Defragged History
A review
I spent half of my childhood in the shadow of New Amsterdam. I fed ducks in the river named for Jonas Jonasson Bronk, tended the garden of my neighbor Mr. Van Snydern, and, for many of those years, lived in the city that preserves the title Jonkheer Adrian van der Donck. However, I knew little of the story of that wondrous place until I encountered, a year or so ago, Defragged History.
True to its title, this YouTube channel - which has since planted a colony here on Substack - helped me assemble these fragments of memory into a comprehensive picture, not merely of the time when folks spoke Dutch in the streets of Manhattan, but of the events, both great and small, that set the stage for the founding of that city.
Known only as ‘Yvette’ (she pronounces all three syllables), the creatrix of Defragged History knows her stuff. Thus, the fruits her atelier - and, of late, the products of her pen - pass muster with the most discerning of Clio’s children. (One of those, by the way, would be Your Most Humble and Obedient Servant.) At the same time, as befits someone who often tells tales of pirates, explorers, and great captains, Yvette can spin a yarn with the best of them. (Signore Sabatini - Signore Rafael Sabatini … please call your answering service.)
Readers interested in the origins of modern armies (and yes, Ben Duval, I’m looking at you) will probably want to start with the series on the Eighty Years War, the long struggle that is also known as the Dutch War of Independence. At the same time, those who prefer the company of Petrus Stuyvesant to that of Maurits van Oranje (that’s ‘Maurice of Orange’ to you, Ben) might want to jump directly into the deep end of the pool (that is, the ten-part series that focuses on the history of New Amsterdam.)
In producing the videos she uploads to YouTube, Yvette makes masterful use of graphics. Nonetheless, listeners can also enjoy the audio tracks of these gesamtkunstwerke (that’s Dutch for Gesamtkunstwerke) as stand-alone podcasts. (As I spend more hours on the road than Willie Nelson ever did, I often enjoy the episodes of Defragged History in this manner.)
For Further Reading
