Dutch interest in Ukraine is not something new. As early as the seventeenth century, Dutch media reported on political developments in lands that were already known as Ukrainian territories. At that time, the lands which currently lie within Ukraine’s borders were a bone of contention for Poles, Russians, Cossacks, and Tatars. Dutch poets also wrote about these struggles, especially if they were important to the Dutch economy.

In 1649, for example, the renowned poet Joost van den Vondel commented on Tatar raids in Ukrainian territories, which “laid Poland in ashes” and “threatened us here with famine”: a clear reference to the grain trade between Poland and the Dutch Republic. Vondel obviously knew that large amounts of grain were produced in Ukraine, which at the time formed part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. From the south, the grain was then transported to Gdańsk, where it was bought in bulks by Dutch merchants.

A few years later, in 1657, the anonymous author of a Dutch pamphlet reacted to the many wars which crippled the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: it was fighting the Cossacks, Tatars, Russians, and Swedes all at once – and was facing heavy losses. According to the author, the proud Polish nobles themselves were to blame:

Ukraine is the beginning of the game,
The Polish nobility, proud and fierce
Is the cause of these disasters;
Who knows how the game will end,
Pride comes before a fall,
Everyone comes to fight here.

These verses obviously refer to the 1648 Cossack Uprising, led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who according to the poem aimed to lift “the proud Polish nobility from its saddle”. Later on, the focus shifts to the Swedish invasion of Poland, and the Dutch author argues in favor of sending aid to Gdańsk in order to protect the grain trade.

One final example dates from 1671. The poet Joannes Antonides van der Goes once again linked the ongoing fighting in Ukrainian territories with threats to the Dutch grain trade. Poland could feed the whole world, he wrote, if the country were not involved in wars with the Tatars, Turks, and Cossacks, led this time by hetman Petro Doroszenko. Echoing the earlier poem, Van der Goes stated that the Cossacks threatened to “lift the Polish nobility from its saddle”.

These examples make clear that Dutch readers and writers had a keen interest in political developments in Ukraine, which was essential to the Dutch economy due to the grain it produced. To this day, Ukraine is one of the largest grain exporters in the world.

*I originally wrote this post for the social media outlets of the Dutch Embassy in Poland. This was post no. 30.

Let us tell you a story which testifies to the old bonds between the Netherlands and the lands of Ukraine. A few weeks ago, we already wrote about the seventeenth-century Volhynian nobleman Samuel Korecki, who journeyed to the Netherlands and studied in Leiden. This time, we follow a Dutch student who travelled in the opposite direction.

In the 1590s, a young man named Joris van der Does/Georgius Dousa (1574-1599) rode from Leiden across Europe to Constantinople, where he hoped to study ancient Greek manuscripts and inscriptions. In 1599, a Latin book about his travels was published in Leiden. We wrote about Joris’s favourable descriptions of the Polish cities of Cracow and Zamość a few months ago. However, Joris also passed through lands which currently lie in western Ukraine. What did he see and who did he meet?

Leaving Cracow in September 1596, Joris travelled south-east via Jarosław, before passing the current Polish-Ukrainian border. The first town in modern Ukraine along his route was Yavoriv, where he met a friend of his father’s, the Polish politician Jan Szczęsny Herburt (1567-1616). Joris then travelled onwards to nearby Lviv, one of modern-day Ukraine’s largest and most resplendent cities. He observed that Lviv was a commercial centre of Cretan wine and Turkish merchandise, as well as the home of four religious groups: Greek Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, Armenian Christians, and Jews. While in Lviv, Joris was received most amicably by the well-known poet Szymon Szymonowicz (1558-1629), whose Latin works the young Dutchman greatly admired. Szymonowicz was also a friend of Joris’s father, and his poems were published in Leiden in 1619.

Finally, Joris left Lviv and travelled on to Kamianets-Podilskyi, a city and castle near the current Ukrainian-Moldavian border. On his way there, Joris saw many people with their hair in a so-called kołtun or plica polonica: a kind of thick, clotted braid, which at that time was considered a disease, commonly associated with Poles. Kamianets-Podilskyi itself was described by Joris as surrounded by a huge cliff, which looked like “walls made by the hands of Cyclopes”. Tying in with literary commonplaces about Poland, however, Joris concluded that the Poles who owned the castle were not keen on walls and fortifications, but rather preferred to defend their territory with “cavalry, arms, and a powerful spirit”.

The courageous people of modern Ukraine certainly have a powerful spirit as well. The fascinating history of their country deserves to be better known, especially at a time when that history is itself contested and the people and cultural heritage of Ukraine are under attack.

*I originally wrote this post for the social media outlets of the Dutch Embassy in Poland. This was post no. 29.

