Introduction

One of the smaller countries of Europe, the Kingdom of The Netherlands (Dutch: Koninkrijk der Nederlanden) is a parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarch. The Netherlands has often been known abroad as Holland (from Houtland, or "Wooded Land"). This name was originally given to one of the medieval cores of what later became the state and is still used for 2 of its 12 provinces (Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland). The irregular outline of The Netherlands, not unlike a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, encloses some 16,164 square miles (41,864 square kilometres) of mostly flat land, which lies between the North Sea on the north and west, Germany on the east, and Belgium to the south. Large parts of the total area consist of water. Excluding the territorial waters, the land area amounts to about 13,255 square miles. The kingdom includes the former colonies of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba.

Some 2,500 square miles of this country consists 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. All this new land was turned into polders, which are usually surrounded by dikes. Initially, manpower and horsepower were used to drain the land and were replaced later by windmills. The really large 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. (see also Index: land reclamation)

Despite a government-encouraged emigration after World War II, which sent some 500,000 persons out of the country, The Netherlands is today one of the world's most densely populated nations. Partly as a result of this emigration, more than one-tenth of the citizens in the late 20th century were over 65 years old. Amsterdam, nevertheless, has become one of the liveliest centres of the international counterculture of Western youth. This independence of outlook has strong roots in the 16th and 17th centuries, when Dutch merchant ships sailed the world and helped lay the foundations of a great trading nation characterized by a vigorous spirit of enterprise. In later centuries, burgeoning trade and commercial growth further stimulated development of The Netherlands.

With Belgium and Luxembourg, The Netherlands is a member of the economic union known as Benelux, in which capital, goods, and people can freely circulate; this union, in fact, served as a model for the larger European Economic Community (EEC; now within the European Communities [EC]), of which the Benelux nations are members. The country is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (see also Index: Benelux Economic Union)

Physical and human geography

THE LAND

Relief.

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 (some 27 percent of the total area of the country) actually lies below sea level. The Dutch refer to this area in the north and west as the Low Netherlands, while the area covering the south and east is termed the High Netherlands.

The Low Netherlands consists mainly of polders, where the landscape not only lies at a very low altitude but is also very flat in appearance. On such land, building is possible only after concrete piles, sometimes as long as 65 feet, have been driven into the sand layer.

The Zuiderzee was originally an estuary of the Rhine. 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-long dam, or dike, running northeastward to connect the provinces of Noord-Holland and Friesland, 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 with a total area of about 650 square miles 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. (see also Index: IJsselmeer Polders)

The first two polders created-- 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; the former is the capital of the new province of Flevoland, created in 1986 from the two Flevoland polders and North East Polder. (see also Index: Wieringermeer Polder, Northeast Polder)

In the southwest, the disastrous gales and spring tide of Feb. 1, 1953, which flooded 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) of land and killed 1,800 people, accelerated the implementation of the Delta Plan, which aims to close the sea inlets of the southwestern delta, mostly in the province of Zeeland. These delta works were designed to shorten the coastline by 450 miles, combat the salination of the soil, and allow the development of the islands of the area through roads that were constructed over 10 dams and two bridges built between 1960 and 1987. The largest of these dams, crossing the five-mile-wide East Schelde (Oosterschelde) estuary, has been built in the form of a storm-surge barrier incorporating 61 openings that can be closed in the event of flood. The barrier is normally open, allowing salt water to enter the estuary and about 75 percent of the tidal movement to be maintained, limiting damage to the natural environment in the East Schelde. In the interests 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)--which 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. (see also Index: Rhine River, Lek River, Waal River, Meuse River)

In the High Netherlands, 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, which may reach a height of more than 330 feet. These form a recreational area, Veluwe, which is of national significance. The southern part of Limburg province, in the border zone of the Ardennes, is the only part of the country where altitudes well over 350 feet occur. The Netherlands' highest point, the Vaalserberg, in the extreme southeastern corner, rises to 1,053 feet.

Soils.

Only in the last Pleistocene Ice Age did the Scandinavian ice sheet cover the northern half of The Netherlands. After this period (about 10,000 years ago), 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 unloaded thick layers of sand and gravel transported from the European mountain chains. Later, during the Holocene Epoch, 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 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 Netherlands--between the area of high-pressure air masses centred on the Azores and the low-pressure region centred on Iceland--makes the country 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 diminish by more than half the 13-mile-per-hour wind velocity 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). The rainfall averages 31 inches (790 millimetres), 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 altitude 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 Zeeland. Migrating birds pass in huge numbers through The Netherlands or remain for a summer or winter stay. Species of water, marsh, and pasture birds are numerous. Larger mammals, such as roe deer, red deer, fox, and badger, are mostly restricted to nature reserves. Some species like boar, beaver, fallow deer, mouflon, and muskrat have been introduced locally or reintroduced. 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 South Flevoland. Some endangered species are protected by law.

Settlement patterns.

Modern urbanization in The Netherlands has taken 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. By the late 20th century this figure had decreased to about 13 percent. There has, nevertheless, been a decrease in the city proper population of the large metropolitan centres. These city regions 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 to more rural areas in the north, east, and south of the country. More recently, however, government planning policy has aimed at again concentrating the population in and around the existing cities, especially in the western provinces.

In this part of the country the bulk of the Dutch population is concentrated in the urban core known as the Randstad Holland, 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.

Ethnic composition.

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 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 include Indonesians and peoples from the Moluccas and from Suriname on the northeast coast of South America. (see also Index: immigration, toleration)

The heritage of Dutch humanism.

The considerable hospitality exhibited by the Dutch is to a large extent rooted in the spirit of humanism that was typical of the Dutch Republic of the 16th to the 18th centuries. Figures such as Erasmus in the 16th century and Hugo Grotius in the 17th century epitomize that spirit. It can be characterized as an amalgam of religious piety tempered by an awareness of scientific progress. It resulted in a rather pragmatic mode of thinking that has dominated Dutch bourgeois culture from the 16th century onward, coexisting with growing commercial acumen. Evolving Dutch society came to encompass a diversity of religious traditions, from rigid Calvinism and a more tolerant Protestantism to conformist Roman Catholicism.

Roughly speaking, the present Dutch population can be divided into three almost equal groups relative to religion: Roman Catholics (predominantly in the provinces of Noord-Brabant and Limburg), Protestants (particularly the Dutch Reformed Church), and the nonreligious. Although religious ardour and church attendance have slackened notably since about 1900, the educational institutions and political parties that evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries along denominational lines still play a considerable role vis-à-vis the more or less secularized parties and institutions that sprang from socialist, liberal, and conservative movements. The most constant factor in the body politic has for years been the so-called Christian Democrats--comprising Roman Catholics as well as Protestants--who traditionally dominate the centre of the parliamentary spectrum.

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.

Linguistic composition.

The language in the whole of the country is Dutch, or Nederlands, a Germanic language that is also spoken by the inhabitants of northern Belgium (there called Flemish). Afrikaans, an official language of South Africa, is a variant of the Dutch spoken by 17th-century emigrants from Holland and Zeeland. Apart from Dutch, the inhabitants of the northern province of Friesland also speak their own language, 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 nation's geographic position, its history of occupation, and its attraction for tourists. English, French, and German are among the languages commonly heard. (see also Index: Afrikaans language)

Demographic trends.

Although The Netherlands is one of the world's most densely populated countries, its growth rate has been slight in the 20th century. Birth and death rates are both among the world's lowest, causing a somewhat older society, and most population increase results from immigration. As a result of the postwar government policy mentioned above, however, emigrants had 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 Spaniards, Yugoslavs, Turks, and Moroccans, so that the balance remained more or less static. Since 1970 there has been a continuous immigrant surplus, with a peak in 1975 as a result of a large number of arrivals from Suriname (just before its independence). In the early 1990s more than 4 percent of The Netherlands' population was made up of foreign residents (excluding the tens of thousands of persons of Dutch nationality originating from former colonies). Muslims made up more than 2.5 percent of the population and Hindus and Buddhists another .5 percent. (see also Index: emigration)

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 the government has stimulated industrial growth--Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe, Gelderland, and Zeeland.

THE ECONOMY

Since World War II The Netherlands has become a highly industrialized nation 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 is a major participant in such corporations as The Netherlands Railways, the Dutch State Mines, The Royal Netherlands Blast Furnaces and Steel Works, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, and The Netherlands Natural Gas Company. The state thus has a direct, continuous influence on the management of some sectors of the economy and especially on investment policy. The government also employs a substantial percentage of the total labour force.

The Dutch economy nevertheless remains basically in private hands. Postwar industrial development has been consciously stimulated by government policy, and state subsidies have been granted to attract industry toward the relatively underdeveloped northern provinces, as well as Limburg and certain other pockets of economic stagnation. Despite these subsidies, the western provinces remain the centre of new industry, especially in the services sector.

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, leaving the Protestant union 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 Socio-Economic Council, which serves mainly to advise the government.

Energy.

With the increasing use of oil and natural gas, coal mining (concentrated in southern Limburg) 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 in southeastern Drenthe, near Schoonebeek, and in Zuid-Holland. 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 in the province of Groningen--and beneath the Dutch sector of the North Sea. Under the Geneva Convention of 1958, The Netherlands was allocated a 22,000-square-mile block of the continental shelf of the North Sea, an area larger than the country itself. Almost half of the natural gas produced is exported to Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Italy, helping to improve the balance of payments in the economic sector in which The Netherlands has usually had its largest deficit. The natural gas finds began a trend of Dutch industries toward using the fuel, among them the aluminium smelter at Delfzijl in Groningen. 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. Since it is the government's policy to reserve as much natural gas as possible for domestic use in future decades, the amount of imported coal again increased in the 1980s. (see also Index: United Nations Conferences on the Law of the Sea)

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, lettuce, cut flowers, and house plants has greatly increased, and The Netherlands now contains almost half 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. Fishing is of minimal importance.

Industry.

Dutch industrial development began relatively late, about 1870, and production rose even during the depression of the 1930s. Further development became a priority after World War II, when ascending population figures and growing farm-labour surpluses necessitated tens of thousands of additional jobs each year. Manufacturing industries accounted for about 20 percent of the labour force in the early 1990s, with the metal industry as the largest employer. The food, beverage, and tobacco manufacturing industries, based as they are on the highly productive agriculture sector, ranked second in employment but first in production value. Other important producers included the chemical, petroleum products, and electrical and electronics industries. Dutch industry has been able to redevelop commercial aircraft since World War II, and automobile manufacturing has been expanded. In contrast, employment in textile manufacturing and shipbuilding has decreased. The government has encouraged new industrial development in the fields of microelectronics, aerospace, and biotechnology.

Finance and trade.

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. The General Netherlands Bank and the Amsterdam-Rotterdam Bank handle the majority of Dutch financial business between them; these two institutions merged in 1990. A second large bank was created through the consolidation of the Postbank and the Netherlands Traders' Bank. 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 European Economic Community (EEC; also called the Common Market) is, of course, the dominant factor in foreign trade. In 1958 (just before the Common Market was established) some 40 percent of Dutch exports went to West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Italy, but in the late 20th century these nations and the EEC as a whole accounted for about 75 percent of exports. The largest import source was Germany, followed by other EEC countries and the United States.

Transportation.

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. Trade flows through Dutch harbours, continuing its passage by river vessel, train, truck, and pipeline. Maritime traffic accounts for more than half of 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 as it is 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. 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 to Rotterdam harbour, which handles more tonnage than any other harbour in the world. In petroleum processing, too, Rotterdam is one of the world's leading centres. A trench about 4,000 feet wide at a depth of 74 feet extends 27 miles into the North Sea to facilitate the entry of supertankers with 350,000-ton capacities. 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 Royal Dutch Airlines initiated scheduled service between Amsterdam and London in 1920 and now has a worldwide network. Amsterdam Airport ( Schiphol)--on the site of the former Haarlem Lake at about 13 feet below sea level--is Europe's fifth largest airport. Smaller airports of international importance are Rotterdam Airport (Zestienhoven) and, in southern Limburg, Maastricht Airport (Beek). (see also Index: Schiphol Airport)

In internal traffic the motor vehicle, accommodated by a comprehensive road network, dominates both passenger and goods transport, despite the fact that there is a dense and modern railway network. The length of the railroad track, however, is even surpassed by a network of inland waterways made up of some 3,000 miles of rivers and canals and linked with Belgian, French, and German systems. Besides such natural waterways as the Rhine, Lek, Waal, and Maas, many artificial waterways--the Juliana Canal (in southern Limburg), 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.

ADMINISTRATION AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS

The Kingdom of The Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy. The monarchy is hereditary in both the male and female lines.

Government.

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 75 members are elected by the members of the councils of the provinces, and a directly elected Second Chamber of 150 members. 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.

In local government, the most important institutions are the municipalities (gemeenten). Since World War II their number has been reduced to about 670 as a result of redivisions. Each municipality is run by a directly elected council of from 7 to 45 members, depending on the size of the population. This council is presided over by a burgemeester (mayor), who is appointed by the government and serves as chairman of the executive, the members of which are elected by and from the council. 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 one: directly elected councils (staten) which elect the members of the executive, except for the chairman, who is appointed by the government. The main functions of the provinces include controlling the municipalities within their borders and controlling the district water-control boards (waterschappen).

Political life.

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.

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 nation's international agreements cannot be enforced by the courts.

Voting age and military obligation.

