The Netherlands is located on the coast and adjacent West Frisian Islands of the North Sea, that is, in the most densely populated, industrially developed part of Western Europe, where European and intercontinental routes intersect.
The country's borders were established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. and during the Belgian revolution of 1830-1831, and have remained unchanged to this day.

In terms of area, the Netherlands (except for micro-states) is larger than only Albania, Belgium and Luxembourg. The length from West to East is approximately 200 kilometers, and from North to South 300 kilometers. It is noteworthy that the area of ​​the Netherlands is not constant. Its wetlands are constantly being drained and new lands are being reclaimed from the sea. In 1950, the country's territory occupied 32.4 thousand, in 1980 - 37.5 thousand, and in 1987 - 41.2 thousand square kilometers.

Area: 41,526 sq. km

land: 33,889 sq. km
water: 7,637 sq. km

Most of the Netherlands is flat, and therefore the Dutch call any hill a mountain. Over the course of several centuries, much land has been reclaimed from the sea, and these places are now protected by dams. More than half of the country lies below sea level, and only in the southeastern province of Limburg can you see hills. On land, Holland borders Belgium and Germany, and its coastline is washed by the North Sea. The main river artery is the Rhine, which originates in the mountains of Germany and Switzerland.

One of the most significant natural disasters in the history of the Netherlands occurred in 1953, when a severe storm at sea destroyed and broke through the protective dams in the province of Zeeland. The flood killed 1,835 people. In order to prevent such a tragedy from happening again, it was decided to implement the Delta Project, the essence of which was to fence off the southwestern river deltas with the help of a network of barrier dams and a colossal protective fence against storm surge. Its height is 3.2 km. In 1995, the largest evacuation of the country's population since the Zeeland disaster was carried out. The fact is that that year in France and Belgium it fell a large number of precipitation, which led to the flooding of the Meuse and Vaal rivers. About 240 thousand people were evacuated to Gelderland (the region around Nijmegen).

There are no protected areas in the Netherlands - it is the most densely populated country in Europe. But at the same time, it seems that life here is the most organized life in the world. The Western urban area, which includes Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam, is the most densely populated metropolitan area in the world. The cities are located literally one after another. They are connected by motorways and bicycle paths. Between the cities there are neat fields and pleasant wooded areas that act as boundary lines. In some cities, you can hear the chirping of birds through the noise of city life.

The Netherlands has a temperate maritime climate with cold winters and mild summers. In spring and autumn, the area is often covered with mud, and it seems that such impenetrable grayness has always been and will always be here. However, thanks to the flat terrain, the weather here changes with every blow of the wind.

In the process of human development of the territory of Holland, many species of wild animals were forced out of their habitats. However, the country is home to many birds, especially waterfowl. Many rare species animals are protected in national parks and nature reserves.

Mainly those species of wild animals that live in damp meadows, reservoirs and canals have been preserved. The expansion of land reclamation has worsened the living conditions of birds, and only in certain coastal areas relatively large colonies still remain. There are about 180 species of birds in Holland. And during winter migrations, thousands of waterfowl reach the Netherlands. In the north of the country, on the shallows of the Wadden Sea, separating the West Frisian Islands from the mainland, white-fronted geese, short-billed bean gooses, barnacle geese, a lot of gulls and waders spend the winter. It is also home to the southernmost population of eiders. An abundance of lapwings and godwits is characteristic of the marches. On the coast itself, large curlews, herbals, and turukhtans are common.

