Episode 52: Draining the Swamp Part 2: Too Drained, Too Furious

Back to History of the Netherlands

In recent episodes we have taken a departure from the trials and tribulations of the region’s politics to discuss some of the more grass-roots ideas, practices and social developments that were making their marks on the History of the Netherlands as the 15th century rolled into the 16th. In this episode we are going to get even more grassy and even more rooty, as we continue on from a much earlier episode in discussing the ways that humans shaped the land and water around them whilst endeavouring to live in what is, naturally, a pretty swampy wilderness. 

This episode is going to span a long period of time, much of which we have already delved into over the course of our journey. As podcasters we’ve known for a long time that it behoves us to do a follow up to an earlier episode on this topic. To re-enforce this, we were given a kick in the backsides to do so promptly after having received some feedback from an intrepid listener named Edwin den Boer earlier this year. Edwin, (hello if you are listening!) commented on the loving, communal platform that is ‘X’ that perhaps our recurring jokes about the Netherlands being “our beloved boggy swamp” were missing a crucial fact about what makes this part of Europe so special. The swampy ground upon which the towns are built and the people live is arguably far less important to the region than the huge river systems, being those of the Rhine, the Maas and the Scheldt, which flow through our beloved boggy swamp and empty out into the sea here. Edwin argues, not unreasonably, that instead of declaring our love for “our swamp” we should instead be expressing our enthusiasm for “our delta”. And Edwin, you make a valid point, however I’m going to counter it for two reasons. Firstly, talking about “our delta” as Australians would make us look like giant fanboys of Delta Goodrem which I most certainly am not. Julian, are you a fanboy of Delta Goodrem? ‘No Not Me Not I.’ Secondly, there’s just no equivalently satisfying delta-related word as sphagnum. I just really like the mouthfeel of the word sphagnum. Sphagnum. Despite these objection, Edwin is correct in that we need to explore how the waterways, water management processes, shipping and trade for which the Netherlands would become renowned all grew from the context of people living in…what I am sure we can all agree, Edwin, can be called a beautiful, swampy river delta. 

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 2: Too Drained, Too Furious.

“Draining the Swamp Part 2: Too Drained, Too Furious” episode artwork by Steven Straatemans

De Grote Ontginning - The Great Reclamation

Part 1 was way back in Episode 8 of this podcast, entitled “Draining the Swamp (or the secret, soggy story of sphagnum)”. In that episode we first discussed how in the 11th century colonists began to settle in the wet wildernesses of places like Holland, Utrecht and Guelders, at the encouragement of the nobility of those areas. We explored how these colonists would chop sphagnum, or peat moss, out of the ground and create long parallel ditches to drain water out of the bogs and into a river, creating land on which they could live and farm happily, whilst paying rent, taxes, and tolls in return to those nobles. It seemed like a win-win situation. Unfortunately, however, the boggy landscape began to sink as it dried out and rotted from the inside, while continual human interference in the river systems, such as with the construction of dams upstream, combined with heavy sedimentation to cause the mouth of the Oude-Rijn river near Katwijk to silt up and eventually become completely closed after a storm in 1163. All of the water from that river had nowhere to go and it quickly began to threaten the newly created land as its levels rose. If you can recall, we discussed how in 1165 the count of Holland, Floris III, decided the best course of action was to build a dam at a place called Zwammerdam, which would basically stop the water from entering Holland and instead let it become Utrecht’s problem. Brilliant idea according to Holland, not so brilliant according to Utrecht, whose people understandably kicked up a fuss. After an intervention by no less than the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, the dam was removed, but instead two big drainage canals, called the Zijl and the Does, were dug, which moved the water from south to north, through the Leidse Meer and the Haarlemmer Meer and eventually out into the Zuiderzee via the Spaarne and IJ rivers. This is often seen as the beginning of the Rijnland Waterboard, the body which would become (and still partly is) responsible for water management in this part of Holland, since digging such major works required cooperation between the 15 different rural districts that they ran through. That was pretty much where we left things in that episode, but now we are finally going to head back to Holland and Utrecht to see how the water management systems developed over the next few hundred years, in the background of the internecine conflicts and social development about which we have spoken so much since Episode 8.

