LETTERLETTER 9

EXERCISE ON HISTORY (ievads)

When, as a child, I read about the English wars, I learned stories of brave Dutch enterprises, most of them incredibly victorious. Obviously, my books were devised to educate the young generations of the Low Countries to patriotism, not to asking questions.

Later, reading English historians, such as Callender, about the same events which were now referred to as the Dutch wars, I learned that the impertinent (nekaunīgie) Dutch fishermen were always defeated by the English navy, except when it was foggy by day and dark by night. And when a Dutch squadron sailed deep into the heart of England and demolished the fortified naval docks on the barricaded river Medway, the Dutch were desperate rather than brave or smart and they could only succeed because England was paralyzed by the Plague.

There is sufficient nonsense in my childhood reading to arouse suspicion. In spite of their victories the Dutch had to give up Nieuw Amsterdam and to accept that the defeated enemy called it after York, a township somewhere at the other side of London.

But the serious history for adult English readers deserves some suspicion as well. Victorious England was forced to amend its own proud English law in favour of a defeated enemy (the Act of Navigation) and to accept the everlasting memory of the Dutch terror in the English language with the curious degrees of comparison: bad—worse—Dutch. Dutch disease, a lethal virus infection in elm trees, has a worthy counterpart in the Dutch name for rachitis: Engelse ziekte (angļu slimība).

The facts about these wars were at hand in the governmental archives of both kingdoms, nevertheless they do not seem to impose rigid restrictions on adapting history to educational purposes.

Something sensible could come out of cool calculation. From the number of ships lost on both sides and the average crew on naval vessels we could conclude that the first and the second English wars were the most cruel massacres of the time. Many thousands of young lives were sacrificed to nothing but the trivial interests of a few rivaling fish and slave merchants.

I do not know whether this view of the most glorious history of civilized Christian nations could be of much help for our approach of the issues of our own time. For this moment I am satisfied with the conclusion that history is tricky stuff.