According to AbbreviationFinder, Amsterdam is the capital city of Netherlands.
From the beginning to the Middle Ages
The Amstelledamme settlement was established around 1270 and was already exempt from customs duties in 1275 and was first mentioned in a document. A few years later the construction of a fortress began, and around 1300 the city was granted city rights by the Bishop of Utrecht. In 1306 the construction of the Oude Kerk began. At the beginning of the 20s of the 14th century, Amsterdam became a customs port for beer imported from Hamburg. At the end of the 1960s the city became a member of the Hanseatic League. In these years, Amsterdam was due to host miracle, a relic that sick pilgrims had healed, the pilgrimage has become.
In 1421 and 1452, fires destroyed large parts of the city, as many houses were built of wood and covered with straw. As a result, a building code was issued that stipulated stone as a building material. The first stone city wall was built in the early 80s of the 15th century. In 1489, the Habsburg emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519) was healed of the relic and, as a thank you, granted the city the privilege of wearing the imperial crown in the city’s coat of arms. In 1519 Holland and other duchies and counties were united under Charles V (1500-1558) from Spain as the Low Countries with today’s Belgium and Luxembourg.
In the following years, ideas of the Reformation found their way into the city, but were suppressed by the government. During religious unrest in 1566, Calvinists destroyed numerous works of art that hung in Amsterdam’s churches in the wake of the iconoclasm. In the following year, troops of the Spanish King Philip II (1527-1598) were sent to the Netherlands, which, under the leadership of the Duke of Alba, were to re- enforce Catholicism in the country. Von Alba was appointed Spanish governor in the Netherlands in 1567. As a result, numerous Protestants were persecuted and killed. In 1568 the Eighty Years War began and freedom struggle, in which independence from Spain and freedom of belief should be enforced.
In 1573 the Duke of Alba came to Amsterdam, where he was warmly received by many citizens loyal to the king, and made the city a pro-Spanish enclave, while resistance in the rest of the country increased. Three years later, the siege of Amsterdam began under the leadership of William of Orange. The city surrendered in 1578, and the Spaniards had left Amsterdam a year earlier. A new city government was formed, made up of Reformed merchants. As a result, the Satisfactie van Amsterdam declared the Protestant faith to be the official religion. From then on, Catholic worship services were only tolerated in secret churches, although there was officially freedom of belief. In 1585 the Spaniards conquered Antwerp and the mouth of the Scheldt was blocked. Thousands of Jewish and Protestant merchants then emigrated to Amsterdam. In 1588 the Republic of the United Netherlands was founded, which consisted of the seven Protestant provinces in the north, Geldern, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, Friesland, Overijssel and Groningen.
In 1595, four Amsterdam ships left the island of Texel for the East Indies, today’s Indonesia. With this began the trade with Southeast Asia and the simultaneous colonization. In 1602 the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) was founded. Until the end of the 18th century, this had a monopoly on trade with Southeast Asia. In 1611 the first Amsterdam commodity and securities exchange was opened.
Early modern times to the present
In the following years Amsterdam was able to increase its wealth through trade, and the Golden Century began for the city. At the end of the 17th century it had become the richest city in Europe. In 1612 the construction of the Dreigrachtengurtel began, as the population grew rapidly and the medieval town center had become too narrow. In 1622 Amsterdam had around 105,000 inhabitants. A year earlier the Verenigde Westindische Compagnie had been founded, whose trade monopoly lay in West Africa, North Africa and South America.
In the first half of the 17th century the tulip came via Turkey to the Netherlands and also to Amsterdam, where it was considered a status symbol. Unbelievably high prices were paid for certain tulip bulbs and almost every Amsterdam citizen who had the opportunity tried to earn money with the flower. The so-called tulipomania reached its peak between 1634 and 1637. Then it came to a crash, as a result of which economic
chaos broke out and many Amsterdam residents lost their entire fortune in many cases.
