3. The Cultural Connotations of Idioms Containing “Dutch”

3.1 The origin and connotations of idioms containing “Dutch”

Dutch, also called the kingdom of the Netherlands, is a small coastal country , located in European mainland, with well-renowned seawall, windmills and tulips.In 1463, the country established his own the kingdom of the Netherlands and in 1581, he gained independence from Spain. Originally, “Dutch” is a just proper name. Before stepping into Shakespeare’s time,that is 16th century, the English had being regarded the Dutch as friendly partners and in all English literary works, the Dutch obtained much respect, more often than not. However, the situation began to change since the 17th century, the Netherlands rapidly grew to be the strongest capitalistic country. In the 17th century, the Netherlands dominated the world trade market and expanded his colonies into the East, raking in exorbitant profits and treasure. But the Dutch, as greedy as a wolf, with a large amount of money, attempted to seize the control of the marine trade. At the same time, the British got the better of the Spanish, breaking Spanish and Portuguese hegemony in colonial parts. Standing out of most strong countries, Britain gradually developed to be the powerful colonial country. In order to further consolidate and expand its power in colonies, it is unavoidable for Britain to fight against the Netherlands for treasure. In 1651, the British parliament passed the Navigation Regulation with the purpose of hitting Dutch intermediary role in trade between Britain and the rest of the world and weakening his sea power and colonization. Certainly, the Netherlands, not resigned to playing second fiddle, strongly opposed this regulation and threw no attention to it, whereas Britain still stock to his guns. Hence, the fierce sea wars broke out, as a saying goes, when Greek meets Greek, there comes the tug of war. During more than twenty years of the wars, there were three famous large-scale naval warfare, which were called the Anglo-Dutch wars. After years of wars, though sometimes failed or successful, anyway, at last, England won victory.来!自-优.尔,论:文+网www.youerw.com

Although England debated the Netherlands, through years of marine wars, the relationship between them was increasingly worsening. Year by year, both they showed themselves’ hatred of each other. At that moment, in order to express their abomination for the Dutch, English began to create some expressions related to the Netherlands, that are idioms containing :Dutch”, to refer to something bad, cheap and shameful.=