God created the earth for everyone except us,” says a Dutch proverb. And the Roman Pliny the Elder said about the Dutch: “You don’t know whether land serves as their home or water.” In fact, the ground here is unsteady and unreliable.
If you look from above, you will see squares of fields cut into channels. There are windmills on the canals. But they are not for grinding flour. These are water pumping mills. They pump out water when the sea approaches land. They protect the land, won with great difficulty from the sea, protect it from its treachery.
Holland is a ship that is at war with an endless storm. And the sea attacks him.
Constant struggle with the elements. Channels. Shafts. Dams. Pile houses. It’s all contained in the word “Holland”...
The Netherlands... I wonder why the country is called THAT? Nieder - below, Land - country... The country located BELOW, i.e. in the lowlands. Low country...
And the second name – Holland – translated into Russian means “Country by the Restless (Stormy) Sea” or “Hollow Land”.
If you look at the map, Holland is actually located below sea level. This is the lowest landmass in Europe.
This tiny country (only 14 million people live in it - that’s less than two Moscows!) with an area of ​​41.2 square meters. km - or rather, its fertile soil - was literally created by the people themselves with their labor.
In the 5th - 6th centuries, the Frisians - the ancestors of today's Dutch - built the first polders here - areas of land reclaimed from the sea, surrounded by barriers and drained with ditches that drain water. This means that the Dutch have been arguing with nature for more than a thousand years.
At the beginning of the 20th century, a certain Cornelius Lely, an ordinary Dutch employee, proposed a plan: to block off the Zuider Zee Bay and pump out the water. This two-meter giant, with the imagination of a child, dreamed of creating a “promised land” from his shaky country.
Oddly enough, this seemingly crazy idea was not rejected, and in 1918 the grandiose project began to be implemented. Its author did not live only three years before the full realization of his dream. In 1932 the dam was opened. And the polder was named after him. The Zuider Zee Bay no longer appears on modern maps.
When you fly to Amsterdam by plane in May, to Schiphol Airport, which lies 16 meters below sea level, you see many colorful rugs, as if spread around the city. It is unlikely that you will see this anywhere else! These are the polders on which tulips, tulips and many more tulips of imaginable and inconceivable colors bloom.
The technique for constructing polders is simple, but it takes a lot of time.
First, dredgers erect a shaft on a drained area (for example, a lake).
For one to two years, pumps pump out water from the resulting space.
Finally (the industriousness of the Dutch can be compared, perhaps, only with the Japanese with their bulk islands) the bottom is exposed. But this is still a quagmire, a swamp, a swamp...
With the tenacity of ants, these workers build trenches and drain water. Another two or three (!) years - and the bottom will harden. But this is not enough! The resulting soil, it turns out, needs to be washed, salt removed, loosened, fertilized...
In short, in just about ten years you can sow. What? For example, tulips.
By the way, they bloom in Holland not only in May, no, all year round. Greenhouses built for flowers turn polders into glass cities.
Holland is said to be like a shallow plate in which tulips, tulips and tulips float. And M. Dodge, the author of the famous “Silver Skates,” a favorite childhood book of many generations in many countries, wrote about Holland like this: “It is such a flat country that all objects are clearly visible even from a distance, and a chicken can be seen as well as a windmill.” mill, and in Holland ships are tied to the doorposts - just as horses are tied in other countries, and all sorts of goods are loaded onto them from the windows of the upper floor. In this country people live like beavers, and it may happen that one fine day, when the tide reaches its highest point, Holland will be carried into the ocean ... "
How to protect these fragile man-made land from the tides that destroy it? And most importantly, how to warn people about them?
The Dutch came up with this too. Light floats float here and there on the water. Each of them is connected to an air mill. As soon as the water rises above normal, the mill will spin, give a signal to all pumping stations, and pumping of water will begin.
However, now there is probably something much more electronic and computer-based. Nevertheless, it was here, in this tiny country, that the first in the history of technology (or one of the first) “automatic” water level monitors began to be widely used.
The Dutch are generally incredibly hardworking and inventive. Geography itself teaches them this.
According to legend, in the old Amsterdam prison, nicknamed the “scraping mill,” criminals were not allowed to idle, forcing them to scrape bark from logs. And those who shirked work were sent to a punishment cell where a pipe was installed, and water continuously flowed through it. And there was a pump. So even an inveterate lazy person could not sit in the punishment cell for at least an hour without doing anything: the water rose higher, higher, and the prisoner, in order not to choke, had to continuously pump it out with a pump. This is the way to cultivate hard work in given living conditions.
The Dutch generally have to pump out water that seeps from the ground or pours from the sky all their lives. Otherwise, there is simply nowhere for it to go.
And if more water is pumped out, that means more land is drained.
This is why the Dutch continually build and strengthen dams and dams. To save life.