A lot of the following information is coming from a 2003 article called “Rijnland and Woerden” by Gerard van de Ven, who was a special professor of water management history at the University of Amsterdam. As usual, there is conflicting and contrasting information about a lot of these points, since historians love splitting hairs about water management projects completed hundreds of years ago. So if you think we misdate your favourite canal by a hundred years, don’t blame us, blame Gerard van de Ven. After the digging of the Zijl and the Does it turned out they weren’t, by themselves, enough to adequately drain water from the south to the lakes further north, so in 1202 the count of Holland decided to build a dam at Zwammerdam again! This time, however, there were  proper negotiations undertaken between the various parties from Holland and Utrecht, to try to reach an agreement on how to deal with the water. The count of Holland stipulated that the dam at Zwammerdam would be taken away on the proviso that the lands of Utrecht (whose waters emptied into the Oude Rijn) pay for a third set of drainage ditches to be dug. Collectively these ditches would eventually be known as the Heimanswetering. In addition to this, those lands in Utrecht built their own dam which could be opened and closed to control the flow of water, so that water from Utrecht wouldn’t flow uncontrolled into Holland during high-water periods. These projects were sufficient for the Count of Holland to swear under oath in 1204 to never build a dam in Zwammerdam there again. We can call this a dam oath. 

As we mentioned in the first “Draining the Swamp” episode, water management issues required cooperation and compromise between individuals, villages, and entire regions, whose other interests besides ‘not drowning’ were often not aligned with each other. That they could cooperate on this particular issue is no doubt a testament to water’s uncompromising nature. You can’t just say to a river “hey, could you please not flood me today?”. Well, you can, but the water isn’t going to listen. As such, dealing with your annoying neighbours, who could well be your arch rivals, is the only other course of option available to you if you all want to not drown in a giant flood one day. The time period between 10th and the 13th centuries is labelled De Grote Ontginning, or The Great Reclamation, in Holland and Utrecht, since this was when people got to work draining the bog lands. Throughout the last century of The Great Reclamation, the push and pull between conflict and cooperation in dealing with water issues literally shaped the development of Holland and Utrecht and the relationship between the peoples and communities who lived in these lands.

One of the big issues which people in these lands faced was not only in getting the water out of marshy areas but also to ensure that water from outside them couldn’t get in. For this reason, the places in which drainage canals emptied into outside waters were highly concerning, since at high tide or during storms there was always a threat that the outside water might rise up and make itself an unwanted guest pushing back against the defences. As such, in the 1220s it was decided to dam the waterways which emptied into the Leidse Meer from the south and instead regulate the emptying of the water into that lake via a complex of seven locks through one of its surrounding borders, a wall called the Wendeldijk, which ran along its south eastern edge. A treaty was concluded in 1226 between Bishop Otto II of Utrecht and Count Floris IV of Holland, in which it was agreed that “the lands of Woerden” in Utrecht would pay for three of those seven locks and their annual upkeep. This is often seen as the beginnings of the Groot-Waterschap van Woerden, or the Woerden Waterboard, although that wouldn’t be officially founded until a century later in 1322.

Here be dragons

In the winter of 1248-1249 a series of three giant storms ravaged the Low Countries between November and February, causing storm surges which broke open dikes and flooded areas of Friesland, Holland and Groningen. An account of one of these storms was recorded in the Chronicle of Witterwierum by a guy called Menko, who was the abbott of a premonstratensian monastery named Bloemhof. We are going to quote from it now, translating this into English from a Dutch translation from Latin which was provided by Rudi Künzel in his article Een vurige draak in Menko’s kroniek:

“In the beginning of 1249, … the west wind, in contrast to the gentleness that is proper to it, roaring like a north wind, increased terribly at night and became so strong in the early part of the night that such a roar of winds has not been heard for ages. The roofs of many houses were torn off, some, even new and strong ones, collapsed, and everywhere nothing was heard but sorrow and grief. Furthermore, around midnight a glittering light was seen in the sky, which sparkled somewhat. Some thought it was lightning, but no thunder followed. Others thought it was a dragon. Isidore says in his Book of Origins that [dragons are] usually fiery by nature and rises in storms. But since he [the dragon] is accustomed to be born and live in the hottest part of Ethiopia, we would rather modestly leave it in the middle what splendor this was than to presumptuously pronounce a judgement on it. This, however, we have learned that in all of Friesland, wherever he [the dragon] was seen, everyone perceived him at a distance of a throw of a glade and that he disappeared there into the earth. At the first cockcrow the north-wind followed the west-wind and thus the storminess of the sea broke the dikes, the water covered the land and everywhere there was sorrow and sighing… But the Father of mercies, the God of all comfort, who is angry and has mercy, softened his anger in the midst of the chastisement, for if the north wind had replaced the west wind just before, during the highest level of the sea water, and had continued with as much force, Friesland would hardly have survived." These same storms also ravaged Holland, breaking through sea dunes nearby Callantsoog and Schagen and flooding the north of Holland. This was no doubt partly what spurred people in that area to build the Westfriese Omringdijk, that system of dikes which encircled a large swath of North Holland. It offered them great protection from the water, though we’re unsure how good it was against dragons. These storms illustrated how vulnerable Holland was south of the IJ, so the mouth of the Spaarne river was dammed to stop sea water from entering into the countryside. Nine locks were installed to control the flow of water and allow ships to pass through. By this stage, the Rijnland waternoard had grown in area compared to the Woerden one, so it was agreed that Rijnland would pay for six of the locks, with Woerden paying for the other three.

