In this episode, we want to take a more granular look at the Guelders war by zooming in on the events as they affected one city in particular, Amsterdam, during a roughly one year period from the end of 1507 until December 1508. Mainly, we want to develop a perspective of how people who were not dukes, bishops or princesses, but rather the regular Jans and Geertjes; citizens of a small but powerful town, whose lives were greatly impacted by the actions and decisions of those above them on the social hierarchy ladder of life that existed at the time. We have been on imaginative journeys through Amsterdam before, once in the 1420s (Episode 22) and more recently (in Episode 53) as we explored the shipbuilding traditions that were, by then, well established. Well, we figured there is no harm in going back, some twenty years on from that most recent adventure, to see what has become of our caulker and how he may have experienced a tumultuous year in Amsterdam as the Guelders war suddenly erupted on the city’s doorsteps. Our account of this time is mostly based on the history of Amsterdam written by city historian Jan Wagenaar, published between 1760-67. Wagenaar was given unrestricted access to the city archives and this use of primary sources means that his account is full of the vivid details you are about to live through. So kick back, relax, and transport yourself back in time, to the early autumn of 1507…

In March, 1507, Margaret of Austria was appointed by her father Maximilian as his procureur-général in the Low Countries, meaning she essentially took the reigns of power in those lands over from him. This marked the beginning of her first period of regency for her nephew, Charles, the 7 year old son of her recently deceased brother Philip the Handsome and Joanna of Castile. On top of this, she was also given the responsibility of looking after Philip and Joanna’s children, the aforementioned Charles, as well as his older sister Eleonor and his younger sisters Isabella and Mary. Upon returning to the Low Countries, Margaret would set up her court in the town of Mechelen, where she would be responsible for guiding these four through the remainder of their childhoods and education. Margaret of Austria faced challenges personally and politically on all fronts, but her first forays into international diplomacy would need to focus on the English King Henry VII. She would rely on all the diplomatic skills she had garnered over her tumultuous life so far to extricate herself from (yet another) a marriage proposal and her lands from the disastrous intercursus malus trade deal.

During the first decade of the 16th century, one of the primary concerns for the towns, cities and ducal governments of the Low Countries was the war the Habsburgs were waging with Charles of Egmont over the title of Duke of Guelders. The war in Guelders complicated the already convoluted political structure that had developed across the Low Countries over the course of the previous half century. In this episode, we’re going to focus on Guelders again, but this time to see how the war was intimately entangled in a web of relationships between the different layers of nobility, both domestic and foreign, and how the interests of the Habsburg dynasty often clashed with the interests of the people who lived within their domains. When Philip the Handsome sailed away to Spain, Charles of Egmont seized the opportunity to restart the war, meaning the defence of the Habsburg lands was left to the man Philip had put in charge in his absence, his Stadhouder General, Guillame de Croy, the Lord of Chievres. Philip’s premature death would completely rearrange the pieces on the chess board as the Low Countries were once again plunged into a succession crisis. There was one giant mess left behind for the person who would ultimately become regent for Philip’s infant son Charles to clean up... And that person would be Philip’s sister, Margaret of Austria.

When Joanna of Castile wed Philip the Handsome aka Habsburg Phil in 1496, few people would have foreseen that this marriage would result in the Habsburg prince wearing the Castilian crown 10 years later. Yet due to a series of dynastic deaths in the Spanish ruling family, by 1501, Joanna was crown princess of Castile. Habsburg Phil’s priorities and attentions began to take on a grander scope as the prospect of ruling in Spain became tantalisingly real. Joanna and Phil would travel to Spain in 1502-3 to be confirmed as heirs to the Castilian crown. Habsburg Phil returned to the Low Countries a year later, but Isabella of Castile insisted Joanna stay behind since she was heavily pregnant. A bizarre incident took place at La Mota castle, after which Joanna rejoined her husband, but Isabella was left doubting her daughter’s capability to rule. Speculation about Joanna’s mental state came to the fore, leading to clashes between her father, Ferdinand of Aragon, and her husband over who would wield the power in Castile. When Isabella of Castile died in 1504, Philip and Joanna made preparations to return to Spain and claim the crown, leaving the Low Countries again in January 1506. This second trip was a disaster from the outset, beginning with an unplanned stay in England following a shipwreck. Then in September, just a few months into his reign as King of Castile, Habsburg Phil would also unexpectedly die, opening the door for his sister, Margaret of Austria, to return to the centre of the political stage and become Regent of the Low Countries. 

