me here. The League of Venice included a bunch of Italian city-states and regional powers, including the Pope Alexander VI, as well as our friend Emperor Maximilian and the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. To help cement this anti-French alliance between Spain and the Habsburgs, a double marriage was arranged which would see Maximilian’s children marry the children of the Spanish monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand.

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