(upbeat music)

- It's the ocean versus the Dutch.

That's the battle that's going on right now.

(ticking)

It's been going on for hundreds of years

and you know, who's winning, the Dutch.

(upbeat music)

See all that water,

it's super ingenious the way they designed it.

Can you tell the engineering marvel?

- If I hear one more thing about the water.

(upbeat music)

- Look at this map of Holland in 1300,

compare this to a map of Holland today.

The country has gained land.

Yes, thousands and thousands of square kilometers

of land has been won back from the ocean.

(ticking)

The story of this battle between the ocean and the Dutch

explains why Holland is good at cheese,

why Amsterdam has canals,

Why Dutch people ride bikes.

(upbeat music)

- And for those who are confused,

the Dutch, Netherlands and Holland are all the same thing

and they all have different reasons

and I'm not gonna go into them.

You can like, look at Wikipedia.

This is just when I use those words,

it all has to do with the same thing, which is this country,

okay?

(upbeat music)

So the Netherlands or Holland or whatever you wanna call it

is a country that is sinking.

It's actually...

the majority of it is under sea level

or right at sea level.

(upbeat music)

I mean, if you look at the map of Holland,

you see that a lot of it

is just these little strips of land

that are right up in the North sea

and the ocean and the wind

just kind of eat away at this land year after year.

Instead of fleeing these coastal communities

that were slowly sinking into the water,

about 500 years ago, the Dutch started to fight back.

(upbeat music)

Now, let's just be clear about one thing,

which is, fighting the ocean,

the incessant, timeless powerhouse, the ocean,

is a very difficult thing.

Where are we going?

- Texel

- What?

(upbeat music)

Texel?

- Texel.

(upbeat music)

- We made it.

- We made it.

(upbeat music)

- This battle between the Netherlands and the ocean

is now much more real for me,

and this wind and these waves

are so crazy and consistent.

They're just eating this land alive

and yet the Netherlands have decided to fight back

and they're doing a pretty darn good job.

(upbeat music)

- Holland is up for this task.

They've developed a whole system,

a whole science behind hydrological engineering

that has allowed them to combat

the effects and the erosion of the ocean.

- My favorite is the Curry ketchup,

and Johnny loves the (indistinct)

and they actually go really well together.

Like us.

(laughs)

(upbeat music)

- Okay, so how do they actually do this?

This is where it gets really interesting.

(upbeat music)

There are a few techniques that the Dutch use

for their wizardry over the water.

The first one has to do with them building a wall

around a body of water that they want to turn into land.

Build a wall around it and then they, back in the day,

would build a windmill next to those walls

and they would use the windmill to spin,

and as the windmill would spin,

that would spin a pump that would pump the water out

of that land.

(upbeat music)

They'll plant on it,

and they will do whatever they need to do

to actually make it a firm, dry, habitable land

and then they'll build entire cities on.

(upbeat music)

And then in 1932, Holland had a huge win.

(upbeat music)

There's this giant part of the country

that was a part of the sea.

And they finally built this huge wall.

(upbeat music)

Building this giant wall, created a barrier

between the saltwater sea and made this huge body of water

into a fresh water lake.

(upbeat music)

After they built this wall,

they then started to section off little pieces

of this newly created Lake,

and to start to turn those into land as well.

So this is all of the land that they have created

since 1932, when they built a wall to make this Lake.

I mean, it's totally crazy.

(dramatic music)

The Netherlands, actually, a few years ago,

got a new province, like a new state in their country,

not because of any administrative reform,

but because they literally reclaimed a giant piece of land

that used to be under the sea.

(dramatic music)

So much of the Dutch coastline looks like this,

just super fortified with asphalt

and a million other building materials

that they have come to

for hundreds and hundreds of years of experimentation.

It seems simple, it's like a wall,

but in this wall lies the big secret

to Holland not sinking,

and they don't always work.

There have been times when these walls break,

but for the most part, this has been a success story,

(soft uplifting music)

But it's not just creating land out of water

it's also just how they manage water

in every one of their cities.

(cheerful upbeat music)

Amsterdam used to just be, I mean,

you can hear it in the name, a dam

on the Amstel river.

(cheerful upbeat music)

They then built it up

and they created this series of canals,

a very intentional design, as you can see,

and in doing so,

they made this city a very accessible boat city,

which was a very lucrative thing to do

back in like the 1500's and 1600's.

Amsterdam became an economic hub in Europe

and developed a very quickly.

A population boom contributed to the golden age of Holland.

And even today, Amsterdam is a giant

economic and global hub,

which you can attribute to how the Dutch

have just mastered water

and learned how to intentionally design their cities

and their country around water management.

(cheerful upbeat music)

A lot of the things we think of as quintessential of Dutch

come from this culture of water management.

And it now that sounds like the wonkiest thing in the world,

but listen to me here, see the bikes,

the bikes are a product of this low land

because when you have flat land,

it's relatively close together

because as most of the land is waterlogged,

then bikes become a really efficient,

viable transportation means.

You also have some of the most fertile grounds in the world

for growing grass,

which then becomes fertile pastures for cows,

which produce amazing dairy products,

which is why Dutch cheese is such wonderful, amazing cheese.

And then of course there are windmills.

Windmills are a huge Dutch thing.

Windmills come from this history of pumping water

from lakes and the ocean to create new pieces of land.

For a long time windmills were the technology,

which is why Poland is full of windmills.

Finally, you have these tulips.

Tulips are another huge Dutch thing.

The reason for this is that tulips grow

in this special clay-sand-soil mixture

and a lot of that exact soil is right here in Holland

because of the fact that a lot of this land

was under water before they reclaimed it,

and so it's perfect for growing tulips.

So a lot of Dutch culture

could be attributed to water management

and conquering the water.

(upbeat music)

I hope you now understand why Amsterdam has canals

and the marvel of Dutch water management.

So much more to learn.

I wanna thank Skillshare for sponsoring this video,

Skillshare is an online platform for courses

and it's a community where you can learn tons of stuff

from video production to animation,

to creative and entrepreneurial skills.

There are thousands of really high quality courses

that you can have unlimited access to

for, I think it's like 10 bucks a month

if you sign up for the annual subscription.

So it's like pretty darn cheap.

I learned all of my skills

in an online learning course environment,

including Skillshare courses

and I really recommend them if you're interested

in fueling your curiosity and learning something new,

or even fueling your business and professional skills.

Because they're sponsoring this video,

you can click the link in the description

and get two months free of unlimited access

to all these courses.

So you don't pay anything for two months,

so you can test it out and see if it's a good fit for you.

You click that link in the description,

then it will take you to the place where you can sign up.

There's a fantastic course on Skillshare

about camera transitions, which I use a lot.

The idea of being able to make really fun

and creative transitions, just using your camera

instead of fancy effects or software.

I found that to be a really useful course

and you may too, if you're interested

in this kind of camera work.

So go sign up for Skillshare

if you wanna test it out for free for two months,

and thank you Skillshare for sponsoring this video

and making it possible

for me to make these more in-depth explainers,

which kind of take a lot of time,

but I hope you learned a lot

and I'll see you in the next one.

(upbeat music)