Overview
Country, northwestern Europe.
Area: 16,034 sq mi (41,528 sq km). Population (2005 est.):
16,300,000. Capital: Amsterdam. Seat of government: The Hague. Most of
the people are Dutch. Languages: Dutch (official), English. Religions:
Christianity (Roman Catholic, Protestant); also Islam. Currency: euro.
The Netherlands’ southern and eastern region consists mostly of plains
and a few high ridges; its western and northern region is lower and
includes polders on the site of the Zuiderzee and the common delta of
the Rhine, Meuse, and Schelde rivers. Coastal areas are almost
completely below sea level and are protected by dunes and artificial
dikes. Although densely populated, the country has a low birthrate. Its
developed market economy is based largely on financial services, light
and heavy industries, and trade. It is a constitutional monarchy with a
parliament comprising two legislative houses; its chief of state is the
monarch, and the head of government is the prime minister. Celtic and
Germanic tribes inhabited the region at the time of the Roman conquest.
Under the Romans trade and industry flourished, but by the mid-3rd
century ad Roman power had waned, eroded by resurgent Germanic tribes
and the encroachment of the sea. A Germanic invasion (406–407) ended
Roman control. The Merovingian dynasty followed the Romans but was
supplanted in the 7th century by the Carolingian dynasty, which
converted the area to Christianity. After Charlemagne’s death in 814,
the area was increasingly the target of Viking attacks. It became part
of the medieval kingdom of Lotharingia (see Lorraine), which avoided
incorporation into the Holy Roman Empire by investing its bishops and
abbots with secular powers, leading to the establishment of an Imperial
Church. Beginning in the 12th century, much land was reclaimed from the
sea as dike building occurred on a large scale; Flanders developed as a
textiles centre. The dukes of Burgundy gained control in the late 14th
century. By the early 16th century the Low Countries came to be ruled by
the Spanish Habsburgs. The Dutch had taken the lead in fishing and
shipbuilding, which laid the foundation for Holland’s remarkable
17th-century prosperity. Culturally, this was the period of Jan van
Eyck, Thomas à Kempis, and Desiderius Erasmus. Calvinism and Anabaptist
doctrines attracted many followers. In 1581 the seven northern
provinces, led by Calvinists, declared their independence from Spain,
and in 1648, following the Thirty Years’ War, Spain recognized Dutch
independence. The 17th century was the golden age of Dutch civilization.
Benedict de Spinoza and René Descartes enjoyed the intellectual freedom,
and Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer painted their masterpieces. The Dutch
East India Co. secured Asian colonies, and the country’s standard of
living soared. In the 18th century Dutch maritime power declined; the
region was conquered by the French during the French revolutionary wars
and became the Kingdom of Holland under Napoleon (1806). The Netherlands
remained neutral in World War I and declared neutrality in World War II
but was occupied by Germany. After the war it lost the Netherlands
Indies (Indonesia from 1949) and Netherlands New Guinea (in 1962; now
Irian Jaya). It joined NATO in 1949 and was a founding member of the
European Economic Community (later renamed the European Community and
now embedded in the European Union). At the outset of the 21st century
The Netherlands benefitted from a strong, highly regulated mixed economy
but struggled with the social and economic challenges of immigration.
Profile
Official name Koninkrijk der Nederlanden (Kingdom of The
Netherlands)
Form of government constitutional monarchy with a parliament (States
General) comprising two chambers (Senate [75]; House of Representatives
[150])
Chief of state Monarch
Head of government Prime Minister
Capital Amsterdam
Seat of government The Hague
Official language Dutch1
Official religion none
Monetary unit euro (ˆ)
Population estimate (2008) 16,433,000
Total area (sq mi) 16,040
Total area (sq km) 41,543
1Frisian is officially recognized in Friesland but not legally codified
by the national government.
Main
country located in northwestern Europe, also known as Holland.
‘‘Netherlands’’ means low-lying country; the name Holland (from
Houtland, or “Wooded Land”) was originally given to one of the medieval
cores of what later became the modern state and is still used for 2 of
its 12 provinces (Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland). A parliamentary
democracy under a constitutional monarch, the kingdom includes the six
former island colonies of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. The
capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government The Hague.
The country is indeed low-lying and remarkably flat, with large
expanses of lakes, rivers, and canals. Some 2,500 square miles (6,500
square km) of The Netherlands consist of reclaimed land, the result of a
process of careful water management dating back to medieval times. Along
the coasts, land was reclaimed from the sea, and, in the interior, lakes
and marshes were drained, especially alongside the many rivers. All this
new land was turned into polders, usually surrounded by dikes.
Initially, man power and horsepower were used to drain the land, but
they were later replaced by windmills, such as the mill network at
Kinderdijk-Elshout, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The largest
water-control schemes were carried out in the second half of the 19th
century and in the 20th century, when steam pumps and, later, electric
or diesel pumps came into use.
Despite government-encouraged emigration after World War II, which
prompted some 500,000 persons to leave the country, The Netherlands is
today one of the world’s most densely populated countries. Although the
population as a whole is “graying” rapidly, with a high percentage over
age 65, Amsterdam has remained one of the liveliest centres of
international youth culture. There, perhaps more than anywhere else in
the country, the Dutch tradition of social tolerance is readily
encountered. Prostitution, “soft-drug” (marijuana and hashish) use, and
euthanasia are all legal but carefully regulated in The Netherlands,
which was also the first country to legalize same-sex marriage.
This relative independence of outlook was evident as early as the
16th and 17th centuries, when the Dutch rejected monarchical controls
and took a relatively enlightened view of other cultures, especially
when they brought wealth and capital to the country’s trading centres.
In that period Dutch merchant ships sailed the world and helped lay the
foundations of a great trading country characterized by a vigorous
spirit of enterprise. In later centuries, The Netherlands continued to
have one of the most advanced economies in the world, despite the
country’s modest size. The Dutch economy is open and generally
internationalist in outlook. With Belgium and Luxembourg, The
Netherlands is a member of the Benelux economic union, which in the
1950s and 1960s served as a model for the larger European Economic
Community (EEC; now embedded in the European Union [EU]), of which the
Benelux countries are members. The Netherlands is also a member of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and it plays host to a
number of international organizations, especially in the legal sector,
such as the International Court of Justice.
The Dutch reputation for tolerance was tested in the late 20th and
early 21st centuries, when an increase in immigration from non-European
Union countries and a populist turn in politics resulted in growing
nationalism and even xenophobia, marked by two race-related political
assassinations, in 2002 and 2004, and the government’s requirement that
immigrants pass an expensive ‘‘integration’’ test before they enter the
country.
Land
Relief
The Netherlands is bounded by the North Sea to the north and west,
Germany to the east, and Belgium to the south. If The Netherlands were
to lose the protection of its dunes and dikes, the most densely
populated part of the country would be inundated (largely by the sea but
also in part by the rivers). This highly developed part of The
Netherlands, which generally does not lie higher than about three feet
(one metre) above sea level, covers more than half the total area of the
country. About half of this area (more than one-fourth of the total area
of the country) actually lies below sea level.
The lower area consists mainly of polders, where the landscape not
only lies at a very low elevation but is also very flat in appearance.
On such land, building is possible only on “rafts,” or after concrete
piles, sometimes as long as 65 feet (20 metres), have been driven into
the silt layer.
In the other, higher area, the layers of sand and gravel in the
eastern part of the country were pushed sideways and upward in some
places by ice tongues of the Saale Glacial Stage, forming elongated
ridges that may reach a height of more than 330 feet (100 metres) and
are the principal feature of the Hoge Park Veluwe National Park. The
only part of the country where elevations exceed 350 feet (105 metres)
is the border zone of the Ardennes. The Netherlands’ highest point, the
Vaalserberg, in the extreme southeastern corner, rises to 1,053 feet
(321 metres).
Drainage and dikes
The Zuiderzee was originally an estuary of the Rhine River. By
natural action it then became a shallow inland sea, biting deep into the
land, and eventually it was hollowed into an almost circular shape by
the action of winds and tides. In 1920 work was begun on the Zuiderzee
project, of which the IJsselmeer Dam (Afsluitdijk), begun in 1927, was a
part. This 19-mile- (30-km-) long dam was completed in 1932 to finally
seal off the Zuiderzee from the Waddenzee and the North Sea. In the
IJsselmeer, or IJssel Lake, formed from the southern part of the
Zuiderzee, four large polders, the IJsselmeer Polders, with a total area
of about 650 square miles (1,700 square km), were constructed around a
freshwater basin fed by the IJssel and other rivers and linked with the
sea by sluices and locks in the barrier dam.
The first two polders created there—Wieringermeer and North East
(Noordoost) Polder, drained before and during World War II—are used
mostly for agriculture. The two polders reclaimed in the 1950s and
’60s—South Flevoland Polder (Zuidelijk) and East Flevoland Polder
(Oostelijk)—are used for residential, industrial, and recreational
purposes. Among the cities that have developed there are Lelystad and
Almere.
In the southwest, the disastrous gales and spring tide of Feb. 1,
1953, which flooded some 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) of land and
killed 1,800 people, accelerated the implementation of the Delta
Project, which aimed to close off most of the sea inlets of the
southwestern delta. These delta works were designed to shorten the
coastline by 450 miles (725 km), combat the salination of the soil, and
allow the development of the area through roads that were constructed
over 10 dams and 2 bridges built between 1960 and 1987. The largest of
these dams, crossing the five-mile- (eight-km-) wide Eastern Schelde
(Oosterschelde) estuary, has been built in the form of a storm-surge
barrier incorporating dozens of openings that can be closed in the event
of flood. The barrier is normally open, allowing salt water to enter the
estuary and about three-fourths of the tidal movement to be maintained,
limiting damage to the natural environment in the Eastern Schelde. In
the interest of the commerce of the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp, no
dams were constructed in the New Waterway, which links Rotterdam to the
North Sea, or the West Schelde, an approach to Antwerp, Belg. The dikes
along these waterways consequently had to be strengthened.
A region with a very specific character has been formed by the great
rivers—Rhine, Lek, Waal, and Maas (Meuse)—that flow from east to west
through the central part of the country. The landscape in this area is
characterized by high dikes along wide rivers, orchards along the levees
formed by the rivers, and numerous large bridges over which pass the
roads and railways that connect the central Netherlands with the
southern provinces.
Soils
In the late Pleistocene Epoch (from about 126,000 to 11,700 years
ago), the Scandinavian ice sheet covered the northern half of The
Netherlands. After this period, a large area in the north of what is now
The Netherlands was left covered by moraine (glacial accumulation of
earth and rock debris). In the centre and south, the Rhine and Maas
rivers unloaded thick layers of silt and gravel transported from the
European mountain chains. Later, during the Holocene Epoch (i.e., the
past 11,700 years), clay was deposited in the sheltered lagoons behind
the coastal dunes, and peat soil often subsequently developed in these
areas. If the peat soil was washed away by the sea or dug away by humans
(for the production of fuel and salt), lakes were created. Many of these
were reclaimed in later centuries (as mentioned above), while others now
form highly valued outdoor recreational areas.
Climate
The climate of The Netherlands is temperate, with gentle winters,
cool summers, and rainfall in every season. Southerly and westerly winds
predominate, and the sea moderates the climate through onshore winds and
the effect of the Gulf Stream.
The position of the country—between the area of high-pressure air
masses centred on the Azores and the low-pressure region centred on
Iceland—makes The Netherlands an area of collision between warm and
polar air masses, thus creating unsettled weather. Winds meet with
little resistance over the flat country, though the hills in the south
significantly diminish the velocity of the potent wind that prevails
along the coast. On average, frost occurs 60 days per year. July
temperatures average about 63 °F (17 °C), and those of January average
35 °F (2 °C). Annual rainfall averages about 31 inches (790 mm), with
only about 25 clear days per year. The average rainfall is highest in
summer (August) and autumn and lowest in springtime. The country is
known—not least through the magnificent landscapes of Dutch painters—for
its heavy clouds, and on an average day three-fifths of the sky is
clouded.
Plant and animal life
Most wild Dutch plant species are of the Atlantic district within
the Euro-Siberian phytogeographic region. Gradients of salt and winter
temperature variations cause relatively minor zonal differences in both
wild and garden plants from the coast to more continental regions. The
effects of elevation are negligible. Vegetation from coastal sand dunes,
muddy coastal areas, slightly brackish lakes, and river deltas is
especially scarce in the surrounding countries. Lakes, marshes,
peatland, woods, heaths, and agricultural areas determine the general
floral species. Clay, peat, and sand are important soil factors for the
inland vegetation regions.
Animal life is relegated by region according to vegetation. Seabirds
and other sea life, such as mollusks, are found especially in the muddy
Waddenzee area and in the extreme southwest. Migrating birds pass in
huge numbers through The Netherlands or remain for a summer or winter
stay. Species of waterbirds and marsh and pasture birds are numerous.
Larger mammals, such as roe deer, red deer, foxes, and badgers, are
mostly restricted to nature reserves. Some species, such as boars,
beavers, fallow deer, mouflons, and muskrats, have been introduced
locally or reintroduced. Some reptiles and amphibians are endangered.
Numerous species of river fish and river lobsters have become scarce
because of water pollution. There is a diversity of brackish and
freshwater animals inhabiting the many lakes, canals, and drainage
ditches, but the vulnerable species of the nutritionally deficient
waters have become rare.
Nature reserves have been formed by governmental and private
organizations. Well-known reserves include the Naardermeer of Amsterdam,
the Hoge Veluwe National Park, and the Oostvaardersplassen in the centre
of the country. Some endangered species are protected by law.
People
Ethnic groups
Popular belief holds that the Dutch are a mixture of Frisians,
Saxons, and Franks. In fact, research has made plausible the contention
that the autochthonous inhabitants of the region were a mixture of
pre-Germanic and Germanic population groups who in the course of time
had converged on the main deltaic region of western Europe. There
emerged from these groups in the 7th and 8th centuries some major
polities based on certain ethnic and cultural unities that then came to
be identified as Frisians, Saxons, and Franks.
The Dutch Republic originated from medieval statelets, and its legal
successor, the Kingdom of The Netherlands, has attracted countless
immigrants through the centuries. A strong impetus was the principle of
freedom of thought, which engendered the relative tolerance that
developed in the 16th and 17th centuries. These sentiments were—and
are—most manifest in the prosperous commercial and industrial centres in
the western provinces, which attracted many members of persecuted
religious or political minorities. Among these were southern lowlanders,
French Huguenots, and Portuguese Jews, along with many people who sought
to improve their economic situation, such as Germans and non-Iberian
Jews. In the 20th century, immigrants from the former Dutch overseas
colonies added to the influx; they included Indonesians and peoples from
the Moluccas and from Suriname on the northeast coast of South America.
In recent decades, however, as Muslims from Turkey and Morocco arrived
in large numbers, Dutch embracement of diversity has been more tenuous.
At the beginning of the 21st century, not only did a virulent
anti-immigrant movement emerge, but also the government required that
immigrants pass a test in their country of origin relating to Dutch
language and culture before they were allowed to enter The Netherlands.
Languages
The language in the whole of the country is Dutch, sometimes
referred to as Netherlandic, a Germanic language that is also spoken by
the inhabitants of northern Belgium (where it is called Flemish).