History plays a crucial role in the Ukrainian-Russian War, as President Putin continues to spread misinformation and a twisted version of Ukraine’s past to legitimise his invasion as an attempt to “reunite” Ukraine with Russia. Let us consider a bit of Ukrainian history, therefore, relating to the Netherlands, from a time when modern-day Ukraine was not part of Russia.

In July 1606, a young student called Samuel Korecki inscribed his name into the album amicorum (“book of friends”) of the Dutch scholar and mayor of Harderwijk, Ernst Brinck. Korecki’s name features amongst numerous well-known men of the time, such as Galileo Galilei. But who was he?

Samuel Korecki was a duke from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, whose family owned Korets Castle and vast estates in Volhynia. This region, currently in western Ukraine, had for a long time belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but during the sixteenth century was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland. Samuel Korecki was born there ca. 1586/88 and made a military career in service of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. During the Polish-Russian War of 1609-1618, he aided the Polish forces which occupied the Kremlin. He fought the Tatars and Moldavians on multiple occasions, and famously escaped Ottoman imprisonment. Returning home via Italy, he once again faced the Commonwealth’s southern enemies at the Battle of Cecora in 1620. Korecki was taken captive once more, and was eventually strangled by the Ottomans in Istanbul, in 1622.

So how did his name find its way into Ernst Brinck’s album amicorum? Before his military career, Samuel Korecki studied in the Northern Netherlands. He enrolled as an arts student at Leiden University on 29 May 1604, together with his younger brother Karol. This was not uncommon: since the founding of Leiden University in 1575, hundreds if not thousands of nobles from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth studied in Leiden. Apparently, Samuel met Ernst Brinck and decided to inscribe his name into his “book of friends”.

When Samuel finished his studies, Dominicus Baudius, one of the university professors, wrote a Latin poem in his honour, which was published in Leiden in 1607. Baudius ended his eulogy by saying that “Themis [the ancient Greek goddess of justice] will lift your name above the high stars of the sky,” implying that his Volhynian friend deserved eternal praise.

The case of Samuel Korecki illustrates that Ukrainian history is not Russian history, and Dutch-Ukrainian relations go way back.

*I originally wrote this post for the social media outlets of the Dutch Embassy in Poland. This was post no. 28.

Have you ever heard of the Polish Elfstedentocht? It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Dutch love ice skating. At the 2022 Winter Olympics, the Dutch team once again won multiple medals on the ice. Possibly the most famous and thought-provoking ice skating tradition in the Netherlands is the so-called Elfstedentocht (Eleven-City-Tour), a tour of almost 200 km via eleven towns in Frisia, skated on natural ice. The first Elfstedentocht was held in 1909, and a total of fifteen tours have been skated thus far.

The Elfstedentocht also has a Polish connection. In 1985, when it looked as though the real Elfstedentocht could not be organised due to unfavourable weather conditions, several Dutchmen and -women travelled by bus to Poland, where an alternative tour was planned. Unfortunately, on the night they arrived at their hotel, it was announced that the real Elfstedentocht would be held after all! The skaters did their best to organise a swift return to the Netherlands, which at that time – with the Iron Curtain still in place – proved quite the challenge. In the end, most of the Dutch skaters made it back home in time. One of the men who hurried back was Rein Jonker, who was a contender for the tour’s title. He finished in fifteenth place, however. The following year, at the fourteenth Elfstedentocht, Jonker came in second.

This does not mean that there was no alternative tour in Poland. In fact, Polish versions of the Elfstedentocht were organised in both 1985 and 1986.

More information can be found here.

*I originally wrote this post for the social media outlets of the Dutch Embassy in Poland. This was post no. 27.

In 1648, around this time of the year, the Polish queen Marie-Louise de Gonzague-Nevers will have received a pleasant letter from the Northern Netherlands. None other than the famed poet and diplomat Constantijn Huygens wrote to her, offering her a personal gift: a copy of his recently published ‘Pathodia sacra et profana’, a collection of psalms and musical compositions with texts in Latin, Italian, and French. The letter itself was written in French – the queen’s native language – and Constantijn signed it in Holland on 6 January. Taking into account a delivery time of a few weeks, this means that the book must have reached Warsaw by the end of January or beginning of February.