The franchise is extended to all Dutch citizens who have reached the age of 18, except for a few special groups, such as the mentally impaired. The Dutch armed forces consist of an army, a navy, and an air force. All male citizens become liable for military service at the age of 18. The normal period of obligatory service is between 14 and 17 months.

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 consists 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 about 85 institutions for Higher Professional Education. These are called polytechnics, and they cover many professional fields complementary to the 13 universities. They are all publicly financed. Nine of them cover a general range of disciplines: 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 (Protestant) Free University at Amsterdam (1880), and the Roman Catholic universities of Nijmegen (1923) and of Brabant at Tilburg (1927). The 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.

Health and welfare.

Since World War II The Netherlands has 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, including the General Old Age Pensions Act, the General Widows and Orphans Act, the Exceptional Medical Expenses Act, and General Disablement Benefits. There also are four employee insurance schemes, including the Sickness Benefits Act, the Disablement 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 ones 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 too little or no income.

Housing.

A severe housing shortage began developing after the mid-20th century and became the source for political controversy. By the 1970s, in the face of continually growing demand, even an unprecedented boom of housing construction paled. 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, which now accounts for more than 40 percent of the stock. Concurrently, the generously subsidized homeowner sector expanded to more than 45 percent.

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, transport 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.

Government policy concentrates increasingly on combating negative environmental effects, preferably by tackling their source. 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. Environmental control measures require costly sacrifices from both the individual taxpayer and industry.

CULTURAL LIFE

The cultural life in 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 not involving itself directly in 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.

CULTURAL LIFE

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 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 "The 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; the allegorical Hiëronymus Bosch; the portraitist Frans Hals and landscapists Aelbert Cuyp and Jacob van Ruisdael; still-life artists such as Jan Vermeer, Willem Heda, and Willem Kalf; and the geometrically inclined Piet Mondrian. For a broader discussion of Dutch painting, see PAINTING, THE HISTORY OF WESTERN.

Literature and the performing arts.

Dutch literature, and theatre as well, has 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. For more information, see DUTCH LITERATURE. The nation'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 not highly developed.

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 The Hague.

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 at The Hague, Het Loo (the former royal palace) at 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 Otterloo (Veluwe), are renowned for their collections of paintings by van Gogh. The most popular folk museums are the Openluchtmuseum (Open Air Museum) at Arnhem and the Zuiderzeemuseum at Enkhuizen.

Recreation.

Favourite regions for open-air recreation are the sea coasts 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 people also are attracted to hilly areas, such as the Veluwe and the southern part of Limburg province, while foreign visitors come in droves to the old cities in the western part of the country, with Amsterdam ranking as the most popular site. Favourite foreign vacation spots for the Dutch are the Mediterranean coasts during the summer holidays and the Alps during winter holidays.

Press and broadcasting.

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 De Telegraaf from Amsterdam (right of centre). The most widely read newspapers in political and intellectual circles are the NRC Handelsblad in Rotterdam (liberal) and De Volkskrant in Amsterdam (left of centre).

The majority of radio and television transmissions are produced by eight associations, all under private initiative. There are Roman Catholic, Protestant, Socialist, and independent broadcasting organizations, each of which publishes for its supporters a comprehensive weekly that lists all the Dutch and a fair number of foreign programs. All these stations operate within the framework of the Netherlands Broadcasting Corporation, which is responsible for the programming of unreserved airtime. Religious organizations, political parties, and small factional groups are granted some reserved broadcasting time. The government itself has no influence on the programs. Advertising is restricted and is controlled by a separate foundation. All broadcasting is financed by a licensing fee and by the yield from television and radio advertising. A commercial Dutch-owned television station, based in Luxembourg, can be received in most parts of the country thanks to the extremely dense Dutch cable television network.

For statistical data on the land and people of The Netherlands, see the Britannica World Data section in the BRITANNICA BOOK OF THE YEAR. (M.W.H./H.Me.)

History of the Low Countries (to 1579)

For historical purposes, the name Low Countries is generally understood to include the territory of what is today the Kingdom of The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, as well as parts of northern France. However, Belgium, although it was not constituted as an independent kingdom until 1831, became a distinct entity after 1585, when the southern provinces were definitively reconquered by Spain and separated from the northern sector. For a brief period, from 1814 to 1830, an attempt was made to unite the Low Countries into one kingdom again, but both regions by this time had developed cultures too different to form a single entity under a central government. Here, therefore, the history of the Low Countries will be surveyed as a whole to the late 16th century. The later individual histories of Belgium and Luxembourg are treated in the separate articles on those countries.

PREHISTORY

In most stages of the prehistory of the Low Countries the regions north of the lower courses of the Rhine and Meuse (Mass) rivers were part of a North European culture area, while those to the south had close relations to central and western Europe.

Lower and Middle Paleolithic (250,000-35,000 BP).

The earliest well-dated remains of human habitation in the region are flint objects that reflect the Levalloisian stone-flaking technique. Found in the loess-covered Belvedere quarry near Maastricht on the Netherlands-Belgium border, these objects have been dated to about 250,000 years BP, correlating with an early interstadial period during the Saale Glacial Stage. The remains of human industry discovered in river deposits near Mons, Belg., may even be slightly older than the findings at the quarry. Hand axes from the late Saalian stage and other artifacts derived from ice-borne deposits have been recovered in the central and northern Netherlands and are characterized as late Acheulian. (see also Index: Acheulean industry)

The Mousterian culture (c. 80,000-35,000 BP) has been documented in the Ardennes caves in southern Belgium and in open excavation sites in The Netherlands' North Brabant and Belgian Limburg. Mousterian tool culture is associated with Neanderthal man, and the skeletal remains of that form have been found in several Belgian caves (at Spy near Namur and at Engis near Liège) in the 19th century. (see also Index: Mousterian industry)

Upper Paleolithic (35,000-10,000 BP).

Aurignacian, Gravettien (upper Perigordian), and Magdalenian assemblages found in the Ardennes caves represent the northernmost fringes of the inhabited zone of Europe until about 13,000 BP. The open site of Maisières Canal in Hainaut province, Belg., is exceptional for its preservation of glacial fauna (from about 28,000 BP) in later river deposits. Several late Magdalenian sites (hunting stands) were discovered in southern (Belgian and Dutch) Limburg. A wide uninhabited area separated the Magdalenian sites from sites of the Hamburgian tradition (emanating from western Germany) in the northern Netherlands. The latter included reindeer-hunting peoples who were the first colonists of the North European Plain at the end of the last (Weichsel) ice age. Later cultural traditions (including the Federmesser, Creswellian, and Ahrensburgian) formed the basis for the cultures of the succeeding Mesolithic period. (see also Index: Aurignacian culture, Gravettian industry, Magdalenian culture)

Mesolithic (10,000 BP-4000 BC).

(BC dates in this section are all based on radiocarbon measurements calibrated to real centuries before Christ). The distribution of hundreds of flint scatters often characterized by microliths (tiny blade tools) distinguish southern and northern cultural spheres, separated by the main rivers. Bone implements from the period have been dredged or fished up from locales in the North Sea and Rotterdam harbour. Outstanding among the relics of the period is a dugout pine canoe found at Pesse in Drenthe province; dating to 8500 BP, it is the oldest vessel known. Among the culture groups of the period were the Maglemesians of the northern cultural sphere. Their implements are often decorated with designs. Another culture group of the period, the Tardenoisian, occupied sandy regions and plateaus; their remains included arrowheads and other objects incorporating microliths. (see also Index: Maglemosian industry)

Neolithic (4000-2900 BC).

Farmers of the Linear Pottery culture, settling on the loess of Dutch Limburg and Belgium around 6500 BP, were among the first to bring Neolithic lifeways to the region. Large-scale excavations in Sittard, Geleen, Elsloo, and Stein in The Netherlands and at sites including Rosmeer and Darion in Belgium have rendered considerable remains from this early Neolithic group. This northwesternmost branch of the culture met with other communities that left, by contrast, few relics and are identified only by minimal scatters of their characteristic pottery, called Hoguette and Limburg. These early communities had widespread internal contacts, documented by remains that include adzes made of exotic stone, and external contacts with late Mesolithic communities to the north, especially along the Meuse River.

Other cultures briefly rose up (Blicquy in Belgium and Rössen in Germany) and in their turn were succeeded about 4100 BC by the northwesternmost branch of the Michelsberg culture in Belgium and, somewhat later, the Funnel-neck Beaker culture in The Netherlands. The evolution of these groups represents principally a transformation in the style of material culture of native communities. Among the most significant Michelsberg remains are the extensive fields of deep flint mines at Spiennes in Hainaut and Rijckholt in Dutch Limburg. Contacts by the Michelsberg with late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers north of the loess zone gave rise to semiagricultural communities, as evidenced by relics from about 4000 BC found in the Netherlands delta at Swifterbant in Flevoland and Hazendonkborn and Bergschenhoekborn in Zuid-Holland.

The late Neolithic (3300-2900 BC) is characterized in the eastern Netherlands, especially in Drenthe, by the Funnel-neck Beaker culture, which is particularly distinguished by megalithic burial monuments (the so-called hunebedden), the origins of which are still unknown. Composed of large stone blocks left behind by receding glaciers, these monuments mark collective tombs and may extend for up to 160 feet (about 50 metres) in length. In addition to the beakers for which the culture is named, the remains include collared flasks, buckets, and bowls--often decorated with horizontal and vertical grooves--and polished stone and flint tools. Southern Belgium was reached in this period by the northern fringes of the French Seine-Oise-Marne culture. A third cultural entity has been identified in the Netherlands delta as the Vlaardingen group; it comprises fully agrarian as well as semiagrarian settlements.

Transitional between the Neolithic and Bronze ages is the beaker phase (2900-2000 BC). A distinguishing characteristic of the culture is its change to exclusively individual burial, in which specific grave goods (battle-axes, daggers, beakers) were included; the body, arranged in a flexed posture, was placed in an east-west orientation. This custom is assumed to indirectly reflect essential changes in society, possibly brought about by technological innovations, such as the plow, the wheel, and the cart, which might have caused a restructuring of the agrarian system. (see also Index: Beaker folk)

The Bronze Age (2000-700 BC).

The early Bronze Age in the region was characterized by a continuation of the beaker tradition, the beginnings of bronze imports (from central and northern Europe and the British Isles), and a modest local bronze industry. The origin of cremation and the burial of ashes in urns in the southern Netherlands and Belgium ( Hilversum culture) can be related to close contacts with Wessex, in Britain.

Finds from the middle Bronze Age (1500-1100 BC) reflect the establishment of an essentially more advanced agricultural system: remains of some 80- to 130-foot-long farmhouses, including stable sections, provide evidence of true mixed farming, including manuring, care for winter fodder, and, presumably, the use of straw in stables. Cattle were by far the dominant livestock. This contrasts sharply with the Neolithic cultures, in which agricultural activities are presumed to have been less interrelated. Burial during the period was under barrows, now surrounded by post circles, with human remains either extended in coffins (common to the northern Netherlands) or cremated in urns (as in the south).

While settlement tradition continued, changes in burial custom took place around 1100 BC, with urn burial now taking place in small, individual barrows surrounded by ditches of various types. A northern sphere connected with Westphalia, a central sphere in Noord-Brabant/Limburg connected with the Rhineland, and a southern Flemish group are distinct examples of this type of burial. Modest native bronze industries have been identified in the north (Hunze-Eems industry) as well as along the Meuse in Limburg, while bronze weapons and implements were imported from Great Britain and various other sources.

The Iron Age (c. 700 BC to Roman times).

The Iron Age in the Low Countries is characterized by Celtic and Germanic influences. In the south, Hallstatt (Celtic) and La Tène traditions can be traced through prestigious warrior chieftain graves at such sites as Court Saint Etienne (Hainaut, Belg.), Eigenbilzen (Belg.), and Oss (Neth.), which were stocked with chariots and harnesses, bronze weapons, implements, and even wine services. These traditions are also reflected in fortified hilltop settlements, in pottery styles, and in ornaments and other artifacts. On the sands to the north people had to cope with a deteriorating environment, especially impoverishment of the soils, podzolization, and wind erosion. They responded to these conditions with a more diversified agriculture and the more protective system of Celtic fields (small plots with low earthen banks formed around them). Other illustrations of renewed adaptability were demonstrated by the colonization of newly formed salt marshes and the building of artificial dwelling mounds called terpen in the north, the new settlement of creek and peat landscapes of the western river estuaries, salt production along the coast, and the breeding of horses elsewhere. (L.P.L.K.) (see also Index: Hallstatt culture, La Tène culture)

ANCIENT AND EARLY MEDIEVAL TIMES

The Roman period.

