Lecture 22: Dutch Treat—Coffee, Tea, Sugar, Tobacco
For the time being, the Dutch colonies made the Dutch the
wealthiest nation on Earth. What also makes them unique is that
they don’t have a king or powerful nobility. When they fought to
free themselves from Spanish rule in the 16th century, they were
determined not to have a king, so they set up a republic, which
remained until the 19th century. As a result, there is a lot of wealth
that is spread across a large mercantile class, and they spend it. These people were Calvinists, so they were supposed to be strict,
frugal, and sober and not spend a lot of money on fi nery and food.
Therefore, they invest much of their great wealth, but they also
spend money on nice but relatively somber things. Dutch cooking tends to be very simple. They eat at a lot of fi sh,
beer, bread, butter, and cheese. There is one important Dutch
cookbook of this period called De Verstandige Kock (“The Sensible
Cook”). The cooking is really very plain, but there are a couple of
things they specialized in that came into American cooking via the
Dutch: pancakes, waffl es, and cookies (all Dutch words). They’re
also crazy about pies.England and France
The next great mercantile power was England. Just like the
Netherlands, England tried to muscle in on world trade. They also
had their own East and West India companies, monopolies granted
specifi cally to compete with the Dutch. Like the Dutch, they began
their involvement in world trade by preying on Spanish shipping
during the war with Spain in the late 16th century. The very fi rst efforts to colonize the New World were in what is
now Virginia in the 1580s, and they were disastrous. The English
really only get going with colonization in the early 17th century;
they set up Jamestown in 1607. There’s a mad scramble to set up
colonies that would provide raw materials or foods to the mother
country and also provide markets for manufactured goods made
back in Europe.