Like many other nations, the Dutch nation makes up the bulk of the population of the Netherlands. The formation of the Dutch nation was associated with the development and establishment of capitalist relations in the country, when a common territory, economic life, and culture began to take shape. But the main stage was the victory of the Dutch bourgeois revolution and the formation of the sovereign state of the Republic of the United Provinces.
The Netherlands is also home to Germans, Jews, Indonesians and Surinamese. The official language is Dutch. It belongs to the family of Germanic languages ​​and has similarities with the Low German dialects; it developed in the Middle Ages on the basis of the Low Frankish dialects with the participation of Frisian and Saxon.
However, only one nationality can be identified as an independent ethnic group - the Frisians, living in the northern coastal regions of the Netherlands.
Compared to the general background of Western European countries, the Netherlands stood out due to its rapid population growth. For the period 1930-1995. The country's population has tripled, while, for example, in neighboring Belgium - by 70%. In the mid-1960s, the Netherlands had a population of just over 12 million, and the population was predicted to reach 20 million by the end of this century.
Considering vital factors, it should be noted that mortality in the Netherlands has remained low over the past decade - about 8%, and the sharp decline in child mortality is significant. The achievements of the Netherlands in the field of health and social security have had an impact here. Fertility for a long time was high, but from the middle of this century it began to decline (in%): 1900 -31.6; 1930 -23.1; 1939 -20.6; 1950 -22.7; 1965 -20.8; 1979 - 17.2; 1990 - 12.7. During the Second World War and especially immediately after its end, the birth rate in Holland increased.
The proportion of young people in the general population is relatively small, while the proportion of older people is quite high. For every 100 people aged 20 to 64 years in 1930, there were 11.5 people over 65 years old, in 1989 - 11.9 (forecast for 2010-15). The aging of the nation is largely due to increased life expectancy.
For men born today, life expectancy is determined to be 73 years, and for women - 79 years. In 1986-1990. The largest population growth (4.8%) was observed in the east of the Netherlands, and in the remaining parts of the country it ranged from 1.8% (west) to 2.5% (south).
In terms of population density, the Netherlands firmly holds first place in Europe and second place in the world, second only to Bangladesh. The largest population clusters in other areas of the country are associated with the urban agglomerations of North Brabant, Twente and southern Limburg. Only 12% of the country’s population lives in the north of Holland, and 45% in the south and east.
Despite a long history of urban development, the Netherlands had a predominantly rural population in the first half of the 20th century. Subsequently, with the growth of industry, the situation began to change. In 1950, urban communities accounted for 60% of the total population (by then reaching 10 million people), with half the population of the Netherlands living in the six largest cities.
The urban population is generally growing faster than the rural population, although the natural increase in rural areas is higher. The population of cities is increasing due to the migration of the rural population. Thus, the shortage of labor in cities associated with the emergence of new and expansion of old enterprises is compensated. An important incentive for migration is Better conditions labor and level of service in cities. Against the general background of migration flows, the most significant scale was resettlement from the southwestern regions to Rotterdam and from the northern regions to Amsterdam.

Natural resources of Holland and their use.

The paleogeography of the Zechstein (an analogue of the Kazanian stage of the Upper Permian) deserves special attention in the geology of the country. In the north-east of the Netherlands at this time the subsidence reached its greatest extent, and thick sedimentary strata accumulated there, with which rock salt deposits are associated. The accumulation of natural gas in the same part of the country is apparently associated with coals and bituminous shales of marine delta fractions of Carboniferous age, from there the gas penetrated into the overlying strata and was stopped by their salt roof. This barrier ensured the safety of large accumulations of natural gas. There are relatively few oil deposits.
During the Quaternary period, the formation of a giant Rhine delta took place against the backdrop of a consistent decrease in sea level. During glaciation, the formation of cover sands and permafrost soils occurred. During the Middle Pleistocene, large parts of the Netherlands were directly affected by the ice sheet.
Almost all of the Netherlands' natural resources are used in industry. Table salt, limestone, peat, and sand are mined in small quantities. Gas production began in 1950. Its total reserves exceed 2,100 billion cubic meters, 70 billion cubic meters are produced annually, half of which is exported to France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium. Until 1950, more than 12 million tons of coal were mined in the Netherlands annually, but after 25 years all the mines in the country closed.

Geography of the main industrial complexes and industries.

Modern Netherlands is an industrial country with intensive agriculture and a developed system of foreign economic relations.
In the industry of the Netherlands, specialization is clearly expressed in the production of competitive, high-quality products of a rather limited range. The leading role is played by specialized concerns that focus their activities on the world market. At their disposal are large enterprises that determine the industrial profile of the country. IN last years the rate of concentration has increased sharply
The Netherlands embarked early on the path of capitalist development. Victory of the bourgeois revolution of 1566-1609. served as an incentive for the rapid spread of capitalist relations, the growth of cities, and the flourishing of trade and shipping. The Netherlands took a leading place in world trade and began to perform intermediary functions.
Profitable geographical position The Netherlands' position at the crossroads of important maritime and continental trade routes largely determined the role of this country. Many sectors of the country's economy were based on the processing of cheap colonial raw materials.
In a short period of time, the Netherlands transformed from an industrial-agrarian country into an industrialized one. high development service sector. Industries such as ferrous metallurgy, mechanical engineering, oil refining, and chemicals have rapidly moved forward, supplying a large number of export products. Of the old industries, only the food industry has retained its position, using the country’s vast agricultural resources. Industries targeting colonial markets (such as the textile industry) gradually lost their importance.
With the discovery of rich gas fields, the Netherlands has become one of the world's leading countries in terms of energy resources. This served as an important factor in economic development, reducing the country's dependence on imported fuel.