“The Granary of Europe”: Gdańsk in the Eyes of Eighteenth-Century Dutchmen. The Reception and Rhetoric of the Image of the City in the Context of the Fall of the Dutch Republic
The article reconstructs the image of Gdansk in Dutch Press of the eighteenth century. I analyze the tools used for the creation of this image. One of them is manipulation of historical facts; other is connecting by Dutch authors the fall of the Netherlands in the eighteenth century with the deterioration of commercial contacts with Gdansk. This search for a “scapegoat” responsible for the fall of the Dutch republic is present on many fields. It is a rhetorical means employed to absolve the real perpetrators: Dutch elites.
Keywords: Enlightenment, Dutch Press, moral weeklies, Hanseatic League, Dutch society.
Otwórz Artykuł