How The Dutch Dug Up Their Country From The Sea

The Dutch have a saying, God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands. Today we will see why. The Dutch polders are the largest land reclamation projects in the world. A true marvel of engineering which added nearly 20% of land to the country. And its fertile land makes the Netherlands the second largest exporter of food in the world. In the last episode we looked at how a large dike was constructed to block seawater from flooding into the inner regions of the Netherlands. In this episode we're going to look at how parts of the inland water area was drained and turned into fertile land. While this is part of a series, you don't need to have watched the first episode to understand this one. I try to make all my videos as stand-alone as I can. Ever since the 16th century, large areas of land have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes amounting to over 50% of the country's current land area if you include every lake ever laid dry. The process of land reclamation in the Netherlands is mainly done through poldering. It is the process of draining water from a lake or by placing dikes around an area of water and then draining it until you are left with fertile land. And this is what Lely proposed, build a dike to stop the seawater, then build smaller dikes inside this newly formed lake, and then one by one drain the water. This land was rich in clay, could be settled, and could be farmed. Which in turn meant that the Dutch government could tax these activities and make a lot of money. To test poldering in the southern sea itself, they decided to first make a small test polder, only 400 square meters. It took about a year and they tested the effects drainage would have on the soil of the southern sea and how to best configure the new polders. They first built 18 kilometers of dike around the area and then proceeded to pump it dry. It was performed by using a variation of the Archimedes screw and a pumping station or a mill. To make the land suitable for agriculture, a network of ditches were dug into the polder to channel water towards the pumping station. The resulting dehydration caused the seabed to sink by over a meter in some places. Once the ground was settled, the ditches were replaced with underground drainage tubes. And while the polder was now dry, it couldn't be settled yet. The ground was still far too unstable, so they cultivated the land by throwing reed seeds out of airplanes. This sturdy plant helped evaporate the water and bring air into the soil, thereby solidifying the land. Then all the fields of reed were burned and replaced with rapeseed. It's also around this time that they built basic infrastructure such as roads. And when winter turned into spring, the newborn polder would slowly turn into a sea of yellow. These yellow plants were then replaced with various grains such as rye, wheat, barley, and oats. This process took years and in the end the soil was rich enough to allow the planting of other crops while roads and houses were being built for the future settlers and farmers. Polders were divided in plots of 50 acres. The best land is used for vegetables, the next best for rye and other grains, and the worst land is forested. Each plot was paved with a road in front of it and a canal in the back to make it accessible by both land and water. While this test polder was being built, the engineers didn't simply wait and see. They decided to continue with poldering other parts of the IJsselmeer and would know if there was any trouble ahead by looking at the pilot polder's progress. They started with the Wieringermeer. This area that would eventually encompass this polder already included several villages. This presented a new problem for the Dutch government. Who did this new land belong to? The Southern Sea was divided among the mainland municipalities. This is okay for seawater but now it is going to be turned into land, splitting up the responsibility among several government bodies. So it was decided that this land would be a public body, which meant there was a complicated arrangement where a government body was in charge of working on the polder and a committee was responsible for public governance. As the polder became more populated, its people demanded representation in politics and so it became its own municipality on July 1st 1941. The next polder is the North-East polder. Here too they first built dikes around the area they wanted to lay dry and then pump out all the water, cultivate with simple seeds to strengthen the ground, then continue with different plants until you can build roads and farms and eventually begin cultivating the land. There were two major events related to this polder however. The first is that most of its construction occurred under German occupation. At first they let the work continue unhindered as the Germans wanted to create a polder of their own in Germany. But as the war turned worse for the Germans, they began to raid the polder for people in hiding. Workers were deported and before losing the war, they blew up parts of the dike and partially flooded the land. Luckily this damage was repaired quickly and the water was drained within a few weeks. The second major occurrence was something unexpected. You see, the polder is connected to the land, but the polder is located a few meters lower than the mainland. So groundwater would flow from the mainland into the polder and then from the polder it would be drained into the southern sea. This meant that the mainland soil was now deprived of water and far less fertile. So to solve this problem for the next polder, they left a string of water surrounding the new polder. This new polder was called Flevoland, which was named after the Roman name for an ancient lake in that area. It roughly means land of the stream. But because this polder was surrounded by water, they needed a much longer dike. A 90km long dike was constructed for the eastern section of Flevoland. Work began in 1951, but 2 years later a massive flood hit the south of the Netherlands. A region which was unprotected from modern dikes. This was the largest natural disaster to strike the Netherlands in its entire history. This event created tens of thousands of refugees and construction on Flevoland halted until they could get the south up and running again. And these refugees needed a place to stay. Many of them were farmers and many were given plots of land in the new polder and when the south was finally safe again, many opted to stay in the new polder. But Flevoland wasn't ready yet. Work on the polder soon continued again and it was finished in 1957. And it was decided to build a city which would function as the regional commercial and managerial capital for Flevoland and the northeast polder. This city would be called Lelystad after the man who laid out the plans for this prestigious project. In 1959 the southern Flevoland polder began construction and was finished in 1968, taking longer because they only used a single pump to drain out the water. Due to its proximity to Amsterdam and the Amsterdam housing shortage at the time, Flevoland would get a second city to relieve tensions from the capital. Thanks to motorized farming equipment and artificial fertilizer, farming had become a lot less valuable by that time, so much of Flevoland was turned into housing and nature preserves. Construction on Flevoland officially finished in 1984 when the crucial urban areas were finished. 4 years later the polder would become their own province rather than being split up between the existing ones, adding the 12th province of Flevoland to the Netherlands. And then the last polder was the Markerwaard. A dike was constructed to prevent minor floods in the Amsterdam region, but construction was slow, lasting nearly 12 years, twice as long as the Afsluitdijk, even though it was shorter and they were working with more modern equipment. The debate whether to build the last polder dragged on for years. With modern technology, the need for agricultural land had disappeared. The extra space for housing was no longer needed thanks to the southern Flevoland polder. And by this time people took ecological concerns a lot more serious, so they decided to leave it as it was to preserve nature and for recreational use. In 2012 plans were approved to build several small islands here, but it would only be accessible to tourists and birdwatchers. This project was the largest land reclamation project in history and ended only a few years before I was born. It was the dream of one man who, through his engineering genius and political cunning, was able to save thousands of lives and propel the Netherlands as a country famous for hydroengineering. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. If you want to see the video about the longest dam in history, click here. I will finish this series with an episode on the Delta Works. So if you want to see that video and videos like it as soon as they come out, press the subscribe button. I make new videos all the time.