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The Low Countries - Life World Library (1965) by Eugene Rachlis ? Time-Life International ISBN: None Condition: Good The Low Countries, 1965. Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg: three relatively modest pieces of Europe containing an unreasonable quantity of history, commerce, painting, canals, bicycles, beer, diplomacy and extremely determined attempts to prevent the North Sea from reclaiming the premises. Published by Time-Life International as part of its superb Life World Library series, Eugene Rachlis?s The Low Countries takes on the wonderfully ambitious task of explaining this compact but remarkably complicated corner of Europe in one generously illustrated volume. And "Low Countries" is not merely a poetic description. Large areas of the Netherlands really are low. Impressively low. Alarmingly low. In places, the sea is effectively upstairs. The Dutch response to this geographical inconvenience has historically been not to move somewhere higher, but to construct dikes, canals, pumping stations and enormous engineering works and inform the water that it will be staying over there. This arrangement has mostly worked. By 1965 the region was also undergoing one of the great transformations of post-war Europe. The destruction and austerity of the Second World War were receding, economies were expanding, living standards were rising and the countries of Western Europe were becoming increasingly economically interconnected. The modern European project was already taking shape. Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had been pioneering regional cooperation through Benelux , and all three were founding members of the European Economic Community. This therefore captures the Low Countries at a fascinating moment: firmly modern, increasingly prosperous, yet still visibly connected to a much older Europe. And there is a lot of older Europe. For relatively small countries, Belgium and the Netherlands have spent an impressive amount of history appearing in everybody else?s history books. Spanish rule. Religious wars. Merchant empires. Napoleon. Two World Wars. Colonial adventures. Revolutions. Royal families. International treaties. And approximately six centuries during which various European powers seem to have looked at the region and thought, "We should probably march an army through there." Geographical position is not always an advantage. The Netherlands naturally supplies some of the most immediately recognisable imagery: canals, windmills, flat landscapes, bicycles and towns apparently constructed after somebody discovered bricks and became extremely enthusiastic about them. Amsterdam is particularly photogenic, although its modern reputation as an international centre of tourism, nightlife and stag weekends was not quite what a respectable Time-Life photographer in 1965 was generally attempting to document. Instead we get the older city: canals, merchants? houses, bridges, ports and the extraordinary legacy of the Dutch Golden Age. There is also Rotterdam, rebuilt dramatically after the devastation of the Second World War and developing into one of the world?s great ports. This is the Netherlands as a trading nation, something it has been remarkably good at for centuries. When your country contains few mountains, limited natural resources and quite a lot of water where the land ought to be, apparently the sensible response is to become extremely efficient and sell things to everybody else. Belgium presents another wonderfully complicated national story. Dutch-speaking Flanders. French-speaking Wallonia. Brussels sitting in the middle trying to keep everybody organised while simultaneously becoming one of the principal centres of European diplomacy. For a small country, Belgium has achieved the impressive feat of possessing several languages, multiple layers of government and enough institutional complexity to make outsiders wonder whether anyone actually knows who is responsible for collecting the bins. Yet Belgium also.
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