Word: stilles
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Fifteen years after Wilhelmina ascended the throne World War I began. The British blockade induced a grave food shortage. Trade was completely disrupted and the country was overrun with refugees. Dutch ships were sunk and by 1918 what ships still floated abroad had been seized by the Allies. Only bright spots on The Netherlands' horizon were that: 1) although the Germans considered invading the country, they eventually decided against it, partly because the Dutch had effectively remodeled their land defenses, partly because Germany, already at the Belgian Channel ports, had money and used it to buy supplies in neutral...
Rich at Home. In the course of Wilhelmina's reign The Netherlands' population has risen from 5,000,000 to 8,500,000. More important, the country has changed from a predominantly agricultural to an increasingly industrial nation. Cheese, butter and tulip bulbs are still important exports, just as windmills, wooden shoes, dikes are still a part of the Dutch landscape. But more typical of The Netherlands in the 20th Century are its huge international banks, its thriving merchants, its busy manufacturers...
...international banking centre challenging in importance the City of London and the Paris Bourse. It houses such famous institutions as the Amsterdamsche Bank n. v., the Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappy n. v., Mendelssohn & Co. (now defunct), whose proprietors will turn a guilder almost anywhere they can find one. They are still sorry that Spain's Dictator Franco turned down their offer to bank him last spring. After Adolf Hitler came to power, Amsterdam became a concentration camp for refugee money. The city's grain market is one of the biggest in Europe; its stock-market is a sensitive...
...their spheres of empire. There had been previous signals: the peremptory seizure of Hainan, the occupation of the strategic Spratly Islands, the frank avowal of many a world-imperialist Japanese. Punctuating the European war as it did, the landing served rather to make the world review just what was still to be found in the treasure of the Indies. Were the outposts worth defending...
Hong Kong was once a valve controlling the flow of fabulous trade out of South China. Then the Japanese got a valve of their own farther up the pipe at Canton, and Hong Kong became a comparatively dead city. It is still one of the most beautiful ports in the world-its harbor is like a Wedgwood plate full of sugar buns-but it is now a negligible trade centre, and Britain plans to abandon it at the drop of a bomb...