(no subject)

[timelets]

“In a single century, on a piece of land that lay largely below sea level, and a population of two million, which amounted to little more than a rounding error in the continent’s total, the Dutch built a global empire, produced an improbable number of history’s greatest artists, scientists, and philosophers, and set the standards in economic and political practice that shaped the modern world.
”

--- Matthew Stewart. “The Courtier and the Heretic.”

the invention of the Dutch "platform."