At the time of the Roman conquest (1st century BC), the Low Countries were inhabited by a number of Celtic tribes to the south and west of the Rhine and by a number of Germanic tribes to the north. Cultural and ethnic influences in both directions, however, make it difficult to draw the line between Celtic and Germanic peoples. On the coast of northern France and in Flanders lived the Morini; to the north of them, between the Schelde River and the sea, the Menapii; in Artois, the Nervii; between the Schelde and the Rhine, the Eburones and the Aduatuci; and, in what is now Luxembourg, the Treveri. North of the Rhine, the Frisii (Frisians) were the principal inhabitants, although the arrival of the Romans brought about a number of movements: the Batavi came to the area of the lower reaches of the Rhine, the Canninefates to the western coastal area of the mouth of the Rhine, the Marsaci to the islands of Zeeland, the Toxandri to the Campine (Kempenland), the Cugerni to the Xanten district, and the Tungri to part of the area originally inhabited by the Eburones. (see also Index: Roman Republic and Empire, Germanic peoples)

The Roman conquest of Gaul, which was completed by Caesar in 59-52 BC, stopped short at the Rhine. The emperor Augustus' attempt to extend Roman military power over the Elbe failed, and the area occupied by the Frisians, north of the Rhine, was therefore never under Roman rule. In the Rhine delta and to the south and west of the Rhine, the Romans set up the same administrative organizations as those found in other parts of Gaul. The Low Countries formed part of the provinces of Belgica and Germania Inferior (later Belgica Secunda and Germania Secunda), which themselves were subdivided into civitates: in Belgica, those of the Morini, Menapii, Treveri, Tungri, and possibly the Toxandri; in Germania Inferior, those of the Batavi, Canninefates, and Cugerni. Because of the later adoption by the church of the division into civitates, a number of centres of the civitates have become the seats of bishoprics; among these are Thérouanne, Tournai, Tongeren (Tongres), and Trier (Trèves).

From the mid-1st to the mid-3rd century AD, the Gallo-Roman culture penetrated the northern provinces of the empire. The famous road network was constructed, and important garrisons were concentrated along the Rhine and also on the Waal at present-day Nijmegen. This affected a whole region: a more inland city such as Tongres became an important market for grain to be brought to Cologne. Along the great Cologne-Tongres-Bavai-Boulogne axis, relatively rich villae were located at regular distances. One of these, the city of Maastricht, profited from the river trade on the Meuse and had baths as early as the 1st century, while graves in the vicinity contained sarcophagi with bas-relief ornamentation, as well as splendid glass and sculptures of Mediterranean origin. The Gallo-Roman elite were concentrated along the main roads and especially on the richest lime soils. Some large industrial settlements producing iron works and clay tiles were located near the Schelde close to crossings of secondary roads to the north.

In the mid-3rd century Roman power in the Low Countries began to weaken, and the forts were abandoned. This was the result not only of a resurgence of the Germanic tribes but also probably of the encroachment of the sea, which in all likelihood brought about a drastic change in the area's economy. A temporary recovery began at the end of the 3rd century. In particular, Julian, Caesar of Gaul, waged several wars in the Low Countries between 355 and 360 and was able to put new strength, for a time, into the Rhine border. A great invasion by Germanic tribes in 406-407, however, ended the Roman occupation of the Low Countries. The Romans had already tolerated the Germanic penetration of their territory and had given some tribes the task of protecting the borders of the empire. The Franks, who had settled in Toxandria, in Brabant, were given the job of defending the border areas, which they did until the mid-5th century.

Frankish rule.

The Franks were probably influenced considerably by Roman culture, becoming familiar with the Roman world and way of life, although the expansion of their own race and their growing self-confidence were barriers to complete Romanization. About 450 they moved southward, founding a new Frankish kingdom in a region that was centred on the road from Tongres to Boulogne. The Gallo-Roman population had left the less-populated sandy areas in the north and withdrawn south of that road. The first king of the Merovingian Franks, Childeric I (d. 481/482), ruled the region around Tournai, while his son Clovis I (ruled 481/482-511) extended the kingdom, eliminating other Frankish leaders and becoming ruler of much of Gaul. During the 6th century, Salian Franks had settled in the region between the Loire River in present-day France and the Coal Forest in the south of present-day Belgium. From the late 6th century, Ripuarian Franks pushed from the Rhineland westward to the Schelde. Their immigration strengthened the Germanic faction in that region, which had been almost completely evacuated by the Gallo-Romans. The Salian Franks, on the other hand, had penetrated a more densely Latinized area where they came under the strong influence of the dominant Roman culture. (see also Index: Merovingian dynasty)

The area occupied by the Frisians in the north was completely outside the Frankish sphere of influence, but the Rhine delta and even what is now Noord-Brabant also appear to have retained the virtually independent status they had possessed during the Roman era.

The Frisians were part of a North Sea culture that formed a distinct foil to Frankish power. The Frisians played an important role in trade, which sought routes along the Rhine and the Meuse and across the North Sea. Industrial products were imported from northern France, the Meuse plain, and the Rhineland, where Merovingian power was more firmly established and where centres of commerce (e.g., Dinant, Namur, Huy, and Liège) developed. The more or less independent area on the North Sea coast, however, found itself threatened during the 7th century by the rise of the Frankish nobles. In particular, the family of the Pepins, who came from the centre of Austrasia (the Ardennes and upper Meuse), was able to secure land in Limburg. Moreover, encouraged by the Frankish king Dagobert (ruled 623-639), the Frankish church began an offensive that led to the foundation of the bishopric of Thérouanne (the civitas of the Morini).

This collaboration between church and nobles prepared the way for an expansion of political power to the north, which was carried out under the leadership of the Pepins, who as "mayors of the palace" in Austrasia had virtually taken over power from the weakened Merovingian kings. Charles Martel, a bastard son of Pepin II, who managed after several years' fighting (714-719) to grasp supreme power over the whole Frankish empire, succeeded in 734 in forcing his way through to the northern centres of the Frisians and gaining a victory near the Boorne River. His victory was later consolidated by Pepin III and his son Charlemagne (ruled 768-814). The whole area of the Low Countries thus effectively formed part of the Frankish empire, which was then ruled by the Pepin, or Carolingian, dynasty.

The Low Countries under the Carolingians.

Government.

The administrative organization of the Low Countries during this period was basically the same as that of the rest of the Frankish empire. Supreme authority was held by the king, who, aided by servants of the palace, toured the country incessantly. The Carolingian kings naturally made several visits to the Low Countries, where they had old palaces or built new ones (Herstal, Meerssen, Nijmegen, Aix-la-Chapelle) and where they also possessed extensive crown estates. Their authority (bannus) was delegated to counts who had control of counties, or gauen (pagi), some of which corresponded to Roman civitates. Among these counties in the Low Countries were the pagus Taruanensis (centred on Thérouanne), pagus Mempiscus, pagus Flandrensis (around Brugge), pagus Turnacensis (around Tournai), pagus Gandensis (Ghent), pagus Bracbatensis (between the Schelde and the Dijle rivers), pagus Toxandrie (modern Noord-Brabant), and, north of the great rivers, Marssum, Lake et Isla, Teisterbant, Circa oras Rheni, Kinnem, Westflinge, Texla, Salon, Hamaland, and Twente. In the north, however, it is frequently not possible to determine with certainty whether the word gau in fact denoted a region controlled by a count who exercised the king's authority or indicated simply a region of land without reference to its government. Smaller administrative units were the centenae, or hundreds, and districts called ambachten. These last were mainly in what are now the provinces of Vlaanderen, Zeeland, and Holland.

Religion.

The conversion to Christianity of the southern Low Countries, which took place largely during the 7th century, led to the foundation of further bishoprics at Arras, Tournai, and Cambrai, which were part of the ecclesiastical province of Rheims (the former Roman province of Belgica Secunda). Germania Secunda contained the ecclesiastical province of Cologne, in which the civitas of Tongres seems to have had an uninterrupted existence as a bishopric since Roman times; the centre of this bishopric was moved for a time to Maastricht (6th and 7th centuries) until, about 720, Liège became the seat of the bishopric. Christianity was brought to the north of the Low Countries mainly by Anglo-Saxon preachers, by Frisians influenced by them, and by Franks. This Anglo-Saxon Christianity was particularly important in the missionary bishopric of Utrecht, which at first, because of its missionary character, had no precisely defined borders. True, the city of Utrecht had been named as the see of the bishopric, but, as in England, the monasteries played an important part in the missionary work; among these was the monastery of Echternach in Luxembourg and the two important Benedictine abbeys in and near Ghent, founded by St. Amand in the early 7th century. The country between the Meuse and the Waal rivers and the area around Nijmegen belonged to the bishopric of Cologne, while certain districts in the north and east were part of the bishopric of Münster (founded by Charlemagne).

Social classes.

The social structure of the Low Countries in the Frankish era included a number of classes. At the top was an elite that probably already operated on a hereditary system and of which the members were bound to the king as vassals and rewarded by fiefs (beneficia). Next were the freemen (liberi, ingenui), bound to the king by an oath of allegiance and traditionally under an obligation to serve in the army and in the law courts. A freeman's Wergeld--the sum that had to be paid to his family if he was killed--was in principle 200 shillings (solidi); but the ingenui Franci, or homines Franci (found in the region of the great rivers; probably descended from native nobles who had early placed themselves in the service of the Franks in their policy of conquest), had a much higher Wergeld. At the bottom of the ladder were the bondsmen, who were closely dependent on a lord (often an important landowner), in whose service they stood, in most cases working on his estates. It may be supposed that the position of the bondsmen was relatively favourable in the coastal areas of Holland and Friesland, where there were no large estates and, moreover, where the struggle against the sea required as much manpower as the community was able to offer. (see also Index: bondsman)

Economy.

Economically, the structure of the Low Countries in the Frankish period was principally agrarian. Particularly in the south and east, it was common practice to exploit the land from a central farmhouse (villa, or curtis), using the services of dependent subjects (bondsmen), who were duty-bound to work on the domain of the lord and to this end received small farms from him. The nature of the land in the west and north, however, probably to a large extent precluded this classical type of exploitation of the domains; there was scattered, even fragmentary, ownership of land, and the curtis was no more than a gathering place to which the bondsmen had to take a part of their produce. In Holland and Friesland, fishing and the raising and selling of cattle were of importance. This Frisian trade, of which Dorestad was a centre, was greatly stimulated by absorption into the Frankish empire, and it reached its zenith under Charlemagne and Louis I the Pious (ruled 814-840). Moreover, by virtue of its becoming part of the Frankish empire, Friesland obtained an important hinterland in the southern regions of the Meuse and Rhine and was thus in a position to develop export and through trade to Denmark, Norway, and the Baltic countries. The importance of Frisian trade may be seen in the Carolingian coins found in Dorestad, where there was a toll and a royal mint. This trade was supplied by the southern Low Countries. Thus the cloths that were sold as Frisian cloths were produced in the area of the Schelde (later called Flanders). Quentovic, at the mouth of the Canche, was another trading centre; it too had a toll and a mint. Smaller trade settlements (portus, or vicus) emerged at Tournai, Ghent, Brugge, Antwerp, Dinant, Namur, Huy, Liège, and Maastricht--a clear indication of the commercial importance of the Schelde and the Meuse.

Decline of the Frankish empire.

The great Carolingian dynasty passed into a decline as early as the reign of Louis the Pious, and the process was accelerated after his death in 840. Repeated wars broke out under his sons, leading eventually to the partition of the empire. The dissolution of Carolingian power was further helped by Viking, Magyar, and Saracen attacks--the Viking attacks being of greatest import for the Low Countries. The attacks had begun immediately after the death of Charlemagne (814) in the form of plundering raids, the magnitude and danger of which soon increased. ( Dorestad, for example, was destroyed four times between 834 and 837.) Churches and monasteries, with their rich treasures, were the principal targets for the Vikings, who soon took to spending the winter in the Low Countries. In order to ward off the danger, attempts were made to throw up walls around towns and monasteries or even to drive off the Vikings by fierce counterattacks--a procedure that enjoyed some success--so that the counts of Flanders, for example, were able to lay a firm foundation for their own power. Another method of defense was to admit the Vikings on the condition that they defend the areas given them against other Vikings. The danger diminished after 900.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TERRITORIAL PRINCIPALITIES AND THE RISE OF THE TOWNS (925-c. 1350)

Politically speaking, the period between 925 and about 1350 is characterized by the emergence, growth, and eventual independence of secular and ecclesiastical territorial principalities. The rulers of these principalities--both secular and spiritual--had a feudal relationship with the German king (the Holy Roman emperor), with the exception of the count of Flanders, who held his land principally as the vassal of the French king, with only the eastern part of his county, Imperial Flanders, being held in fealty to the German king. While the secular principalities came into being as a result of individual initiative on the part of local rulers and of their taking the law into their own hands, to the detriment of the king's authority, the development of the spiritual princes' authority was systematically furthered and supported from above by the king himself. The secular principalities that arose in the Low Countries and whose borders were more or less fixed at the end of the 13th century were the counties of Flanders and Hainaut, the duchies of Brabant and Limburg (after 1288 joined in personal union), the county of Namur, the county of Loon (which was, however, to a large degree dependent on the bishopric of Liège and incorporated in it from 1366), the county of Holland and Zeeland, and the county (after 1339, duchy) of Guelders. The Frisian areas (approximately corresponding to the modern provinces of Friesland and Groningen, but excluding the city of Groningen) had no sovereign authority. The spiritual principalities were Liège, Utrecht, Tournai, and Cambrai. The secular authority of the bishop of Utrecht was exercised over two separate areas: the Nedersticht (now the province of Utrecht) and the Oversticht (now the provinces of Overijssel and Drenthe and the city of Groningen). (see also Index: feudalism, Holy Roman Empire)

It must be noted that, although these principalities displayed common characteristics in their economies, social structures, and cultures, it was the intrusion of the Burgundian dynasty that brought about a certain degree of political unity, which in turn furthered economic, social, and cultural unity and even led to the beginnings of a common national feeling (which was nevertheless too weak to prevent partition in the late 16th century). (see also Index: Burgundy)

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE TERRITORIAL PRINCIPALITIES AND THE RISE OF TOWNS (925-CA.1350)

The secular principalities.

