{"id":558,"date":"2026-04-11T21:59:31","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T21:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/558\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T21:59:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T21:59:31","slug":"amsterdam-capital-canals-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/558\/","title":{"rendered":"Amsterdam – Capital, Canals, Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The international trade<\/a> on which Amsterdam had thrived suffered greatly during the Napoleonic period, and it was only the revival of Dutch rule and commerce in the East Indies<\/a> in the 1830s that began to restore prosperity to the city. After 1850 sustained<\/a> growth set in, and the population doubled (to 500,000) by 1900. The East Indian trade and associated manufactures remained the backbone of the economy. The North Sea Canal<\/a>, built during the 1870s, strengthened the port by providing a direct link to the North Sea<\/a>. Amsterdam suffered from the disruption of trade during World War I<\/a>, but modest prosperity resumed in the 1920s. The Great Depression<\/a> and World War II<\/a> were especially traumatic for the capital. The German army occupied the Netherlands in 1940, and Allied bombers attacked industrial areas several times. However, the city\u2019s severest loss was the deportation<\/a> of its 70,000 Jewish inhabitants. There were heroic exploits<\/a> in Amsterdam by the Dutch Resistance<\/a> and many quiet deeds of valour in protecting those persecuted by the Nazi regime, such as the family of Anne Frank<\/a>. However, the city\u2019s Jews and their old quarter were almost entirely eliminated.<\/p>\n

After the war there was a difficult period of reconstruction, but by the 1950s the economy was booming. The Netherlands<\/a> in the 1950s was not a radical place, and Amsterdam was typically staid and proper. The 1960s, however, brought social and cultural change throughout the Western world, nowhere more so than in Amsterdam, which embraced the libertarian radicalism for which it has been renowned ever since. The reasons for the extraordinary change are still debated but include the long economic boom, the severity of the religious strictures in mainstream Dutch culture<\/a> in the mid-20th century, and the traditional Dutch tolerance of difference. This radicalism opened the way for the city\u2019s relatively open tolerance for recreational drug use<\/a> and prostitution. During the 1960s and \u201970s, numerous radical movements arose, some of them highly political and tightly structured, but many of them playful and satirical, based on street theatre. Public demonstrations often turned into confrontations with the increasingly bewildered and beleaguered police. Riots took place at the wedding of Princess (later Queen) Beatrix<\/a> in 1966 and at her coronation parade in 1980, and demonstrations, confrontations<\/a>, and riots over a variety of political issues occurred in central Amsterdam repeatedly into the 1980s. During the 1990s the intensity of street protest diminished, but there is still a radicalism in Amsterdam\u2019s public life that is hard to find anywhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The international trade on which Amsterdam had thrived suffered greatly during the Napoleonic period, and it was only…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23,707,706,705,704],"class_list":{"0":"post-558","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-amsterdam","8":"tag-amsterdam","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-britannica","11":"tag-encyclopeadia","12":"tag-encyclopedia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}