Afrikaans, an official language of South Africa, is a variant of the
Dutch spoken by 17th-century emigrants from the Holland and Zeeland
regions. Apart from Dutch, the inhabitants of the northern province of
Friesland also speak their own language (called Frisian in English),
which is closer to English than to either Dutch or German. In the major
cities especially, many people are fluent in several languages,
reflecting the country’s geographic position, its history of occupation,
and its attraction for tourists. English, French, and German are among
the languages commonly heard.
The heritage of Dutch humanism
The considerable hospitality exhibited by the Dutch is perhaps to
some extent rooted in the spirit of humanism that was typical of the
Dutch Republic of the 16th to the 18th century. Figures such as
Desiderius Erasmus in the 16th century and Hugo Grotius in the 17th
century epitomize that spirit. It resulted in a rather pragmatic mode of
thinking that has dominated Dutch bourgeois culture since the 16th
century, coexisting with growing commercial acumen. Evolving Dutch
society came to encompass a diversity of religious traditions, from
rigid Calvinism and more-tolerant forms of Protestantism to conformist
Roman Catholicism. Calvinism was always the religion of the national
elite, while Roman Catholicism could be practiced only behind closed
doors before 1798 (when all religions were pronounced equal before the
law), and at various times certain sects were persecuted. In comparison
with some of its neighbours, The Netherlands historically has shown a
remarkable degree of religious tolerance.
In terms of formal allegiance, the present Dutch population can be
divided into three almost equal groups relative to religion: Roman
Catholics (the southern provinces of Limburg and Noord-Brabant are
traditionally almost monolithically Catholic, but in terms of absolute
numbers more Catholics live north of the great rivers than in
Noord-Brabant and Limburg), Protestants (particularly the adherents to
the Netherlands Reformed Church), and the nonreligious. The adherents of
Islam have developed a wide range of institutions in The Netherlands and
constituted about 6 percent of the population at the turn of the 21st
century.
Secularization has made its mark in The Netherlands; the Christian
Democrat parties of the centre, whose political platform included planks
such as public funding for religious education, had attracted more than
50 percent of the vote up to the 1960s, but in the 1990s they were
ejected from government for the first time in the 20th century.
Nonetheless, the educational institutions and political parties that
evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries along denominational
lines remain as potent as the more or less secularized parties and
institutions that sprang from socialist and liberal movements. The
“pillarization” of Dutch society—that is, the founding of separate
institutions such as hospitals, schools, and periodicals by various
groups—commands much less religiosity and devotion now, but these
organizations are still central to education, political life, and public
service.
These more or less converging societal groupings have not completely
obliterated a range of age-old regional cultural distinctions. They are
sometimes vividly preserved, as in the case of the northern province of
Friesland, which proudly conserves the ancient Frisian culture. With
more-recent immigration, new cultural groups are becoming significant.
Settlement patterns
Modern urbanization in The Netherlands took place mainly in the 20th
century. In 1900 more than half the population was still living in
villages or towns of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. A century later this
proportion had decreased to about one-tenth. There has, nevertheless,
been a decrease in the city-proper populations of the large metropolitan
centres. These inner cities are now becoming economic and cultural
centres, their populations having spread outward in search of newer
housing and greater living space in suburbs, new residential quarters of
rural settlements, and new towns. In the 1960s and ’70s the authorities
stimulated this development by subsidizing house building in a number of
so-called growth nuclei and by moving several groupings of public
offices from the western core area of the country to more-rural areas in
the north, east, and south. More recently, however, government planning
policy has aimed at again concentrating the population in and around the
existing cities, especially in the western portion of the country.
In this part of The Netherlands, the bulk of the population is
concentrated in the horseshoe-shaped urban core known as the Randstad
(“Rim City,” or “City on the Edge”), comprising such cities as
Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden, Haarlem, Amsterdam, Hilversum, and
Utrecht. Extensions of the Randstad stretch toward the east (Arnhem,
Nijmegen) and the south (Breda, Tilburg, Eindhoven), thus forming the
so-called Central Netherlands Urban Ring. Other urban centres are
Groningen in the northeast, Enschede and Hengelo in the east, and
Maastricht and Heerlen in the southeast. It is government policy to keep
traditional towns and cities separated by strips of agricultural or
recreational land.
Demographic trends
Exceptionally high fertility rates until the 1960s contributed to
The Netherlands’ being one of the world’s most densely populated
countries. Since then, trends have shifted, owing mainly to wider use of
birth control pills (a consequence of growing secularization) and to the
increased participation of women in higher education and the workforce.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Dutch birth and death rates were
both among the world’s lowest, resulting in a somewhat older society,
with most population growth arising from immigration.
Emigrants exceeded immigrants by an average of almost 20,000 each
year from 1947 to 1954. Thereafter the economy and labour potential of
the more industrialized European countries attracted an increasing
number of labour migrants from southern Europe, Turkey, and Morocco, so
that the balance of in-migration and out-migration remained more or less
static. From 1970 there was a continuous immigrant surplus, and in the
early 21st century, one-fifth of The Netherlands’ population was made up
of residents born abroad or with at least one foreign-born parent. In
the late 1990s, with most other doors to immigration closed by
government policy and the possibility of entry for family reunification
largely expended, the numbers of applications for asylum were high.
There was also an increase in the immigration of Dutch nationals from
the Netherlands Antilles. Following legislation in 2001 that further
tightened immigration restrictions, the annual number of asylum seekers
fell, but the issue of immigration remained on the political forefront.
For many years prior to 1970, internal migration showed a constant
flow from the more rural provinces in the north, east, and south toward
the more strongly urbanized western part of the country. After 1970,
however, the trend toward migration to the west was reversed. Subsequent
emigration was mainly from Zuid-Holland and Noord-Holland (the most
heavily populated provinces) toward Utrecht and the less densely
populated provinces, where government regional policy stimulated
industrial growth—Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe, Gelderland, and
Zeeland.
Economy
Since World War II, The Netherlands has been a highly
industrialized country occupying a central position in the economic life
of western Europe. Although agriculture accounts for a small percentage
of the national income and labour force, it remains a highly specialized
contributor to Dutch exports. Because of the scarcity of mineral
resources—with the important exception of natural gas—the country is
dependent on large imports of basic materials.
The Netherlands has a market economy, but the state traditionally has
been a significant participant in such fields as transportation,
resource extraction, and heavy industry. The government also employs a
substantial percentage of the total labour force and effects investment
policy. Nonetheless, during the 1980s, when the ideological climate
favoured market economics, considerable privatization was initiated,
government economic intervention was reduced, and the welfare state was
restructured. State-owned companies such as DSM (Dutch State Mines) and
KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) were among those privatized. Nonetheless, The
Netherlands has, relatively speaking, a highly regulated mixed economy.
Since World War II, economic development has been consciously
stimulated by government policy, and state subsidies have been granted
to attract industry and services toward the relatively underdeveloped
north and certain other pockets of economic stagnation. Despite these
subsidies, the western part of the country remains the centre of new
activity, especially in the service sector.
Agriculture
The country’s agricultural land is divided into grassland, arable
farmland, and horticultural land. Dutch dairy farming is highly
developed; the milk yield per acre of grassland and the yield per cow
are among the highest in the world. A good percentage of the total milk
production is exported after being processed into such dairy products as
butter, cheese, and condensed milk. Meat and eggs are produced in
intensively farmed livestock holdings, where enormous numbers of pigs,
calves, and poultry are kept in large sheds and fed mainly on imported
fodder. Most cereals for human consumption as well as fodder are
imported.
Horticulture carried on under glass is of special importance. The
export of hothouse tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, cut flowers, and
houseplants has greatly increased, and The Netherlands now contains a
substantial share of the total European horticultural area under glass.
Open-air horticulture also produces fruit, vegetables, cut flowers, and
bulbs, the latter from the world-famous colourful bulb fields. Only
one-tenth of the land is forested. The Dutch fishing industry, while not
large, is nevertheless significant. At the beginning of the 21st
century, three-fourths of the fish consumed in The Netherlands was
foreign caught, yet about four-fifths of the total catch was exported.
As a result, the country is unusual in exporting more fish than it
imports.
Resources and power
With the increasing use of oil and especially natural gas, coal
mining (concentrated in the southeast) was discontinued in 1974 because
of the rising cost of production. The Netherlands imports several
million tons of coal annually to meet domestic and industrial needs,
including those of such industrial installations as the steel works of
IJmuiden at the mouth of the North Sea Canal.
The production of crude oil, of which there are minimal deposits,
covers only a small part of Dutch requirements. The wells are located
near Schoonebeek, in the northeast, and in the southwest. Large amounts
of crude oil are imported for refining in The Netherlands, and much of
the refined petroleum is exported.
The discovery of natural gas in 1959 had a tremendous influence on
the development of the Dutch economy. The gas fields are in the
northeastern Netherlands—with the largest field at Slochteren—and
beneath the Dutch sector of the North Sea. Under the Geneva Convention
of 1958, The Netherlands was allocated a 22,000-square-mile
(57,000-square-km) block of the continental shelf of the North Sea, an
area larger than the country itself. Technological advances led to an
increase in offshore production in the last decades of the 20th century.
One-third of the natural gas produced is exported, primarily to
countries of the European Union (EU), helping to improve the balance of
payments in the economic sector—in which The Netherlands has usually had
its largest deficit. The natural gas discoveries began a trend in Dutch
industries toward greater use of domestically produced fuel. Purchase,
transport, and sale of the gas are in the hands of The Netherlands
Natural Gas Company, a limited company in which shares are held by Dutch
and American firms and the Dutch state. One of the results of the
reliance on gas is that nuclear power is very limited in The
Netherlands. On the other hand, the flat maritime landscape is well
suited to the use of wind turbines, which are increasingly employed in
agricultural areas. Among the country’s other resources are zinc,
extracted at Budel, sodium at Delfzijl, and magnesium at Veendam.
Manufacturing
Modern Dutch industrial development began relatively late, about
1870, and production rose even during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Further development became a priority after World War II, when ascending
population figures and growing farm-labour surpluses necessitated the
creation of tens of thousands of jobs each year. Manufacturing
industries accounted for about one-fifth of the labour force in the
early 21st century but only about one-eighth of production value.
Important components of the manufacturing sector include food and
beverages, metal, chemical, petroleum products, and electrical and
electronics industries. Textile manufacturing, shipbuilding, and
aircraft construction were important historically, but employment in
those sectors has greatly declined. The government has encouraged new
industrial development in the fields of microelectronics, biotechnology,
and the so-called digital economy.
Finance, trade, and services
Commercial banking in The Netherlands is in the hands of a few large
concerns, and there has been a trend toward mergers of banks and
insurance companies over several decades. The state-owned Netherlands
Central Bank supervises the banking system. The Amsterdam Stock
Exchange, one of the oldest in the world, was founded in the early
1600s.
Trade is conducted mainly with Europe and North America. The member
states of the EU are The Netherlands’ dominant trading partners,
receiving three-fourths of Dutch exports and providing one-half of the
country’s imports. In 1958 (just as the Common Market was established)
some 40 percent of Dutch exports went to West Germany (now Germany),
Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Italy. By the beginning of the 21st
century, the main trading partners were Germany, Belgium, the United
Kingdom, France, Italy, the United States, Russia, and China. In the
same period, the service industry accounted for about seven-tenths of
the labour force and about two-thirds of gross domestic product (GDP),
with tourism playing a vital role. The most frequent foreign visitors
are Germans, Britons, Americans, and Belgians.
Labour and taxation
Dutch employers are organized mainly in separate but closely
cooperating organizations: one Roman Catholic and Protestant and one
nondenominational. The labour force had a tripartite organization before
the Socialist and Roman Catholic unions merged as Netherlands Trade
Union Federation (Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging; FNV), leaving the
Protestant union, the National Federation of Christian Trade Unions
(Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond; CNV), and a few small independent
organizations far behind in membership. Employer organizations and
labour unions are represented on the Joint Industrial Labour Council,
established in 1945 for collective bargaining, and on the Social and
Economic Council, which serves mainly to advise the government. These
corporatist arrangements were substantially deregulated in the 1980s as
neoliberal, market-oriented policies were carried out. Socioeconomic
planning remains extremely important, however, and the Central Planning
Bureau’s economic models are integral to all forms of economic policy.
The Dutch government uses both direct and indirect taxation to
finance its extensive welfare programs. In 1969 it began levying a
value-added tax (VAT). In addition to a graduated personal income tax,
there is also a property tax, a motor vehicle tax, an excise tax on
certain products, an energy tax, and a tax on legal transactions.
Transportation and telecommunications
In The Netherlands transportation is of special importance because
the country functions as a gateway for the traffic of goods between
western Europe and the rest of the world. (Amsterdam, for example, has
been the centre of diamond exchange for centuries.) Trade flows through
Dutch harbours, continuing its passage by riverboat, train, truck, and
pipeline. Maritime traffic accounts for more than half the total amount
of goods loaded and unloaded in The Netherlands, and, indeed, the whole
southern part of the North Sea may be likened to an immense traffic
square, fed by the Thames, Rhine, Maas, and Schelde rivers, with links
into the hinterland of the continent that make it one of the greatest
commercial arteries of the world. Rotterdam has the country’s
best-equipped modern harbour, the largest on the continent. Europoort,
the region between Rotterdam and the North Sea, can easily be reached by
the biggest oceangoing ships; it serves as an approach via the New
Waterway Canal to Rotterdam harbour. For some 40 years, until it was
eclipsed by busier Asian ports in the early 21st century, Rotterdam
handled more tonnage than any other harbour in the world. In petroleum
processing too, Rotterdam is one of the world’s leading centres, with
facilities to receive the largest supertankers. The number of rivercraft
is probably unsurpassed by any other country.
Other important ports, though dwarfed by Rotterdam-Europoort, are
Amsterdam and, on the Western Schelde, Flushing and Terneuzen. KLM
initiated scheduled service between Amsterdam and London in 1920 and
became one of the world’s leading airlines, merging with Air France in
2004 to form Air France-KLM. Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol)—on the site of
the former Haarlem Lake at about 13 feet (4 metres) below sea level—is
among Europe’s largest airports. Smaller airports of international
importance are Rotterdam (Zestienhoven), Eindhoven, and Maastricht.
In terms of internal traffic, motor vehicles, accommodated by a
comprehensive road network, dominate both passenger and goods transport,
despite the fact that there is a dense modern railway network. Dutch
road haulage companies are market leaders and constitute a large slice
of such business in the EU. Moreover, Dutch shipping companies handle
about two-fifths of the EU’s freight transport by water. The
Netherlands’ network of inland waterways, made up of some 3,000 miles
(4,800 km) of rivers and canals, is linked with Belgian, French, and
German systems. Besides such natural waterways as the Rhine, Lek, Waal,
and Maas rivers, many artificial waterways—the Juliana Canal, the
Amsterdam-Rhine River Canal (between Amsterdam and Tiel), the Maas-Waal
Canal (west of Nijmegen), and others—connect the major ports on the
coast with the hinterland.
The telecommunications system in The Netherlands is highly advanced,
with extensive fibre-optic and mobile networks. Per capita cell phone
usage in The Netherlands is comparable to that of most western European
countries (though considerably less pervasive than in Scandinavia); per
capita personal computer use is high by western European standards.