Fast forward nearly four decades and, on February 18, 1286, the now Count of Holland, Floris V, signed a charter which created a whole lot of regulations for the water management of the Rijnland area. It’s pretty important to remember that at this point, the lands, or swamps really, which we have been talking about were pretty much like a cold, boggy, green wild west with lots of birds and far fewer coyotes. It was a wilderness, with no set borders, not even between the areas which the Count of Holland and the Bishop of Utrecht laid claim to. In this aforementioned charter, then, Floris explicitly laid out the boundaries that would come to define the Rijnland waterboard, being the Spaarndammerdijk in the north, the Zwammerdam in the east and a dike between Wassenaar and Voorschoten in the south called the Hoevensytwinde. This dike, which sits just north of The Hague, would later become known as the Landscheiding, or Land Division, between the Rijnland and Delfland water boards. When this charter was written, the water levels south of the Land Division, in Delfland, were actually one metre lower than those in the Rijnland, making this a pretty obvious place to set a boundary. There would, however, be violent conflict at this boundary in later centuries, which we will talk about later in this episode.

Damming the Hollandsche IJssel river

As mentioned earlier, one of the consequences of The Great Reclamation was that as water drained out of the peaty marshlands they began to sink. If the lands sank to the same level as the waters into which they were draining, they would become waterlogged and unusable. By 1285, this sinking had led people in the southern Rijnland area to realise that they needed to find a new way to get the water out of their swamps. In that year, Floris V ordered a dam to be built where the Hollandsche IJssel river branched off from the Lek River, nearby a place called Hoppenesse. The Lek is a continuation of the Nederrijn river, which is itself one of the branches of the Rhine river in the Netherlands. The location of this dam actually sat on lands controlled by the Bishop of Utrecht, John of Nassau, and was protested against vehemently by the Chapters of Utrecht, who were large landowners in this area and as such would be expected to contribute to funding it. If this dam was built, it would have great consequences for the Lek River, since it would increase the amount of water flowing down it. As a result, there would be an increased risk of flooding and dikes along the Lek river would need to be strengthened, requiring further works and expense. This would prove to be prescient when the Lek dikes broke open three times in 1321 and 1322, causing flooding throughout Holland and Utrecht. To stop more flooding, a new 5km long “winter dike” was built four hundred metres behind the “summer dike”, giving the river space to flood into at moments of high water. A lot of places around the world are today investigating and utilising the concept of giving “room for rivers” as they face higher amounts of water flowing through their rivers due to the effects of climate change. The Dutch have been doing it for almost 700 years already. If you’ve been paying attention, I bet you knew that was Dutch. 

Damming the Hollandsche IJssel also had consequences for ship traffic in the area since boats could no longer sail from that river into the Lek. If you are able to remember back to Episode 11, The Murder of Floris V, John of Nassau was not a very shrewd operator financially and had required Floris V’s help to quell an uprising in his lands a decade earlier. This is how Floris was able to buy John’s permission to build the dam, basically by giving him 4500 pounds telling him he was going to build the dam. The construction took place between March and November each year until it was completed four years later in 1289. The Chapters of Utrecht remained unhappy with this for years and it wasn’t until 1296 that they finally reached a settlement with John of Nassau about the dam, after they too had received a bit of compensation from the Count of Holland. 

The dam at Hoppenesse, which is now known as the Dam bij het Klaphek, created a problem for the city of Utrecht. Ships sailing from Utrecht could no longer easily get onto the Rhine river and thus into Germany. Previously they had sailed down a canal which had been dug in 1122 called the Vaartsche Rijn from which they could get to the Hollandsche IJssel, then to the Lek. This new dam could potentially have dire consequences for the economic position of the town. As a result, and to counter these possible consequences, a new canal which would become known as the Nieuwe Vaart, was dug which connected the Vaartsche Rijn to the Lek. The digging of the Nieuwe Vaart was also met by protestations from landowners in the area, who were unhappy about their land being confiscated for what they saw as low-ball offers by the city of Utrecht. In a charter issued on December 12, 1289, Floris V demanded that four of them, being Willem van den Slike, a guy called Spronch, Willem van Oudegein and Arnoud van Amstel hand over their lands to the city of Utrecht for values which were determined by him. The charter ended with “and whoever did not do that, we would hold it against him” which isn’t even a veiled threat, that’s just a full on threat. The canal was dug before the dispute with the land owners had been settled. In an article entitled “Novus Renus: Aanleg en Betekenis van de Nieuwe Vaart”, historian Kaj van Vliet explains how for years afterwards the dispute dragged on. Willem van den Slike refused to give up his rights and was eventually killed in a battle on the Nieuwe Vaart by soldiers from Utrecht, where his son was taken prisoner. This son gave up his rights to the lands but another of Willem’s sons, named Gijsbrecht, refused to settle. A deal was eventually brokered between his estate and the city of Utrecht by the Count of Guelders in 1334, but only after Gijsbrecht had also been killed at the Nieuwe Vaart. That’s almost half a century of angst over the digging of a canal.