In November 1501, Margaret of Austria was married by proxy to Philibert the Handsome, the Duke of Savoy. Over the next three years, Margaret thrived in this new position as Duchess of Savoy. Philibert was more than willing to let her take charge of affairs in Savoy, since that freed him up for more important stuff, like hunting and enjoying life. Margaret of Austria was only twenty-one years old, but had spent much of her life thus far learning the art of politics in the courts of France, Spain and the Low Countries. She was more than prepared for the challenges she would face in Savoy. For this remarkable woman, however, tragedy never seemed too far away and in 1504, after just three years of marriage, it once more cast its net over her life when Philibert died suddenly after a hunting trip and Margaret of Austria became, once again, a grieving widow.

Around the same time that Friesland succumbed to the rule of a foreign prince in 1498, the Duchy of Guelders was also engulfed by a struggle against Habsburg domination. Charles of Egmont and Emperor Maximilian both continued to lay claim to the title of Duke of Guelders and over the next half a century, the conflicts in both Friesland and Guelders would become inextricably linked in a series of on-again, off-again wars. To begin this episode, we will take an unexpected but delightful detour to a part of Europe that doesn’t naturally come to mind when you think of Guelders… Italy! There we will see Maximilian fail to impose his authority on a conflict between Pisa and Florence. Bentornati al podcast sulla storia dei Paesi Bassi. After that we will see Maximilian enlist the help of two German princes, the Dukes of Julich and Cleves, to try and bring Guelder to heel and carve it up between them. In this, Maximilian will also fail to impose his will, this time facing resistance not only from Charles of Egmont, but also his own son, Philip the Handsome. Finally, we will see how Charles of Egmont benefited from a bit of French mediation in the war between Guelders, Julich and Cleves, before he almost met an untimely end at the siege of Huissen in 1502. There’s a lot to get through! So let’s get cracking.

In the summer of 2025, we were lucky enough to meet Rene Rosechild, who lives in Denver, Colorado, today, but whose family roots trace back via Canada to the Netherlands. Rene’s mother, Rosalie Nathans, was a Jewish Amsterdammer who was liberated from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. When she returned to Amsterdam, she discovered that she was the only member of her family who had survived the war. Rosalie’s mother, her father, her brother, her sister, her sister-in-law, her brother-in-law and her two young nephews had all been murdered or succumbed to disease or deprivation in the Nazi concentration camps. Having had her entire life taken away from her, Rosalie made the decision at the age of 20, to marry a Canadian soldier and emigrate to Canada. Eighty years later, a large contingent of Rosalie Nathans’ descendants, from places all over the world, came together in Amsterdam to install memorial stones in front of their family’s former home on the Nieuwe Hoogstraat. These memorial stones are called Stolpersteine in German, struikelstenen in Dutch, or stumbling stones in English. They are brass plaques, placed on the street in front of buildings, which pay testament to the fact that at that address lived a victim of Nazi persecution. Three of those who attended the ceremony were Rosalie Nathans’ daughter Rene, who we mentioned at the beginning and two of Rene’s nieces, Rosalie Wood and Gabrielle Richter. We spoke with Rene in our studio in Amsterdam and later with Rosalie and Gabrielle via zoom. Throughout this episode we will hear from them as we discuss Rosalie Nathans’ story and the family’s experience of getting the Stolpersteine installed outside the old family home in Amsterdam. 

Over the fifty-four episodes of this podcast so far, we have often found ourselves fixated on familiar phases of sphagnum, or ferocious fights in far flung foreign fields, but frequently we’ve failed to focus on the fortunes of the fierce and frisky - fabled to be free - Frisians. Folly! Fear not Frieslanders, for now it is your time to shine. In this episode, we are going to delve into Frisian Law and Frisian Freedom in the 15th century:  We will look at how they developed up until the end of the 15th century; examples of how Frisian Law impacted peoples’ lives; how local governing structures specific to Frisia changed in the 15th century and how in 1498 these new conditions allowed Frisian Freedom to finally be stamped out by the very Emperor who was supposed to uphold it.

On June 12, 1672 the Dutch republic was attacked on all sides by France, England and the bishoprics of Cologne and Münster. Within a month, three of the seven provinces had been conquered and the people of Gelderland, Utrecht and Overijssel brutally felt the pinch as foreign soldiers looted, raided and plundered at will. Many fled westward, sailing across the Zuiderzee, where they found refuge in the Waterland region of Holland. In this episode we speak to historian Loek Zoon of Waterlands Archief whose recent work has shone a light on how the towns of Waterland reacted to the sudden surge of strangers, about the people who fled and those who helped them and how the whole event can inform us better as we similarly face a world in which high-level politics distills into dislocation and strife.