Government and society
Constitutional framework
The Kingdom of The Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy. The
monarchy is hereditary in both the male and female lines. The
constitution, which dates from 1814, declares that the head of state,
the monarch, is inviolable and thereby embodies the concept of
ministerial responsibility. It further provides that no government may
remain in power against the will of Parliament. The States General
(Staten-Generaal), as Parliament is officially known, consists of two
houses: a First Chamber, whose members are elected by the members of the
councils of the 12 provinces, and a directly elected Second Chamber.
Both houses share legislative power with the government, officially
known as the Crown (Kroon), defined as the head of state acting in
conjunction with the ministers. The two houses control government
policy. The First Chamber can only approve or reject legislation but
does not have the power to propose or amend it.
Every four years, after elections to the Second Chamber have been
held, the government resigns, and a process of bargaining starts between
elected party leaders aspiring to form a government that will be assured
of the support of a parliamentary majority. It usually takes a few
months of maneuvering before a formateur, as the main architect of such
a coalition is known, is ready to accept a royal invitation to form a
government. The head of state then formally appoints the ministers. In
the event of political crises resulting in the fall of the government
before the end of a four-year period, the same process of bargaining
takes place. The monarch, acting on the advice of the ministries, has
the right to dissolve one or both chambers, at which time new elections
are held.
Local government
In local government, the most important institutions are the
municipalities (gemeenten). Since World War II the number of
municipalities—which once totaled more than 1,000—has been dramatically
reduced as a result of redivisions. Each municipality is run by a
directly elected council that is presided over by a burgemeester
(mayor), who is appointed by the national government and serves as
chairman of the executive, the members of which are elected by and from
the council; in the early 21st century, there was active discussion of
directly electing mayors. In those areas to which the councils’ own
ordinances are applicable, the municipalities are autonomous. In many
instances, national legislation or provincial ordinances provide for the
cooperation of municipal authorities.
The country is divided into 12 provinces: Groningen, Friesland,
Drenthe, Overijssel, Flevoland, Gelderland, Utrecht, Noord-Holland,
Zuid-Holland, Zeeland, Noord-Brabant, and Limburg. Their administrative
system has the same structure as the municipal government: directly
elected councils (staten), which elect the members of the executive,
except for the chairman, who is appointed by the national government.
The main functions of the provinces include oversight of the
municipalities within their borders and of district water-control boards
(waterschappen).
Justice
In The Netherlands the ordinary administration of justice is
entrusted exclusively to judges appointed for life; there is no jury
system. There are cantonal courts (kantongerechten), which exercise
jurisdiction in a whole range of minor civil and criminal cases.
More-important cases are handled by one of the district courts
(rechtbanken), which also can hear appeals from cantonal court
decisions. Appeals against decisions from the district courts are heard
by one of five courts of appeal (gerechtshoven). The Supreme Court (Hoge
Raad) ensures a uniform application of the law, but it cannot determine
constitutionality. In the legislative process itself, the government and
Parliament together pass judgment on the constitutionality of a bill
under consideration. Laws that are at variance with the country’s
international agreements cannot be enforced by the courts.
The Netherlands also plays an important role in international law.
The Hague is the seat of the International Criminal Court, the
International Court of Justice, and Europol.
Political process
The Second Chamber, the provincial councils, and the municipal
councils are elected according to a system of proportional
representation. In general elections for the Second Chamber, it can take
as little as 0.66 percent of the overall vote to get one of the seats in
the chamber. As a result, a large number of parties and political
movements are represented in Parliament. The principal Dutch political
parties in the early 21st century included the Christian Democratic
Appeal (CDA), formed in the 1970s from a coalition of the leading
Christian parties; the Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid; PvdA); the
liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor
Vrijheid en Democratie; VVD); the Socialist Party; Democrats 66 (D66);
and the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid; PVV), led by Geert
Wilders, an anti-Islam populist, who draws on support for the now
defunct List Pim Fortuyn (LPF), named for its founder, Wilhelmus
Fortuyn, an anti-immigration populist who was assassinated in 2002.
There is also a comparatively high proportion of women representatives
in the States General (more than one-third in the early 21st century).
The franchise is extended to all Dutch citizens who have reached age 18,
except for a few special groups, such as the mentally impaired. About
three-fourths of the citizenry are registered voters.
Security
The Dutch armed forces consist of an army, a navy, and an air force;
there is also a small unit of military police. Until the 1990s, all male
citizens were liable for military service at age 18; however, the end of
the Cold War, the reunification of Germany, and the disbandment of the
Warsaw Pact rapidly changed Dutch defense needs. The military is now an
all-volunteer force open to males and females who are at least age 20.
With fewer personnel than before, it concentrates on crisis control and
higher mobility.
Health and welfare
Following World War II, The Netherlands developed an elaborate
system of social security, providing all its citizens with universal
health care and old age and unemployment benefits. All citizens are
entitled to four national insurance schemes: the General Old Age
Pensions Act, the General Widows and Orphans Act, the Exceptional
Medical Expenses Act, and General Disability Benefits. There also are
four employee insurance schemes: the Sickness Benefits Act, the
Disability Insurance Act, the Compulsory Health Insurance Act, and the
Unemployment Insurance Act. The system is supplemented by a number of
social services, the most important being the General Family Allowance
Act, which provides for family allowances for children up to age 17 and
under certain circumstances for older children (including those not
entitled to student grants), and the National Assistance Act, under
which benefits are paid to claimants who have little or no income.
The system is one of the most generous in the world, but since the
1980s its costs have become increasingly prohibitive. As with the
systems employed by many other Western democracies, there were major
revisions to the Dutch scheme, such as cost-sharing provisions and
restrictions involving temporary workers, the self-employed, and
non-Dutch nationals. The government pension is used in combination with
pensions from employers and from private insurance plans.
Housing
A severe housing shortage began developing after the mid-20th
century and became a source of political controversy. By the 1970s, in
the face of continually growing demand, even an unprecedented boom in
housing construction proved inadequate. Demographic changes led to a
rapid increase in the number of households, and rising standards of
living fueled the consumption of space per person. This crisis abated by
the mid-1970s, only to be replaced by a financial one.
Rent controls, as well as alternative investment opportunities and
the introduction of the social security of the welfare state, reduced
the private rental sector from more than 60 percent in 1947 to less than
15 percent by the late 1980s. The expansion of the postwar housing stock
was made possible only by massive investment in subsidized rental
housing, run by not-for-profit housing associations. Concurrently, the
generously subsidized homeowner sector expanded. Today just over half of
Dutch homes are owned by their occupants (still a low figure by EU
standards). Since the early 1990s the government has stepped back from
its central role in controlling and subsidizing rents and has
concentrated available public resources more on lower income groups. By
2001, a century after the Housing Act of 1901, The Netherlands
officially declared an end to the housing shortage.
Education
All primary, secondary, and higher education is provided by either
governmental (municipal or state) or private institutions. The latter
are, with a few exceptions, run by Protestant and Roman Catholic
organizations. All private schools are, when they conform to legally
fixed standards, financed from governmental funds on an equal footing
with their public (openbare) counterparts. Dutch secondary education is
not a comprehensive system (that is, the same for all pupils) but one
consisting of several tracks. Among these are the five-year Higher
General Education track, the mandatory preparation for institutions of
higher education other than the university; and the six-year Preparatory
Scientific Secondary Education track, which is mandatory for university
admittance.
The system of higher education is a binary one. There are dozens of
institutions for Higher Professional Education, and they cover many
professional fields complementary to those served by the country’s
principal universities. The latter are all publicly financed. A number
of the major universities cover a general range of disciplines,
including the four state universities—of Leiden (founded 1575),
Groningen (1614), Utrecht (1636), and Limburg at Maastricht (1976)—and
the (former municipal) University of Amsterdam (1632), the Erasmus
University at Rotterdam (1973), the (originally Calvinist) Free
University at Amsterdam (1880), the (originally Roman Catholic) Radboud
University of Nijmegen (1923), and the University of Tilburg (1927).
Other governmental universities are more specialized: the universities
of technology at Delft (1842), Eindhoven (1956), and Enschede (Twente
University; 1961) and the Agricultural University at Wageningen (1918).
In addition, the Open University, established in 1984, provides for both
university and vocational education through correspondence courses.
Environmental control
In The Netherlands, as in all industrialized countries, the
increasing pollution of both the natural and man-made environments is a
major problem. Pollution in The Netherlands has certain specific aspects
that are closely linked to the country’s geography. For example, the
maritime situation, together with the low-lying character of the
coastlands, gives rise to a serious salination problem. The great
European rivers—the Rhine, Maas, and Schelde—have historically
transported many waste products to The Netherlands and into the
adjoining North Sea. High population density and its associated
intensive land use also increase the concentration of all forms of
pollution.
Dutch policy regarding the environment is among the toughest and most
ambitious in the world. The government sets stiff targets for reducing
pollution and other environmental damage, which firms are then invited
to meet by their own measures. Since the late 1980s national
environmental policy plans have increasingly addressed the causes of
pollution. Thus, commuters are encouraged to travel by public transport;
farmers are induced to reduce the use of pesticides and artificial
fertilizers; and industries are regulated to promote cleaner production
processes and to reduce emissions of pollutants into the air, water, and
soil.
Cultural life
The cultural life of The Netherlands is varied and lively. Dutch
painting and crafts are world renowned, and Dutch painters are among the
greatest the world has ever known. The Dutch themselves take great pride
in their cultural heritage, and the government is heavily involved in
subsidizing the arts, while abjuring direct artistic control of cultural
enterprises. Indeed, the long-enduring tradition of Dutch freedom of
expression has undoubtedly played a significant role in the flowering of
Dutch culture through the ages.
Daily life and social customs
The symbols of Dutchness—wooden shoes, lace caps, tulips, and
windmills—are known throughout the world, but they tell only a small
part of the story of contemporary life in The Netherlands. Except in
places such as Vollendam and Marken and on occasions of national
celebration, traditional dress long ago gave way to a style of dress in
line with that of the rest of northern Europe. Flowering bulbs and
tubers, including tulips, remain an important export commodity, and
various festivals celebrate them. They are also displayed in the annual
spring flower exhibition at Keukenhof Gardens and in venues such as the
Aalsmeer flower market.
Dutch cuisine is notable for many individual dishes, including filled
pancakes (pannekoeken); pastries such as banket (an almond paste-filled
treat), oliebollen (a deep-fried pastry dusted with powdered sugar), and
speculaas (spice cookies); and a great variety of hard cheeses,
including Edam and Gouda, the world-renowned varieties that originated
in the towns for which they are named. Jenever, the Dutch ancestor of
gin, is a malted barley-based spirit produced in two basic types, jonge
(‘‘young’’) and oude ("old," which contains a higher percentage of malt
wine and thus is stronger and often yellowish as a result of the aging
of the malt wine). Both types contain a variety of botanicals, notably
juniper (genever), for flavouring. Dutch licorice, which is
exceptionally salty, is a popular candy. Indonesian rijsttafel (‘‘rice
table’’)—which developed as a method by which Dutch plantation owners
could sample many Indonesian foods in the colonies—was imported to The
Netherlands and has become a staple cuisine in larger Dutch cities. In
addition to the holidays of Christian tradition (Easter, Christmas,
Pentecost, and Ascension), the Dutch celebrate Queen’s Day (April 30),
Remembrance Day (May 4), and Liberation Day (May 5), though the last is
commemorated only at five-year intervals.
The arts
Painting and sculpture
The history of Dutch painting offers such a deep, rich lode of names
that only a few can be touched on here. Certainly among the most revered
are those of Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh. Rembrandt,
painting in the 17th century, became a master of light and shadow, a
technique reflected in his landscapes as well as such portraits as his
monumental group portrait now known as Night Watch. Van Gogh, born in
the 19th century, was a powerful influence in the development of modern
art.
Among other great painters of the Low Countries are Jan van Eyck, the
founder of the Flemish school; allegorist Hiëronymus Bosch; portraitist
Frans Hals; landscapists Albert Cuyp and Jacob van Ruisdael; still-life
artists such as Johannes Vermeer, Willem Heda, and Willem Kalf; and the
geometrically inclined Piet Mondrian. (For a broader discussion of Dutch
painting, see painting, Western.) Highlights of Dutch architecture range
from the Dutch Baroque works of Pieter Post to 21st-century
practitioners such as Rem Koolhaas. The Schroeder House (1924), in
Utrecht, designed by De Stijl architect Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, was
designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000.
Literature and the performing arts
Dutch literature and theatre have always been handicapped by the
smallness of the proportion of the human race that speaks Dutch. Perhaps
the greatest name of Dutch letters was that of the Renaissance humanist
Erasmus. Contemporary Dutch writers who are internationally known
include Harry Mulisch and Cees Nooteboom. The country’s performing arts
are widely encouraged and supported. The National Ballet at Amsterdam
and the Netherlands Dance Theatre at The Hague are internationally
renowned. Theatre companies are all private foundations, though the
state and the municipalities provide financial assistance. The Dutch
film industry is small. Among the most noteworthy recent directors are
Johan van der Keuken, Marleen Gorris, and Paul Verhoeven. The
International Film Festival Rotterdam is the country’s leading film
festival, and the Nederlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam is the national
motion picture archive.
Music
The Netherlands has not produced composers of the stature of some of
its neighbouring countries, although it has built a fine reputation for
performance. The Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra is world famous, and
the Residentie Orchestra at The Hague and the Rotterdam Philharmonic
Orchestra also have fine reputations. Various other towns have
orchestras and choral groups, and there is a Dutch National Opera
Company. Noted musical events include the World Music Festival at
Kerkrade and the North Sea Jazz Festival at Rotterdam.
Cultural institutions
The Netherlands has a rich range of state-supported museums. The
most famous is the Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam, noted for its collection of
works by the great 17th-century Dutch masters (especially Rembrandt).
Other major museums endowed by the state include the Mauritshuis in The
Hague, Het Loo (the former royal palace) in Apeldoorn, and the Stedelijk
Museum in Amsterdam, recognized for its collection of contemporary
paintings. Two museums, the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam
and the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo (Veluwe), are renowned for
their collections of paintings by van Gogh. Often overlooked are a
number of exceptional smaller museums such as the Huis Lambert van
Meerten (Lambert van Meerten House) in Delft and the Nederlands
Tegelmuseum (Netherlands Tile Museum) in Otterlo, both of which
specialize in tiles. The most popular folk museums are the
Openluchtmuseum (Open Air Museum) at Arnhem and the Zuiderzeemuseum at
Enkhuizen.
Sports and recreation
Favourite regions for open-air recreation are the seacoasts with
their wide sandy beaches and the many interior lakes in the western and
northern parts of the country. They are frequented by both Dutch and
foreign visitors. The Dutch also are attracted to hilly areas, such as
the Veluwe, while foreign visitors go in droves to the old cities in the
western part of the country, with Amsterdam ranking as the most popular
destination. Favourite foreign vacation spots for the Dutch are the
Mediterranean coasts during the summer holidays and the Alps during
winter holidays.
Cycling is a popular activity—for commuting, recreation, and
sport—involving at least half the population. Other favourite sports
include tennis, field hockey, and ice skating. The Elfstedentocht is a
popular ice-skating race that passes through 11 cities in the province
of Friesland; it is held only during winters with heavy ice. The Dutch
are also avid players and fans of football (soccer), and club teams such
as the storied Ajax FC of Amsterdam and the Dutch national team have
experienced much international success, not least in the 1970s, when the
national team, led by Johan Cruyff and Johan Neeskens, pioneered the
concept of “total football,” which calls for players with all-around
skills to perform both defensive and attacking duties. The Netherlands
made its Olympic debut in the 1900 Games in Paris, and the Summer Games
were held in Amsterdam in 1928. Dutch Olympic athletes have won medals
in cycling, speed skating, and swimming.