The secular princes consolidated their power in a number of ways. The count still exercised the rights that had for centuries been attached to the Carolingian office of count, denoted by the term comitatus. They included the administration of justice, various military powers, and the right to levy fines and tolls. To these rights fiefs were attached, which during the passage of time were expanded by the counts, who eventually owned such large estates that they were by far the greatest landowners in their territories. Soon the term comitatus covered not only the office, or duty, but also the whole area over which that office was exercised; thus it could be said that the count held his county in fief of the king. An important element of the count's authority was supervision over the county's religious foundations, especially the monasteries. In the 10th century, the counts sometimes even assumed the function of abbot (lay abbot); but they later contented themselves with the control of appointments to ecclesiastical offices, through which they often had great influence over the monasteries and profited from the income from monastic land. Thus, monasteries such as St. Vaast (near Arras), St. Amand (on the Scarpe), St. Bertin (near St. Omer), and St. Bavon and St. Peter (in Ghent) became centres of the power and authority of the counts of Flanders; Nivelles and Gembloux, of the dukes of Brabant; and Egmond and Rijnsburg, of the counts of Holland. (see also Index: monasticism)

At the end of the 9th and in the 10th century, during the Viking attacks and while connections with the empire were loosening, the local counts built up their power by joining a number of pagi together and building forts to ensure their safety. The counts of Flanders amalgamated the pagi Flandrensis, Rodanensis, Gandensis, Curtracensis, Iserae, and Mempiscus, the whole being thenceforth called Flanders; they fortified this area of their power with new or surviving Roman citadels. In the northern coastal regions, the Viking Gerulf was granted in about 885 the rights over a number of counties between the Meuse and the Vlie (Masalant, Kinnem, Texla, Westflinge, and a district known as Circa oras Rheni, which was, as the name implies, on both sides of the Rhine); his descendants consolidated their power there as counts of west Frisia and, after 1100, took the title of counts of Holland. In Brabant and Guelders, the amalgamation of fragmentary and dispersed estates took place later than in Flanders and Holland.

During the 10th and 11th centuries, the German kings of the Saxon and Salian dynasties attempted to impose their authority on the increasingly powerful secular principalities by the appointment of dukes. In Lorraine, during the reign of Otto I (936-973), the king appointed his brother, Bruno, the archbishop of Cologne, to the position of duke. Bruno soon split Lorraine into two dukedoms--Upper and Lower Lorraine. In Lower Lorraine, the title of duke was given to the counts of Louvain and the counts of Limburg--the former at first called themselves dukes of Lorraine but soon assumed the title of dukes of Brabant; the latter were known as the dukes of Limburg. (see also Index: Saxon dynasty)

The spiritual principalities.

That the German kings failed to integrate Lorraine into the Holy Roman Empire as a duchy ruled by a viceroy may be attributed to the fact that the kings soon developed another way to strengthen their power, not only in Lorraine but throughout the empire, by systematically investing bishops and abbots with secular powers and making them pillars of authority. This procedure, developed by Otto I and reaching its summit under Henry III, was carried out in phases and led eventually to the establishment of the Imperial Church (Reichskirche), in which the spiritual and secular principalities played an important part. The most important ecclesiastical principalities in the Low Countries were the bishoprics of Liège, Utrecht, and, to a lesser degree, Cambrai, which, though within the Holy Roman Empire, belonged to the French church province of Rheims. The secular powers enjoyed by these bishops were based on the right of immunity that their churches exercised over their properties, and that meant that, within the areas of their properties, the counts and their subordinates had little or no opportunity to carry out their functions. The bishops' power was consolidated when the kings decided to transfer to the bishops the powers of counts in certain areas that were not covered by immunity.

Certain bishops, such as those of Liège and Utrecht, were able to combine their rights of immunity, certain jurisdictional powers, regalia, and ban-immunities into a unified secular authority, thus forming a secular principality called a Sticht (as distinct from the diocese) or--where the power structure was very large and complex, as in the case of the bishop of Liège--a prince-bishopric. As princes, the bishops were vassals of the king, having to fulfill military and advisory duties in the same way as their secular colleagues. The advantage of this system to the kings lay in the fact that the bishops could not start a dynasty that might begin to work for its own ends, and its smooth running stood and fell with the authority of the kings to nominate their own bishops.

Thus the spiritual-territorial principalities of the bishops of Liège and Utrecht emerged--the prince-bishopric of Liège and the Sticht of Utrecht. In Liège this development was completed in 972-1008 under the guidance of Bishop Notger, appointed by Otto I. As early as 985 he was granted the rights of the count of Huy, and the German kings made use of the bishopric of Liège to try to strengthen their positions in Lorraine. Utrecht, which lay more on the periphery of the empire, developed somewhat later. It was principally the kings Henry II, Conrad II, and Henry III who strengthened the secular power of the bishops through privileges and gifts of land.

Struggle for independence.

Thus, the Low Countries during the 10th and 11th centuries saw the development of the pattern of a number of more or less independent feudal states, both secular and ecclesiastical, each of which was struggling for more freedom from the king's authority, the enlargement of its sphere of influence, and the strengthening of its internal power. Flanders led the way. In the 10th and 11th centuries it needed to pay only scant attention to the weak French kings of the Capetian dynasty and was thus soon able to exercise its power farther south--in Artois--and was even able to play an important part in a political power struggle around the French crown. In 1066 the count of Flanders lent his support to the expedition to England of his son-in-law, William, duke of Normandy. The counts of Flanders built up a strong administrative apparatus--the curia comitis, based on central officials and on local rulers called burgraves, or castellans (castellani), who were in charge of districts known as castellanies, where they had extensive military and administrative powers. The reclamation of land from the sea and from marsh and wasteland in the coastal area, which began in the 11th century, enlarged the estates and the income of the counts and brought about the need for a rational administrative system. The nobles were a power to be reckoned with, but Count Robert I (ruled 1071-93) and his successors were able to find support and a balancing force in such developing towns as Brugge, Ghent, Ypres, Courtrai, and Cassel. The murder of the powerful and highly respected Count Charles the Good (ruled 1119-27), who was childless, plunged Flanders into a crisis that involved not only the nobles and the towns but also, for the first time, the French king. (see also Index: land reclamation)

About 1100 such other territories as Brabant, Hainaut, Namur, and Holland began to expand and form principalities, helped by the weakening of the German crown during the Investiture Contest (a struggle between civil and church rulers over the right to invest bishops and abbots). The Concordat of Worms (1122) ruled that bishops were to be chosen by the chapter of canons of the cathedral; thus, the German king was obliged to transfer the secular powers to an electus, who was then usually ordained bishop by the metropolitan. Although the king still exercised some influence over the elections, the local counts were able to make their voices heard the loudest in the chapter, so that Utrecht, for example, soon had bishops from the families of the counts of Holland and Guelders. This was the end of the strong influence that German imperial power exercised through the bishops in the Low Countries. Thenceforth, the spiritual and secular princes stood together, although the death of a bishop still tended to plunge the principality into a crisis. (see also Index: Investiture Controversy)

French and English influence.

As their power declined, the Holy Roman emperors could do little more than involve themselves almost incidentally in the affairs and many conflicts of the Low Countries. The German decline went hand in hand with the increasing influence of the French and English kings, particularly after 1200; this applied especially to French power in Flanders. A struggle for the throne that broke out in Germany at the death of Henry VI (1197) found the two powerful factions -- the Ghibellines and Guelfs--on opposite sides; in the Low Countries, a game of political chance developed, in which the duke of Brabant ( Henry I) played an important role, alternatively supporting both parties. The French king, Philip Augustus, and his opponent, King John of England, both interfered in the conflict, which polarized into Anglo-Guelf and Franco-Ghibelline coalitions, each looking for allies in the Low Countries. A victory won by the French king at the Battle of Bouvines, east of Lille (1214), put the count of Flanders at his mercy. The southern parts of the county were split off and incorporated into the county of Artois. (see also Index: Welf-Waibling conflict)

Throughout the 13th century, the French kings increased their influence in Flanders, which was joined to Hainaut by personal union. The power of the counts diminished during the reign of two countesses from 1205 to 1278 because of the increasing pressure of the kingdom and the growing power of the cities. The counts' efforts to control the urban elites (the patriciate) by controlling the cities' finances and the appointment of the magistrates (aldermen, or schepenen) failed because the French king supported the patricians. King Philip IV, who was successful in his territorial expansion in Champagne and Gascony, also tried to incorporate the county of Flanders by a military invasion, in which he was supported by his patrician partisans. By 1300 the annexation of Flanders was almost complete. Resistance by Count Guy, which was supported by the crafts in the towns, culminated in a resounding victory by the Flemish army (which consisted largely of citizens of the towns fighting on foot) over the French knights at Courtrai (the Battle of the Golden Spurs, 1302) and prevented total annexation.

French influence remained strong during the 14th century, however, as the counts saw themselves repeatedly opposed by a mighty coalition of subjects in revolt. An early case was the peasant revolt in the western part of the county, supported by Brugge and lasting from 1323 to 1328; it was provoked by heavy taxation as a consequence of the French-imposed peace conditions of 1305. Only the massive help of a French army enabled the count to impose his heavy repression. Then the outbreak of the Hundred Years' War about 1337 tempted the Flemish to take sides with the English, whose wool imports they needed for their large-scale textile industry. From 1338 until his death in 1346, Count Louis I of Nevers sought the protection of the French king, to whom he fled, leaving his county virtually in the hands of the three major cities of Ghent, Brugge, and Ypres, which had developed as city-states. Again in 1379-85 a new revolt of the major cities against the count's son, Louis II of Male, provoked French military intervention, which, however, did not resolve the situation. Louis of Male also fled to France, and peace with the Flemings could only be negotiated favourably for the cities by their new prince, Philip, duke of Burgundy, youngest son of the French king, John II.

Social and economic structure.

To obtain some insight into the social structure of the Low Countries between 900 and 1350, it is important to realize that, although the territorial princes wielded supreme power, the people were in fact directly dependent on an elite that, by virtue of owning land and possessing certain powers of jurisdiction and administration, had formed seigneuries, in which they held considerable effective power. These lords could control their dependents by demanding agricultural services, exercising certain rights over dependents' inheritances, levying monies in return for granting permission to marry, and forcing them to make use of the lords' mills, ovens, breweries, and stud animals. In the main, the owners of these seigneuries were treated as nobles and were often, though not always, bound to the territorial prince by feudal ties. A separate class was formed by the knights, who in the 12th century were usually ministeriales (servants who had originally been bondsmen) and were used by their lords for cavalry service or for higher administrative duties, for which they received a fief. It was not until the 13th century and, in many places, even later that the feudal nobility and ministerial knights became unified in a single aristocracy. Apart from these nobles, there were also freemen who owned their own land (allodium), but little is known about them; they were present, however, in large numbers in the cattle-breeding regions of Flanders, Zeeland, Holland, and Friesland, where the numerous rivers and streams must have split up the land into many small farms. The descendants of noble families who were no longer able to live as richly as the nobles and who were known as hommes de lignage (in Brabant), hommes de loi (Namur), or welgeborenen (Holland), must have been very close in status to the freemen. In the agricultural areas of Hainaut, Brabant, Guelders, and the Oversticht were dependents whose legal status is difficult to determine, though they may be classed as bondsmen because of their being liable for various services and payments. (see also Index: freeman, bondsman)

A factor of great, if not decisive, importance for social and economic relations, not only in the Low Countries but in all of western Europe, was the growth of the population. There is no direct statistical information but only a certain amount of indirect knowledge--after about 1050, it can be seen in the internal colonization (in the form of reclamation of such waste ground as woods and bogs), in the building of dikes and polders, in the expansion of agricultural land, and in the growth of the villages (new parishes) and towns.

The opening up of extensive areas of wood and heathland led to the foundation of new settlements (known in the French-speaking areas as villes neuves), to which colonists were attracted by offers of advantageous conditions--which were also intended to benefit the original estates. Many of these colonists were younger sons who had no share in the inheritance of their fathers' farms. The Cistercian and Premonstratensian monks, whose rules prescribed that they must work the land themselves, played an important part in this exploitation of new land. In the coastal regions of Flanders, Zeeland, and Friesland, they were very active in the struggle against the sea, building dikes both inland and on the coast itself. At first these dikes were purely defensive, but later they took on an offensive character and wrested considerable areas of land from the sea.