After Prince Juan’s death in 1497, Margaret of Austria spent almost two years in mourning in Spain, being treated with empathy and kindness by the Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand. Margaret’s sudden singleness meant that, whether she liked it or not, her father Maximilian was going to update her profile on the Tinder for European royalty, and start swiping through every eligible prince or king throughout the continent to see how he could next use his daughter for his own political gains. We will sort through the prospective matches and, while Margaret travels through France on her way back home, we’ll make a detour there ourselves for a game of royal tennis which will end in a royal death, divorce and subsequent sex scandal. Salacious! Margaret of Austria arrived back in Ghent in March 1500, just in time to be present at the christening of her nephew, Charles, a grandiose celebration such as had not been seen in the Low Countries before, even including a fire breathing dragon. In the aftermath, Margaret’s future would once again be discussed within the various courts of Europe and she would be married off for a third and final time, this time to Philibert the Handsome, Duke of Savoy.

We sit down with Bart Ouvry, managing director of AfricaMuseum in Tervuren, Belgium, to speak about the challenges he faces attempting to decolonise a colonial museum. Established in 1898, the museum originally served as a propaganda tool to lend support to Belgium's King Leopold II's colonial ambitions in Congo and central Africa. By the late 20th century, the museum was being widely and critically called into question, leading to a five year renovation plan that started in 2013, intended to revamp it both physically and philosophically. Since reopening in late 2018, AfricaMuseum has continued to receive mixed opinions from many different perspectives. This testifies to the complexities and controversies that remain inherent within any discussion about historical narratives and what different and divisive consequences they can bear for people today. To hear more about the museum team’s journey in forging a path through this mire, we were lucky enough to sit down with Bart in his office to ask him about his own background, the importance of history, about his role at the museum and about what it’s like to lead a team that is faced with tackling such difficult and monumental task.

We dumbly delve into the deep and desolate doldrums that define trying to understand the growth and development of Dutch shipbuilding in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, particularly in Holland. Conditions would conspire to allow this industry to flourish across the Low Countries. There is, however, a distinct lack of written information from the shipbuilding sector in the 15th century to speak about it definitively. Historians and archaeologists have put together and continue to put together as many pieces as possible, however much of the detail is forever lost. As such, speculation must play its part. In the second part of the episode, we are going to discuss some of the main sources that historians use to try and get a picture of this very opaque past.

On October 27, 1275, Count Floris V of Holland issued a toll exemption to the village of Amsterdam as compensation for damage caused by his troops. This document remains the oldest known written reference to Amsterdam and is kept in a dark depot in the Amsterdam City Archives. One of the curators and people responsible for keeping this document safe for the people of Amsterdam is Erik Schmitz. We had the privilege of speaking to him on October 28, 2024, as Amsterdam kicks off its 750th jubilee year. Our conversation spans from looking at the physical document itself, what it meant for Amsterdam's growth over the centuries and how its significance has changed in line with the development of the city itself.

Between the years 1000 and 1500 CE the soggy, sphagnum filled bog lands of the western Low Countries were terraformed to support human habitation and, as such, the seeds of future prosperity and hardships were simultaneously, albeit unknowingly, sown. Draining the swamp meant that land was created for agriculture, farming and settlement. This land was crisscrossed by waterways over which products both domestic and foreign could be moved on boats from the sea to the rivers and vice versa. Draining the swamp also meant that those lands sank, due to oxygen seeping into the pierced mass of moss and rotting the previously petrified peat within. People had to invent things like pumping mills to move water out of the swamp and stave off that waterlogged sinking feeling they had been experiencing. By the start of the 16th century, towns in the Low Countries had become important hubs of commercial shipping, with boats sailing from Northern Germany and beyond to the Baltic Sea, preferring to use the relatively calm and peaceful waters “inside the dunes” of Holland to reach markets in Flanders, as opposed to risking the open waters of the North Sea. Although water management required cooperation between the peoples of different towns, all of this economic activity also naturally created competition and rivalry between these towns, particularly in Holland, as they literally fought over their rights to do things like dig new canals, build new locks and charge tolls. It’s Draining the Swamp Part II: Too Drained, Too Furious.

We chat with comedian and author Greg Shapiro a.k.a. The American Netherlander a.k.a. the voice of Donald Trump in the "America First, the Netherlands Second" video. Greg shares with us his uniquely American insight into the Netherlands' history and culture, especially as to how it relates to the United States, how the two cultures can learn from each other, and how kids books differ between the two countries.

They both lived during the Dutch Golden Age, grew up in Leiden, were taught by the same painter, shared a studio, received all the praise, and painted the rulers of their time. And yet, Jan Lievens is not as famous today as his friend Rembrandt. In this episode of The Low Countries Radio, we reconstruct the lives and works of these two giants of art, showing how trends and the zeitgeist can drive or hinder an artist's career, but how their legacy is bound to the whims of fate and fortune.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Just as much as Dutch and Flemish culture today have been defined by their ability to seek consensus through compromise, so too have they defined by a willingness to angrily, and often violently, take to the streets in order to be heard. In this episode of The Low Countries Radio we will take a look at some of the major and minor protest movements that have occurred across the Low Countries which have helped shape them into the places they are today.