Media and publishing
The constitution guarantees freedom of the press but does not allow
journalists to protect their sources. The Dutch press has a
long-standing reputation for high-quality reporting, newspapers having
been printed in Amsterdam as early as 1618. One of the oldest newspapers
in Europe is the Oprechte Haerlemse Courant, now called the Haarlems
Dagblad, which was founded in 1656. By far the greatest circulation is
enjoyed by the right-of-centre De Telegraaf, from Amsterdam. The most
widely read newspapers in political and intellectual circles are the
liberal NRC Handelsblad in Rotterdam and the left-leaning De Volkskrant
in Amsterdam. Several free tabloids and Internet-based dailies have
taken over some market share.
The majority of radio and broadcast television transmissions are
produced by a small number of associations, all under private
initiative. They were originally very much part of the pillarization
system, and each represented a political or religious point of view,
such as Roman Catholicism, various forms of Protestantism, Socialism,
Humanism, and others. Most of these associations, however, have long
since lost their ideological distinctiveness and illustrate how the
shell of the pillarized system has remained in existence long after its
contents have ebbed away. Nevertheless, religious organizations,
political parties, and small factional groups are still guaranteed
access to the airwaves by Netherlands Broadcasting Corporation, which is
responsible for news and the programming of unreserved airtime. The
government itself exerts no influence on the programming, and
advertising is restricted and is controlled by a separate foundation.
All public broadcasting is financed by a licensing fee and by the yield
from television and radio advertising. Commercial broadcasting was
introduced in the early 1990s, and there are now a host of terrestrial
and satellite channels that can be received in most parts of the
country, thanks to the extremely dense Dutch cable television network.
Marcus Willem Heslinga
Henk Meijer
Michael J. Wintle
History
This section surveys the history of the Kingdom of The
Netherlands from its founding in 1579 to the present. For a discussion
of the period prior to that date, see Low Countries, history of the.
The Union of Utrecht
On Jan. 23, 1579, the agreement at Utrecht was concluded, forming
a “closer union” within the larger union of the Low Countries led by the
States General sitting in Brussels. Included in the Union were the
provinces and cities committed to carrying on resistance to Spanish
rule: Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland (Guelders), and Zutphen (a
part of Overijssel) as the first signatories, followed in the next year
by the whole of Overijssel, most of Friesland, and Groningen, all in the
north; and in the south by the cities of Antwerp and Breda in Brabant,
and Ghent, Brugge (Bruges), and Ypres (Ieper) in Flanders. Designed to
establish a league for conduct of the war of independence and ultimately
to strengthen the central government in Brussels, the Union of Utrecht
became in fact the foundation of a separate state and a distinct country
in the northern Netherlands. The new state was named the United
Provinces of the Netherlands, or, more briefly, the Dutch Republic, and
its government was known in the international community as the States
General.
The people of the northern Netherlands began to be distinguished from
the inhabitants of the south (to whom the name Flemings continued to
cling) by the appellation Hollanders (French: Hollandais; Italian:
Olandese; German: Holländer; and so forth), after their principal
province. The English, however, came to apply exclusively to the
Hollanders the term Dutch, which previously they had applied to all
German speakers (from German Deutsch, Dutch Duits). The name
Netherlanders, which remained in use in the Low Countries for the
inhabitants of the United Provinces specifically and for all those,
north or south, who spoke Dutch (Netherlandic), passed out of currency
in most foreign countries or came to be restricted to the northerners.
The transformation had a price: the erosion of the bond of historical
identity between northerners and southerners—or Dutch and Belgians, as
they would be called beginning in the 19th century.
The treaty that formed the basis of the new northern union
established a military league to resist the Spaniards on a “perpetual”
basis, and it provided for closer political arrangements between the
provinces than those of “allies” in the ordinary sense. The provinces
united “for all time as if they were a single province”; each remained
sovereign in its internal affairs, but all acted as a body in foreign
policy. Decisions on war and peace and on federal taxation could be made
only unanimously. The union did not throw off the formal sovereignty of
the king of Spain, but it confirmed the effective powers of the
provincial stadtholders (formally the “lieutenants,” or governors, of
the king) as their political leaders (there was no “stadtholder of the
United Provinces,” as foreigners often assumed, although several of the
provincial stadtholderates were often united in the same person). The
union moved away from the religious settlement embodied in the
Pacification of Ghent of two years before and toward a predominance of
the Calvinists and their monopoly of public practice of religion in the
key provinces of Holland and Zeeland.
The immediate political significance of the union was that it
complemented the Union of Arras, concluded earlier in January, which
began the reconciliation of the southerners with King Philip II of
Spain. The two “unions,” parallel but opposite, thus undermined the
policy of William I (Prince William of Orange) of collaboration between
Roman Catholics and Calvinists throughout the Low Countries in
resistance to the Spanish domination, which required mutual toleration
between the religions. But it took some time before the “general union,”
with its base in the States General at Brussels, fell apart irrevocably.
For another half decade the prince struggled to keep intact the broader
union and at the same time to ensure its military and political support
from abroad. Although Archduke Matthias of Habsburg, named
governor-general by the States General in 1577 after the deposition of
Don Juan, remained the formal head of state until 1581, the prince
continued to exercise his leadership. That the prince was the head and
heart of the rebellion was recognized by Philip II in 1580, when he put
him under the ban of outlawry. William’s Apology in defense of his
conduct was followed in 1581 by the Act of Abjuration (Akte van
Afzwering), by which the States General declared that Philip had
forfeited his sovereignty over the provinces by his persistent tyranny.
This was a declaration of independence for the whole of the Low
Countries, but the military and political events of the next decade
limited its permanent effect to the northern provinces under the “closer
union” of Utrecht.
Foreign intervention
Yet independence did not become William’s objective even after
the proclamation of the Act of Abjuration. Archduke Matthias returned
home in 1581 after William turned to François, duke of Anjou, who agreed
to take over the “lordship” of the Low Countries in 1580. The prince
hoped for assistance from the duke’s brother, King Henry III of France,
and considered the lordship of Anjou as only a kind of limited,
constitutional sovereignty like that which the rebels had hoped to
impose on Philip II at the beginning of their rising. Anjou, however,
saw the lordship as a means to total dominion over the Netherlands.
Irritated by restraints upon his authority, he even attempted the
seizure of power by military force, which resulted in the so-called
French Fury of Jan. 17, 1583, when his troops tried to capture Antwerp.
The coup misfired, but William managed to keep Anjou (who returned to
France) in his post despite the outraged feelings of the Netherlanders.
Holland and Zeeland were on the verge of offering the title of count
to William when he was assassinated on July 10, 1584, at Delft, by
Balthasar Gérard, a fanatical young Roman Catholic from Franche-Comté,
spurred by the promises of the ban of Philip II. William’s death did not
end the rebellion, as Philip had hoped, but it did result in the almost
unnoticed disappearance of the central government in Brussels. The
States General, which now met at The Hague in Holland, represented only
the provinces in the Union of Utrecht.
With the Spaniards steadily overrunning Flanders and Brabant, the
Dutch in their plight did not immediately abandon William’s policy of
seeking foreign assistance. But after Henry III of France and Elizabeth
I of England both refused sovereignty over the country, the States
General in 1586 named as governor-general Robert Dudley, earl of
Leicester, whom Elizabeth had sent to command Dutch and English
auxiliary forces against the Spaniards after the fall of Antwerp.
Leicester, like Anjou before him, endeavoured to make himself absolute
master of the country, relying on the support of popular Calvinism and
of the outlying provinces that were jealous of Holland to create a
strong centralized government under his authority. Holland thwarted
Leicester’s efforts, which culminated in an attempted invasion of
Holland from Utrecht in 1587. With Leicester’s departure, the United
Provinces put aside all efforts to obtain a foreign protectorate and
stood forth as an independent state.
The formation of a new government
Although derived from historical institutions, the government of
the United Provinces was in practice largely a new set of institutions,
not created but confirmed by the Union of Utrecht. Their primary force
lay in the provinces, seven in number (Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht,
Gelderland, Overijssel, Friesland, and Groningen), which were ruled by
assemblies of provincial States representing the towns and the landed
nobility. Although the stadtholders (who after a few years came to be
drawn exclusively from the house of Orange) were elected by the States
of the provinces, they at the same time possessed important prerogatives
in the selection of members of the town governments from which the
provincial assemblies ultimately derived their authority, and they were
the acknowledged military leaders of the republic. Central government
passed from the Council of State to the States General, which was more
explicitly subordinated to provincial authority. Although it conducted
the military and diplomatic work of the republic, the States General
failed to obtain effective rights of direct taxation (except for import
and export duties assigned to the admiralties), and its major decisions
were taken under the rule of unanimity.
In practice the province of Holland, by far the wealthiest province
in the union and the contributor of more than half the revenues of the
central government, became the preponderant political force in the
country, along with the stadtholders of the house of Orange. The
relationship between Holland and the house of Orange governed the
republic’s politics for the two centuries of its existence. As
collaborators, Holland and the princes of Orange could make the clumsy
governmental system work with surprising effectiveness; as rivals, they
imperiled its potency as a state, at least until one or the other
emerged a temporary victor, but neither force was able to rule
permanently without the other.
The decades immediately after 1587 were marked by close collaboration
between Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, “advocate” of Holland (the legal and
executive secretary of the provincial States), and Maurice of Nassau,
William I’s second son (the first, Philip William, became prince of
Orange and remained loyal to Spain), who was named stadtholder of
Holland and Zeeland and became the commander of the republic’s armies.
The result was a series of military triumphs over the Spanish forces
under Alessandro Farnese, duke di Parma e Piacenza. Maurice recaptured
the Dutch territories north of the great rivers and extended them
southward into much of Brabant and enough of Flanders to cut off Antwerp
from the sea. These victories are recorded in the historical memory of
the Dutch as “the closing of the garden,” the territory that became the
republic of the United Provinces and then (with a few additions) the
modern Kingdom of The Netherlands. These victories were accompanied by
England’s and France’s diplomatic recognition of the States General as
the government of an independent state.
Ascendancy of the Dutch economy
The military prowess of the fledgling republic rested upon the
wealth of Holland—which managed in wartime to maintain and extend its
trade to all Europe and, after the turn of the century, even to East
Asia. Amsterdam replaced Antwerp, the great port on the Schelde River,
as the principal warehouse and trading centre for all Europe, even while
Holland maintained the leadership in shipping it had already garnered
during the 16th century. The foundation of Dutch economic prosperity lay
in the fishing and shipping industries. Even during the period of
Antwerp’s ascendancy, ships from Holland and Zeeland had carried a large
portion of the goods that passed through the Schelde, and now that
Amsterdam had taken over from Antwerp, Dutch shipping only expanded its
predominance. Dutch fishermen had harvested the North Sea for centuries,
and the salted cargoes were sold widely throughout western and central
Europe.
Dutch trade benefited, as had that of Flanders, from the location of
the country at the nexuses of the great north-south and east-west trade
routes of Europe. To these was added the route to the East Indies early
in the 17th century. Amsterdam and the lesser ports of Holland and
Zeeland became the principal European suppliers of grain and naval
stores from the Baltic, to which they shipped manufactured goods and
wines from the south. Germany’s principal exports were now shipped down
the Rhine, as Dutch ports replaced the Hanseatic towns of northern
Germany. The bulk of French exports were carried in Dutch ships, and
even Spain and Portugal depended on the Dutch for grain and naval stores
(thereby enabling the Dutch to finance their war of independence).
During the 17th century the Dutch assumed a major role in supplying
grain and other northern commodities to the countries of the
Mediterranean and also became the principal importer of spices and other
luxury goods from the East. England too relied to a great extent upon
Dutch shipping. The Dutch advantages lay not only in their situation but
also in the efficient design of their bulky flyboats (fluiten), manned
by small crews at less cost than any of their competitors.
Modern banking institutions developed to meet the needs of the vastly
expanding trade. Amsterdam’s “exchange bank” was instituted in 1609 to
provide monetary exchange at established rates, but it soon became a
deposit bank for the safe settling of accounts. Unlike the Bank of
England, established almost a century later, it neither managed the
national currency nor acted as a lending institution (except to the
government in emergencies). Private bankers met the need for credit, as
well as acting as brokers in financial transactions. The need for
commercial exports, as well as a growing population at home, spurred
industry in many towns. Although the shipbuilders on the Zaan, northwest
of Amsterdam, and the sugar refiners in particular developed large-scale
operations, sometimes including machinery, Dutch industry generally
remained small in scale, as indeed nearly all manufacturing was in the
17th century.
Dutch industry was heavily dependent on trade, and major manufactures
grew up in the western towns connected with international commerce. In
processing and finishing textiles, Dutch manufacturers were often
capable of undercutting competition abroad. Agricultural products were
also traded. Grain was produced on Dutch farms, especially in the inland
provinces, but rather than compete with the massive grain imports from
the Baltic, coastal agriculture focused on cash crops for use in
industry (flax, hemp, dyes, etc.), dairy and livestock farming, and
market gardening. This kind of market-oriented agriculture was more
profitable than the traditional production of basic foodstuffs.
The Twelve Years’ Truce
The Twelve Years’ Truce, which began in 1609, arose out of
political controversies that were to dominate the republic for the next
two centuries. The collaboration between the house of Orange and the
leaders of the province of Holland, which had thwarted Spain in its
reconquest of the Netherlands north of the great rivers, was replaced by
an intermittent, but often fierce, rivalry between them, in which the
other tensions of Dutch political life were reflected and incorporated:
the jealousy among the lesser provinces of a Holland that they
considered too wealthy, too mighty, and too arrogant but that they knew
they needed for their own defense; the misunderstanding between maritime
and landward provinces; the annoyance of landed nobles that they were
dependent upon the goodwill of burghers in Holland (they preferred the
prince of Orange, whom they saw as one of themselves); the resentment of
the popular classes, men of small property and of none, toward the town
regents (members of government) from whom they looked to the princes of
Orange to protect them; and the antipathy of the Reformed clergy toward
the regents, who obstructed their desire to make the state serve the
church. The debate over whether to conclude a peace with Spain mingled
these various interests with that of the house of Orange, partly because
Maurice opposed peace, partly because it involved making some compromise
with Spain, and partly because it would mean a reduction of his
influence in the state; but the province of Holland in particular, under
Oldenbarnevelt’s leadership, felt that the independence and security of
the United Provinces had been sufficiently assured to permit a reduction
of the immense expenditures for the war. When Spain reduced its
immediate proposal to a truce rather than permanent peace, agreed to
treat the United Provinces as independent and sovereign, which was just
short of outright recognition, and put aside efforts to win guarantees
for Dutch Catholics, the pressure for conclusion of a truce could not be
withstood.
The Twelve Years’ Truce did not, however, end controversy within the
republic. If anything, it only sharpened Maurice of Nassau’s opposition
to Holland and Oldenbarnevelt. The staunch Calvinists endeavoured to
hold the Reformed Church to the strict orthodoxy expounded by Franciscus
Gomarus, a Leiden professor of theology, against the broader, less
rigorous tenets upheld by his colleague Jacobus Arminius. The Gomarists
demanded that the government uphold their principles because the
Reformed Church was the only true church, but they reserved for
themselves the right to declare what the correct doctrines were; and
they vigorously asserted that other religious groups, Catholic,
Protestant, and Jewish alike, should be suppressed or at least penalized
and restricted. On the other hand, the Arminians had the support of the
leaders of Holland and a majority of its towns, who felt that what was
in effect the state church had to be under the authority of the
government. Both out of principle and out of a desire not to hamper
trade with men of all religions, they favoured a broadly inclusive
Reformed Church and toleration for those outside its ranks.