To ensure that water from the Lek river would not enter into the Nieuwe Vaart a dam was placed close to where the two waterways met at place called Vreeswijk. This would become a so-called “overtoom”, a location where boats would be dragged over a dike to get from one waterway to another. To imagine what an overtoom would like, picture a levee which has a wooden ramp going up one side and down the other. Rollers were placed at regular intervals to help smoothly get the boat out of the water and up and over. At the top of the levee, a windlass was constructed, which is basically a frame which has a big horizontal beam with a rope wound around it which can be rotated by a hand crank. The windlass would do the work of pulling the boats across the overtoom and the bishop of Utrecht earned a nice income from this. When the overtoom was eventually replaced by a wooden lock in 1373, the Vaartsche Rijn would become one of the most important waterways in the Netherlands, right up until the 19th century. It became part of the Keulse Vaart which connected Amsterdam to Germany, via the city of Utrecht. The building of the lock in 1373 made the water level easier to control and also made it so that ships and goods could get through this area much more easily, since everything didn’t need to be pulled across the overtoom. It also meant that Vreeswijk became a town whose economy revolved around the lock. Since boats would often have to wait for a long time before they were able to use the lock, the crews would need a place to eat and drink, stay the night and do business. As a result, Vreeswijk became a bustling outer harbour of Utrecht.

The first polders in Holland

The biggest consequence of damming the Hollandsche IJssel off from the Lek was that the water level in the Hollandsche IJssel dropped. The only fresh water feeding into the Hollandsche IJssel was water draining out of the surrounding lands and a canal called the Doorslag which connected it to the Vaartsche Rijn. After being dammed off, the water level in the river was much more affected by tides. The Hollandsche IJssel empties into the Maas river at Rotterdam, only a short distance away from where that river empties into the North Sea. As such, much like the Maas, the Hollandsche IJssel became a tidal river. At high tide seawater would enter into the system and raise the level, while at low tide it would drop dramatically. One immediate benefit of this was that the Hollandsche IJssel became a perfect place to drain the surrounding peatlands into at low tide. Remember that many of the drained marshlands had actually sunk to the old water line. But now since the water would get even lower at low tide, there was more opportunity for draining to be done!

As a result, throughout the 14th century, people occupying the lands between the Oude Rijn and the Hollandsche IJssel, from the dam at Hoppenesse to Gouda, began to dig new drainage canals towards the Hollandsche IJssel so they could take advantage of this new situation. Where those waterways connected to the river, sluice gates were installed so that water could not enter during high tide, but could flow out at low tide. Like all big water management projects, this was a communal effort. Villages and farming communities which were close to each other were required to work together so that they could fund and carry out these projects. To make sure that only those who had actually contributed to the effort could benefit from it, they would surround their lands with low lying dikes so that no water from outside could come in. The water level within this diked off area thus became regulated and could be controlled by opening and closing the sluice gate. These diked off areas with their own regulated water level were known as “polders” and waterboards were set up within the polders so they could administer and manage all water related affairs within them.

Unfortunately, however, damming off the Hollandsche IJssel also had the side effect of dramatically speeding up the silting of the river. As sea water entered into the river at high tide, it brought with it clay sediments which would be deposited along the river banks and raise the riverbed. This clay would prove useful for making what became the famous, yellow IJssel bricks. As an aside, in case you are scared that we would neglect something so important to the Netherlands as bricks, we are planning to do an entire episode and, possibly, series of episodes one day about the famous yellow IJssel bricks. For now, though, we can leave it to Bart Ibelings who wrote in his essay about the silting up of the Hollandsche IJssel, “It is…remarkable that the millions of bricks that were baked here annually did not lead to sufficient deepening [of the river]”. This, combined with subsidence within the polder, meant that soon it was no longer possible to use the low tide in the river to empty water out of the polders. New methods had to be invented. First, people did it by hand, using bailers. Soon pumping mills were installed, which needed muscle power to move water up out of the polder and into the river. The first mills were either powered by people, either by hand or by treadmills (imagine people in big hamster wheels), or animals such as horses or donkeys. In 1408, the first wind powered mill was demonstrated in Alkmaar by Floris van Alkemade and Jan Grietenzoon and these would later come to symbolise the Dutch efforts to drain their boggy swamp. But we will save that for a later episode. 

