Dutch language in the context of Ghent University Hospital

The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau, with additional native branches found in regions such as parts of Central Asia (e.g., Tajikistan and Afghanistan), southern Indian subcontinent (Sri Lanka and the Maldives) and Armenia. Historically, Indo-European languages were also spoken in Anatolia and Northwestern China. Some European languages of this family—English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Dutch—have expanded through colonialism in the modern period and are now spoken across several continents. The Indo-European family is divided into several branches or sub-families, including Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Indo-Iranian, and Italic, all of which contain present-day living languages, as well as many more extinct branches.

Today the individual Indo-European languages with the most native speakers are English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Hindustani, Bengali, Punjabi, French, and German; many others spoken by smaller groups are in danger of extinction. Over 3.4 billion people (42% of the global population) speak an Indo-European language as a first language—by far the most of any language family. There are about 446 living Indo-European languages, according to an estimate by Ethnologue, of which 313 belong to the Indo-Iranian branch.

Latin America (Spanish and Portuguese: América Latina; French: Amérique Latine) is the cultural region of the Americas where Romance languages are predominantly spoken, primarily Spanish and Portuguese. Latin America is defined according to cultural identity, not geography, and as such it includes countries in both North and South America. Most countries south of the United States tend to be included: Mexico and the countries of Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Commonly, it refers to Hispanic America plus Brazil. Related terms are the narrower Hispanic America, which exclusively refers to Spanish-speaking nations, and the broader Ibero-America, which includes all Iberic countries in the Americas and occasionally European countries like Spain, Portugal and Andorra. English- and Dutch-speaking countries and territories, although in the same geographical region, are excluded (Suriname, Guyana, the Falkland Islands, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, etc.).

The term Latin America was first introduced in 1856 at a Paris conference titled, literally, Initiative of the Americas: Idea for a Federal Congress of the Republics (Iniciativa de la América. Idea de un Congreso Federal de las Repúblicas). Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao coined the term to unify countries with shared cultural and linguistic heritage. It gained further prominence during the 1860s under the rule of Napoleon III, whose government sought to justify France's intervention in the Second Mexican Empire.

Canvas is an extremely durable plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, shelters, as a support for oil painting and for other items for which sturdiness is required, as well as in such fashion objects as handbags, electronic device cases, and shoes. It is popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame.

Although historically made from hemp, modern canvas is usually made of cotton, linen, or sometimes polyvinyl chloride (PVC). It differs from other heavy cotton fabrics, such as denim, in being plain weave rather than twill weave. Canvas comes in two basic types: plain and duck. The threads in duck canvas are more tightly woven. The term duck comes from the Dutch word for cloth, doek. In the United States, canvas is classified in two ways: by weight (ounces per square yard) and by a graded number system. The numbers run in reverse of the weight so a number 10 canvas is lighter than number 4.

The Grand-Place (French, pronounced [ɡʁɑ̃ plas]; "Grand Square"; also used in English) or Grote Markt (Dutch, pronounced [ˌɣroːtə ˈmɑr(ə)kt] ; "Big Market") is the central square of Brussels, Belgium. It is surrounded by opulent Baroque guildhalls of the former Guilds of Brussels and two larger edifices; the city's Flamboyant Town Hall, and the neo-Gothic King's House or Bread House building, containing the Brussels City Museum. The square measures 68 by 110 metres (223 by 361 ft) and is entirely paved.

The Grand-Place's construction began in the 11th century and was largely complete by the 17th. In 1695, during the Nine Years' War, most of the square was destroyed during the bombardment of Brussels by French troops. Only the Town Hall's façade and tower, which served as a target for the artillery, as well as some stone walls, resisted the incendiary balls. The houses that surrounded the Grand-Place were rebuilt during subsequent years, giving the square its current appearance, though they were frequently modified in the following centuries. From the mid-19th century, the square's heritage value was rediscovered, and it was thoroughly renovated.

The Dutch colonial empire (Dutch: Nederlandse Koloniale Rijk) comprised overseas territories and trading posts under some form of Dutch control from the early 17th to late 20th centuries, including those initially administered by Dutch chartered companies—primarily the Dutch East India Company (1602–1799) and Dutch West India Company (1621–1792)—and subsequently governed by the Dutch Republic (1581–1795) and modern Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815–1975).

Following the de facto independence of the Dutch Republic from the Spanish Empire in the late 16th century, various trading companies known as voorcompagnie led maritime expeditions overseas in search of commercial opportunities. By 1600, Dutch traders and mariners had penetrated the lucrative Asian spice trade but lacked the capital or manpower to secure or expand their ventures; this prompted the States General in 1602 to consolidate several trading enterprises into the semi-state-owned Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC), which was granted a monopoly over the Asian trade.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands, commonly known simply as the Netherlands, is a sovereign state consisting of a collection of constituent territories united under the monarch of the Netherlands, who functions as head of state. The realm is not a federation; it is a unitary monarchy with its largest subdivision, the eponymous Netherlands, predominantly located in Northwestern Europe and with several smaller island territories located in the Caribbean.