Especially important was the reclamation of marshland in the peat-bog areas of Holland and Utrecht and in the coastal regions of Flanders and Friesland. The Frisians had specialized in this work as early as the 11th century; Flemings and Hollanders soon adopted their methods, even applying them in the Elbe plain in Germany. The system, which consisted of digging drainage ditches, lowered the water table, leaving the ground dry enough for cattle grazing and, later, even for arable farming. The colonists, who were freemen, were given the right to cut drainage ditches as far back from the common watercourse as they wished. Certain restrictions were later imposed by the lords, however, who regarded themselves as the owners of these waste areas and demanded tribute money as compensation. Reclamation work was organized by a contractor (locator), who was responsible to the count and often carried out the function of local judge. (see also Index: land reclamation)

Thus, in the 12th and 13th centuries, a large area of land in the Holland-Utrecht peat-bog plain was made available for agriculture, facilitating the rise of nonagricultural communities (i.e., the towns). In Flanders, Zeeland, Holland, and Utrecht this struggle against the sea and the inland water was particularly noteworthy in that it led to the foundation of water boards, which in the 13th and 14th centuries were amalgamated to form higher water authorities (the hoogheemraadschappen). Mastery over the water had to be carried out on a large scale and in an organized fashion; the building of dikes required a higher authority and coordinated labour. Thus, various organizations emerged, acting independently in the field of canal and dike building and maintenance and responsible only to the government itself. These were communitates, with their own servants and their own managements (dike reeves and heemraden) and empowered to take necessary measures to maintain the waterworks, administer justice, and issue proclamations. This included the levy of taxes for this purpose, under the exclusive control of the landholders, who had to contribute proportionally to the area they possessed. The need of absolute solidarity, imposed by geography, thus created a system of communal organization based on full participation and equality exceptional in European terms. In the core of Holland, three large hoogheemraadschappen controlled the whole territory. They were headed by dike reeves who also were the count's bailiffs and thus functioned as high judges and administrators. They were assisted by heemraden elected by the landholders.

The increase in the population and the reclamation of land from the sea and marshes, as well as the fight to keep the sea out, all helped change the social and economic structures of the Low Countries. For centuries, the southern and eastern areas had been agricultural, often making use of the domain system. In the coastal areas, however, reduced labour requirements of cattle raising could be combined with fishing, weaving, and overseas trading. Dorestad, the centre of the Frisian trade, fell into decay not so much as a result of Viking raids (it was rebuilt after each one) as of a change in the course of the river upon whose banks the town was situated. Dorestad's leading position in trade was then taken over by Tiel, Deventer, Zaltbommel, Heerewaarden, and the city of Utrecht. Wheat was imported from the Rhine plain, salt from Friesland, and iron ore from Saxony, and, before long, wine, textiles, and metal goods were brought along the Meuse and Rhine from the south. The IJssel in Guelders also began to carry trading traffic through Deventer, Zutphen, and Kampen and, on the coast of the Zuiderzee (now IJsselmeer), through Harderwijk, Elburg, and Stavoren. (see also Index: international trade)

Growth of Flanders.

In the south, commercial developments were concentrated in two areas: one was the Artois-Flanders region, which profited from the shipping facilities of a river system providing access to the sea and to the wide Schelde plains; the other was the Meuse corridor. For centuries, sheep farming on chalky soils and coastal marshlands had produced the wool needed in the cloth industry; but to meet an increased demand wool was imported from England, for which purpose merchants from various Flemish towns joined together in the Flemish Hanse, a trade association, in London. Flemish cloth produced in fast-growing cities such as Arras, Saint-Omer, Douai, Lille, Tournai, Ypres, Ghent, and Brugge found its buyers throughout Europe. Notary's registers in Genoa and Milan, preserved since about 1200, mention many transactions of different varieties of Flemish cloth and indicate the presence of Flemish and Artesian (from Artois) merchants. The fairs (markets) in the Champagne region linked northern Italy with northwestern Europe; in Flanders a series of similar fairs was set up to facilitate contacts and credit operations among merchants of different nationalities. (see also Index: textile)

To a large extent, the Flemish economy became dependent on the import of English wool, while its exports of finished cloth were directed mainly to the Rhineland, northern Italy, the French west coast, the northern Low Countries, and the Baltic. Flanders' early dominant position was possible owing to a favourable combination of geographic and economic factors. Because Flanders had the first large export industry in northern Europe, its production centres attained the highest levels of quality through specialization and diversification.

For the cloth industry itself, Ghent and Ypres were among the most important towns. In Ghent the production process was run by drapers (drapiers), who bought the raw material, had it treated by spinners, weavers, fullers, and dyers, and eventually sold the final product. A drop in wool imports from England could therefore cause immediate social and political upheavals in the city.

The area of the Meuse also carried on considerable trade and industry; merchants from Liège, Huy, Namur, and Dinant are named in 11th-century toll tariffs from London and Koblenz. This trade was supplied mainly by the textile industry of Maastricht, Huy, and Nivelles and by the metal industry of Liège and Dinant. Trade in Brabant, actively supported by the dukes, used the road, or system of tracks (medieval road systems were not advanced), that ran from Cologne through Aix-la-Chapelle, Maastricht, Tongres, Louvain, and Brussels to Ghent and Brugge. Four major trade routes thus developed before 1300 in the Low Countries, favouring the growth or even the emergence of cities; these were between the Rhine and the Zuiderzee, along the Meuse, along the land route from Cologne through Brabant to the sea, and through Flanders. Only the latter displayed a spectacular growth during this period, taking advantage of its proximity to the sea to build up a massive export industry of labour-intensive, high-quality consumer products.

Since prehistoric times, fishing, particularly for herring, had been important in the coastal regions of Zeeland and Flanders. Since the 5th century BC, archaeological evidence shows that the people produced salt, important in fish preservation, by boiling seawater. In later centuries, a more sophisticated technique was devised by burning peat, from which salt could be refined. This industry was located along the coast and near Biervliet and Dordrecht on the major rivers. It evidently was established to support the fisheries. The fishing industry was given added stimulus by the shift of the herring shoals from the coast of Schonen (Sweden) to the North Sea. The ships, however, were increasingly placed at the disposal of general trade and, in particular, of the wool trade with England. The German merchants also turned their attention to Holland, where Dordrecht became the most important centre. Because of its central position in the rivers area, this town offered the counts the chance to raise tolls on all traffic in the neighbourhood; moreover, all cargoes had to be unloaded and offered for sale--wine, coal, millstones, metal products, fruit, spices, fish, salt, grain, and wood.

The towns.

The towns gave the Low Countries a special character of their own. Apart from some towns that had existed even in Roman times, such as Maastricht and Nijmegen, most towns arose in the 9th century; in the 11th and 12th centuries, they expanded and developed considerably. The emergence of the towns went hand in hand with the population increase and the extension of cultivable land, which made possible higher production. The population centres that emerged were not primarily agrarian but specialized in industry and trade. (see also Index: city, urbanization)

The oldest towns were in the regions of the Schelde and Meuse. Near existing counts' castles or walled monasteries, merchants formed settlements (portus, or vicus). In some cases, like that of Ghent, for instance, the commercial portus was older than the count's castle and grew purely because of its advantageous location. The portus gradually merged with the original settlements to form units that both economically and in their constitutions took on their own characters with respect to the surrounding country--characters that were later manifested by defensive ramparts and walls. The cities in the Meuse valley (Dinant, Namur, Huy, Liège, and Maastricht) had already developed in the 10th century, owing to the heritage of this region as the core of the Carolingian empire. Maastricht in particular played a prominent role as one of the main seats of the German imperial church. In the Schelde valley a dense urban network had also developed. A later group (though not much later) was formed by the northern towns of Deventer and Tiel, while Utrecht had long been a town in the sense of a commercial centre. Zutphen, Zwolle, Kampen, Harderwijk, Elburg, and Stavoren are other examples of early towns. Much younger (13th-century) are the towns of Holland--Dordrecht, Leiden, Haarlem, Alkmaar, and Delft.

All the towns formed a new, nonfeudal element in the existing social structure, and from the beginning merchants played an important role. The merchants often formed guilds, organizations that grew out of merchant groups and banded together for mutual protection while traveling during this violent period, when attacks on merchant caravans were common. From a manuscript dated about 1020, it appears that the merchants of Tiel met regularly for a drinking bout, had a common treasury, and could clear themselves of a charge by the simple expedient of swearing an oath of innocence (a privilege they claimed to have been granted by the emperor). Thus, there and elsewhere, the merchants constituted a horizontal community formed by an oath of cooperation and with the maintenance of law and order as its goal.

In contrast, therefore, to the vertical bonds in the feudal world and within the manors, horizontal bonds emerged between individuals who were naturally aiming at independence and autonomy. The extent to which autonomy was achieved varied greatly and depended on the power exercised by the territorial prince. Autonomy often developed spontaneously, and its evolution might have been accepted either tacitly or orally by the prince, so that no documentary evidence of it remains. Sometimes, however, certain freedoms were granted in writing, such as that granted by the bishop of Liège to Huy as early as 1066. Such town charters often included the record of a ruling that had been the subject of demands or conflicts; they frequently dealt with a special form of criminal or contract law, the satisfactory regulation of which was of utmost importance to the town involved. Indeed, the first step a town took on the road to autonomy was to receive its own law and judicial system, dissociated from that of the surrounding countryside; a natural consequence of this was that the town then had its own governing authority and judiciary in the form of a board, whose members were called schepenen (échevins), headed by a schout (écoutète), or bailiff. As the towns grew, functionaries appeared who had to look after the town's finances and its fortifications. They were often called burgomasters (burgemeesters).

Town opposition to the prince.

The development of a town's autonomy sometimes advanced somewhat spasmodically as a result of violent conflicts with the prince. The citizens then united, forming conjurationes (sometimes called communes)--fighting groups bound together by an oath--as happened during a Flemish crisis in 1127-28 in Ghent and Brugge and in Utrecht in 1159. The counts of Flanders from the house of Alsace ( Thierry, ruled 1128-68, and Philip, 1168-91) kept careful watch, supporting and aiding the towns in their economic development but otherwise keeping the process in check.

In their struggle for autonomy, the towns had to fight for financial freedom, such as for the lessening or abolition of the taxes and tolls they had to pay to the prince but also and principally for the right to impose their own taxes, usually in the form of indirect taxation (e.g., excise duties), in order to raise money for necessary public works. Especially important to them was the right to frame their own laws; this legislative right (the keurrecht) was in most towns originally restricted to the control of prices and standards in the markets and shops but was gradually extended to cover civil and criminal law. The extent of a man's obligation to serve in the prince's armed forces was often fixed or limited or both (sometimes by the provision for payment in lieu, sometimes by a legal definition of the number of foot soldiers or manned ships to be made available).

Thus, the town in the Low Countries became a communitas (sometimes called corporatio or universitas)--a community that was legally a corporate body, could enter into alliances and ratify them with its own seal, could sometimes even make commercial or military contracts with other towns, and could negotiate directly with the prince. Land within the town's boundaries usually became its property or its burghers' by redemption, and the town's inhabitants were usually exempt from any dependent relationship with outsiders.

A town's population usually had a distinct social structure. The merchants, the oldest and leading group, soon emerged as a separate class (the patriciate); they generally managed to gain control of the offices of schepen and burgomaster and thus controlled the town's finances. Sometimes the homines novi, a new class of up-and-coming merchants, tried to become part of the patriciate, as in Dordrecht and Utrecht. Beneath the patriciate a lower class formed, called the gemeen ("common," in the strict sense of the word), which embraced the artisans and organized into crafts such tradesmen as butchers, bakers, tailors, carpenters, masons, weavers, fullers, shearers, and coppersmiths. These crafts originally developed out of charitable organizations of people in the same profession and had to adhere to regulations laid down by the authorities. Gradually, however, they tried to obtain their independence, exercise influence in politics, cut themselves off from outsiders by means of compulsory membership, and introduce their own regulations regarding prices, working hours, quality of products, apprentices, journeymen, and masters. During the second half of the 13th century, class antagonism rose in the main industrial cities in Flanders. The political conflict between the count of Flanders, the king of France, and the partriciate opened the way for the craftsmen to score a military victory in 1302. This led to the constitutional recognition of the crafts as autonomous organs with the right of considerable participation in the cities' administration. The achievements of the Flemish artisans inspired their colleagues in Brabant and Liège to revolt and raise similar demands; Flemish military incursions provoked the same reaction in Dordrecht and Utrecht. In Brabant, the concessions were only short-lived, but their effects were more durable in the other places, although never undisputed by the old elites. (see also Index: class struggle)

In Flanders and in the bishopric of Liège, the towns rapidly attained such power that they constituted a threat to the territorial prince, a situation that often resulted in violent conflicts. In contrast to this, relations between the prince and the towns of Brabant were more harmonious; the political interests of the prince and the economic interests of the towns coincided for the most part during the 13th century, while John I, Duke of Brabant, sought expansion toward the Rhine valley, which offered protection for the growing trade that moved from Cologne overland through Brabant. Duke John II, however, left such formidable debts that Brabant merchants were arrested abroad, which made them claim control over the duke's finances during Duke John III's minority (1312-20). The fact that from 1248 to 1430 only two dynastic successions involved a direct adult male heir gave the cities (which had incurred massive debts) recurrent opportunities to intervene in the government and to impose their conditions on the successors in the form of public testaments called joyeuse entrée acts, which were delivered at all successions from 1312 until 1794. The acts, which also applied to Limburg, contained dozens of ad hoc regulations besides a few more general and abstract notions, such as the indivisibility of the territory, a nationality requirement for the officials, approval of the cities before embarking on a war, and the subjects' right of resistance in case of violation of any stipulation of the acts. In Holland the towns did not really develop until as late as the 13th century, when they were helped by the counts.