For now,  unfortunately, we have reached a dam on our journey and we now must cross an overtoom in the form of an ad break. On the other side, we will take a look at how the silting up of the river also had ramifications on the all important shipping route which traversed across Holland, the “doorvaert binnen dunen”, the “sailing route inside the dunes”. 

The creation of the “doorvaert binnen dunen”

As mentioned at the start, this episode is mostly being written in response to a comment by Edwin den Boer earlier this year which pointed out how the delta aspect of the Netherlands was more important and relevant to its history and economic prosperity rather than the land in between the rivers. Edwin is, of course, absolutely correct in the fact that the Low Countries is a gigantic delta region and that this has been a defining feature and a critical component leading to the prosperity and development which has taken and will continue to take place in the Low Countries throughout our story. Throughout the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries, the river systems in the Low Countries, such as the IJssel, Vecht, Amstel and Spaarne became increasingly important as a way to move goods coming from the Baltic region into the more southern regions of the Low Countries such as Flanders and Brabant, or into Germany. Sailing along the coast of the Low Countries was dangerous due to shallow waters, sandbanks and treacherous weather. Also, as we saw in Episode 23, “Overachieving Overijsselers and Holland versus Hansa”, when regional North Sea powers went to war with each other, the North Sea often became unsafe for any ships to sail, regardless of which flags they were flying, due to privateering (governmentally approved piracy yaarrr!). As such, moving goods along internal waterways such as rivers, lakes and canals was a safer and more reliable option than navigating the sea. Before the middle of the 13th century, the only real inland north-south route which existed in the Low Countries was one that went via the Vecht river and the city of Utrecht.

In 1244, Willem II, Count of Holland, issued a charter in which he sold the right to drain the marsh in a place called Waddinxveen. In this charter, he explicitly mentioned that a canal was to be dug which would connect the Gouwe River to the Oude Rijn in South Holland. Digging this canal would help drain water out of the area around Waddinxveen, but it also created the possibility for ships to sail through Holland’s internal waterways from north to south or vice versa. After this canal was dug in the middle 13th century, ships could sail from the Zuiderzee, south towards Amsterdam, then west towards Spaarndam and onto the Spaarne River, past Haarlem and into the Haarlemmermeer and the Leidsemeer, through the Heimanswetering (which we spoke about earlier in this episode) into the Oude Rijn and then onto the Gouwe, past Gouda and into the Hollandse IJssel. Once on the Hollandsche IJssel ships could either sail up the Lek and Rijn to Gelderland and Germany, or go down downstream until they reached the Maas, from which they could either go out to sea past Rotterdam and Briel, or go further south towards the Ooster-Schelde and Zeeland, Flanders and Brabant.

Simply put, digging this canal made it possible for ships to sail from the north of France, safely through Holland, onto the Zuiderzee, from which they could hug the coast of Germany and up towards Denmark. This route through Holland would later become known as “gecostumeerde binnenvaart” which when you put it into google translate comes out as the “costumed inland shipping”. It is hilarious to imagine a bunch of people LARPing while on boats, but unfortunately it actually means something more like “legally regulated inland shipping route”. It was also known as the “doorvaert binnen duinen”, the “passage inside the dunes” which is nicely poetic so that’s what we’re going to keep calling it.. even if it does bring up false images of giant, all-consuming worms destroying spice-mining encampments. 

The benefits of taking this north-south route through Holland were quickly realised by shippers not only from Holland, but also those from further abroad, since it was much easier to follow than the one via the Vecht river through Utrecht. The amount of ships sailing through here also came to the attention of the Count of Holland. Tolls were introduced so that the comital coffers could profit from all of these boats on Holland’s waterways. One toll would have to be paid for the “salt waters” at Geervliet, nearby Rotterdam. When on the fresh waters of the “passage inside the dunes” a toll would be paid at Spaarndam in the north, at Alphen in the middle to use a lock called the Gouwe Sluis, and at Moordrecht in the south.

