From the mid-fourteenth century onward, the Netherlands deployed windmills on an unprecedented scale to drain waterlogged polder land from the North Sea and Rhine delta, creating the vast reclaimed agricultural landscape that defined Dutch national identity for centuries. These drainage mills, working in series to lift water through successive stages into drainage canals and out to sea, effectively manufactured dry land from tidal swamp, enabling the densely populated and commercially dynamic Dutch republic to sustain one of the world's most productive economies. By 1450, windmills were the single most important energy source in the Low Countries.

The Dutch windmill landscape became inseparable from national identity and inspired a rich tradition of Dutch-language poetry celebrating the polder, the canal, and the mill as symbols of human ingenuity against nature. Later, English Romantic and Victorian poets visiting the Netherlands — including Matthew Arnold — found in the windmill a potent image of collective labour reshaping the earth. The Dutch mastery of wind power also enabled the Golden Age maritime empire whose wealth supported the printing industry that disseminated European literature across the globe.