During this period, when foundations were being laid for the dominant role the towns would later play in the Low Countries, a decisive change also took place in the authority of the territorial prince. Originally he regarded his powers mainly as a means of increasing his income and of extending the area over which he could exercise power. He felt little duty toward his subjects or desire to further the welfare of the community as a whole. At best there were religious as well as material motives in his dealings with the churches and monasteries. There were no direct relations between the prince and all his subjects, for he was primarily lord of his vassals. The political, social, and economic developments discussed above, however, brought a change in this situation. In the first place, the prince's increasing independence meant that he himself began to behave like a king or sovereign lord. His authority was then referred to as potestas publica ("public authority"), and it was believed to be granted by God (a Deo tradita). The area over which he ruled was described as his regnum or patria. This implied not only the duty of a lord toward his vassals but also that of a prince (princeps) toward his subjects. This duty included as its first priority the maintenance of law and order (defensio pacis) by means of laws and their administration. He had further to protect the church (defensio or advocatio ecclesiae), while his involvement in land reclamation and in the building of dikes and with the development of the towns brought him into direct contact with the nonfeudal elements of the population, with whom his relations were no longer those of a lord toward his vassals but took on a more modern aspect--that of a sovereign toward his trusted subjects. He became, according to the 14th-century lawyer Philip of Leiden, the procurator rei publicae ("he who looks after the matters of the people"). Contact with his subjects was through the representatives of the communitates of the water boards and heemraadschappen and through the towns and nonurban communities, which were legally corporate bodies in dealings not only with outsiders but also with the prince. Sometimes the towns expressly placed themselves under the protection of the prince and declared themselves committed to loyalty to him. Such a town was Dordrecht, which, in a document dated 1266, expressed its loyalty and at the same time described the count of Holland as dominus terrae ("lord of the land"). These new notions point to a more modern conception of a state, to a growing awareness of territoriality, and to new possibilities of collaboration between prince and subjects.

CONSOLIDATION OF TERRITORIAL STATES (1384-1567)

Among the many territorial principalities of the Low Countries, Flanders, Brabant, Hainaut- Holland, and Gelderland (Guelders) in the mid-14th century had a dominating military and diplomatic position. Flanders had already arrested the course of French domination, and its feeling of territoriality was strengthened by this and by many minor wars between the principalities as well as by three major revolts of large segments of the population against the principality's count. This antagonism displayed some early expressions of Flemish nationalism against the count and the nobility, who were backed by France and were French-speaking. In Brabant, national feelings were similarly fostered by fears of foreign invasions in the 1330s. In many respects, Flanders was the real territorial leader during the late Middle Ages. Its population was by far the largest of the principalities, its economic development the strongest, and its institutions the most elaborate. The extraordinary size of the largest cities made it impossible to rule the county without their collaboration. Thus during the 13th century, the scabini Flandriae, uniting delegations from the governments of the main cities, intervened in various political matters of the principality, especially concerning economic policy. During the 14th century, the three largest cities, Brugge, Ghent, and Ypres, formed a nearly permanent consultation committee called the three members of Flanders on which was bestowed decisive powers in most political matters, including taxation, legislation, and justice; it wielded as well a strong influence in international relations. During the repeated periods of revolt or absence of the count, the three members automatically extended their functions to the overall exercise of power. This experience explains why in Flanders, in contrast to Brabant and Hainaut, a system of representation by three estates (clergy, nobility, and the burghers) did not develop spontaneously. The power of the cities proved so overwhelming that they did not have to share control with the clergy and the nobility. It was the duke of Burgundy who introduced assemblies of three estates from 1385 onward, as a means to contain the cities, just as he imposed the addition of a fourth member to the consultation committee, which provided rural representation. These moves, however, did not profoundly alter the balance of power, which remained intact until the prince expanded his territory during the 15th century. (see also Index: estate system)

In the county of Holland, power relations were balanced between the count, the nobility, and the burghers; the clergy played almost no role, since there were few important abbeys. The cities were much smaller than those of Flanders; a group of the six largest cities (Dondrecht, Leiden, Haarlem, Amsterdam, Gouda, and Delft) wielded the greatest influence and power. From 1349 onward a deep cleavage among the Dutch nobility over the succession to the throne led to the formation of two parties, the Kabeljauwen ( Cods) and the Hoeken ( Hooks); most cities were also divided along these party lines. Feuds on a local basis took the shape of the party antagonisms, which during certain periods of crisis spread over the whole county and over neighbouring Zeeland and Utrecht as well. During the years after 1392, the periods from 1419 to 1427, 1440 to 1445, and again in the 1470s and '80s, there was a high degree of discord in which the prince and his high officials saw their prerogatives seriously challenged. The relatively small size of the cities, close links between noble and partrician families, a weak administrative organization, and dynastic rivalries for the throne contributed to the ongoing party strife until the end of the 15th century.

Gelderland was later in its development, partly because the powerful Duke William (ruled 1379-1402) of that principality had his own financial resources as a result of his military activities in the service of the English and, later, French kings; under William's successors, however, the knights and the towns became more powerful and finally gained permanent representation as estates. In Utrecht, too, there was cooperation between the prince (the bishop) and the estates; and the clergy, particularly the collegiate churches of the town of Utrecht, played an important part: the Land Charter of Bishop Arnold in 1375 was inspired by the Joyeuse Entrée of Brabant. In the prince-bishopric of Liège, cooperation between prince and estates had to be won by violent conflicts between the towns and the bishop and, within the towns, between the patriciate and the crafts. It was mainly to these territorial estates that the princes had to turn for financial help, which was often voted to them only on limiting conditions.

The Burgundians.

In the second half of the 14th century, the dukes of Burgundy (princes of the French royal house of Valois) began to penetrate these territorial principalities in the Low Countries, whose feelings of territoriality made them regard the dukes of Burgundy with suspicion. The marriage in 1369 of Philip II the Bold of Burgundy to the heiress of the count of Flanders (Margaret) signified the beginning of this Burgundian infiltration, which was repeatedly furthered by marriages, wars, and such tricks of fate as inheritances.

Through his marriage Philip gained possession, after the death of his father-in-law in 1384, of the counties of Flanders, Artois, Rethel, Nevers, and the free county of Burgundy (Franche-Comté), the latter being within the Holy Roman Empire. He thus not only gained a large and powerful part of the Low Countries but was also able to extend his Burgundian property. Though it seemed at first that French power might again become the dominant force in the Low Countries, it soon became clear that the Burgundian dukes, while happy to continue taking part in French politics, were extremely independent and more interested in forging a single powerful empire out of the Low Countries and Burgundy. Duke John the Fearless succeeded to all his father's lands in 1404, while his younger brother Anthony was given Brabant, where the childless Duchess Joanna had named him as her successor, which was accepted by the estates. Anthony's branch of the Burgundians died out as early as 1430, so that Brabant fell to the other branch under Philip III the Good (ruled 1419-67), who also gained possession--through war, family relations, and purchase--of Hainaut-Holland, Namur, and Luxembourg. This Burgundian power structure was not a state but was founded on a personal union among the various principalities, each of which jealously guarded its own freedom and institutions. The Burgundian dukes did, however, attempt to set up central organizations to bridge the differences among the principalities and to keep the various regions under stricter control by appointing governors ( stadtholders).

Regional courts and exchequers increasingly enforced the central government's control in administrative, political, and judicial fields. Some principalities, such as Brabant and Hainaut, claimed that their privileges disallowed any foreign interference in their territories; in Flanders and Holland, however, the dukes introduced officials from their Burgundian homeland. In the long term, this policy of bringing in foreign administrators raised serious resistance against the central government, especially because it tended to make French the only administrative language, while the majority of the population in the Low Countries was Dutch-speaking. To further central control, Duke Philip extended his court in order to incorporate regional nobilities, and in 1430 he created The Order of the Golden Fleece, to which he brought the highest nobles from his principalities. In addition, the judicial tasks of his Great Council were entrusted from 1435 to a special group of councillors who steadily increased the weight of the central jurisdiction over local and regional customs and privileges. The ambitions of the Burgundian dukes finally ran aground on the forced and overly hasty centralization and expansion of power carried out by Charles the Bold (ruled 1467-77), who was able, nevertheless, to annex Gelderland. Charles imposed increasingly high financial demands, which were put before the States-General--an assembly that united the delegates from the various states at meetings called by the duke and held at regular intervals; he tried to constitute a kingdom in the Low Countries with himself as regent, an endeavour that failed in 1473. Charles did manage, however, to elevate the central law court to the rank of the royal Parliament of Paris--an obvious defiance of the king of France's prerogatives. After his defeat and death in battle to French-supported forces, a movement for regional and local rights arose and won a series of privileges from his daughter Mary (ruled 1477-82) that halted the previous centralization movement. Moreover, the duchy of Burgundy itself was taken over by the French crown, so that the Burgundian union, as it was reformed by the States-General from 1477, became a union without Burgundy. The pressure of French incursions brought the members of the States-General into closer collaboration. While ensuring their loyalty to the Burgundian dynasty and organizing a defense against France, they obtained the first written constitution for the whole of the principalities in the Low Countries. It recognized extensive rights to the States-General, such as control over the waging of war, currency, taxation, and tolls; furthermore, it prescribed the use of the legal language to be used in the courts. This text remained for centuries a point of reference for the rights of the subjects, granting to individuals the right of resistance in cases where tenets of the document were seen to be violated.

The Habsburgs.

After Mary's position had become more firmly established by her marriage to Maximilian of Habsburg (the son and future successor to the Holy Roman emperor), the States-General, because of its internal particularism, proved unable to provide a lasting administration. Gradually, a restoration took place, at first under the regency of Maximilian after Mary's death in 1482. Maximilian, however, lacked the political skills to deal with the various social forces in the Low Countries. His political strategy was aimed simply at a thorough recovery of the territorial and institutional losses since 1477, but his policy of high taxation, debasement, warfare, and violation of privileges, during a period of deep general economic crisis, provoked opposition and revolt, first in Flanders but also later in Holland, Brabant, and Utrecht. His answer was, as it had been in the past, the brutal use of military force, which plunged these regions into 10 years of devastating internal war. When his and Mary's son Philip I the Handsome (ruled 1493-1506) took over the government, he smoothly resumed the centralization process by refounding the central law court (then known as the Great Council of Malines) and set up within the duke's council permanent commissions to discuss important political and financial questions. (see also Index: Habsburg, House of)

The fate of the Low Countries was already closely bound up with that of Austria by virtue of the Habsburg marriage; in 1504, this situation was intensified when Philip and his wife, Joan, inherited the Spanish crown. From then on, the Low Countries were merely a part of a greater whole, and their fate was principally decided by the struggle of this Spanish-Austrian empire for European hegemony. They repeatedly had to make sacrifices for the many wars waged against France, particularly under Emperor Charles V, who in 1519 had added the German imperial crown to his many possessions. The emperor, who was almost always out of the country, placed the Low Countries under the rule of governors-general--first his aunt Margaret and later his sister Mary, who retained control and worked toward further centralization even when he was in the country.

The States-General could do little more than offer passive resistance, principally through financial manipulations. As a meeting place for the regional deputies, the States-General did have a certain influence and, by its opposition, strengthened a sort of negative feeling of unity. That the emperor himself also saw the Low Countries as a unit can be seen in his incorporation of the territories in the north and east, including Groningen and Friesland (1522-28). A remarkable step was the imposition of temporal power over the bishop of Utrecht (1528); full power was also acquired over the duchy of Gelderland in 1543. Consequently, Charles took measures to separate his so-called Seventeen Provinces of the Low Countries from the empire as "Burgundian Kreis" (1548) and in the Pragmatic Sanction (1549), which stated that succession would be regulated in identical fashion in all the regions of the Low Countries that he had included in his empire. The Low Countries were thus prevented from being split up.

In the meantime, the process of centralization had reached a decisive phase with the foundation of the collateral councils (1531), which were separate from the Great Council. They were the Council of Finance, which had in effect already existed for some time; the Council of State, in which members of the high nobility could advise the governess; and the Secret Council, in which permanent officials dealt with everyday administration and composed ordinances without having to wait for advice. All the government organs, except for the central law court in Malines, were in Brussels, which from that time became the capital of the Low Countries. The States-General and territorial states were still a stumbling block in the acquisition of financial resources, so that Charles V was never able to provide himself with a standing army.

Under Charles's son Philip II, who in 1555-56 succeeded as king of Spain and prince of the Netherlands, the policy of centralization was continued. It culminated in the introduction of a new ecclesiastical hierarchy. The Low Countries, which formerly had been, ecclesiastically speaking, merely an extension of the archbishoprics of Cologne and Reims, became by virtue of a papal bull of 1559 a directly governed region of the church under three archbishops and 15 bishops. There was fierce resistance to this by the high nobles, who saw the high positions in the church slip from their grasp; by the abbots, who feared the incorporation of their monasteries for the maintenance of new bishoprics; and by a number of territories, which were afraid of greater inquisitorial activities under new bishops. The high nobles, who were often excluded from the activities of the Secret Council, led the resistance under the capable Prince William of Orange (1533-84) and the popular Count van Egmond. Resistance increased when the Burgundian Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle (bishop of Arras and virtually prime minister under the Netherlands' governor Margaret of Parma) was appointed archbishop of Malines and then cardinal of Malines and primate of the Netherlands. The government gave way, and Granvelle was forced to leave the country; yet the high nobles themselves hardly knew how to run affairs. The initiative was thus transferred to the low nobility, who in 1565 united by bond of oath in the so-called Compromise and in 1566 presented to the governor a petition requesting the relaxation of edicts and ordinances against the Calvinists and other Protestants. At the same time, they adopted the name Geuzen (gueux, "beggars"), originally a term of abuse. (see also Index: Orange, House of)

As the resistance grew stronger, the Protestants became more confident, and fanatics started a violent campaign against churches -- the "breaking of the images" (August 1566)--against which the governor took powerful measures but only in the first few months of 1567 managed to restore peace. King Philip II, however, whose information concerning these events was somewhat out of date because of slow communications and who was uneasy because of the "breaking of the images," decided to take stern measures. He sent his trusted general, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, Duke de Alba, to the Netherlands. Alba's strict regime precipitated a revolt that eventually led to the partition of the Netherlands.

