Dear Cecil,
I had one comment on your very well written article about the stock market. You wrote: “In the Netherlands, traders began gathering in front of the house of the Van der Buerse family, eventually leading to the word “bourse” as a synonym for stock exchange.”
The Netherlands did not yet exist as a country in those days. In the 14th century the Van der Buerse family (“beurs” is Dutch for purse, “van der” is “from the”) lived in the city of Brugge (spelled Bruges in English) in the county of Flanders, currently part of Belgium, but at that time part of the French kingdom. The Low Countries (which we call “de Nederlanden” in Dutch) consisted of a bunch of semi-independent duchies, counties and other assorted fiefs that technically belonged to the French kingdom or the German empire.
They got sort of united in the 14th-15th century under the last counts of Flanders and then became part of Burgondy, then Austria, then Spain and so on. “Nederland” - what you call “The Netherlands” in English, we use the singular form - consists of the Northern part of the Low Countries and became an independent country only during the religious wars in the 16th-17th century. The Southern “Netherlands” finally formed Belgium and Luxemburg in the 19th century.
Well, I am sure you know all that. The only thing I am getting at is that we Flemings (Dutch-speaking Belgians) are quite proud of our history and don’t want it taken away and handed over to our friends-competitors in the North. We have had some history in common, we speak the same language (Dutch) and we are good neighbors, but we do compete in many ways (for those same reasons, I am sure). It is not easy, of course, to place the old city of Bruges geographically so that the modern reader knows where it is. But “The Netherlands” in its modern meaning is definitely wrong. May I suggest following alternative:
“In Flanders (currently part of Belgium), traders began …”
Paul De Belder
Leuven
Flanders
Belgium
Europe 