The efforts of Gomarists to seize churches for their own use in
defiance of town authorities led to incipient civil war. Maurice broke
openly with the dominant party in Holland when it attempted to set up
little provincial armies in Holland and Utrecht. In 1618 he acted under
the authority of the States General—in which the majority of provinces
favoured the Gomarists (now called the Contra-Remonstrants because they
had opposed an Arminian petition) over the Remonstrants (Arminians)—to
crush the resistance of Oldenbarnevelt’s party. Oldenbarnevelt, two of
his chief supporters in Holland (including the great jurist Hugo
Grotius), and an ally in Utrecht were arrested and tried for treason by
a special court instituted by the States General. The defendants
affirmed that they were subject only to the authority of the sovereign
province that they served. The sentence, which to foes of the house of
Orange over the centuries became an act of judicial murder, sent
Oldenbarnevelt, then aged 71, with almost four decades of service as
Holland’s leader, to his death by beheading in May 1619. Grotius and
another defendant (the third had committed suicide) were sentenced to
life imprisonment, although Grotius escaped, sensationally, a few years
later.
During those fateful months, the Reformed Church held a national
synod at Dordrecht. Dominated by the Contra-Remonstrants, the synod
expelled the Remonstrants, reaffirmed the doctrines of the church along
Gomarian lines, and ordered the preparation of a new translation of the
Bible (the famous States Bible, which consolidated the Dutch language
much as the contemporary King James Version consolidated English). The
triumph of Maurice and the Contra-Remonstrants meant that war with Spain
would be a virtual certainty upon the expiration of the Twelve Years’
Truce in 1621—all the more because the Spanish authorities in the
southern Netherlands insisted upon including rights for Dutch Catholics
in a permanent treaty and even sought an acknowledgment by the States
General of the nominal overlordship of the king of Spain. Maurice did
not use his new uncontested power to reform the complicated incoherence
of the Dutch constitution; the structure of government and the
distribution of formal power remained the same. Maurice was not a
politically minded ruler and was satisfied as long as he had his way in
military matters. The United Provinces remained essentially republican
in character.
War with Spain (1621–48)
The war resumed in 1621 under Maurice’s leadership. But his
victory touch was gone, and the republic appeared to be in danger when
the great fortress of Breda, on the southern frontier, fell to the
Spaniards in 1625. Only a few weeks before, Maurice had died. The danger
was all the greater because the Austrian Habsburgs, in alliance with
their Spanish cousins, were waging a successful struggle against their
Protestant foes in Germany in the first stages of the Thirty Years’ War.
But Maurice’s half brother, Frederick Henry, who succeeded him as prince
of Orange, stadtholder, and commander in chief, resumed the course of
victory. He completed the recapture of the towns recently gained by the
Spaniards and extended the territory under the States General to the key
fortress of Maastricht on the Maas (Meuse), well to the south. At the
same time, the Dutch navy won a series of victories over the Spaniards,
including Piet Heyn’s celebrated capture of their silver fleet off the
coast of Cuba (1628) and the destruction of a Spanish fleet in the
Downs, off the English coast, by Maarten Tromp in 1639.
Frederick Henry turned out to be a more subtle and purposeful
politician than Maurice. On the one hand, he ended the suppression of
the Remonstrants, with whose religious views he sympathized, without
exasperating the Contra-Remonstrants beyond repair. On the other hand,
he established a firm grip over the policies of the republic, notably by
establishing a close alliance with France aimed at the joint conquest of
the Spanish Netherlands. Frederick Henry’s political predominance within
the republic was based upon his control of the lesser provinces, which
had a majority in the States General and which could outweigh the
influence of Holland.
Gradually Holland turned against him, especially after he arranged
the marriage of his young son William (later William II) to Princess
Mary Stuart, daughter of Charles I of England, on the eve of the English
Civil War (1642–51). This fateful dynastic bond tied the interests of
the house of Orange to the royal families of England, first to the
Stuarts and later to the Hanoverians. The position of the house of
Orange, however, was elevated by the connection; the French monarchy
granted Frederick Henry the honorary address of “His Highness,” normally
restricted to royalty; and the debate over the function of the princes
of Orange in Dutch politics began to be conducted as a controversy over
monarchy. A quasi-royal court rose up around Frederick Henry, and this
in turn only clarified and strengthened the republicanism of his
opponents, especially in Holland, who feared that the political
leadership of the princes of Orange would be turned into an explicit
monarchy.
During the 1640s, however, Frederick Henry lost his physical and
intellectual powers and was unable to prevent Holland from reasserting
its predominance over the republic’s policies. The States General
entered into peace negotiations with Spain at Münster in Westphalia.
Frederick Henry died in 1647 before the conclusion of the talks, and his
son, William II, could not prevent the signing and ratification of the
treaty in January 1648. Spain now formally acknowledged the independence
of the Dutch and indeed even urged its friendship upon the United
Provinces, warning of the threat to both the Dutch and the Spanish from
the rising power of France.
Prince William was not ready to accept a permanent peace, and he
negotiated secretly with the French for a resumption of the war, not
only against Spain but also against republican England, which had
executed his father-in-law, King Charles I, in January 1649. Needing a
powerful army to wage the anticipated war, William bitterly fought the
efforts of Holland to reduce the standing army and thereby to permit
more rapid payment of the huge debt accumulated over the 80 years’
struggle for independence. Efforts at compromise broke down during the
spring of 1650 as the Hollanders and William each sought to compel the
other to concede political inferiority.
William decided to make use of his preponderance in the States
General, and he led a delegation from that body to the towns of Holland
to seek a change of their vote in the States of Holland; such a
delegation was a direct violation of what Holland saw as its provincial
sovereignty. Rebuffed by a number of town governments, most importantly
by those of Amsterdam and Dordrecht, William decided to cut through the
resistance by force. At The Hague, on July 30, 1650, he arrested six of
the States’ deputies from the recalcitrant towns and sent them to the
castle of Loevestein (where Grotius had been imprisoned) on charges of
having resisted lawful orders of the States General. At the same time,
he sent an army to seize Amsterdam, but it was thwarted by delays on its
march and by the determined resistance of the municipal authorities,
supported by the common people. Amsterdam, however, faced a siege that
might gravely imperil its trade, while the besiegers themselves ran the
danger of being drowned should Amsterdam open the dikes. A compromise
was soon worked out whereby William’s opponents were released but were
required to withdraw from government. William had cleared the way for
his policies but at the price of arousing deep fears among the Dutch
people—most of all in the powerful province of Holland—of military
dictatorship, monarchical rule, and renewed involvement of the country
in war. But before he could carry out his plans, William II died of
smallpox in early November. A posthumous son, William III, was born a
week later.
The first stadtholderless period
Fate thus intervened to give Holland’s leaders, now intensely
distrustful of Orangist influence, a chance to take over the country
from the leaderless party of their antagonists. They governed the
country for a little more than two decades, during what is known as the
“first stadtholderless period” (1650–72) because the five leading
provinces did not appoint a successor to William II. (It should be
noted, however, that William II’s cousin, William Frederick, of the
junior branch of Orange-Nassau, continued to govern Friesland as well as
Groningen, which also elected him stadtholder.) During the early months
of 1651, a Great Assembly of the States General, with expanded
delegations from all the provinces, met at The Hague to consider the new
situation. Holland was satisfied to consolidate the leadership it had so
unexpectedly regained and conciliated the lesser provinces by leaving
undisturbed the religious settlement of 1619 and by granting amnesty to
those who had supported William II in 1650. But Holland’s fears of the
increased powers of the central government had been so stiffened that it
depended upon its own preponderance, rather than upon constitutional
reforms, to achieve effective government.
Yet efficiency of rule, so difficult to obtain when the powers to
make and apply policy were so widely scattered, became all the more
necessary when the republic became embroiled in war with the English
Commonwealth in 1652. Nonetheless, the system was surprisingly
efficient. The conflict with England arose out of a medley of causes:
first, the English republicans, after their successes against the
royalists, took up the cause of defending English commercial interests
against the Dutch and passed the Navigation Act of 1651, forbidding
Dutch shippers from acting as middlemen in English trade both in Europe
and overseas; second, the English sought to bring the Dutch into a
political union directed primarily against the Stuarts and their cousins
of the house of Orange. But the Dutch, whatever resentment the
Hollanders bore against the Orange dynasty, were unwilling either to
court civil war or to abandon their dearly won independence in a union
that would make them junior partners to the English. An accidental clash
between the Dutch and English fleets led to full-scale war in which a
greatly improved English navy won the upper hand. By 1654 the Dutch were
compelled to accept peace on English terms, including a secret promise
by Holland (“Act of Seclusion”) to exclude forever the prince of Orange
from the stadtholderate and the supreme command.
The decision to accept a humiliating peace as the only way to
terminate a disastrous war had been taken at the insistence of the young
Johan de Witt, who had taken office in 1653 as councillor pensionary of
Holland (the same office once held by Oldenbarnevelt). With the return
of peace, became the brilliant leader of the republic’s foreign and
domestic policy. He rebuilt the Dutch navy, reduced indebtedness,
improved the financial condition of both the States General and the
States of Holland, and restored the republic’s prestige in Europe.
Carefully averting any renewal of strife with England, he was able not
only to compel France to back down in a naval dispute but also to send a
powerful Dutch fleet to save Denmark from Swedish conquest in the First
Northern War (1657–60).
When the exiled English king, Charles II, was restored to his throne
in 1660, de Witt continued his policy of staying on good terms with
England no matter who ruled there; this policy, however, foundered on
the same two issues—commercial rivalry and the status of the house of
Orange—that had brought about the war of 1652–54. Charles not only
accepted the renewal of the Navigation Act of 1651 but intensified the
rivalry with the Dutch by demanding forcefully that they acknowledge his
sovereignty over the adjacent seas, pay tribute for the right to fish in
the North Sea, and open the Dutch East Indies to English traders. When
naval warfare resumed in 1664 off Africa, followed by war in Europe the
next year, Charles took up the cause of the young prince of Orange. By
persuading the Orangists that his price for peace was restoration of
William III to the offices of his forefathers, the English monarch built
up a friendly party in the United Provinces that urged acceptance of his
terms and even fostered a conspiracy to overthrow the government of de
Witt and his friends. But de Witt managed to meet the new threat. An
Orangist plot in Holland was uncovered and put down in 1666.
When Charles had demanded too high a price for Dutch friendship in
1660–62, de Witt had negotiated an alliance with the French, who feared
that the restoration of the prince of Orange would create a hostile
Anglo-Dutch coalition. Furthermore, success in the fighting at sea
increasingly went to the newly rebuilt Dutch navy. In 1667 the Dutch
fleet sailed up the Thames and the Medway to Chatham, destroying the
English shipyards and burning the fleet at its moorings. In that same
year, however, the French, under Louis XIV, who had only belatedly sent
naval and land forces to aid the Dutch, began an invasion of the Spanish
(southern) Netherlands (present-day Belgium) in the War of Devolution.
As French conquest of the southern Low Countries constituted a threat to
both the Dutch Republic and Britain, those states came to terms in the
standoff Peace of Breda (July 31, 1667), followed in January by an
Anglo-Dutch alliance compelling France to make peace with Spain.
This Triple Alliance (so called because Sweden became a third
partner) proved to be de Witt’s undoing, although he had no effective
diplomatic strategy to put in its place. Louis XIV, balked in his aim of
conquest, considered that the Dutch had betrayed their alliance and
turned to Charles II with proposals for a joint war against the United
Provinces. Charles, bitterly resentful over his humiliating defeat at
Chatham, accepted the French offer of a richly subsidized alliance. Even
as the threat from France emerged more clearly, the Orangists imagined
that the Dutch could still win over Charles by the restoration of
William III, but they were able to obtain only the prince’s appointment
as commander in chief early in 1672. Charles joined the French in open
war in the spring of 1672, counting upon William to accept rule of a
rump Dutch Republic after France and Britain had taken away important
territories for themselves. But William, who was given full power,
including the stadtholdership, during a storm of riots and near
rebellion that swept the country in June and July after the French
invasion penetrated to its heart, took over the leadership of the Dutch
defense from de Witt, who was lynched by a mob in The Hague in August.
With William’s support, the States General rejected the Anglo-French
terms.
William III
The tide of war now turned against the aggressors. The Dutch navy
under Adm. Michiel Adriaanszoon de Ruyter repeatedly defeated the allied
fleets off the coast of the republic, while the Dutch armies held on
behind the flooded polders of the “water line.” When other powers—Spain,
at first as an auxiliary and then as a full participant, the German
emperor, and Brandenburg—joined the Dutch side, the French armies
withdrew from the republic. During six years of bitter war, William III
was able to bring about the withdrawal of England (1674) and the defeat
of all French war aims against the Dutch; yet his Grand Alliance was
unable to bring Louis XIV to his knees, although Spain paid the price of
a peace negotiated at Nijmegen in 1678. But during these years in which
his political control of the republic, while strong, was not absolute,
William was no more interested in constitutional reform than de Witt,
his predecessor in the leadership of the country, had been. He was
satisfied to expel adversaries from office and dominate the decisions
taken by men who represented the same groups and the same social
principles as those whom they replaced; but Holland, whose wealth
ultimately was the basis for all Dutch power, political and military,
slipped from under his thumb and asserted its autonomy of judgment and
decision. The transformation of the republic, which had been from its
origins an aristocracy dominated by mercantile wealth, into an oligarchy
of inherited power, continued unimpeded by William; he had used the
violence of the urban citizenry during the crisis of 1672 to unseat his
opponents, including de Witt, but he was no more sympathetic than they
had been to the vague democratic aspirations that were expressed here
and there.
During the decade after the conclusion of the Peace of Nijmegen, the
tension between William and Holland (particularly Amsterdam) worsened,
because the prince was fixed upon a policy of renewed resistance to
Louis XIV, while the Hollanders preferred peace at any reasonable price.
But the upsurge of the threat from France in the late 1680s—the French
incursions into western Germany and the threat of French domination of
England under James II, a stalwart Roman Catholic and a pensioner of
Louis XIV—brought William and Holland into agreement upon the need to
support the prince’s expedition to England in 1688, which resulted in
his acceptance of the English throne, jointly with his wife, Mary
Stuart, early the next year. William, as king-stadtholder, had to give
primacy to English interests because England was the more powerful
partner in the alliance. He therefore approved the arrangement whereby
England concentrated its efforts against France on the sea, while the
Dutch did so on land; the result was neglect of the Dutch navy.
Ironically, the final triumph of the English over the Dutch in their
commercial rivalry was a consequence of their alliance, not their
enmity.
The war begun in 1689 ended with a stalemate peace in 1697, followed
by two treaties between the maritime powers and France for partition of
the Spanish monarchy. In 1700, however, Louis XIV accepted the bequest
of the Spanish throne for his grandson, Philippe d’Anjou (Philip V of
Spain), and war was resumed the next year.