Economic structure.

The economic structure of the Low Countries underwent far-reaching changes in the 14th-16th centuries. The growth in population, which in western Europe had begun in the 10th century, ceased with relative suddenness after 1300. The European famine of 1315-17 had dramatic effects in the cities; in Ypres 10 percent of the population that died and had to be picked up off the streets were buried by public means. Social tensions, insurrections, and internal wars also cost numerous lives during the 14th century, especially in the rebellious cities of Flanders and Liège. Many Flemish weavers and fullers fled to England, helping there to build up an English cloth industry, which came to compete with that of the Low Countries. The effects of recurrent plagues from 1349 onward, raging once in each decade until the early 15th century, must have been devastating as well. The global population was seriously diminished, but in the cities, where overpopulation had been developing since the late 13th century, the losses were replaced by rural surpluses, leaving somewhat easier living conditions in the cities for the survivors. Generally, the standard of living in the Low Countries improved in the second half of the 14th century.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, Brugge became the main international market of northwestern Europe. Colonies of foreign merchants installed their offices: Italians, Catalans and other Iberians, French and English, and above all the German Hanse, for whom Brugge was the most important Kontor (office). Southern and northern Europe met at Brugge, and their exchange networks were linked there. An intensive movement of bills of exchange converged there and helped to balance the region's export deficit with the Mediterranean states. The densely populated Low Countries evidently formed an important market for imported goods such as wine, Mediterranean fruits, and Eastern spices and silk; grain was also an important import. The relatively affluent population could afford expensive goods, but it also produced labour-intensive, high-quality objects, including fashionable clothing and various works of art and applied art, such as paintings, jewelry, woodcuts, and pottery. The trade network helped to spread these works throughout Europe. (see also Index: international trade)

On the other hand, the loss of some one-third of the European population, mostly to plague, had severely reduced the export markets, causing competition to intensify. The Brabantine cities had developed their own textile industry, competing internationally. Since the crafts held a firm grasp on wages and regulations from 1302 onward in Flanders, they raised the production costs higher than those in Brabant and much higher than those in England and Holland. The Flemish had to become reoriented toward ever more sophisticated methods and higher-quality products in that state's large, old cities. Improvements in linen and tapestry weaving exemplified new innovations. Entrepreneurs now shifted their production toward villages, unrestricted by craft regulations, where wages were lower and quality controls weaker. These rural manufacturers used cheaper wools from local areas and (from the 15th century) Spain, and they produced lighter, less refined cloth, which found a wide middle-class market.

Holland became the site of marked economic change during the second half of the 14th century. The drainage of the peat bogs had made them gradually less suitable for the cultivation of bread grains, and cattle raising had become the major means of subsistence. That occupation's minimal labour requirements drove a large proportion of the rural population into the cities, where some found jobs in crafts and seafaring. Dairy products continued to be exported to the larger cities in Flanders and Brabant, but grain now had to be imported, largely from Artois and, increasingly from the 15th century, the Baltic region. The Dutch also learned the technique of preserving herring common to that region; the shift of the herring shoals to the North Sea had helped the Dutch take the lead in this trade. In addition, they developed a shipbuilding industry for which they again needed the import of wood, iron, tar, and pitch from the Flemish Hanse area. They succeeded in building a competitive fleet that could offer transportation at a lower cost than that of the Hanse. The Dutch then were able to penetrate the Baltic Sea region, not only to buy sorely needed raw materials but increasingly also to sell and transport. None of the Dutch products were exclusive to them, the goods being often of even lesser quality than those offered by their competitors; their price, however, was always more advantageous, thanks to their excellent cargo facilities. Apart from the herring industry, the Dutch competed in cloth and, even more effectively, in beer: their quality of barley, clear water, and hops enabled them to brew a product of distinctive character for which demand grew. The cities of Delft, Gouda, and Haarlem became major beer-exporting centres, shipping to the southern Netherlands and to the Baltic regions as well. The Dutch also exported some bulk salt. The production of salt derived from peat having proved to be of insufficient quantity and quality for salting fish, the Dutch imported raw maritime salt from the French Atlantic coasts and refined it in their peat-fueled ovens. This was suitable for the fish industry and could also be exported to the Baltic area, the traditional production from Lüneburg, Ger., having slowed down.

While Holland thus laid the basis for its remarkable 17th-century prosperity, the southern Netherlands showed a shift of commercial leadership from Brugge to Antwerp. During the 15th century, Antwerp developed strongly thanks to its free entrepreneurial climate and its two annual fairs, which were combined with two more in the nearby Schelde harbour city of Bergen-op-Zoom. At that time, the fairs still functioned as a corollary to the Brugge market, but they nevertheless attracted merchants from central and southern Germany. While Brugge lived through a deep political crisis in the 1480s, Antwerp attracted the new colonial trade, especially that of the Portuguese, and the important Augsburg, Frankfurt, and Nürnberg merchant and banking houses. They imported new textiles in return for copper, silver, and other metal products. The Italians soon left Brugge for Antwerp, belatedly followed by the increasingly regressing German Hanse. The fast expansion of the Antwerp market was supported by excellent relations with the monarchy which, in turn, could finance its hegemonistic policy through loans from Antwerp merchants. A special innovation was financial techniques developed at the Antwerp beurs (stock exchange), created in 1531. While Brugge remained a clearinghouse for international commercial debts, where exchange rates for bills were determined, the Antwerp exchange specialized in transferable, usually discounted, public debts.

Generally speaking, a commercial capitalism was developing that stimulated the entire economy of the Netherlands. Competition in the cloth industry was growing especially strong between urban and expanding rural manufacturers. The towns battled these rural clothmakers in vain, though in 1531 Holland issued an edict to restrict them throughout the county but with little success. Moreover, Holland itself had begun to play an increasingly important economic role; new industries were developing, but fishing, shipping, and trade remained its main means of support apart from arable farming and cattle breeding. Dordrecht, one of the major commercial centres of the Low Countries, was rivaled by Rotterdam and Gorinchem and, by the 16th century, was outstripped by Amsterdam, which cornered an increasing proportion of Baltic trade, as evidenced from the lists of the toll in the Sound (between Sweden and Denmark). (see also Index: textile)

The regions along the Meuse and IJssel also maintained their commercial activity. In the bishopric of Liège there was even a metal industry with blast furnaces, paid for by capital raised by traders. Coal mining in the area between the Meuse and the Sambre was also organized according to modern capitalist methods.

The cultivation of commercially exploitable crops also developed in country areas--hemp for rope making, hops and barley for brewing, flax for the manufacture of linen. Yet all this was at the expense of wheat farming. Grain had to be imported in increasingly large quantities, and, whenever grain imports fell off, the people, particularly the lower classes, went hungry. The economic apparatus had become more versatile and brought greater prosperity, but at the same time, precisely because of this specialization, it had become more vulnerable. The distribution of prosperity was variable; the great mass of the people in the towns suffered the consequences and bore the main burden of the rise in prices occasioned by inflation.

Population growth.

It is impossible to estimate the population of the Low Countries before about 1470, and even for that date complete data are not available. Figures are often not available for all areas at a given date in the Middle Ages. An acceptable figure for the Low Countries in the late 15th century might be about 2,400,000 inhabitants. Flanders was by far the most populated and most densely inhabited principality, with about 750,000 people and a density of 30 persons per square mile (77 per square kilometre). It was followed by Brabant with 413,000 people and about 15 persons per square mile (40 per square kilometre) and Holland with 268,000 people and 25 per square mile (66 per square kilometre), although the latter data are from the year 1514. The other principalities counted far fewer inhabitants--for example, 209,000 in Hainaut, 180,000 in Artois, and 140,000 in Gelderland, Liège, and Luxembourg.

After 1470 the population must have declined generally, owing to wars, bad harvests, and epidemics. From 1490 a new period of growth especially favoured Brabant and Holland. About 1570 the duchy of Brabant counted about 500,000 inhabitants, which was still less than the more densely populated Flanders. One-quarter of the Flemish peasants farmed plots of only 5 to 12 acres (2 to 5 hectares), and nearly half had even less than 5 acres. The level of urbanization was growing extremely fast in the Low Countries, especially in the largest principalities. In 1470, 36 percent of Flanders' population and 31 percent of Brabant's were city dwellers, while in Holland the proportion reached 45 percent in 1514. It should be noted, however, that the cities of Holland were still relatively small, the largest being Leiden with 14,000. In the southern Low Countries in the mid-14th century, Ghent and Brugge attained populations of 64,000 and 46,000, respectively, while Brussels counted 33,000 in 1482 and Malines (Mechelen) grew to 25,000 around 1540. Antwerp showed spectacular growth, from 15,000 in 1437 to nearly 40,000 around 1500, and more than 100,000 in 1560, its peak for this period.

The Low Countries played an important part in the artistic, scientific, and religious life of Europe. In the late Middle Ages, when prosperity was increasing and the princely houses, particularly that of the Burgundians, as well as the middle classes in the towns, were encouraging progress, the Low Countries began to make independent contributions to cultural life.

The most original of these were in the field of visual and applied arts. From the late 14th century the Low Countries produced sculptors like Claus Sluter, whose most famous works are the funerary monuments for the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, and his wife at Dijon, Fr., and painters like Melchior Broederlam who also served the duke. In the 15th century, however, the cities in the southern Low Countries became the core of cultural activity, because the duke's court resided mostly in that region and because the local bourgeoisie, clergy, and noblemen profited from the Burgundian prosperity and could invest in works of art, which allowed them to share somewhat in the splendour of the court. The main centres were Ghent (Jan and Hubert van Eyck and Hugo van der Goes), Louvain (Dirck Bouts), Brussels (Rogier van der Weyden), and Brugge (Hans Memling, and Gerard David). Each of these masters stands for a school of followers. Miniature painting similarly was a most flourishing activity, reaching its first height in the northern Low Countries (Utrecht) about 1400, but rising also in the south through the 15th century. Tapestry weavers in Arras attained a unique quality, which was imitated in Tournai, Brussels, Oudenaarde, Brugge, Ghent, and elsewhere. Brabant was famous for its woodcut triptychs made in Louvain and Antwerp (then in Brabant), Brugge for its lace, jewelry, and fashionable clothing. All these extraordinary works were exported through Europe, where they won the appreciation of princes, aristocrats, and rich burghers.

In the southern Low Countries, mysticism reached its zenith in the 13th and 14th centuries in the poems of Sister Hadewych and the prose of the prior Joannes Ruusbroec (Jan van Ruysbroeck). Ruusbroec's writings were founded on a considerable knowledge of theology; it is not certain whether his work had a direct influence on the founding of the religious movement along the IJssel--the modern devotion (devotio moderna)--or whether mysticism merely created the intellectual climate in which the new school of thought could develop. The modern devotion was inspired by Geert Grote (Gerard Groote, 1340-84) of Deventer, who preached, as did many others, the ascetic and pious life and resistance to the secularization of the church. His message was well received, and many lay people found in themselves a desire to live in communities devoted to the service of God; these were the Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life, who later organized themselves into the Windesheim monasteries and convents, which followed Augustinian rules. Their communities were extremely important for both education and religion; they were industrious copyists and brought a simple piety to the lower classes. Their work, like that of the mendicant orders, was a typical product of life in the towns. The movement reached its peak in Thomas à Kempis, from Zwolle, whose Imitatio Christi (The Imitation of Christ) became quite widely read, not least in Dutch versions. (see also Index: Christianity, Common Life, Brethren of the, Windesheim Congregation)

Development of Dutch humanism.

Within the modern devotion, where great importance was attached to good teaching, Dutch humanism was able to develop freely. Of importance was the foundation in 1425 of the University of Louvain; it received in 1517 the Collegium Trilingue where Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were taught. The greatest Dutch humanist was Erasmus (1469-1536), whose fame spread throughout the world and who had been taught in the schools of the Brethren of the Common Life. He drew his inspiration, as did many other humanists, from antiquity and was famed for his pure Latin. He was in touch with the greatest minds of his time, visited England (Cambridge) and Italy, and worked for some years in Basel and in Freiburg. Erasmus' greatest achievement was to turn the science of theology, which had degenerated into meaningless Neoscholastic disputes, back to the study of sources by philological criticism and by publishing a new edition of the Greek New Testament. Although he vociferously criticized the church and even the princes, he avoided out of conviction a break with the church and pleaded for religious tolerance. (see also Index: Louvain, Catholic University of)

The humanists were principally intellectuals, however, expressing themselves in literary and scientific treatises and having little impact on the broad masses of the people. Many of them, like Erasmus, desired no break with the church and did not accept that break when it became a fact by the appearance of Martin Luther. Instead, they wanted reformation within the church. It was otherwise for the reforming movements that brought turmoil to the Low Countries in the first half of the 16th century. Even Lutheranism had few followers, despite its early appearance (Luther's dogmas were condemned by the University of Louvain as early as 1520). There was a Lutheran community in Antwerp; but otherwise, support was limited to individual priests and intellectuals. It was precisely over the question of the Eucharist that the Sacramentarians differed with Luther; they denied the consubstantiation of Christ in the Eucharist, although their stance enjoyed little support from the people.