The four subdivisions of the Kingdom—Aruba, Curaçao, the Netherlands, and Sint Maarten—are constituent countries (landen in Dutch; singular: land) and participate on a basis of equality as partners in the Kingdom. In practice, however, most of the Kingdom's affairs are administered by the Netherlands—which comprises roughly 98% of the Kingdom's land area and population—on behalf of the entire Kingdom. Consequently, Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten are dependent on the Netherlands for matters like foreign policy and defence, but are autonomous to a certain degree, with their own parliaments.

The United East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie [vərˈeːnɪɣdə oːstˈɪndisə kɔmpɑˈɲi]; abbr. VOC [veː(j)oːˈseː]), commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies, it was granted a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be purchased by any citizen of the Dutch Republic and bought and sold in open-air secondary markets, one of which became the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. Because it traded across multiple colonies and countries from both the East and the West, the VOC is sometimes considered to have been the world's first multinational corporation.

Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asian trade. Between 1602 and 1796, the VOC sent nearly a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods and slaves. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795. The fleet of the English, later British East India Company, the VOC's nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic, with 2,690 ships and one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC. The VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly and slave trading activities through most of the 17th century.

Factory was the common name during the medieval and early modern eras for an entrepôt – which was essentially an early form of free-trade zone or transshipment point. At a factory, local inhabitants could interact with foreign merchants, often known as factors. First established in Europe, factories eventually spread to many other parts of the world. The origin of the word factory is from Latin factorium 'place of doers, makers' (Portuguese: feitoria; Dutch: factorij; French: factorerie, comptoir).

The factories established by European states in Africa, Asia and the Americas from the 15th century onward also tended to be official political dependencies of those states. These have been seen, in retrospect, as the precursors of colonial expansion.

The Hague (Dutch: Den Haag, short for 's-Gravenhage) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and has been described as the country's de facto capital since the time of the Dutch Republic, while Amsterdam is the official capital of the Netherlands.

The Hague is the core municipality of the Greater The Hague urban area containing over 800,000 residents, and is also part of the Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area, which, with a population of approximately 2.6 million, is the largest metropolitan area of the Netherlands. The city is also part of the Randstad region, one of the largest conurbations in Europe.

The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, Northern America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, English, is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic, spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia, Iron Age Northern Germany and along the North Sea and Baltic coasts.

The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German, with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch, with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans, an offshoot of Dutch originating from the Afrikaners of South Africa, with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German, considered a separate collection of unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it (at least 2.2 million in Germany (2016) and 2.15 million in the Netherlands (2003)); Yiddish, once used by approximately 13 million Jews in pre-World War II Europe, now with approximately 1.5 million native speakers; Scots, with 1.5 million native speakers; Limburgish varieties with roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border; and the Frisian languages with over 500,000 native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany.

Silesians (Silesian: Ślōnzŏki or Ślůnzoki; Silesian German: Schläsinger or Schläsier; German: Schlesier pronounced [ˈʃleːzi̯ɐ] ; Polish: Ślązacy; Czech: Slezané) is both a linguistic as well as a geographical term for the inhabitants of Silesia, a historical region in Central Europe divided by the current national boundaries of Poland, Germany, and Czechia. Historically, the region of Silesia (Lower and Upper) has been inhabited by Polish (West Slavic Lechitic people), Czechs, and Germans. Therefore, the term Silesian can refer to anyone of these ethnic groups. However, in 1945, great demographic changes occurred in the region as a result of the Potsdam Agreement leaving most of the region ethnically Polish and/or Slavic Upper Silesian. The names of Silesia in different languages most likely share their etymology—Polish: Śląsk; German: Schlesien pronounced [ˈʃleːzi̯ən] ; Czech: Slezsko [ˈslɛsko]; Lower Silesian: Schläsing; Silesian: Ślōnsk [ɕlonsk]; Lower Sorbian: Šlazyńska [ˈʃlazɨnʲska]; Upper Sorbian: Šleska [ˈʃlɛska]; Latin, Spanish and English: Silesia; French: Silésie; Dutch: Silezië; Italian: Slesia; Slovak: Sliezsko; Kashubian: Sląsk. The names all relate to the name of a river (now Ślęza) and mountain (Mount Ślęża) in mid-southern Silesia, which served as a place of cult for pagans before Christianization.

Ślęża is listed as one of the numerous Pre-Indo-European topographic names in the region (see old European hydronymy). According to some Polonists, the name Ślęża [ˈɕlɛ̃ʐa] or Ślęż [ɕlɛ̃ʂ] is directly related to the Old Polish words ślęg [ɕlɛŋk] or śląg [ɕlɔŋk], which means dampness, moisture, or humidity. They disagree with the hypothesis of an origin for the name Śląsk [ɕlɔ̃sk] from the name of the Silings tribe, an etymology preferred by some German authors.

The Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, with overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands consists of twelve provinces; it borders Germany to the east and Belgium to the south, with a North Sea coastline to the north and west. It shares maritime borders with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Belgium. The official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland. Dutch, English, and Papiamento are official in the Caribbean territories. People from the Netherlands are referred to as Dutch.

Netherlands literally means "lower countries", in reference to its low elevation and flat topography, 26% of which is below sea level. Most of the areas below sea level, known as polders, are the result of land reclamation that began in the 14th century. In the Republican period, which began in 1588, the Netherlands entered a unique era of political, economic, and cultural greatness, ranked among the most powerful and influential in Europe and the world; this period is known as the Dutch Golden Age. During this time, its trading companies, the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, established colonies and trading posts all over the world. While neutral in the First World War, the Netherlands was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940 during the Second World War, which lasted until the end of the war in 1945.

The 1920 Summer Olympics (French: Jeux olympiques d'été de 1920; Dutch: Olympische Zomerspelen van 1920; German: Olympische Sommerspiele 1920), officially known as the Games of the VII Olympiad (French: Jeux de la VII olympiade; Dutch: Spelen van de VIIe Olympiade; German: Spiele der VII. Olympiade) and commonly known as Antwerp 1920 (French: Anvers 1920; Dutch and German: Antwerpen 1920), were an international multi-sport event held in 1920 in Antwerp, Belgium.

In March 1912, during the 13th session of the IOC, Belgium's bid to host the 1920 Summer Olympics was made by Baron Édouard de Laveleye, president of the Belgian Olympic Committee and of the Royal Belgian Football Association. No fixed host city was proposed at the time.

The 1928 Summer Olympics (Dutch: Olympische Zomerspelen 1928), officially the Games of the IX Olympiad (Dutch: Spelen van de IXe Olympiade), was an international multi-sport event that was celebrated from 28 July to 12 August 1928 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The city of Amsterdam had previously bid for the 1920 and 1924 Olympic Games. Still, it was obliged to give way to war-torn Antwerp in Belgium for the 1920 Games and Pierre de Coubertin's Paris for the 1924 Games.

The only other candidate city for the 1928 Olympics was Los Angeles, which would eventually be selected to host the Olympics four years later. In preparation for the 1932 Summer Olympics, the United States Olympic Committee reviewed the costs and revenue of the 1928 Games. The committee reported a total cost of US$1.183 million with receipts of US$1.165 million, giving a negligible loss of US$18,000, which was a considerable improvement over the 1924 Games.

The North European Plain (German: Norddeutsches Tiefland – North German Plain; Mitteleuropäische Tiefebene Środkowoeuropejska}} – Central European Plain; Danish: Nordeuropæiske Lavland and Dutch: Noord-Europese Laagvlakte; French: Plaine d'Europe du Nord) is a geomorphological region in Europe that covers all or parts of Belgium, the Netherlands (i.e. the Low Countries), Germany, Denmark, and Poland.

It consists of the low plains between the Hercynian Europe (Central European Highlands) to the south and coastlines of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea to the north. These two seas are separated by the Jutland Peninsula (Denmark). The North European Plain is connected to the East European Plain, together forming the majority of the Great European Plain (European Plain).

The County of Zeeland (Dutch: Graafschap Zeeland) was a county of the Holy Roman Empire in the Low Countries and it later became one of the seven provinces of the Dutch Republic. It covered an area in the Scheldt and Meuse delta roughly corresponding to the modern Dutch province of Zeeland. The County of Zeeland did not include the region of Zeelandic Flanders which was part of Flanders; conversely, the modern Province of Zeeland does not include Sommelsdijk, historically part of the County of Zeeland.

The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Dutch: Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden), also known as the United Provinces (of the Netherlands), and referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation and great power that existed from 1588 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands and the first independent Dutch nation state. The republic was established after seven Dutch provinces in the Spanish Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule, forming a mutual alliance against Spain in 1579 (the Union of Utrecht) and declaring their independence in 1581 (the Act of Abjuration), after which they confederated in 1588 (the Instruction of 12 April 1588) after the States General could not agree on a new monarch. The seven provinces it comprised were Groningen (present-day Groningen), Frisia (present-day Friesland), Overijssel (present-day Overijssel), Guelders (present-day Gelderland), Utrecht (present-day Utrecht), Holland (present-day North Holland and South Holland), and Zeeland (present-day Zeeland).

Although the state was small and had only around 1.5 million inhabitants, it controlled a worldwide network of seafaring trade routes. Through its trading companies, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (GWC), it established a Dutch colonial empire. The income from this trade allowed the Dutch Republic to compete militarily against much larger countries. Major conflicts were fought in the Eighty Years' War against Spain (from the foundation of the Dutch Republic until 1648), the Dutch–Portuguese War (1598–1663), four Anglo-Dutch Wars (1652–1654, 1665–1667, 1672–1674, and 1780–1784), the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713), the War of Austrian Succession (1744–1748), and the War of the First Coalition (1792–1795) against the Kingdom of France.