William died, childless, in 1702. When Holland again took the
initiative for government without a stadtholder, it was followed by the
other provinces with much greater alacrity than had been the case in
1650–51. Resentment had built up against William, who had been
preoccupied with foreign affairs and did little to improve domestic
politics, and the absence of an adult heir meant that there was no
effective opposition to the new course. Leadership of the Dutch state
for the next 45 years came from the councillor pensionaries of Holland,
who were often able men but either unwilling or unable to do more than
conduct current business without attempting the delicate and explosive
task of restructuring the government. On the contrary, constitutional
rigidity became the credo not only of Dutch republicans but also of the
Orangist party, with the only point in contention between them being
whether the prince of Orange-Nassau, who was stadtholder of Friesland,
should be elected to the same office in the other provinces. William IV,
who followed his father in Friesland in 1711, was chosen stadtholder in
Groningen in 1718 and in Gelderland (and the district of Drenthe) in
1722. Even without a stadtholder in the principal provinces, Dutch
subordination to English interests remained intact during the War of the
Spanish Succession (1701–13) and the succeeding years of peace.
Dutch civilization in the Golden Age (1609–1713)
The century from the conclusion of the Twelve Years’ Truce in
1609 until either the death of Prince William III in 1702 or the
conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 is known in Dutch history as
the “Golden Age.” It was a unique era of political, economic, and
cultural greatness during which the little nation on the North Sea
ranked among the most powerful and influential in Europe and the world.
The economy
It was a grandeur that rested upon the economic expansion that
continued with scarcely an interruption until 1648, at the end of the
Thirty Years’ War. The half century that followed was marked by
consolidation rather than continued expansion, under the impact of the
revived competition from the other nations, notably England and France,
whose policies of mercantilism were to a large degree directed against
the near monopoly of the Dutch over the trade and shipping of Europe.
Although the Dutch tenaciously resisted the new competition, the
long-distance trading system of Europe was transformed from one largely
conducted through the Netherlands, with the Dutch as universal
buyer-seller and shipper, to one of multiple routes and fierce
competitiveness. Nonetheless, the wealth earned during a long century of
prosperity made the United Provinces a land of great riches, with more
capital by far than could find outlet in domestic investment. Yet the
economic burden of repeated wars caused the Dutch to become one of the
most heavily taxed peoples in Europe. Taxes were imposed on the transit
trade in and out of the country. But as mercantile competition became
stiffer, the rate of such taxation could not be safely increased, and
the burden therefore fell increasingly on the consumer. Excise and other
indirect taxes made the Dutch cost of living one of the highest in
Europe, although there was considerable variance between the different
areas of the republic.
Dutch prosperity was built not only upon the “mother trades”—to the
Baltic and to France and the Iberian lands—but also upon the overseas
trades with Africa, Asia, and America. The attempt of the Spanish
monarchs (who also ruled Portugal and its possessions from 1580 to 1640)
to exclude Dutch merchants and shippers from the lucrative colonial
commerce with East Asia led the Dutch to trade directly with the East
Indies. Individual companies were organized for each venture, but the
companies were united by command of the States General in 1602 in order
to reduce the costs and increase the security of such perilous and
complex undertakings; the resulting United East India Company
established bases throughout the Indian Ocean, notably in Ceylon (Sri
Lanka), mainland India, and the Indonesian archipelago. The Dutch East
India Company, like its rival English counterpart, was a trading company
granted quasi-sovereign powers in the lands under its dominion. Although
the East India fleets that returned annually with cargoes of spices and
other valuables provided huge profits for the shareholders, the East
India trade of the 17th and 18th centuries never provided more than a
modest fraction of Dutch earnings from European trade. The West India
Company, established in 1621, was built upon shakier economic
foundations; trade in commodities was less important than the trade in
slaves, in which the Dutch were preeminent in the 17th century, and
privateering, which operated primarily out of Zeeland ports and preyed
upon Spanish (and other) shipping. The West India Company had to be
reorganized several times during its precarious existence, while the
East India Company survived until the end of the 18th century.
Society
The social structure that evolved with the economic
transformation of Dutch life was complex and was marked by the
predominance of the business classes that later centuries called the
bourgeoisie, although with some significant differences. The social
“betters” of Dutch aristocracy were only to a limited extent landed
nobles, most of whom lived in the economically less advanced inland
provinces. Most of the Dutch elite were wealthy townsmen whose fortunes
were made as merchants and financiers, but they frequently shifted their
activities to government, becoming what the Dutch called regents,
members of the ruling bodies of town and province, and drawing most of
their incomes from these posts and from investments in government bonds
and real estate.
The common people comprised both a numerous class of artisans and
small businessmen, whose prosperity provided the base for the generally
high Dutch standard of living, and a very large class of sailors,
shipbuilders, fishermen, and other workers. Dutch workers were in
general well paid, but they were also burdened by unusually high taxes.
The farmers, producing chiefly cash crops, prospered in a country that
needed large amounts of food and raw materials for its urban (and
seagoing) population. The quality of life was marked by less disparity
between classes than prevailed elsewhere, although the difference
between a great merchant’s home on the Herengracht in Amsterdam and a
dockworker’s hovel was all too obvious. What was striking was the
comparative simplicity even of the wealthy classes and the sense of
status and dignity among the ordinary people, although the exuberance
that had earlier marked the society was toned down or even eliminated by
the strict Calvinist morality preached and to some extent enforced by
the official church. There was, too, a good deal of mingling between the
burgher regents who possessed great wealth and political power and the
landed gentry and lesser nobility who formed the traditional elite.
Religion
One of the characteristic aspects of modern Dutch society began
to evolve in this period—the vertical separation of society into
“pillars” (zuilen) identified with the different Dutch religions.
Calvinist Protestantism became the officially recognized religion of the
country, politically favoured and economically supported by government.
But the Reformed preachers were thwarted in their efforts to oppress or
drive out other religions, to which a far-reaching toleration was
extended. Mass conversion to Calvinism had been confined mainly to the
earlier decades of the Eighty Years’ War, when Roman Catholics still
frequently bore the burden of their preference for the rule of the
Catholic monarchs in the southern Netherlands. Sizable islands of Roman
Catholicism remained in most of the United Provinces, while Gelderland
and the northern parts of Brabant and Flanders conquered by the States
General were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, as they remain today.
Although public practice of Catholicism was forbidden, interference
with private worship was rare, even if Catholics sometimes bought their
security with bribes to local Protestant authorities. Catholics lost the
traditional form of church government by bishops, whose place was taken
by a papal vicar directly dependent upon Rome and supervising what was
in effect a mission; the political authorities were generally tolerant
of secular priests but not of Jesuits, who were vigorous proselytizers
and were linked to Spanish interests. Protestants included, along with
the predominant Calvinists of the Reformed Church, both Lutherans in
small numbers and Mennonites (Anabaptists), who were politically passive
but often prospered in business. In addition, the Remonstrants, who were
driven out of the Reformed Church after the Synod of Dort (Dordrecht;
1618–19), continued as a small sect with considerable influence among
the regents.
There were also other sects emphasizing mystical experiences or
rationalist theologies, notably the Collegiants among the latter. Jews
settled in the Netherlands to escape persecution; the Sephardic Jews
from Spain and Portugal were more influential in economic, social, and
intellectual life, while the Ashkenazim from eastern Europe formed a
stratum of impoverished workers, especially in Amsterdam. Despite
unusually open contacts with the Christian society around them, Dutch
Jews continued to live in their own communities under their own laws and
rabbinic leadership. Successful though some Jews were in business, they
were by no means the central force in the rise and expansion of Dutch
capitalism. Indeed, no clear pattern can be detected of religious
affiliation affecting the growth of the Dutch business community; if
anything, it was the official Dutch Reformed Church that fulminated most
angrily against capitalist attitudes and practices, while the merely
tolerated faiths often saw their adherents, to whom economic but not
political careers were open, prospering and even amassing fortunes.
Culture
The economic prosperity of the Dutch Republic in this “golden
century” was matched by an extraordinary flowering of cultural
achievement, which drew from the country’s prosperity not only the
direct resources of financial nourishment but also a driving and
sustaining sense of purpose and vigour. This was reflected in the first
instance by a notable series of historical works: the contemporary
chronicles of the revolt by Pieter Bor and Emanuel van Meteren; the
highly polished account by Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, a masterpiece of
narration and judgment in the spirit of Tacitus; the heavily factual
chronicle of Lieuwe van Aitzema, with its interspersed commentary of
skeptical wisdom; Abraham de Wicquefort’s history of the Republic
(principally under the first stadtholderless administration); and the
histories and biographies by Geeraert Brandt. These were works in which
a proud new nation took account of its birth pangs and its growth to
greatness. Only in the latter part of the century did Dutch historians
begin to express a sense that political grandeur might be transient.
Political theorists shared the same concerns, although the effort to
fit new experience and ideas into the traditional categories derived
from Aristotle and Roman law created an air of unreality about their
work, perhaps even more than was true of political thinkers elsewhere in
Europe. Theorists such as the Gouda official Vrancken in the days of the
foundation of the republic and Grotius in the early 17th century
portrayed the republic as essentially unchanged since the early Middle
Ages or even since antiquity—a country where sovereignty resided in
provincial and town assemblies, which had partly lost their control to
counts and kings before regaining it in the revolt against Philip II.
The next surge of political debate came after mid-century, when for a
little more than two decades the country was governed without a prince
of Orange as stadtholder.
The controversy over whether the young Prince William had any right
by birth to the offices of his forefathers probed the fundamental
character of the republic, for even a quasi-hereditary stadtholdership
created an incipient monarchy within the traditional structure of
aristocratic republicanism. The debate involved the issue not so much of
centralization versus provincialism as where the leadership of the
republic properly lay, whether in the house of Orange or in the province
of Holland and notably its greatest city, Amsterdam. Only the celebrated
philosopher Benedict de Spinoza, an outsider by origin and character (a
Jew by birth and upbringing), elevated these political questions to the
level of universality.
Another great philosopher of the 17th century who resided in the
Dutch Republic was the Frenchman René Descartes. Though an outsider,
Descartes found in the Netherlands a freedom from intellectual
inquisitions and personal involvements. He lived there for two decades
while engaged in studies that would help transform modern thought.
Scientific activity in the United Provinces also reached a high
level. The physicist Christiaan Huygens approached Isaac Newton himself
in power of mind and importance of scientific contribution. The engineer
and mathematician Simon Stevin and the microscopists Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek and Jan Swammerdam rank in the front of their fields.
Dutch literature, which knew great creativity during the Golden Age,
remained the possession of the relatively small number of those who
spoke and read Dutch. Figures such as the historian P.C. Hooft or the
poets Constantijn Huygens and Joost van den Vondel (the last of whom was
also a distinguished playwright) wrote with a power and a purity worthy
of the best that France and England produced at that time. Music was
hampered by the Calvinists’ antipathy to what they saw as frivolity.
Organ music was barred from services in Reformed churches, although town
authorities frequently continued its performance at other times. The
great organist-composer J.P. Sweelinck was more influential in
encouraging the creative wave in Germany than among his own countrymen.
The art whose achievements rank at the very top was painting, which
rested upon the broad patronage of a prosperous population. Group
portraits of regents and other influential citizens adorned town halls
and charitable establishments, while still lifes and anecdotal paintings
of popular life hung in profusion in private homes. Some of the greatest
work, from the brushes of such painters as Frans Hals, Jan Steen, and
Johannes Vermeer, were painted for these markets, but the greatest of
Dutch painters, Rembrandt van Rijn, broke through the boundaries of the
group portrait to create works with his own extraordinary mood and
inward meaning. Landscape painters, notably Jacob van Ruisdael, captured
the distinctive Dutch flatland, broad skies with massed clouds, and
muted light. Architecture remained at a lesser level, merging with some
success the native traditions of brick buildings and gable roofs and
fashionable Renaissance styles. Sculpture remained a largely foreign
art.
The 18th century
Economic and political stagnation
Once the Dutch fleet had declined, Dutch mercantile interests
became largely dependent on English goodwill, yet the rulers were more
concerned with reducing the monumental debt that weighed heavily upon
the country. During the 18th century, Dutch trade and shipping were able
to maintain the level of activity reached at the end of the 17th
century, but they did not match the dramatic expansion of French and
especially English competitors. The Dutch near monopoly was now only a
memory. Holland remained rich in accumulated capital, although much of
it could find no outlet for investment in business. Some went into the
purchase of country houses, but a great deal was used to buy bonds of
foreign governments; the bankers of Amsterdam were among the most
important in Europe, rivaling those of London and Geneva.
Dutch culture failed to hold its eminence; individuals such as
medical scientist Hermann Boerhaave or jurist Cornelis van Bynkershoek
were highly respected, but they were not the shapers and shakers of
European thought. Dutch artists were no longer of the first order, and
literature largely followed English or French models without matching
their achievements. The quality of life changed; instead of the seething
activity of the 17th century, the 18th century was one of calm and
easeful pleasantness, at least for men of property. The middling classes
in town and countryside also knew continuing prosperity; conditions for
the labouring classes continued to be hard, although foreign visitors
thought the workers lived better there than elsewhere. There was a
residual class of unemployed who subsisted on the charity of town
governments and private foundations. Religious life was more relaxed,
particularly among Protestants. Roman Catholics, still without political
rights but facing milder restrictions, fell into a quarrel between
adherents of Jansenism (see Roman Catholicism: Jansenism), which
followed Augustinian theology, especially in the matter of
predestination, and supporters of Rome, in particular the Jesuits; the
former split off to form the Old Catholic Church, a small denomination
that still exists. The educated classes widely accepted the principles
and attitudes of the Enlightenment, although without the sharp hostility
to religion that characterized the French philosophes.
During the second stadtholderless period of Dutch government
(1702–47), the republican system became an immobile oligarchy. The
“liberty” defended by the regents as soundly republican was in practice
the rule of hereditary patricians, responsible to neither the citizenry
below nor a stadtholder above. Although William IV yearned for
restoration to the offices held by the princes of Orange before him in
the provinces to the south, he accepted, with no less admiration and
commitment than the regents, the perfection and immutability of the
Dutch constitutional system, with the single difference that he
envisioned it including the stadtholderate for all the provinces.
It was not until the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) that
the power of the regents began to crumble. As in 1672, disaster on the
battlefield proved the Achilles’ heel of a regime that had not built up
a broad popular political base. The regents had not been able to
overcome the traditional commitment of the people to the house of Orange
as their natural leader and saviour. French and Prussian armies swarmed
over the Austrian (formerly Spanish) Netherlands and were poised for
invasion of the United Provinces, which were linked by alliance with
England, although they had remained formally neutral. When the French
forces crossed into Dutch territory, rioting reminiscent of 1672,
although less widespread and violent, led to the fall of the second
purely republican government and the election of William IV as
hereditary stadtholder of all the provinces. Otherwise there was little
change; some regents were compelled to step down from their posts, and
leadership in the hands of the prince of Orange was uncontested. William
rebuffed the efforts of burghers in Amsterdam and other towns who had
supported his restoration in order to achieve democratic reforms, in
which participation in government would be extended to men of modest
property (although not to wage workers or to paupers).
