The Dutch tradition of tolerance was rooted partly in the country’s geography. Flat, open and without many obvious geographical borders, it had historically been impossible to fence off outsiders or hold new ideas in quarantine for long. ‘Holland doesn’t have mountains,’ the great Dutch novelist Cees Nooteboom once wrote. ‘Everything’s out in the open. No mountains, no caves. Nothing to hide. No dark places in the soul.’ As a local saying went, the Dutch always preferred to approach things rechtdoorzee, or ‘straight on through the sea’ – directly and honestly, with no room for face-saving or
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