Constantijn clearly tried to impress and flatter the queen. He referred to her brief stay in the Dutch Republic in December 1645-January 1646 – an episode we discussed some time ago: “Your passage alone has perfumed the air of these provinces so much, and you have left such strong impressions of your multiple excellent qualities and universal knowledge of all that can be called beautiful, that ultimately, Madam, all those who in some way profess to love beauty, have desired to bear witness to that which art or nature has bestowed upon them in that area.” The author then humbly introduced himself as “one of those fortunate unfortunates”, since although he missed her during her presence in Holland, “the distance from here to the furthest north would not be large enough to prevent me from always seeing and admiring you, as if you had never left Amsterdam”. “The furthest north” was Constantijn’s way of referring to Poland. Whereas Poland is nowadays commonly seen as an Eastern European, or possibly a Central or East-Central European country, authors in the 17^th century universally described it as a part of “the north”, just as the Dutch Republic itself.

Finally, Constantijn presented the actual subject of the letter: his book, which “throws itself at Your Majesty’s feet”. Constantijn argued that the queen might like it, since it was printed in Paris, and claimed that he was forced to send it to her, merely because others had threatened to do so without his knowledge, which would “rob him of the opportunity, for which I have waited so patiently, to tell you how much I honour the grace which I ask of you, to be regarded with all respect and submission”. With this mix of false modesty and abundant admiration, Constantijn obviously wanted to win the queen’s favour. Considering his prominent position in Dutch politics, his book and letter can be seen as diplomatic tools, used not only for the author’s personal gain, but also aimed at strengthening the bonds between the Dutch Republic and the Polish court.

Did Marie-Louise like Constantijn’s gift? Sadly, we do not know how Marie-Louise responded, but as she was an active patroness of poetry, she may have spent many hours enjoying Constantijn’s writings.

The French letter and a Dutch translation by Rudolf Rasch can be found here.

*I originally wrote this post for the social media outlets of the Dutch Embassy in Poland. This was post no. 26.

Forty years ago, Poland was in the grip of the martial law, which had been introduced on 13 December 1981. A military junta attempted to weaken political opposition, for example by the deployment of army units, censorship, and the imprisonment of activists without trial. The period also saw great shortages in food supplies. Poland’s martial law lasted until July 1983.

In the Netherlands, several organisations set up help for Poland. Most famously, the Stichting Vriendenhulp Heemstede (Friends’ Help Foundation Heemstede) organised ‘Pak van je hart’ (‘A Package from the Heart’ – a Dutch play on words), a fundraiser which resulted in 180.000-200.000 ‘Christmas boxes’ filled with food. 130 Dutch trucks delivered them all over Poland. Other initiatives were organised as well, many of which were centralised in the so-called Nederlandse Stichting Hulp aan Polen (Dutch Foundation of Help for Poland), which set up advertising campaigns to keep raising funds for Poland.

In addition, attempts were made in the Netherlands to cooperate with Solidarność, the Polish trade union and social movement which formed the main target of the martial law. The attempts were primarily undertaken by Merpol (Mensenrechten in Polen, Human Rights in Poland), an organisation of Poles in the Netherlands. One of them was Jan Minkiewicz, the son of Polish migrants, who was raised in the Netherlands. On 19 December 1981, during a national demonstration in Amsterdam against the Polish martial law, Minkiewicz called for the establishment of a Dutch Solidarność bureau. The bureau’s first meeting occurred on 13 January 1982. It became a focal point in the Netherlands for information about Poland, organised demonstrations, and raised funds for Polish causes. Minkiewicz, meanwhile, became a central figure in the cooperation between Solidarność and Western activists. He eventually became the Western representative of the WiP (Ruch Wolność i Pokój, The Freedom and Peace Movement), a Polish opposition movement established in 1985.

More information about Solidarność and the Netherlands can be found in the PhD thesis of Christie Miedema.

*I originally wrote this post for the social media outlets of the Dutch Embassy in Poland. This was post no. 25.

This time of year, many of us have a nativity scene in our homes. They commonly include the Three Kings, also known as Wise Men or Magi, who came to honour Christ after his birth. These Kings are often dressed in long oriental robes and turbans. What is less commonly known, is that such a look in the previous centuries was sometimes associated with Polish dress. This can be exemplified by a gable stone showing a ‘Pool’, which is dated 1688, and which adorns a building on the Kerkstraat 322 in Amsterdam.

During the sixteenth century, Polish male fashion became increasingly influenced by Persian and Ottoman examples, leading Polish noblemen to wear colourful leather boots with heels, a kontusz (a coat or outer kaftan), a ferezja or delia (different types of cloaks), worn over a long-sleeved żupan (a tunic), and a kołpak (a hat often embellished with fur and feathers). Dutch artists and artisans subsequently produced multiple images of ‘typical’ Polish nobles, for example in books, on maps, and… on gable stones. To Dutch eyes, however, Polish dress differed very little – if at all – from other Eastern fashion: Polish figures were also used to represent Hungarians, for example. Similarly, Polish figures were sometimes indistinguishable from Ottomans.