The Patriot movement
During the next decades, in the face of the rigid conservatism of
the princes of Orange (William V succeeded his father in 1751 and
assumed personal government in 1759) and under the influence of the
French Enlightenment, an essentially new political force began to take
shape. Known as the Patriot movement after an old party term used by
both republicans and Orangists, it applied fundamental criticism to the
established government. Although the Patriot movement was representative
of the new democratic and Enlightenment ideals, it had strong roots in
native Dutch traditions. From the beginning, the United Provinces had
rejected specifically democratic institutions in favour of frankly
aristocratic government (in the Aristotelian sense), but the notion that
the regents had a duty to serve not their own private interests but
those of the country and the people had persisted in theory and in mood.
When the aristocracy ceased to recruit new members from below and thus
became an enclosed caste, the discrepancy between its claim of service
to the general welfare and the reality of its practice became evident.
The Patriot movement took in a wide range of supporters: discontented
noblemen such as the Gelderland baron Joan van der Capellen tot den Pol;
wealthy bankers and businessmen without a voice in government; artisans
and shopkeepers, traditionally Orangist in sympathy, who were dismayed
to find their claims to an effective role in the politics of their towns
rebuffed by the princes; and intellectuals committed to the new
Enlightenment rejection of arbitrary power. The Patriots included in
their ranks many Protestant dissenters and Roman Catholics, but Jews
continued to look to the prince of Orange as their protector. Some
regents, holding firm to the republicanism of their ancestors and
resenting the return of the stadtholderate, found a new base for their
ideas in the Patriot movement. Most regents, however, saw more peril in
the new movement for broader popular government than in the stolid
conservatism of the princes of Orange; a reconciliation between the
camps of the patrician republicans and the Orangists began to take shape
under the impact of a common threat from below.
Again the events of war imperiled the established regime. Although
the diplomacy of William V was firmly based upon the alliance with
England, London became exasperated with the Dutch during the American
Revolution (1775–83), when they attempted to continue to expand their
profitable trade with the new American country as well as with France.
Dutch flirtations with the Russian-sponsored League of Armed Neutrality,
resistance to British searches of neutral vessels, and indications of
Dutch negotiations for an alliance with the Americans only worsened
relations. Finally, open hostilities erupted in the fourth Anglo-Dutch
War (1780–84). The Dutch navy, sorely neglected for more than a half
century, was utterly unprepared to battle the powerful British fleet,
and the Dutch fleet’s attempts to convoy their merchantmen brought only
disaster.
The onus of defeat fell upon the stadtholder. He was unable to stand
firm against the increased agitation of the Patriots, who forced their
way into governments of town after town in Holland and other provinces.
Holland began organizing its own army, distinct from that under the
prince’s command, and civil war seemed in the offing. William V fled to
Gelderland with his wife, Wilhelmina, the sister of Prussian King
Frederick II. Holland declared him deposed.
It was the strong-willed Wilhelmina, rather than her hesitant and
rather docile husband, who took the lead in the restoration of the
stadtholderate. Dutch politics had now become a concern of the great
powers. France sided with the Patriots, not out of sympathy with their
principles but because they opposed the stadtholder, who had fallen back
into dependence upon English and Prussian support. As long as Frederick
II ruled in Prussia, Wilhelmina’s pleas for armed intervention fell on
deaf ears, but when the throne passed to his nephew Frederick William II
in 1786, the way opened for action. The Patriots counted on the support
of the French, but the government at Versailles, then entering the final
financial and political crisis of the monarchy that erupted in the
Revolution of 1789, could give no more than verbal encouragement.
Wilhelmina, working closely with the English ambassador, arranged to
create a crisis by seeking to return to Holland; her detention at the
provincial border was taken by Prussia as justification to send an army
into the United Provinces. The Prussians quickly swept away the
makeshift militias of Holland and Utrecht and restored the stadtholder,
William V, to his offices. A period of repression of Patriots followed;
many went into exile, first in the Austrian Netherlands and then in
France.
The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 gave new hope to the
exiles and their friends at home. They looked now for more effective
French assistance and at the same time found in the French revolutionary
experience practical ideas for the reorganization of the government at
home, notably the principle of a single, indivisible republic. The
Patriots’ hopes rose when the armies of the French Revolution swept over
the Austrian Netherlands (which had had a brief interlude of
independence in 1789–90) in 1792, but the French forces retreated the
next year. It was not until 1794 that they returned to Belgium (as it
now became customary to call the southern Netherlands), driving up to
and then across the frontier of the United Provinces. The moment for
which the Dutch Patriots had long been waiting was at hand: French power
would more than outweigh the English and Prussian strength upon which
the stadtholder relied (Prussia made a separate peace with France in
1795), and a democratic revolution, thwarted in 1787, would be possible.
The freezing of the great rivers during the winter permitted the French
forces to cross into the Dutch heartland, but, even before they arrived,
the Patriots seized the reins of state from helpless William V, who
abandoned office and fled to England.
The period of French dominance (1795–1813)
The old republic was replaced by the Batavian Republic, and the
political modernization of the Netherlands began—a process that would
take more than half a century and pass through many vicissitudes, yet it
was one marked by an extraordinary lack of violence. For all its flaws
and inconsistencies, the old regime of the United Provinces had enjoyed
many of the institutions and practices that other countries had to
create in the fire of revolution: the sovereignty of parliamentary
assemblies, wide-ranging political and religious toleration, equality of
all citizens before the law, and an unusually broad distribution of the
benefits of economic prosperity, however far the social system was from
equality. Even the sense of nationhood had put down deep roots, although
the awareness of differences of religion remained powerful. In a word,
the Dutch had already achieved a large measure of the “liberty,
equality, and fraternity” that had become the slogan of the French
Revolution. The task that confronted the Batavian and the successor
regimes was to adapt old institutions and create new ones that could
meet the needs of a new era. But the Dutch statesmen had to operate
within the confines of a small power shorn of most of its military and
naval strength and yet more dependent than most other countries upon its
trading and shipping.
The Batavian Republic (1795–1806)
The Batavian Republic lasted 11 years, during which it proclaimed
the sovereignty of the people but was in many respects a protectorate of
France. The organization of government had to be approved not only by
the Dutch people but also by whatever government happened to be in
control in France. The constitutions therefore reflected not only Dutch
conditions and ideas but also the arrangements in effect in Paris;
nonetheless, they did create a new type of political system, a new
regime, in the Netherlands. After much debate, the ancient historic
provinces—so unequal in wealth, population, and influence—were replaced
by a unitary republic divided into departments and electoral
constituencies that were roughly equal in population, if not in wealth.
The representatives elected to the National Assembly (which replaced the
historic States General) were not delegates of provincial assemblies by
whose decisions they were bound but deputies with full independence of
judgment. The ancient system of government, with its medley of
assemblies and boards with imperfectly differentiated functions, was
replaced by a modern system of separate and explicitly defined
legislative, executive, and judicial branches; functionally organized
ministries directed the work of foreign affairs, internal affairs, war,
and navy. The full legal equality of all citizens in all parts of the
country was proclaimed; the residents of North Brabant,
Zeeland-Flanders, Limburg, and Drenthe gained the same rights as all
other citizens of the republic, just as their districts, once excluded
from the States General, now participated in the national government
equally with all others.
The Reformed Church lost its standing as the sole official, protected
church, supported out of state revenues, and equal status was accorded
to all religious denominations, including Roman Catholicism and Judaism.
Yet full separation of church and state was not proclaimed, and their
relationship was to continue as one of the central factors in Dutch
politics for more than a century. The historic privileges of class and
locality were abolished; the liberty of each and all under the law and
before the courts replaced the diverse “liberties” of town and province,
noble and regent. Where, before, town governments had co-opted their
members, deputies to the National Assembly were now elected; but the
franchise was limited to property holders, and these chose their
representatives not directly but through electors named by primary
assemblies. Most of these institutional changes were permanent, though
the republican form of government was replaced by a kingdom in 1806 and
never reestablished.
While these momentous changes were being debated and adopted, the
ordinary work of state and nation had to continue amid conditions of
almost unprecedented difficulty. England reacted to the French
occupation of the Netherlands and the flight and overthrow of the
stadtholder by a declaration of war and a blockade. Dutch overseas trade
and fishing, the country’s most essential occupations, were brought to a
near standstill, while most of the Dutch colonies were seized by the
English on behalf of William V. The French, however, remained relentless
in their own exploitation of the occupied “fraternal republic.” The
Dutch government, which took over the whole accumulated burden of
national and provincial indebtedness, had also to bear the costs of the
French occupying forces and to pay immense sums in tribute to the Paris
government; indeed, the forced circulation of vastly inflated French
assignats (paper currency) at face value was a scarcely disguised and
very effective form of French taxation directly upon the Dutch people.
Nor did the successive French governments—republican, consular, or
imperial—grant the Dutch any greater freedom of trade with France or
other countries under its control in compensation for the lost overseas
business.
As trade declined and industry languished, Dutch agriculture began to
resume a primacy in the economy; it had always employed the majority of
the workforce. The venturesome spirit for which Dutch businessmen had
been so famed a century or two before seemed to be lost, replaced by
what the Dutch themselves called a jansalie (stick-in-the-mud) attitude;
once-bustling cities dwindled to mere market towns; even Amsterdam lost
much of its population. As a result, it became difficult to consolidate
the new government. A multiple executive modeled on the French Directory
and lacking a firm base in established political institutions and
practices reflected the intrigues of individuals rather than the
programs of clearly delineated parties. The victors quarreled among
themselves and looked to Paris to decide between them, or at least
passively accepted its dictum, given by coups d’état organized or
approved by the French army command.
In 1805 Napoleon I gave quasi-dictatorial powers to R.J.
Schimmelpenninck. Schimmelpenninck, called councillor pensionary after
the fashion of the old provincial leaders, was actually an uncrowned and
nearly absolute monarch (although, ultimately, power continued in
Napoleon’s hands); he nonetheless carried into practice many of the
modernizing reforms that had been proposed but not adopted. Napoleon,
however, decided the next year to incorporate the Dutch state directly
into his “Grand Empire” of vassal states.
The Kingdom of Holland and the French Empire (1806–13)
Renamed the Kingdom of Holland, the Netherlands received as its
monarch Napoleon’s younger brother Louis. The four years of his kingship
constituted one of the strangest episodes in Dutch history. Louis
Bonaparte was a stranger in the land, yet he took its interests to
heart, evading his brother’s commands and winning the respect, if not
quite the affection, of his subjects. The reconciliation of former
Orangists, republicans, and Patriots began under his rule, for, in the
face of the apparent permanence of the Napoleonic empire, they entered
his government and worked together. Nonetheless, the brute fact remained
that, for Napoleon, Holland was the kingpin of the “continental system,”
which he hoped would bring England to its knees by cutting off its
continental exports. French officials enforced the vigorous suppression
of the smuggling of English and colonial goods to the Continent through
Holland that had sprung up over the previous decade with London’s
connivance. King Louis’s resistance to his brother’s efforts and his
refusal to put French interests ahead of those of the Dutch led to the
emperor’s decision to oust his brother from his throne in 1810 and to
incorporate Holland into the French Empire.
Little changed, however; the same officials—some Dutch, some
French—continued to do the work of government in the country, which
remained outside the French tariff system. As long as the Napoleonic
empire seemed firmly based and permanent, Dutchmen served the new
sovereign as they had King Louis, all the more readily because the
exiled prince of Orange gave permission for such collaboration. Dutch
soldiers continued to fight in Napoleon’s campaigns, suffering heavy
losses in the Russian invasion of 1812. But as it became increasingly
obvious, after the failure of the Russian and Spanish campaigns, that
the Napoleonic empire was collapsing, influential Dutchmen began to
prepare for the creation of a new and independent regime; it was taken
for granted that its head would be the prince of Orange—the son of
William V, who had died in 1806—and that it was desirable that it be
established by the Dutch people rather than imposed by the eventual
allied victors. The movement for restoration was led by a remarkable
figure, Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp, a man of firm political principle
who had refused to serve any of the governments that ruled in Holland
after 1795 yet accepted the necessity for a reestablished prince of
Orange to govern the country as a limited constitutional sovereign.
During the autumn of 1813, van Hogendorp secretly planned a takeover
of government from the French, which became possible without bloodshed
during November as French troops withdrew to their homeland. On November
30, the hereditary stadtholder, at the invitation of van Hogendorp’s
provisional authority, returned from England to proclaim his reign as
hereditary prince. In 1814 he granted a charter establishing a
constitutional monarchy, with restricted powers for a Parliament elected
by a narrow property suffrage. At the insistence of the victorious
powers meeting at the Congress of Vienna, he took the title of king of
The Netherlands and was also given sovereignty over the southern
Netherlands, which included both present-day Belgium and Luxembourg.
During the campaign against Napoleon after his return from Elba in 1815,
Dutch troops played a role in his defeat at Waterloo.
The Kingdom of The Netherlands (1814–1918)
King William I
The reign of King William I, as the restored prince of Orange was
now called, was one of the most critical periods in the history of The
Netherlands. During this quarter-century the adaptation of the country
to the conditions and requirements of modernity moved in a complex and
even contradictory way, guided by a monarch who in his economic policy
was far more forward-looking than most of his fellow citizens but who in
politics resisted the expansion of Parliament and the introduction of
liberal principles. He was a 19th-century version of the “enlightened
despot,” a man intent upon power not so much for its own sake as in
order to serve the welfare of his country as he saw it.
The role of the States General—which continued to represent a general
electorate of tax-paying citizenry—was strictly limited to the enactment
of laws proposed by the government and to approval of a long-term
budget; it was in no sense the representative of a sovereign people. The
ministers of state were the agents of the king and responsible to him,
not to the States General. Yet the basic structure of modern government
had been created in The Netherlands; constitutional debate would be
concerned with redistributing powers and responsibilities among existing
institutions.
William I was at his best in confronting the problem of reviving the
economic life of the country after the shattering impact of the long
French occupation. He put the support of both the government and his own
private fortune behind encouragement of commerce and, to a lesser
extent, of industry. He sponsored the formation of The Netherlands
Trading Society, a nominally private firm that undertook the important
but costly and risky enterprise of reorganizing Dutch long-distance
trade and shipping, particularly to the Netherlands East Indies, which
England returned to Dutch sovereignty as part of the peace settlement.
With the reopening of trade between the European continent and the wider
world, the advantages of the Dutch position at the mouth of the great
rivers favoured the revival of the traditional branches of Dutch
enterprise; but competition from the ports of other countries, notably
from Hamburg and Bremen, as well as from Britain, remained strong. Only
in the Netherlands East Indies did the Dutch have a clear advantage over
their rivals.
The most difficult problem faced by the new regime in The Netherlands
was the relations between Holland (which now became the everyday name
for all the northern Netherlands, in Dutch as well as foreign usage) and
Belgium. The king was passionately devoted to the preservation of a
single state encompassing all the Low Countries, a unity lost in the
revolt against Spain more than two centuries before and for the
restoration of which he had paid by ceding most of the Dutch colonies
(except the East Indies) to the United Kingdom. However, the sense of
common nationhood, cultural and political, was quite weak among the
people. The Belgians resented assuming a share of the burden of debt
inherited by Holland; they were oriented toward industry, Hollanders
toward trade. French was the language of the leading classes in the
south, and the use of Dutch as the official language was bitterly
opposed even by Flemings, who resented the Dutch version of the common
Dutch-Flemish language. Most Flemings, as devout Roman Catholics, were
hostile to the predominantly Protestant northern Dutch elite. William’s
efforts to assume the control that Napoleon had possessed over the
Belgian Roman Catholic Church met fierce resistance.