Gouda, Haarlem and Dordrecht profit greatly

The town of Gouda is located where the Gouwe and the Hollandsche IJssel rivers meet. Lying right in between Utrecht and Holland, Gouda was of strategic importance, so on July 19, 1272, Count Floris V granted city rights to Gouda in order to ensure its loyalty to him. In this charter, ships from Gouda were granted exemption from tolls on waterways in Holland, so they wouldn’t have to pay that toll at Moordrecht nor at Spaarndam. The town was clearly interested in ensuring that international shipping would sail on the internal route through Holland. In 1243, Willem II, Count of Holland, had offered protection to merchants from Hanover and Lübeck if they would pay the toll at Geervliet for cloth purchased in Flanders and sail through his territory. One of the people who acted as a witness to this declaration was one Dirk van der Gouda, a pretty clear sign that the economic potential of this location was not lost on those who were settling there early. Around the year 1250 an artificial waterway called “De Haven”, the harbour, was constructed which connected the Gouwe River to the Hollandsche IJssel. A lock was installed at the top of De Haven which came to be known as “De Donkere Sluis” and embankments were built on either side of De Haven. This was to be the nucleus around which the town of Gouda would develop. It is unclear exactly when, but probably at some point before the year 1330 the comital toll was moved from Moordrecht to Gouda. From that point on, Gouda became the central hub of the official shipping route through Holland, sanctioned by the Count of Holland. From 1413, the right to charge the toll was rented out by the Count of Holland to whoever bid the highest amount. This person would then have the responsibility of actually collecting the toll and also get to live in a fancy toll house, which sounds pretty sweet to me. In 1429, the town of Haarlem took over the toll right from Spaarndam.

With the toll points established along the “passage inside the dunes”, this became the only legal route by which ships could pass north-south through Holland. The three cities which profited the most from this route were Haarlem and Gouda, because of the lucrative toll money which was earned there, and the town of Dordrecht, which lies just to the south of the “passage inside the dunes” to the south-east of Rotterdam.  Dordrect had been granted a staple right for all goods transported by ship down the Lek and Merwede rivers in 1299. By 1340 Dordrecht had also added the Maas river to this. That basically meant that any ship which was in the vicinity of Dordrecht would have to first stop there, offer their goods (mostly wine, wood, grain and salt) for sale at the market there and then after 14 days (later 8), they’d be allowed to continue. Dordrecht would send armed ships called “uitleggers” out on the water to search for anybody who might try to evade the toll and then drag them back to the town. They would then have to pay the toll, plus a fine or even in the worst cases have their ships and goods completely confiscated. Some people claim that this is the reason why Dordrecht gets slandered in a Dutch expression which goes “hoe dichter bij Dordt, hoe rotter het wordt”, “the closer to Dordrecht, the more rotten it gets”. It won’t surprise you to learn that lots of Dutch people hate paying taxes and so many towns in Holland protested heavily over centuries about the Dordrecht staple right.

There were, of course, exemptions to paying the comital tolls. Tolls would not be charged on some specific commodities, or would not be charged to people from specific towns. Amsterdam and Leiden, for example, had been granted exemption from tolls in privileges issued to them by the Count of Holland. Hanseatic merchants from Northern Germany or from the Baltics were also given a special rate for the route inside the dunes. Historian J.H.A. Beuken provides an example of this in his essay “De Hanze en Vlaanderen”, in which he quotes a 15th century instruction from the Court of Audit sent to the toll collector Wouter Arntsz in Gouda: “Such goods and merchant ships, as may be brought from the “East” or “North” [meaning northern Germany and the Baltic] and which go westward or southward through Gouda, they shall be free from paying the tolls at Gouda, provided that they show the toll collector a sign that they have paid the toll at Spaarndam”. The same applied vice versa at Spaarndam. So basically they only had to pay the toll once on the journey, which is a 50% discount, which is a pretty sweet deal if you ask me. As such, merchants from those areas preferred to use the “passage inside the dunes” instead of risking the journey across the North Sea until late into the 15th century.

The town of Gouda profited greatly from the “passage inside the dunes”. It was a notorious bottleneck along the route, since “De Haven” was quite a small passage and the lock, the Donkere Sluis, was also very small. Ships would have to wait a long time before they were allowed to use the lock, meaning that they were basically forced to spend a night in the town. This meant that they would spend their money in Gouda buying provisions, fixing their ships and doing the things that sailors are notorious for doing. All of this led to grumbling from others in Holland since it caused extensive delays.

Other towns begin searching for alternative routes

There wasn’t really an alternative way for boats to move north-south across the territory because other waterways which travelled in that direction had been closed off. This was often because of the landscheidingen, the land divisions, which were those internal dikes that had been created to keep the different waterboards separate from each other. In the Vliet, which is a canal between Delft and Leiden, there were two dams, one called the Korstagne nearby Delft and another called Leidschendam nearby Leiden. In the Rotte river between Rotterdam and the Oude Rijn there was a dam called the Hildam. In between Leiden and Amsterdam on the Drecht river was a dam called the Bilderdam, whilst in between Alphen and Amsterdam there was a dam on the Aar river, creatively named.. the Aardam. 

