The people who live in the Netherlands are called the Dutch. The land was originally inhabited by Germanic tribes. A portion of the land became a Roman province that was conquered by Julius Caesar in the first century BC. Later, the land became part of the empire of the Franks, then the House of Burgundy, and eventually became part of the Habsburg Empire.
In the 15th Century, the land came under Spanish rule, and the Dutch revolted. Their leader was Willem of Orange, and in 1581 the Republic of the United Netherlands was formed.
After the Spaniards conquered Antwerp, many wealthy Jews fled to Amsterdam. The money they brought with them was used to organise trips to India, which proved a huge commercial success. Then in 1602, the Dutch East India Company was founded.
Amazingly, the first stock market in the world was invented by Dutch legislators and businessmen back in 1602. This was done to fund the Dutch East India Company and its long trade-based voyages from the Netherlands. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange was also created in the same year, and many consider this to be the oldest ‘modern’ exchange in the world. These developments caused the 17th century to become known as the Golden Age.
During the 17th century, the Netherlands became an international power known for its strong navy. The Dutch empire expanded throughout the world through various colonies on nearly every continent. Also during this time, the arts in the Netherlands were at their peak, with notable artists such as Rembrandt and Vermeer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us4QFxcbqCY
In later years, Dutch power declined as wars with Spain, France, and England weakened the country.
In the 1900s, the Netherlands managed to avoid WWI. Still, Germany occupied it in WWII, and over 75 percent of the 140,000 Dutch Jews were killed as part of the Holocaust, including the famous Jewish girl Anne Frank. After the war, most of the remaining colonies were granted independence. After the difficult years of reconstruction, the country sustained continuous and fast economic growth in the second half of the 20th century.
The 60 years following the war saw especially Amsterdam change immensely. It moved from a trade city to a service-based city and became more liberally minded. As a result, today, the Netherlands is one of the wealthiest countries with a thriving tech scene, great universities, skilled labor, and excellent quality of life.
New Amsterdam as New York - New York was initially called New Amsterdam and was a seat for the Dutch West India Company. Later, the Dutch lost the island and the city to the English, who changed its name to New York.
Dikes - The Dutch have a saying: "God made the Earth, but the Dutch made Holland." The North Sea would have washed away the Netherlands if the Dutch had not erected defenses to protect their land. Today more than 2,400 kilometers of dikes shield the low, flat land—almost half of which lies below sea level—from the North Sea. Without the existing dikes 65 percent of the country would be flooded daily.
Tulips - While the Netherlands is known for tulips, they were originally imported from Turkey in the 16th century. Every third Saturday in January, the Dutch celebrate National Tulip Day – the official start of the tulip season – with free flower picking and flower festivals. And the best place to see tulips in Holland is Keukenhof, a park with 7 million flower bulbs surrounded by tulip fields.
Coffee - The race among Europeans to obtain live coffee trees or beans was eventually won by the Dutch in 1616. Pieter van den Broecke, a Dutch merchant, obtained some of the closely guarded coffee bushes from Mocha, Yemen, in 1616. He took them back to Amsterdam and found a home for them in the Botanical gardens, where they began to thrive. The beans from Yemen adjusted well to conditions at the Amsterdam Botanical Garden and produced Coffea arabica bushes.
Later, the traders of the Dutch East India Company managed to transport coffee from the Dutch colony of Java to the Netherlands and within a few years, the Dutch colonies had become the main suppliers of coffee to Europe.