At the same time, the authoritarian character of William’s
government, particularly the sharp censorship of the press in Belgium,
aroused the antipathy of liberals to the regime. The result was the
outbreak of the Belgian Revolution of 1830 and the proclamation of
Belgian independence. William, supported by a majority of Dutchmen, who
were angered by what they saw as Belgian ingratitude, was able to defeat
the hastily organized Belgian army; but the European powers intervened
to secure Belgian independence, although it was not until 1839 that a
final settlement was reached and the last Dutch troops withdrew from
Belgian soil. William, deeply despondent, abdicated the next year,
leaving to his son, King William II, the task of coming to terms with
the new situation.
William II and William III
The new king was not a man of clear ideas or strong will, but he
was able to do what his father dared not even envisage—oversee the
transformation of The Netherlands into a parliamentary, liberal state.
When the crisis of the 1848 revolutions broke, first in France and then
in central Europe, an alarmed William II turned to the leading liberal
thinker, J.R. Thorbecke, to guide the change. A new constitution was
written, largely modeled on the British (and Belgian) pattern, which
gave effective supremacy to the States General and made the monarch a
servant and not the master of government. The king died the next year,
and the work of transformation continued under his son, William III
(1849–90), who named Thorbecke prime minister. The constitutional
monarchy was consolidated, even though Thorbecke stepped down in 1853
because of Protestant rioting against the reestablishment of a Roman
Catholic hierarchy, with its archbishopric at Utrecht.
Gradually, over the next century, the scope of Dutch democracy was
extended to include ever-broader sections of the Dutch population in the
franchise; universal male suffrage was achieved during World War I, and
suffrage was extended to women in 1919. During this period modern
political parties took shape, organized along religious and ideological
lines; the principal groups were formed by Calvinists (the
Anti-Revolutionary Party), socialists, liberals, and Roman Catholics.
Other smaller minority parties developed subsequently. The central issue
of political controversy became the schoolstrijd (“school conflict”),
which pitted the liberal (and later socialist) advocates of state
schools against the combined Calvinist and Catholic parties, which
demanded state support for private (“special”) schools equivalent to
that provided to state schools. For several decades, liberals remained
generally in control and made few concessions on the school issue. But
when the Protestant leader Abraham Kuyper formed a coalition with the
Catholics in 1888, the religious parties were able to gain power and to
favour the special schools over the public schools. Their policy was
assailed by the secular parties, the traditional liberals, the
progressives, and the socialists. The liberals, however, were at odds
with the other secular parties on other issues, notably economic
policies and the extension of the suffrage. The liberals tended to be
the most conservative party on economic issues and favoured a restricted
electorate; the progressives were vigorously democratic in outlook, as
were the socialists, who also favoured universal suffrage, protection of
the right to strike, labour legislation, and other welfare measures.
These struggles between various ideologies—Catholic, Calvinist,
socialist, and liberal—gradually resulted in the growth of the system of
“pillars,” by means of which the country was split into more or less
self-contained worlds, in which each group could live a largely separate
life within the Dutch state. This distinctive political culture, known
as “the politics of accommodation,” “pillarization,” or verzuiling, was
to characterize Dutch public life for much of the 20th century, up to at
least the 1960s.
Another major issue of the latter half of the 19th century was the
role of the Dutch East Indies. Until the 1860s, the Dutch operated a
highly profitable monopoly regime there called the “Culture System,”
which had been introduced to force the production of certain crops for
export. Its profits helped balance the Dutch domestic budget and allowed
essential investment in transportation and public services. At the same
time, private enterprise clamoured for a share of the profits. Finally,
there were humanitarian objections to the harsh conditions in the
distant archipelago. As a result, the colony was opened up and
deregulated, yet it continued to provide a significant part of Dutch
national income all the way up to the outbreak of World War II.
Queen Wilhelmina and World War I
During the first half of the reign of Queen Wilhelmina
(1890–1948), the political situation remained fundamentally unchanged.
The major parties came to recognize that the school struggle interfered
with the solution of other problems. An agreement in principle was
reached on the eve of World War I, by which the secular parties accepted
state support for religious schools on a basis of equal funds in
exchange for enactment of universal male suffrage. When war broke out in
1914, The Netherlands, which had declared its neutrality, put aside the
proposed reforms in order to concentrate on the immediate problem of
maintaining the country’s livelihood in the face of blockades. The
“Pacification,” as the compromise was called, was adopted in 1917 and
put into effect after the return of peace. The war years saw almost all
political controversies set aside, while the government took
unprecedented action in maintaining trade and guiding economic life.
Although spared the horrors of combat, the Dutch had to maintain a large
standing army, and mutinies broke out among the soldiers in 1918.
The century from the restoration of Dutch independence in 1813 until
World War I saw fundamental transformations of Dutch life. The economic
base was modernized; the role of agriculture diminished, with most Dutch
farmers producing dairy, meat, and horticultural products for the
market; and trade and shipping were revived in the face of fiercely
competitive conditions. But most important was the rise of
industry—first textiles in the eastern provinces, then coal in the
southeast, and finally modern manufactures, notably the great Philips
electrical products factories at Eindhoven. Rotterdam became one of the
world’s busiest ports and the centre of chemical and other industries.
These changes were paralleled in society by the gradual extinction of
pauperism, the domination of middle-class businessmen and professional
men, and the gradual improvement of the conditions of working people and
farmers, especially after the mid-19th century.
Although religious freedom in The Netherlands was generally as great
as anywhere else in Europe, orthodox Calvinists faced major
difficulties, especially during the first half of the 19th century, when
they protested against the modernizing ideas of the mainstream Calvinist
Reformed (Hervormde) Church; their efforts to create independent
religious communities met with sharp resistance from the government.
Some of the Gereformeerden (the older name for “Reformed” used by the
conservatives) emigrated, many of them to the United States; however, in
the second half of the century, this group prospered at home and took
its place at the heart of the pillarized Dutch system.
The cultural life of The Netherlands remained very largely confined
within national boundaries; Dutch thinkers, writers, and artists
responded strongly to influences from Germany, France, and England but
themselves had little impact abroad. Dutch scientists maintained a
respected position for their country; Hugo de Vries was one of the
principal founders of the science of genetics, while the physicist
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz contributed greatly to Einstein’s theories of
relativity. Dutch artists were generally imitative; although The Hague
school of Impressionists displayed great gifts, only Vincent van Gogh,
who spent most of his active life in France, achieved world reputation.
Dutch literature ran parallel to main currents abroad; the Réveil early
in the century was a movement of intensely religious romanticism with
strongly conservative ideas, while Eduard Douwes Dekker (pseudonym
Multatuli) in mid-century expressed the moods of social criticism with
great power; the movement of “Men of the ’Eighties” (Tachtigers) brought
to the fore an emphasis on aesthetic values and spirituality; and early
in the 20th century, a literature of social protest reemerged.
The Netherlands since 1918
The movement of The Netherlands into modernity was accelerated
after 1918. Although the country became a member of the League of
Nations, it reaffirmed its neutrality, which seemed to have obtained the
respect of the powers and which was symbolized by the presence of the
International Court of Justice at The Hague. There was considerable
harshness in relations with Belgium, which not only abandoned its
neutrality for a close alliance with France but demanded territorial
cessions from Holland. The Dutch government, although humiliated by a
demand that it present its case before the peace conference at
Versailles, successfully resisted any amputation of its territory. The
Dutch, for their part, refrained from giving any official support to the
Flemish nationalist movement in Belgium, although a Great Netherlands
movement, principally among intellectuals, emphasized the underlying
unity of the Dutch and Flemings. Domestic politics followed the same
course, with the Protestant political parties continuing to provide
leadership for generally conservative policies, especially after the
onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
World War II
At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the Dutch sedulously
maintained their neutrality, although their sympathies lay
overwhelmingly with the Allied powers. Nonetheless, when Nazi Germany
undertook the campaign against France in the spring of 1940, its forces
struck not only against Belgium in order to outflank the French defenses
but also against The Netherlands. The Dutch land armies were overwhelmed
in less than a week, and the government, accompanied by Queen Wilhelmina
and the royal family, withdrew to England, where they formed a
government in exile.
Much of the work of public administration and civil government under
German military occupation was continued by Dutch organs of state, which
made some effort to buffer German political repression, deportation of
Jews, and forced employment of Dutch labour in Germany. A resistance
movement sprang up, which, with the exception of the Dutch Nazi
collaborators, spanned all groups from the conservatives to the
communists. The Germans retaliated by executing Dutch hostages for such
measures of resistance as the strike of Amsterdam dockworkers against
the seizure and deportation of Dutch Jews to extermination camps in
Germany. Some Jews were able to “go underground” (into hiding) with the
assistance of friends, but the large majority were taken away to their
deaths. In the final phases of the war, particularly after the Allied
failure to capture bridgeheads across the rivers at Nijmegen and Arnhem,
the Dutch suffered from severe food shortages, and, during the last
months before liberation (May 1945), they were near famine (the
so-called Hunger Winter).
The late 20th century
After the war many aspects of Dutch life changed dramatically.
Wilhelmina and her government returned from exile to reestablish a
regime more strongly democratic than ever before. Anticipating the
characteristic difficulties of postwar reconstruction, the government,
industry, and labour agreed upon a plan for industrial and commercial
expansion, with avoidance of the rapid expansion of prices or wages that
would bring a threat of inflation. The plan worked effectively for more
than two decades, and the Dutch were able to avoid drastic inflation
until the breakdown of such corporatist consensus in the 1960s.
Dutch industrialization moved forward with speed and depth, expanding
to include the large-scale production of steel, electronics, and
petrochemicals. Putting aside the policy of neutrality as a failure, The
Netherlands entered vigorously into the postwar Western alliances,
including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the various
organizations of European unity (the Common Market; later the European
Community within the European Union); however, its influence was
limited, even though it joined with Belgium and Luxembourg in a closer
union (Benelux). Indonesia, where Dutch authority was reestablished
after wartime occupation by Japanese forces, soon became the scene of a
nationalist revolution. After some hesitation as well as bitterness, the
Dutch were obliged to grant it full independence. In the Caribbean area,
the Netherlands Antilles remained part of the Dutch kingdom, although no
longer under the authority of the government at The Hague; the island of
Aruba gained an autonomous status within the Antilles in 1986. Surinam
became independent in 1975 and was renamed the Republic of Suriname in
1978.
Dutch political alignments since the mid-20th century have evolved
only gradually and until the 1990s were always dependent on the
Christian Democrat parties of the centre. The first postwar governments
were dominated by an alliance of the Labour and Catholic parties, which
continued until the Labour Party went into opposition in 1958.
Thereafter, with the exception of 1973–77, when the country had a
left-led government, and 1981–82 and 1989–91, when it was ruled by a
centre-left coalition, governments were formed by centre-right
coalitions. After the early 1980s the government was faced not only with
recurrent economic problems but also with the emotion-charged issue of
siting U.S. nuclear cruise missiles (as part of the NATO defense
strategy) in the country. It finally reached the decision in 1985,
against widespread popular opposition, that 48 missiles would be sited
by 1988. The issue was dissolved by the subsequent ending of the Cold
War between the United States and the Soviet Union.
During the 1960s the generally peaceful mood of Dutch public life was
broken by rioting of youth and labour groups, especially in Amsterdam.
The most difficult crisis affected the royal family. The marriage (1966)
of Princess Beatrix, the heiress to Queen Juliana (who had succeeded
Wilhelmina on her abdication in 1948), to a German diplomat aroused
acrimonious debate. The unsanctioned marriage of Princess Irene to a
Spanish Carlist prince had already come as a shock even to Roman
Catholics, but it was less difficult politically because she lost her
right of succession. Juliana’s husband and consort, Prince Bernhard, was
involved in a bribery scandal and withdrew from public office. Juliana
abdicated in 1980 and was succeeded as queen by Beatrix.
By the 1970s Dutch politics, like Dutch society in general, had
largely ceased to practice what was strictly defined as pillarization.
Pillarization had received official confirmation in the Pacification of
1917 and removed most of the tinder from Dutch politics, but it also
kept ordinary Dutchmen ideologically separated from each other to a
greater degree than in most other Western countries. Yet, because the
leaders of the pillar organizations worked well with each other and the
right of each pillar to exist and function was unquestioned, public life
generally ran smoothly.
In the 1960s the system began to disintegrate. New radical political
parties were formed, and, in the face of rapid secularization of the
vote, the various Christian parties joined together in the Christian
Democratic Appeal (CDA). However, the religious vote has continued to
decline, and in the 1990s there were “purple” coalitions for the first
time, between the (red) Labour Party and the (blue) Liberals
(conservatives). The Communist Party, once influential beyond its small
numbers, disbanded in 1991. The far-left groups joined with
environmentalists to form an electoral group called Green-Left, which
garnered about 5 percent of the vote beginning in the late 1990s.
Herbert H. Rowen
Michael J. Wintle
Into the 21st century
In the 1990s, while the economy prospered, environmental concerns
increased, not only because of the country’s vulnerability to rising sea
levels, river flooding, and the effects of pollution but also because
Dutch industry and agriculture were themselves major sources of
pollution. In 2006 the Dutch government spurred the European Union (EU)
to take a larger role in combating the effects of climate change.
In the later 20th century, The Netherlands had gained a reputation
for liberal social policies, such as the toleration of prostitution and
of the limited use and sale of marijuana and hashish. Same-sex marriages
and euthanasia were legalized, and penal sentences were relatively
light. The Netherlands also was one of the most heavily planned and
regulated Western societies, though there were efforts to reduce the
role of the state in the 1980s and ’90s.
Although the Dutch tradition of tolerance generally extended to its
immigrant population, anti-immigrant politician Pim Fortuyn was able to
tap into increasing Dutch uneasiness in 2002. Just nine days before that
year’s election, Fortuyn was assassinated—the country’s first modern
political killing. Nevertheless, his party gained enough support to
become part of a centre-right governing coalition. Because of disputes
within Fortuyn’s party, however, the government resigned after only
three months in office. In subsequent years, other anti-immigration
parties rose in prestige, such as the Party for Freedom. Tension over
immigration continued, with national debates on immigrant amnesty and
assimilation, the clash of Christian and Islamic culture, and occasional
acts of violence, notably the politically charged murder of filmmaker
Theo van Gogh in 2004. By 2006 the government required all potential
immigrants to pass a test on Dutch culture and language (taken in their
home country) before they could enter The Netherlands.
In 2003 Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, head of the Christian
Democratic Appeal, formed a centrist coalition with the liberal
Democrats ’66 and the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. In the
parliamentary elections of 2006, the Socialist Party made large gains,
though the CDA retained its majority with Balkenende at the helm in a
governing coalition with the Labour Party and the Christian Union. But
the political landscape has changed a great deal in The Netherlands
since the 1990s, symbolized by the two dramatic political
assassinations. In 2005, in the first national referendum held in two
centuries, Dutch voters rejected the new constitution of the EU, a
result almost inconceivable in a country that, before about 2000, was
classically pro-Europe and, perhaps more importantly, had generally been
happy to leave such matters to its Eurocentric political elite. Having
taken its populist turn, The Netherlands is now perhaps a less unusual
country. It remains prosperous, but its welfare state is less
distinctively generous, and the famed liberal state has been reined in,
while skepticism of European integration and anti-Islam sentiments are
increasingly loudly voiced.
Michael J. Wintle