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What country is the low country

“God made the world, the Netherlands made the Netherlands“. This is a proud phrase that the Dutch love to say. Can God create the world, we don’t know. However, “the Netherlands made the Netherlands” is not without reason.

“Netherlands” is called the Netherlands in Germanic, which means “land of the lowlands”, named because more than half of its land is below or almost level with sea level. “Neder” means low, “Lan” means place or country, and “Nedland” means “low country”.

Low and flat is the most prominent feature of the Dutch terrain. The whole territory is lowland. One quarter of the land is less than 1 meter above sea level, and one quarter of the land is below the sea level. Except for some hills in the south and east, most of the terrain is are all low. The south is connected by the delta of the Rhine, Maas and Scheldt.

The total land area of ​​the Netherlands is 41,528 square kilometers. The whole territory is lowland. One quarter of the land is less than 1 meter above sea level, and one quarter of the land is below the sea level. There are more than 1,800 kilometers of sea dams and embankments along the coast. The rivers in the territory are vertical and horizontal, mainly including the Rhine and the Maas. On the northwest coast there is IJsselmeer. The west coast is lowland, the east is undulating plain, and the middle and southeast are plateaus. The south is connected by the delta of the Rhine, Maas and Scheldt.

More than half of the Netherlands is named after it is below or almost level with sea level, and some areas are even formed by reclaiming land from the sea, such as most of the province of Flevoland. The highest point in the Netherlands is Vaalserberg in the southeastern corner of the southern province of Limburg, at 321 meters above sea level. The lowest point in the Netherlands is near Rotterdam, 6.7 meters below sea level.

The vast majority of the Netherlands is a plain, and it is the lowest country in the world. The country covers an area of ​​41,160 square kilometers, one-third of the land is only 1 meter above sea level, and one-quarter of the land is below sea level. The population of the whole country is concentrated in the low-lying areas of the west, and the lowest place is 6.7 meters lower than the sea level! How can a large area of ​​land under the sea survive? It mainly depends on “reclaiming the sea to create land”.

In 1629, Frederick Hendrick, Prince of Orange, began the construction of this fortification. During World War II, the Netherlands also tried to rely on this line of defense against the German army. The so-called “Dutch waterline” is the use of water to form a military defensive strategy. The Netherlands is a “lowland country”, and many parts of the country are even lower than sea level.

For thousands of years, the Dutch people have been fighting the sea for a long time to survive. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, they competed with the sea for land. For seven hundred years, they built 2,400 kilometers of embankments, which is more than twice the length of the Dutch coastline. Through the continuous construction of embankments to surround the sea, more than 7,100 square kilometers of “virgin land” under the sea has been developed. Today, a quarter of the country’s territory in the Netherlands is built through long-term embankment construction, drainage and filling. The largest of these is the Barrier Sea Dam.

The dam is built between the North Sea and the Zuider Sea. It is more than 30 kilometers long and 90 meters wide. It turns the Zuider Sea into an inland sea, shortens the northern coastline by nearly 300 kilometers, and further shortens the Zuider Sea. Transformed into land, the sea becomes a mulberry field. The embankment project began in 1920 and was completed in 1932. The amount of work was unprecedented. It is said that it is one of the two artificial structures on the ground that American astronauts can see when they look back at the earth from the moon.

The Port of Ijmuiden is located at the mouth of the North Sea Canal, about 10 nautical miles from the Port of Amsterdam. It is an important port in the western Netherlands and is also known as the gateway to Amsterdam. Now the name of the place marked on the map is Muiden (muiden), which can be said to be the “Dutch Waterline”, a serious defense system, along this waterline, there are various fortresses and defensive measures specially built.