Russell Shorto - Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City

The John Adams Institute April 13, 2021
Video Thumbnail
The John Adams Institute Logo

The John Adams Institute

@thejohnadamsinstitute

About

Video channel of the John Adams Institute for American Culture in the Netherlands, located in Amsterdam. We invite the best and the brightest from a multitude of disciplines – novelists, politicians, historians, scientists, screenwriters, poets – to the Netherlands to talk about their work, their thoughts, their insights. Visit us at http://www.john-adams.nl/

Video Description

Amsterdam could stake a claim to being the birthplace of the modern world. That, in essence, is what Russell Shorto argues in 'Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City'. His book weaves together the lives of Amsterdammers past and present, from Rembrandt to Anne Frank to Theo van Gogh, and teases apart the many meanings of “liberal.” Why did Amsterdam fashion the world’s first stock market? Why was it not only a hotbed of 1960s countercultural activity but also, after the Reformation, a hotbed of similar countercultural activity in the early 1500s? What is left of its liberal heritage today? This lecture was recorded on October 16, 2013.