In 1648 the Eighty Years War ended and the Netherlands regained their independence from Spain in the Peace of Westphalia.
In the same year work began on the Koninklijk Paleis, which at that time still served as the town hall. In 1652, 1665 and 1672 there was a sea war against England. The reason was the so-called navigation file, which promoted the English sea trade, but hindered the Dutch intermediate trade. In 1672, French troops also tried to invade the city, but they were pushed back. In 1685, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (through the Edict of Fountainbleau by Louis XIV), which had guaranteed the French Protestants freedom of religion, numerous Huguenots (= French Calvinists) poured in from France to Amsterdam. Almost a hundred years later the Dutch lost their supremacy at sea in the fourth naval war against England (1780-1784). In 1799 the Verenigde Westindische Compagnie was dissolved, a year later the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie went bankrupt.
In 1795 the Netherlands became a vassal state of France as the Batavian Republic. Eight years later, Louis Napoléon, a brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, made Amsterdam the capital of the Netherlands, which was incorporated into the French Empire in 1810 by Napoléon Bonaparte. The expelled Wilhelm Friedrich Prince of Orange-Nassau ( Wilhelm VI. Of Orange) returned to Amsterdam from exile in 1813 and became King of the Netherlands as Wilhelm I after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. During the Vienna Congress in 1815, the present dayBelgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands declared the Kingdom of the United Netherlands. However, Belgium was replaced by the Netherlands in 1830 after an uprising in Brussels.
In 1876 the North Sea Canal was built, which gave Amsterdam direct access to the sea and the port experienced a boom. In 1895, Amsterdam hosted the World’s Fair and attracted thousands of visitors.
Around 500,000 people lived in Amsterdam at the turn of the century. During the First World War, the so-called potato uprising occurred in 1917, as the neutral Netherlands wanted to deliver potatoes to the warring countries, even though there was also famine in their own country. Between 1910 and 1922 the Amsterdam School style emerged, in the style of which some new buildings were built. In 1928 the IX. Summer Olympics take place. In the 30s of the 20th century Amsterdam was also hit by the global economic crisis. After a 10% cut in unemployment benefits, a revolt took place in what was then the working class Jordaan instead. However, this was bloodily suppressed. In 1936 Princess Juliana and Prince Bernhard got engaged. From 1940 to 1945 Amsterdam was occupied by German troops and liberated by Canadian troops on May 5, 1945. During the occupation, around 100,000 Amsterdam Jews were deported to concentration camps and murdered. In 1944, Anne Frank’s hiding place was discovered and the residents were deported.
Three years after the end of the war, Princess Juliana was sworn in as queen. A year later, Indonesia became the first Dutch colony to gain independence. In 1956 the National Monument was completed. In 1966, heir to the throne Beatrix married the German Claus von Amsberg, which led to violent protests at the time. In the 60s and 70s of the 20th century, many hippies came to Amsterdam, who appreciated the city’s tolerant politics. Princess Beatrix was sworn in as queen in 1980. Seven years later, Amsterdam became the European Capital of Culture appointed. In 1988, one million people in Amsterdam celebrated the Dutch national football team, which had won the European Championship. The crash of an Israeli transport plane over Bijlmermeer in 1992 killed over 200 people. In 1997, in the Treaty of Amsterdam, the foreign ministers of the 15 EU states decided on a common foreign policy for the European Union. In 2002, Crown Prince Willem Alexander married the Argentine Máxima Zorreguita. In the same year, Wim Kok’s government resigned, right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn was murdered and Prince Claus died.
After the failure of the governing coalition, early elections were held on January 22, 2003. Queen Juliana died in March 2004. In November of the same year, Islamist fundamentalists carried out an assassination attempt on director Theo van Gogh after his film Submission had been broadcast, in which van Gogh was killed.
At the moment, new islands are being created in the east of the city on the IJsselmeer in order to create new living space by 2012, as several thousand residents move to Amsterdam every year.