Obviously it is not possible to sail through a dam, so in these places there would often be an overtoom, like we described in the first part of this episode, a construction so you could drag a ship over a dike or a dam. These waterways were often very small and ships would have to be unloaded and dragged across the overtoom and then pay fees associated with that. This made it impractical for large ships to sail this way. In an essay which we have used a lot to write this part of the episode, whose title translates as “The Conflict for Inland Shipping Through the Middle of Holland in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century”, historian J.C. Smit explains how in 1435 there was a disagreement about these fees between the city of Leiden and Willem van Naaldwijk, who was a nobleman who held the right to charge for the use of the overtoom over the Leidschendam which blocked the way between Leiden and Delft. Due to this disagreement and its eventual resolution, we know the kind of products which were being pulled over the overtoom there and how much was being paid for them. It included stuff like wine, beer, grain, cloth, wool, wood, furniture, stone, skins, pigs, hay, herring, alum, glass, mead and dyes. There was also a fee for dragging empty boats across, because, you know, you may as well get as much money as possible, whenever possible. In fact, about the only exemption in the whole process, was that you wouldn’t have to pay for what “one man can carry in his own arms”, which makes me think you’d want to bring one really buff person for each journey and have them carry your stuff so you could save as much money as possible.

As we mentioned at the end of the first part of this episode, after the dam at Hoppenesse was built, the Hollandsche IJssel river began to silt up. As the river became shallower, it meant that the shipping channel which ships could safely sail on became much smaller. It got to the point that a fully loaded boat would be unable to tack into a headwind since there wasn’t enough space to do so. It also made the harbour in Gouda much shallower. In his essay on this topic, Bart Ibelings explains how measures were taken in Gouda by the Count of Holland in 1452 and 1466 to deal with the issues. There is a record of money being paid to the lock operators to store large amounts of water within the lock and then at low tide dump it into the harbour to try and clear it of silt. All of this led to further delays for ships sailing on the “passage inside the dunes” and soon towns began to press for new alternative routes to be built. Basically every town in Holland wanted new routes to be opened, except for Gouda, Haarlem and Dordrecht which profited greatly from the status quo.

The Kostverlorenvaart

An early example of this occurred in the beginning of the 15th century nearby the town of Amsterdam. As the Hollandsche IJssel began to silt up, and the polders of the Rijnland waterboard sank, Rijnland began searching again for new ways to drain water northwards into the IJ. In 1413, the Count of Holland gave permission to the Rijnland waterboard to build a new drainage canal which would connect an offshoot of the Haarlemmermeer, creatively called the Nieuwe Meer, to the IJ, just to the west of the town of Amsterdam. A new lock would have to built through the Spaarndammerdijk in order to let the water from the lake system travel north and empty out into the sea. The town of Amsterdam was vehemently against this lock being built, since it meant that if an enemy was to gain control of the lock, they could use it to drown the town. As such, after it was built, the town of Amsterdam built a dam directly behind the locks, rendering the whole drainage canal useless. Despite the efforts of the Rijnland waterboard, the passage remained closed and as such the entire endeavour was nothing more than a waste of money. It became named the ‘Kostverlorenvaart’, or the ‘sunk cost canal’. 

About 20 years after this, Amsterdam decided to widen a drainage canal which led from Amsterdam to the Kostverlorenvaart, so that ships would be able to sail directly from the town to the Haarlemmermeer and on to Leiden. At the place where the two waterways met was an overtoom over the land divide between the Rijnland and Amstelland waterboards. Haarlem was incredibly unhappy about this, since it threatened to create a bypass which ships could use to get around paying the comital toll for the “passage within the dunes” and took legal action against it with the Count of Holland. In the mean time, they had giant poles slammed into the overtoom so that boats could not get through. The city of Amsterdam removed the poles and then decided to make a passage way through the overtoom so that boats could sail past. In 1434 the Count of Holland fined the city of Amsterdam and had a dam built on the Kostverlorenvaart to stop boats from being able to bypass the toll.

