John Adams

by David McCullough

Holland, the name commonly used for the Seven Provinces of the Netherlands (of which Holland was the richest and most populated province), had particular appeal to Americans. It was the tiny, indomitable republic which, in 1648, had formally won its independence from Spain, the mightiest empire of the time, after a war and truce that stretched over some eighty years. Like the United States, the Dutch Republic was born of war, and for more than a century had survived and prospered between two of the great, interminably warring powers of Europe, France and England. Adams would liken it to a frog hopping about between the legs of two battling bulls. As America faced the challenge of a continental wilderness, Holland faced the North Sea. The extraordinary ingenuity and industry of the Dutch in wresting land from the sea were legendary. Still the actual spectacle of all that had been contrived and built, the innumerable canals, bridges, dams, dikes, sluices, and windmills needed to cope with water, to drain land, and hold back the sea—and that all had to be kept in working order so that life could go on—made first-time visitors stand back in awe, and New Englanders especially, knowing what they did of inhospitable climate and limited space. Francis Dana, when he arrived later, wrote of the Dutch living in a world made by hand. “The whole is an astonishing machinery, created, connected, constantly preserved by the labor, industry, and unremitting attention of its inhabitants at ...