Start at the top at Kochi--or Cochin, as it used to be known--a sleepy Macau-like port where the Portuguese set up trading depots in the 16th century until they were pushed out by the Dutch in 17th century. (They, in turn, were shoved aside by the British in the 18th century.) For the best views of the city, take a ride on a wooden launch.

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The Dutch colonised the islands in the 17th century.

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"Canvey was originally a series of small islands in the Thames estuary, but in the 17th Century Dutch engineers reclaimed land from the sea to form one large island, " says Bush.

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The technique became popular among Dutch artists, including Rembrandt, in the 17th century.

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They float in carefully defined spaces and are often firmly anchored with some sort of horizontal ground that can be as insistent as the horizon in a 17th-century Dutch seascape.

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She was more cautious in the bubble years than many recall--for instance, comparing the period to the 17th-century Dutch tulip-bulb mania in a 1999 New Yorker piece.

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Invented by a Dutch doctor, Franciscus de la Boe, in the mid-17th century, gin (originally called genever) was made by redistilling pure malt spirits with juniper berries.

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Through the 17th century, Dutch and Flemish artists vied with one another in creating meticulously precise images of tables piled with objects of consumption and display.

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Nonetheless, there's plenty of drama to be had in looking through doors and watching the galleries speak to each other, as in noticing the changes from 16th-century Flemish to 17th-century Dutch landscapes that not only describe wholly varying visions of the world but also different ways of formally organizing a picture.

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