MovieChat Forums > Michiel de Ruyter (2016) Discussion > Dutchmen's honorable fight for ....

Dutchmen's honorable fight for ....


COMMERCE.

Yeah, unfortunately for the dutcmen, their effort for patriotism ends up in a commercial warfare against Britain. So bad for those sailors to die for the commercial interests of greedy Dutch and English merchants and companies. Wars that are being waged over monopoly of a product in the world market (including the product called slave), whose merchant ship will carry what goods and tariff barriers. What a patriotic war indeed. While merchants and nobles enjoy their time in luxury, common men die for their trade interests.

That De Ruyter guy was only a great admiral, that's all. His "patriotism" was not about defending Dutch homeland from invaders but pursuing Dutch trade interests across the entire globe. He set up Dutch slave camps in Africa and pursued endless raiding attacks against the French and English colonial possessions. He fought anywhere for Dutch trade interests.

Is this common man's hero ? He could be more like wealthy merchants' hero.

Movie is 6/10, only because of nice visual art. It is tasty to see beautiful warships of the era.



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This is simply ridiculous. Netherlands was and is a trading nation. Defending Dutch trade interests WAS defending Dutch interests.

You have no clue whatsoever about Dutch history. On the scoreboard the Netherlands should have had zero chance to survive at all. Only due to a series of exceptional men was the nation saved, with Michiel arguably being the greatest.

Of course he traded in slaves. EVERYONE traded in slaves, not the least the Africans themselves. So what ?

Also, Michiel WAS a common man, unlike most of the other commanders. His interest was for the nation as a whole, and he refused to become a part of the broiling civil war between the republicans and the royalists, rightly recognizing it was a threat to the nation. He suffered for this and eventually was sent on a suicide mission but he did the right thing.

Michiel is to the Dutch what Nelson is to the British.

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Is this common man's hero ?


He was a testament that people from a humble background could achieve great things and that born in poverty didn't automatically ment you couldn't leave your family in wealth after dying.

The common man's hero indeed and a shining example for everyone aspiring to become a hero.

And stop with the slavery bs already.90% of Europe at that time was a slave and they couldn't care less about the trading of slaves that happend oversea.In fact they still don't care that it ever happend.Rightfully so.

Europeans don't care they where slaves once and they where slaves for way more then a lousy 400 years.

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All Europeans were slaves? My what history have you read..?

Every body has some ancestor that was a slave if you go back far enough. So what?

The difference between Europeans, and (presumably) the American black people you are describing, is they are almost all descended from slaves.

And not in some "I went on genealogy.com, and looked back 25 generatiions and found out I had a relative that was a Sumerian slave owned by the Babylonians"... Who cares.

No, Americans have a much more immediate "my great-great grandfather was a slave, and here's a photo of him being lynched" sort of relationship with slavery.

The affect of slavery upon Europeans is not directly linked to their current socio-economic performance. At least as it regards to their neighbors, and countrymen.

Slavery occurred so long ago in Europe, and in such an utterly alien form to that which happened in the U.S, that any comparison of the sort is plainly stupid. If I steal all your daddies land, put him out of business whatever no private education for you, tough. Immediate result. If I steal your great great great grandaddies land thirty generations ago, and do it for 10 generations, maybe you still get to go to private school. Cos time has a way for balancing things out. A revolution, a war... no more disenfranchisement.

Nothing has upset the racial apple cart in the U.S since slavery, except a few social policies.

Another key difference between ancient slavery or Europeans, and the sort visited upon Africans shipped to America, is the culture of racism that served to maintain it. No one was going to (actually) enslave the Irish in 1800, because they were white. The differences were cultural, and ethnic in ancient slavery, racial slavery on the scale. It's a bit different today for those descendants of slaves that don't look like the Irish, or Greeks, or whoever accepted by the media as 'white'.

For those 'trivial' four hundreds years you quote, their ancestors had been scientifically determined to be less than human and more like apes. They had no material wealth, and their culture had been obliterated and reformed. That takes some time to overcome.

Maybe in a few thousand years they will be able to be as arrogant and obtuse to the effects of slavery as you are.

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Exactly... after the Prime Minister's moving, patriotic speech about how trade made Holland rich and powerful, I immediately thought "hey wait a second... he's talking about the slave trade, among other things".

I stopped watching it because, I just couldn't root for them and was happy that the English handed them there asses. At least THEY oppressed everyone equally.

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What a load of bull!

English oppressing everyone equally?

Ha!

This was a great movie. I would say 7if not 8.

Brush up on your history, Donald.

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*sigh* How to respond to an argument so eloquently put? I guess I'll try:

If you will allow me both that:

In colloquial speech, we often use superlatives or absolutes when we really mean nearly so,

and that:

No one willingly abandons their own closely held and cherished cultural mores in favor of British ones just because the latter pointed a musket in one's face,

After consulting a map of the extent of the British Empire, you'd have to come to the conclusion that...

The English oppressed just about everyone.

So exactly what part of history is it that you think I need to Brush up on? Which of my assertions would you contest? Can you resist the temptation of a bovine-based argument long enough to provide some evidence for your case? I already know the you can't/won't, but I'd give the benefit of the doubt even to a troglodyte that just crawled out of a subterranean cavern to worship the moon.

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You tried so hard to make yourself look intelligent that you came off the fool, regardless of any point you were attempting to convey.

Your point essentially is, "The Dutch traded in slavery during this era and so I could only root for the British. The British also traded in slavery and oppressed people across the entire world to an extent the Dutch could never amount to in their wildest dreams, and I respect their equality in brutality."

Your follow up post was so poorly formatted and riddled with unnecessary verbiage and insults that you failed to support why you feel this way.

Suffice to say that your stance is completely idiotic, and in my opinion indefensible via logic. Good day, sir.

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In stark contrast to the American Revolution perhaps? We don't want to pay tax. Let's go to war!
"All men are created equal" and by all men, we mean those who happen to be in this room at the time. But not the women, and certainly not the slaves serving drinks, or the natives we slaughtered.

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I don't know the details of monolopies of that time period BUT free trade is a very important part of freedom package(speech, press etc) I won't defend all the evil things he has done, few people were truly righteous at his time and our time.

Film could be compressed to like 80 minutes, getting rid of most slo mo's and other unnecessary stuff. It could also be more objective , way too pro - republican :) Almost all orangists(save late-tromp) is described as power hungry maniacs or gullible angry mobs.

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