This is why the ‘Pool’ on the gable stone in Amsterdam looks the way he does. His clothing – which even includes a turban – and his posture are reminiscent of a man in a print by the Dutch engraver Lucas Vorsterman, after the Adoration of the Magi by the famed painter Peter Paul Rubens, a painting from 1621. Rubens in turn based himself on Italian illustrations. It is likely that the gable stone’s maker referred to the same pictorial tradition. This is how the ‘Pool’ on the gable stone in Amsterdam is related to nativity scenes.

Interestingly, the French diplomat Charles Ogier, who visited Poland in the 1630s, likewise associated Polish fashion with the Three Kings. Describing a host of Polish nobles, he compared them to “the Eastern Magi, who came to honour the Infant Jesus with a large measure of display.”

*I originally wrote this post for the social media outlets of the Dutch Embassy in Poland. This was post no. 24.

Last week, it was announced that the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam – with financial aid from the Dutch state and several institutions – intends to buy ‘The Standard Bearer’, a painting by Rembrandt from 1636. Such standard bearers were high-placed members of town militias, not necessarily soldiers. Still, the painting offers an opportunity to reflect on a little-known aspect of Dutch-Polish historical relations: Polish soldiers in the seventeenth-century Dutch army. A travel account by the Pole Sebastian Gawarecki, written during the 1640s, discusses his stay in the Northern Netherlands alongside Marek and Jan Sobieski – the later king of Poland. On 16 May 1646, in the town of Bergen op Zoom, Gawarecki and the Sobieski brothers met “a Pole from Warsaw, who for some years now serves in the Dutch army as a standard bearer, and whom our Polish king [Władysław IV Waza] keeps in Holland at his own expense.” It is unknown who this Polish standard bearer was, but it was not unheard of for Poles to fight in the Dutch army, even if they were Catholics.

The Eighty Years’ War, fought between the Dutch and Spanish, brought about a large-scale modernization in the art of warfare. During much of the seventeenth century, and until the 1648 Peace of Münster in particular, the young Dutch Republic in Polish eyes formed one of the greatest military powers on the continent. The ongoing war attracted vast numbers of young men from across the continent, who wished to study the Dutch art of war, either by observation or by participation. Many nobles from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth studied fortification and artillery at Dutch universities and academies, visited fortresses and army encampments, or enlisted in the Dutch army themselves. Several months ago, we already discussed one famous example: Krzysztof Arciszewski, who made a career in the Dutch West-India Company. Arciszewski’s choice to join the Dutch army is relatively unsurprising, since he was a Protestant. Catholics could join the Dutch ranks as well, however. Despite his Catholic upbringing, the Pole Władysław Konstanty Wituski fought alongside Arciszewski in Brazil, for instance, and the Catholic Lithuanian nobleman Krzysztof Zygmunt Pac served in the Dutch forces as well. It is not unthinkable, therefore, that the Catholic king Władysław IV Waza indeed paid for the upkeep of a Polish standard bearer in the Dutch army.

*I originally wrote this post for the social media outlets of the Dutch Embassy in Poland. This was post no. 23.

In the night of 29 November 1830, the November Uprising began. Polish soldiers in Warsaw started a revolt against the Russian Empire, which had taken control of large parts of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The uprising sparked considerable interest in the Netherlands. But whereas writers in most other European countries supported the Polish insurgents, Dutch responses condemned the revolution altogether. Poems and treatises by various Dutch authors eulogised the Russian tsar as a benevolent ruler, and simultaneously slighted the Poles for their so-called ungratefulness. In addition, they defined the Poles as principally chaotic and unruly.

Why were the Dutch so dismissive of the November Uprising? The answer lies in the Belgian Revolution, which had started in Brussels in August 1830 and in November that year led to the establishment of the National Congress of Belgium. The southern Netherlandish provinces thus separated themselves from their northern neighbours. Many Dutch observers were disgruntled with this situation, and subsequently also criticized the Polish insurrectionists, who they accused of being misled by harmful French influences. Indeed, some authors even stated that if the Poles had not revolted, the Russian tsar surely would have gone to war in order to set things right in Belgium as well.

Other than the Belgian Revolution, the November Uprising did not result in an independent Polish state. By October 1831, the revolt was crushed, and the Russian grip on Poland became even stronger. Dutch responses to Poland’s struggle for autonomy became more nuanced with time, however, and during the January Uprising of 1863-64, many Dutch voices supported the Poles. Belgian historian Idesbald Goddeeris has argued, therefore, that nineteenth-century Dutch responses to Poland shifted according to local Dutch interests.

For more information, see this webpage.

*I originally wrote this post for the social media outlets of the Dutch Embassy in Poland. This was post no. 22.