2009 Summer Program
400 years ago Dutch explorers probed the Hudson River (named for one of their captains.) A few years later they were the first Europeans to explore Connecticut. (They stopped at Olivia Mahler-Haug's house in Branford.) They were looking for trade routes to India. Masters of wind and water from which they had carved their country, the Dutch were unrivaled shipbuilders and sailors. They invented brilliantly efficient merchant ships, multinational corporations, insurance and banking. Construct a Fluit, the slender, three masted vessel that carried the world’s treasures in 1600 with its complete crew. Collect the spices, timber, tea and chocolate, the Japanese silver and Persian perfume that built Amsterdam’s great fortunes. Reeanact tulip mania in 1637: the first speculative bubble.
