Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam (Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City)

First published in January 1995 - The tiny secret of a mediaeval shoe found in the dark-blue mud at the bottom of an Amsterdam canal, the women’s revolt at the Begijnhof, the diary of a terrified priest during the famine of 1575, the tragedy of the maidservant Elsje Christiaens and the famous painter Rembrandt van Rijn, the apocalypse of Mayor Coenraad van Beuningen, the Great Freeze of 1763 and the forgotten courage of Wallie and Gijs van Hall.

Most of the people who populate these pages, Geert Mak writes in his 400-page-plus ‘brief’ biography of Amsterdam, have vanished in time. “No one can tell their stories for them, but the mute witnesses to events are still there, thousands of them (…) In the streets, everyday life roars on. But beneath the ground and behind the facades the city walls are still standing, the Gothic timbers of the monasteries still creak, windmills and old chapels and the earth contain handfuls of treasures and thousands of forgotten names.”

In this book, Mak guides us through gracefully buttressed and ornamentally lit hallways to the deep, deeper and deepest layers of the Dutch capital’s past; from the first settlement around the year 1000 to the present, in which Amsterdam is confronted with challenging issues in such areas as environmental policy and immigration. In later editions a section has been added dealing with the murder of Theo van Gogh on November 2, 2004.

Mak tells the fascinating story of a city which has had many faces throughout the centuries. We read about how History with a capital “H” – the period of Napoleonic rule and the Second World War, for example  – impacted the city, but also about forgotten characters and events that left barely a trace. At one point, for example, Mak notes that in the year 1928 a total of 1,660 tickets were handed out for public drunkenness, and 2,013 bicycles were stolen – facts less grand perhaps, but a joy to discover nonetheless. The index of personal names contains no less than thirteen references to Elsje Christiaens van Sprouwen, a poor maidservant from Denmark who was sentenced to death in the spring of 1664 for killing a landlady who was blackmailing her. Mak’s book may even be seen as an homage to her, and to those other obscure bit players of history.

In addition to his extremely knowledgeable descriptions of the major currents in Amsterdam’s history, it is the loving attention he pays to the snippets of the past that make Geert Mak such an irresistible narrator, and Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam such an unforgettable excursion back through time.

First published in January 1995
Paperback, 368 pages
Uitgeverij Atlas
978 904501232 2
Price € 29.90

Foreign translations:
Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City was or is being translated in German, Czech, Hungarian and English.

German: Amsterdam
Original title: Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam
Translated from Dutch by Isabelle de Keghel
Berlin: Siedler, 1997.

German: Amsterdam
Original title: Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam
Translated from Dutch by  Isabelle de Keghel
München: BTB, 2006.

Czech: Malé dejiny Amsterodamu
Original title: Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam
Translated from Dutch by r Veronika Havlíková.
Praha (Praag): Cinemax, 1999.

Hungarian: Amszterdam Hongaars
Original title: Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam
Translated from Dutch by Tibor Bérczes
Budapest: Corvina, 2001.

English: Amsterdam
Original title: Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam
Translated from Dutch by Philipp Blom
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2000.

English: Amsterdam: a brief life of the city
Original title: Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam
Translated from Dutch by Philipp Blom
London: The Harvill Press, 1999 and 2001.