Gouda and Dordrecht send carpenters and blacksmiths to go a-smashing

We will finish today’s episode with probably the most famous example of armed conflict over this shipping route. After decades of complaining to the Court of Holland, the town of Delft was finally able to convince Maximilian of the necessity of bettering its connection to the north. Due to the Leidschedam on the Vliet between Delft and Leiden and the Hildam on the Rotte river, ships sailing from Delft were forced to make ridiculously long detours if they wanted to head northwards. In 1489 and 1491, Maximilian granted permission to the Rijnland and Delfland waterboards to install locks in those dams to improve the shipping routes from Delft. This led to much grief within the town of Gouda, since fewer ships would then need to dock at de Haven and this, as such, threatened their most important source of income. So they decided to take action and in the middle of winter, January 19, 1492, four hundred angry and drunk men from Gouda and Dordrecht jumped on sleighs and sledded towards the locks to get retribution. 

And speaking of sleighs… that brings us, very late in this episode, to your favourite, and our least favourite, part of the show… bet you didn’t that was Dutch! The English word ‘sleigh’, as in “dashing through the snow on a one horse open sleigh”, as opposed to what you do when you play aggressive thrash guitar for Slayer, is derived from a Dutch word “slee”, which was introduced to North American English via Dutch migrants. So there you go, sleigh, bet you didn’t know that was Dutch!

We will let historian J. C. Smit describe the action: “They went by sleigh across the snowy and frozen fields and waterways to the Hildam and the crossing between Leiden and Delft and destroyed both new openings. According to the Gouda city accounts, its municipal contingent consisted of 44 carpenters and blacksmiths’ apprentices, equipped with axes, saws, hammers, battering rams and other tools. They were protected by 174 armed companions. The entire company was transported on 53 sledges. The carpenters and blacksmiths’ apprentices were paid five stuivers per person for their work, the companions three stuivers. Before the departure, the necessary beer had been drunk. In addition to these costs, the Gouda city council also had to compensate for the damage suffered by farmers on the way and the damage caused to the inn located at the crossing near Delft.”.

The effort and expenditure that Gouda was willing to sacrifice to keep ships from passing through these dams shows how vital the passage inside the dunes was to the city. The conflict would not end there, as the controlling noble Hendrik van Naaldwijk would attempt to rebuild the locks at the Leidschendam in 1492, before Gouda sent men to smash them again. The next year he tried to build them once more and, guess what, the work was once more impeded by force on behalf of Gouda, who also sought not only legal assurance from the Duke’s court at Mechelen that they would be forgiven for smashing the locks which Maximilian had given approval for, but that they could do it again if they had to. After this, the battle continued in the courts. Perhaps because of the turmoil which had been engulfing Flanders around this time, Maximilian and the ducal courts felt they had more pressing issues to deal with. A fully functioning lock at the Leidschendam would not be completed until… 1648, a century and a half later.

Throughout this episode we have seen how waterways, both natural and manmade, shaped the physical and economic landscape of Holland between the 11th and 16th centuries. Through trial, error, conflict and negotiation, the ways that water and therefore ships and therefore goods were moved through the territories of the Low Countries were created. In the course of this whole podcast, we have seen countless examples of how the towns and cities of the low countries developed due to events that range from external wars against foreign states to internal factionalism. In broad strokes, many of these events shaped the country in the lead up to the 1500s, when it would push its way towards modernity. However, while those events are important (and do not fear we will be getting back to that stuff soon enough), it is continually important to recognise, especially as we move our narrative also into modernity, that the waterways, dams and dikes of this delta are the veins and arteries throughout which the lifeblood of this swampy region flows.

Sources used:

Hoogheemraadschap Van Rijnland (2021, December 10). Circa 1200: Watergangen naar het noorden. https://www.rijnland.net/over-rijnland/archieven-en-erfgoed/canon-van-rijnland/circa-1200-watergangen-naar-het-noorden/

Gerard van de Ven, ‘Rijnland en Woerden’. Tijdschrift voor Waterstaatsgeschiedenis 12 (2003), nr. 2, p. 59-68.

Ontstaan van het Groot-Waterschap van Woerden - RHC. (2017, December 21). RHC. https://rhcrijnstreek.nl/bronnen/lokale-historie/hoogheemraadschap-de-stichtse-rijnlanden/groot-waterschap-van-woerden/ontstaan-van-het-groot-waterschap-van-woerden/

Künzel, R. (1979). Een vurige draak in Menko’s Kroniek. Volkskundig Bulletin: Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Cultuurwetenschap, 5, 97–118.

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J.C. Smit, “De strijd om de binnenvaart door Midden-Holland in de vijftiende en de zestiende eeuw”
(1994) - In: Tidinge van Die Goude (1994) p. 14-24

J. H. A. Beuken, ”De Hanze en Vlaanderen”, https://hdl.handle.net/2066/107308

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Jessica Dijkman. (2011). Shaping Medieval Markets: The Organisation of Commodity Markets in Holland, c. 1200 - c. 1450. Brill. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctt1w76wdg

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