Nicholas P. Vidovic
Michael Laurenty
English 102
23 January 2025
The Reclamation of Land in The Netherlands
We as people live off the land. This fact has existed since 200,000 years ago,
when we first originated in Africa. Even then, when water was present, we still found a
way to make more land. The Netherlands, for example, has reclaimed 7,000 km2 of land
from the sea. For reference, the land area of The Netherlands today is around 33,800
km2. This means that centuries ago, The Netherlands had a land area of around 26,800
km2. How could this be?
For as long as the region of the Netherlands has existed, it has always been
shaped by water, shaped by rivers, canals, and the North Sea. The three major rivers, the
Meuse, the Scheldt, and the Rhine, all flow through the Netherlands and into the North
Sea. For many centuries, The Netherlands has fought the invading water of their land.
An excerpt from Erik Mostert from the National Library of Medicine explains that
according to Rüstringer law, an old Frisian law from around 1300, it goes as follows,
“We have to protect our land against the sea using three instruments: the spade, the
burry and the fork. Moreover, we should protect our land with sword, spear, and shield
against unlawful dominion”.
Around the 1300s, many floods rampaged against the Netherlands. One of these
floods, which came from the north of the country, created the Zuiderzee. A storm
created a flood, causing several freshwater lakes to be destroyed and has now become a
large bay that reaches in the center of the Netherlands. Even during the periods of land
reclamation, in 1953, a large flood from the North Sea caused not only the Netherlands
trouble, but also north-west Belgium, England, and Scottland. This flood resulted in the
deaths of around 2,500 people, 10,000 building destroyed, and 9% of Dutch farmland
rendered useless. These floods cause major damage to not only the Netherlands, but
also the Dutch region in general. So how can they stop these floods?
For the longest time, before and after Rüstringer law, people have been
circumnavigating water by the most common way of dikes or small dams. This worked
to a great degree. An excerpt from The International Society for Soil Mechanics and
Geotechnical Engineering, from the time of the 1570s to the 1920s, the local farmers
gradually enclosed their farmland near the river dike where it wasn’t suitable for
farmland. The dike system plus the gradual expansion of farmland made the previous
infertile land now fertile for crops.
In recent years, the Netherland thought of a task with big ambitions, taking back
the Zuiderzee. As previously stated, the Zuiderzee was created from a massive flood
around the 1300s caused by the North Sea. This proposal of taking back the Zuiderzee
isn’t new though. In the same document from The I.S.S.M.G.E., around the seventeenth
century, a man named Hendric Stevin proposed this very idea. However, this project
was beyond the technical and economic funding at the time and was later shelved. These
plans, however, resurfaced in 1916.
In 1916, A winter storm cause several breaches of dikes near Amsterdam in what
is known as “The Forgotten Flood”. With around 50 deaths and many buildings flooded
and underwater, the Afsluitdijk closure dike was proposed and quickly accepted.
However, the length of the dike had to be cut from 200km to about 30 to 35 km. They
also worked on the Ijsselmeer dam as it was one of the main breaches that partly flooded
Amsterdam. The Afsluitdijk was completed in 1932 and the Ijsselmeer 10 years later in
1942, thus turning the Zuiderzee into a lake. One of the land masses that was formed
during the blockage and drainage of the Zuiderzee is Flevoland. Even though it took an
additional 40 years after 1942 to be established, it now has a population of around
440,000 people living there.
So, what about now? How is the reclamation of the Netherlands doing? Right
now, the Markerwaard, a proposed idea from the 60’s, but ultimately failed, is now built
for a different purpose. Originally, it was to house people just like Flevoland, but failed
in the 70’s. In 2016, it was built and right now in 2025, is a small nature reserve and is
being researched for water ecology. In the future, the Netherland appear to not be
interested right now in the fight for land against water. Debates on whether it should be
extensively made have been in discussion as places like Dubai or the U.E.A. propose
ideas, are built and left behind. Even debates on long-term effects have been made on
whether it’s sustainable to keep draining areas of water. There really isn’t a certified and
clear answer to these ideas, but for the Netherlands, they have been the most persistent
people to fight for the land they live on.
Works Cited
Cornelis Disco and Erik van der Vleuten “The Politics of Wet System Building:
Balancing Interests in Dutch Water Management from the Middle Ages to the Present”
from the Delft University of Technology https://ocw.tudelft.nl/wpcontent/uploads/TDTM_R1_The_Netherlands.pdf
René Kolman “NEW LAND IN THE WATER: ECONOMICALLY AND SOCIALLY,
LAND RECLAMATION PAYS” from the International Association of Dredging
Companies
https://www.iadc-dredging.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/article-new-land-inthe-water-economically-and-socially-land-reclamation-pays-128-1.pdf
Publication from the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical
Engineering online library
https://www.issmge.org/uploads/publications/1/30/2001_03_0139.pdf
Erik Mostert “Water and national identity in the Netherlands; the history of an
idea” from the National Library of Medicine
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7671572/