WORLD HERITAGE LIST


The Dutch landscape, which consist out of polders for about 50%, has no equal in the world. It exist thanks to many kilometers long hand-digged ditches and canals, thanks to thousands of kilometers embankment and dikes and thanks to the windmills which drain all the superfluous water to the sea for already 600 years. The vast moors and peat land of the past have been transformed since the Middle Ages into the current artificial situation, where the majority of our land lies beneath sealevel. The Dutch are so acquainted to this situation in daily life that they hardly realise the unique character of their land.

Dikes have created the opportunity for the construction of the western part of the country, but soon it had been found necessary to drain the land continuously and from about 1400 windmills have started to do that job. Without these mills the lower parts of our country woud never have existed at all. Encircled by dikes but uninhabitable by water abundance the land should soon have been abandoned again. The Waddenzee would have extended to the Belgian border. Several centuries later the windmills became the strong arms in the struggle against the great lakes which threatened the Netherlands from inside. Without the mills the great drying works of the lakes during the Golden Age would never have been realised at all.

From the second half of the 19th century windpower was gradually replaced by mechanical power: steam, combustion engines and electrical energy. This resulted in the break-down of hundreds of useless mills and so this typical Dutch landmark was on the verge of disappearing.

However, the windmill is a socio-historical monument of special significance, a centuries old piece of human ingenuity that still is perfectly able to function. A friend in times of need. During the Second Worldwar, when the Dutch community became more and more disrupted, the windmills could be brought in again for vital functions like flour supply and water management. Century after century they have been present as a matter of course and played an important role in common life of the people of the past, in litterature and in art of painting. Maybe therefore it came that windmills were acknowledged as monuments only after such a long time. The national mills property is unique in a wordwide sense and therewith constitutes an important part of world heritage.

The fact that Unesco has put the whole collection of windmills at Kinderdijk and its surroundings on the World Heritage List is the final recognition of this uniqueness. But at the same it presents a mirror to the Dutch - internationally the value of our windmills has received a higher esteem than on a national level.

Unesco's decision has a farther reach than only the windmills. It also characterizes the relationship between the mills and their surroundings as a very precious one. Unesco is fully alive to the notion of mill biotope. Windmills need an open environment for an undisturbed wind catch. Polder mills must be able to keep their position in a centuries old civil engineering infrastructure. The decision means a support for the conservation of our open landscape, of a good biotope and above all of the functioning of the windmill as a monument.




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