A report on Netherlands, Amsterdam and Antwerp

The North Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France.

Major ports are located along its coasts: Rotterdam, the busiest port in Europe and the fourth busiest port in the world by tonnage, Antwerp (was 16th) and Hamburg (was 27th), Bremen/Bremerhaven and Felixstowe, both in the top 30 busiest container seaports, as well as the Port of Bruges-Zeebrugge, Europe's leading ro-ro port.

The North Sea Canal connects Amsterdam with the North Sea.

Growing from a few North German towns in the late 12th century, the League ultimately encompassed nearly 200 settlements across seven modern-day countries; at its height between the 13th and 15th centuries, it stretched from the Netherlands in the west to Russia in the east, and from Estonia in the north to Kraków, Poland in the south.

In the Dutch–Hanseatic War (1438–1441), the merchants of Amsterdam sought and eventually won free access to the Baltic and broke the Hanseatic monopoly.

The Bruges Kontor moved to Antwerp and the Hansa attempted to pioneer new routes.

Rotterdam (, , , lit. The Dam on the River Rotte) is the second largest city and municipality in the Netherlands.

There is a healthy competition with Amsterdam, which is often viewed as the cultural capital of the Netherlands.

A16 (Ring East): Rotterdam – Breda (- Antwerp – Paris)

The transition by the Netherlands to becoming the foremost maritime and economic power in the world has been called the "Dutch Miracle" by historian K. W. Swart.

Before the Low Countries could be completely reconquered, a war between England and Spain, the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585-1604, broke out, forcing Spanish troops to halt their advances and leaving them in control of the important trading cities of Bruges and Ghent, but without control of Antwerp, which was then arguably the most important port in the world.

Many of those moving north settled in Amsterdam, transforming what was a small harbor into one of the most important ports and commercial centres in the world by 1630.

Dutch (Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million people as a second language, constituting most of the population of the Netherlands (where it is the only official language countrywide) and about 60% of the population of Belgium (as one of three official languages).

The process of standardisation became much stronger at the start of the 16th century, mainly based on the urban dialect of Antwerp.

The urban dialects of the Randstad, which are Hollandic dialects, do not diverge from standard Dutch very much, but there is a clear difference between the city dialects of Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam and Utrecht.