Zwolle
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the capital of the Dutch province of Overyssel on the Zwarte Water; 25 miles N. of Zütphen; was once a strong fortress with 11 bastions and three forts. It is a handsome, wellbuilt city, with three fine suburbs. Its corn market is one of the best in Holland. Its chief buildings are St. Michael's Church, a large and splendid building with a famous organ, the government buildings with the provincial archives, the town hall, and the courts of justice. The town has a Latin school, a school of navigation, navigati ation, an industrial school, a public library with rare books on geography and local history, a museum of natural history, a theater, etc. Zwolle has communication with the sea by means of the Willemsvaart canal. It manufactures oil, spirits, iron goods, and linens, carries on shipbuilding, and a trade in corn and cattle. In a monastery in the neighborhood Thomas à Kempis lived and died. Zwolle was a member of the Hanseatic League. Pop. about 35,000. ZYGOPHYLLACEÆ, a natural order of polypetalous dicotyledons, consisting of 17 genera and upward of 100 species of shrubs or herbs with more or less jointed stems, flowers on auxiliary peduncles, and generally white, red or yellow, sepals and petals mostly five, and a dry fruit often separating into cocci. The species are widely dispersed over the tropical and sub-tropical zones, a few also occurring in temperate climates. In the type genus Zygophyllum, the leaves are opposite and consist of two leaflets (Greek zugan, "a yoke," and phyllon, "a leaf"). Z. fabago has vermifuge properties and its flower buds serve as a substitute for capers. Z.coccineum has aromatic seeds employed by the Arabs in place of pepper. The wood called lignum vitæ is the most important product of the order.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Zwolle is still the capital of Overijssel and still keeps the buildings Collier's listed in 1921 — the Grote or St Michael's Church with its great Schnitger organ, the town hall, the provincial archives — but the "about 35,000" inhabitants have become roughly 130,000, making it one of the fastest-growing cities in the eastern Netherlands and one of the busiest railway junctions in the country. The corn and cattle trade that Collier's called one of the best markets in Holland has given way to services, health care and government offices, and the Willemsvaart canal was superseded as the main link to the IJssel by the Zwolle–IJssel canal opened in the 1960s. The one great event since 1921 went unmentioned because it had not happened: in April 1945 the German garrison withdrew and Zwolle was taken with almost no fighting, an episode popularly credited to the Canadian soldier Léo Major. The monastery on the Agnietenberg where Thomas à Kempis died is long gone, though the town still commemorates him.
Written for this edition, 2026.