Amsterdam

Amsterdam takes its name from the dam built across the Amstel in the thirteenth century. The first record is the toll exemption Count Floris V gave to the people of Amstelredamme on 27 October 1275, and Bishop Guy of Utrecht called them burghers soon after 1300, which suggests town rights. In 1323 Count William III made the town a toll point for beer from Hamburg, and the beer trade became the stepping stone to Baltic commerce and to Amsterdam's rise as a trading town; in 1342 Count William IV gave it a new charter.

Houses stood on long wooden piles driven into the sand beneath the marsh, and timber and fire made the medieval town vulnerable. In 1345 a dying man's host was said to survive the flames, the Miracle of Amsterdam, which turned the chapel into a pilgrimage site. By the fifteenth century Amsterdam was the most important trading city in Holland, and ring-shaped canals dug for defence and drainage marked its growth.

In 1578 the Catholic city government was deposed in the Alteratie, and Amsterdam joined the revolt against Spain, mainly for the sake of trade. After Spain took Antwerp in 1585, many merchants of the Southern Netherlands arrived with their networks, along with Portuguese Jews and Huguenots. The East India Company of 1602 and the Exchange Bank of 1609 made the city the hub of a worldwide trade. The population grew from under 30,000 around 1570 to more than 100,000 in 1622, and the concentric canal belt with its merchants' houses and warehouses was dug to house them. By the end of the seventeenth century more than 200,000 people lived in the city, one of Europe's largest. Growth slowed after 1680, and the population sank to about 180,000 by 1815. Louis Bonaparte chose Amsterdam as the capital of his Kingdom of Holland and entered the city on 20 April 1808.