October 16, 1983

Season 1

We use pepper and salt every day. Nobody realizes that it was precisely those simple ingredients that initially attracted the Dutch over the oceans. To the West for the salt. To the East for the pepper. It seems like a simple story, but of course there was much more to it and there was a lot more to it before those proud East Indiamen controlled the oceans and the Low Countries became the Golden Republic.

01. Het Hollands mirakel

How was it possible that the small Netherlands from around 1600 grew to the biggest trade and navel power in the world and to the Golden Republic in a few years time? What fuelled that handful of men on vulnerable ships to overcome all conceivable hardships and cross unknown oceans looking for faraway exotic coasts? Curiosity? Thirst for adventure? Or was trade the only motivation, the profit, the prosperity, the fortune?