An uproar was caused by the Anabaptists (so called because they rejected the baptism of infants and therefore had themselves rebaptized as adults), who refused to swear the oath of allegiance to the prince or to serve in the armed forces or in government per se and who believed in a lumen internum ("inner light"). This baptist movement won great popularity in the Low Countries after 1530; from the very beginning there were two branches--the social revolutionaries and the "quiet baptists." The first of these was characterized by a lively enthusiasm and a willingness, once the external trappings of the church had been rejected, to organize itself into communities, which soon formed close ties with each other. Prophesies by the social-revolutionary branch of the imminent coming of Christ and of a New Jerusalem fascinated the masses, while their fanaticism and readiness to sacrifice themselves made a deep impression on a population suffering poverty and misery. In 1534 a section of the Anabaptists moved to Münster in Westphalia, where they supposed that the New Jerusalem would be built; and in 1535 an abortive attempt was made to take over the town hall in Amsterdam. After a long siege, the bishop of Münster succeeded in reconquering his town, and the Anabaptists suffered terrible vengeance. Only the "quiet baptists" were able to continue, under the leadership of the Frisian pastor Menno Simons (these Mennonites are even today strongly represented in the provinces of Groningen, Friesland, and Noord-Holland).

The future of the movement for reformation in the Netherlands was assured, however, not by the biblical humanists nor by the Anabaptists but by a movement less intellectual than the first and more realistic than the second-- Calvinism.

The theology of John Calvin (1509-64) was radical, strict, logical, and consistent. Its central theme was the absolute might and greatness of God, which made man a sinful creature of no significance who hoped merely to win God's grace by honouring him in daily hard work. Calvinism found its way to the Netherlands by way of France, though there may have been some direct influence from Geneva, Calvin's town. Calvinist writings were known in Antwerp as early as 1545, while the first translation into Dutch of his Christianae religionis institutio is dated 1560, which was also the year in which support for him spread in the Netherlands, largely because the Calvinists preached their creed in public and held open-air services.

Calvinist teaching appealed not only to the lower classes but also to the intellectual and middle classes because of its glorification of work, its discipline, its organization into communities, and its communal singing of the psalms. The government saw the movement as a threat to its plans of unity and centralization, which were supported by the Roman Catholic church, and it took stern measures against Calvinism. Calvinists forcibly removed their coreligionists from prisons and occasionally even attacked monasteries. This group's rejection of icons, paintings, statues, and valuables in churches sometimes led them to remove them and hand them over to the town magistrates. But this idealism became corrupted, and the leaders were unable to retain control of the movement.

It should be noted that Calvinism and other forms of protestantism had spread rapidly among the urban middle classes after 1550 in defiance of rule by Roman Catholic Spain. From 1551 to 1565 the number of persons persecuted in the county of Flanders for heresy rose from 187 to 1322. In Antwerp, the largest city of the Low Countries, with some 100,000 inhabitants around 1565, one-third of the population openly declared for Calvinist, Lutheran, or other Protestant denominations; another third declared itself to be Roman Catholic, while the last third was undeclared. Similar proportions are assumed to have existed in the other main cities, while the rural textile area in southwest Flanders counted large numbers of Anabaptists and Calvinists. It was among these Calvinists that an iconoclast movement to desecrate churches and destroy church images began in August 1566, spreading within a week to more than 150 villages and towns in the southern principalities. (see also Index: images, breaking of the)

The movement was weakened, however, when it lost the support of the nobility, and especially the lower nobility, which had been sympathetic to Calvinism. The government now besieged and captured the Calvinist centre, Valenciennes, by defeating a Calvinist army at Oosterweel, near Antwerp. The result was a great exodus of Calvinists. Nevertheless, Calvin's ideas had penetrated deeply, and his supporters, who had emigrated to England, East Friesland, and the Pfalz of Germany, were able to maintain their unity and support their coreligionists in the Low Countries. The Calvinists were to become the driving force behind the revolt against Spanish rule. (see also Index: Spanish Netherlands)

THE REVOLT AND THE FORMATION OF THE REPUBLIC (1567-79)

The forcible measures taken by the central government against the "breaking of the images" were followed by a brief period of peace. The Duke de Alba (who became governor after the departure of Margaret of Parma on the last day of 1567), introduced stern measures at the express command of the king. These provoked a resistance to the government (often referred to as the "revolt") that triggered the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). The iconoclast movement itself, which had raged across the country like a storm, had already shown a deep-rooted resistance that had many causes and was brought to a head by Alba's measures.

Causes of the revolt.

It is impossible to label any of the causes of the revolt as the decisive factor. An important one, however, was a religious motive. Criticism of the structure of the church and the riches and worldly way of life of its prelates and the accompanying desire for reform had always been strong in the Low Countries; and Protestantism, through the teaching of Luther, the Sacramentarians, the Anabaptists, and, above all, the Calvinists, had gained a firm foothold. The measures taken against the resistance--harsh edicts, prison sentences, torture, and death sentences, carried out with great cruelty--fanned the flames all the more and among all classes. Social and economic causes, however, also lay behind the resistance, especially among the lower classes--the wars with France, the epidemics, poor harvests, hard winters, floods, and a frightening inflation and consequent rise in prices all combined to cause despair and misery among the masses and made them susceptible to radical ideas. At the same time, in the upper classes of the nobility and the urban patriciate, there was a sharply felt reaction against the absolutist policy of the king, who lived far away in Spain and yet whose wish was law in the Low Countries. Towns felt their privileges being threatened, and the nobles found their independent status being undermined by the ever-increasing activities of the secret council. The mercenaries, who were often stationed in a town as a garrison and acted as occupying forces, also aroused hostility. The fact that the resistance did not present a united front may be ascribed to the particularism among the territories--Holland, with its commercial interests, could hardly be expected to be enthusiastic on behalf of typically agrarian feudal provinces such as Hainaut or Artois.

The main cleavage in the opposition groups, however, was social as well as religious: the high nobility and richest merchants mostly remained Roman Catholic, as did the peasants and the urban poor living on the church's alms. The lower nobility, the urban middle classes, and the rural textile workers massively opted for one or the other form of religious, political, and social protest against the prevailing order. This fundamentally explains the earlier accommodation of the rural provinces of Artois, Hainaut, Namur, and Luxembourg under Spanish rule, while opposition was fierce in the urbanized provinces of Flanders, Brabant, Holland, and Zeeland. The rural northeast also remained predominantly Roman Catholic until well into the 17th century.

It is clear, however, that the terror organized by Alba burst like a bombshell in this political, social, economic, and religious climate. William, the prince of Orange, with sharp political insight, had decided not to wait for Alba's arrival; he had managed to escape in time to his birthplace in Nassau-Dillenburg, leaving behind all his possessions, which were promptly confiscated. His son, Philip William, was taken prisoner to Spain. Alba sent his troops to the principal towns and set up the Council of Troubles (or Council of Blood), which imposed severe penalties, often including the death sentence or confiscation of property, sparing nothing and nobody, not even the most powerful--the counts of Egmond and Hoorne were publicly beheaded in Brussels in June 1568.

Alba also rushed through installation of the new ecclesiastical hierarchy, which had not been completed. Furthermore, he attempted to make the central government independent of the provincial states by means of new taxes on property, on the sale of land or building, and on the sale of goods. This met with violent resistance because the taxes were to be general and permanent, so that the separate states would no longer have the means to make conditions for the furnishing of taxes (although they themselves already levied taxes on the sale of goods) and, more important, because a permanent tax system would make the king independent of his subjects. The taxes were the final link in the policy of absolutism and centralization, which would lead to a unified state controlled by a prince with unlimited power.

The severity with which Alba ruled was not able to prevent the immediate appearance of resistance. The Geuzen (guerrilla forces) conducted pillaging raids in the country and piracy at sea, for which they had "authority" in the form of letters of marque issued by William of Orange in his capacity as sovereign of the principality of Orange. Attacks took place as early as 1568. A small force led by Louis of Nassau, William's brother, enjoyed a modest victory over the Spaniards at Heiligerlee (in the province of Groningen), considered the beginning of the Eighty Years' War; but shortly afterward Louis was defeated near Jengum in East Friesland. A greater setback, however, was the complete failure, due to lack of funds, of a campaign led by William himself in Brabant. During the sombre years of 1568-72 the "Wilhelmus" was written--a song of faith, hope, and trust that was to become the Dutch national anthem. Other songs written by the Geuzen lifted the spirits of the people during this period and in later years. (see also Index: Heiligerlee, Battle of)

During these years, William negotiated for help from Germany, England, and, above all, the French Huguenots. A large-scale attack was planned for the summer of 1572. Before William could carry it out, the Geuzen seized the port of Brielle (April 1, 1572), west of Rotterdam. This was a move of considerable strategic importance because the port controlled the mouth of both the Meuse and the Waal, and the prince immediately supported the movement. The Geuzen then took Flushing, Veere, and Enkhuizen, so that William had useful bases in Holland and Zeeland. The help that the Geuzen received from the Calvinists in these towns was striking--the Calvinists, a radical minority, were again and again able to force the more conservative town magistrates to either cooperate or resign. Oudewater, Gouda, Dordrecht, Leiden, Hoorn, and Haarlem followed, only Amsterdam keeping the Geuzen out. The purposeful activities of the Calvinists also led to their gaining churches, often the principal church of a town, for their services; they closed monasteries, and Roman Catholic services were soon forbidden.

The revolt was at first successful only in Holland because of its unique position. As a commercially oriented province, it had been more inclined to look after its own interests than to cooperate with other provinces. Trade had been seriously threatened by the Geuzen but was now free again. Moreover, the province lay in a strategically favourable position--difficult to reach from the central government in Brussels and almost inaccessible to the Spanish armies by virtue of its many rivers, lakes, drains, and bogs.

To give the revolt a legal basis, the fiction was invented that it had been a revolt not against the king but against his evil advisers, particularly the governor. By their own authority, in July 1572 the states of Holland gathered in Dordrecht, where William of Orange was proclaimed stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland. The prince himself went to Holland and, realizing that the Calvinists had been the driving force behind the revolt, became a member of the Calvinist church. But he repeatedly expressly avowed his ideal of the United Netherlands, in which there would be room for Catholics and Calvinists alike.

Alba, disappointed by his failure to push through the tax reforms and about to return to Spain, learned of the fall of Brielle and decided to stay and start a counteroffensive. The south was immediately brought under control with the occupation and plundering of Malines; then Zutphen and Naarden in the north were taken and likewise plundered. This provoked stronger resistance, and Haarlem was retaken only after a long siege, which not only demoralized and decimated Alba's troops but also strengthened the other towns in their decision to offer resistance (1573). Thus, the Spaniards were unable to take Alkmaar, their fleet suffered a heavy defeat in the Zuiderzee, and a long siege of Leiden was relieved by flooding the surrounding country (1574). (As a reward, the town later was given a university, where Calvinistic theology was to be a principal subject for study.) Spanish troops never again forced their way into Holland--a heavy blow for the most powerful monarchy in the world. (see also Index: Leiden, State University of)

Unification after Alba.

Alba left on Dec. 18, 1573, and his successor, Don Luis de Requesens, was unable to prevent further secessions in the north. Even the south, which had been loyal to Spain until then but where active Calvinist movements existed (especially in Ghent), became amenable to William's ambition for a united resistance to the Spanish regime. Problems involved were considerable, with one of the most contentious points being the question of religion--the more radical north demanded the total abolition of Roman Catholicism in Holland and Zeeland and the acceptance of Calvinism by the southern provinces. William, however, was diplomatic enough not to make this demand. It was finally agreed that the States-General would deal with the question later, and until such time the Calvinists would be masters only of Holland and Zeeland. A new governor (Requesens died in March 1576) was to be accepted only if he approved the pacification and sent away the foreign troops, who, because they had received no pay, were beginning to mutiny and plunder and were becoming an increasing nuisance. Another condition of his acceptance was that he govern with native officials and in close consultation with the states. On this basis, delegates from all the provinces came to an agreement, and on Nov. 8, 1576, they signed the Pacification of Ghent. Their sense of unity was further strengthened by the news that on November 4 Antwerp had been invaded by mutinying Spanish troops, who had slaughtered 7,000 citizens in a massacre that came to be known as the "Spanish Fury."

William's idealism, his desire for unity, and his tolerant ideas had apparently triumphed. Unity of thought, however, did not last long; and within three years signs of a split appeared between the urbanized and rural provinces (which later became a permanent split). It was immediately obvious that within the United Netherlands there were opposing powers of radicalism and reaction. For various reasons, they could not maintain equilibrium; the reactionaries tried to force their ideas on the country with the help of the new governor, Don Juan de Austria, a half-brother of the king, and the Calvinists continued their radical program to make theirs the official and only religion. In Ghent, Malines, and Brussels, radical Calvinists took over the city governments, while in Antwerp, the magistrate displayed a conspicuous tolerance toward the Protestants.

Many intractable factors underlay these conflicts--deep-running religious differences between regions; a deeply rooted particularism that hindered cooperation; and structural and economic differences between Holland and Zeeland on the one hand (commerce and industry) and Hainaut and Artois on the other (agrarian economy and feudal possession of land). It is impossible to point to any one factor that was of paramount importance. William did his utmost to save the pacification, and he found support for his ideas of tolerance among the rich burghers; yet he was unable to bridge the differences between rich and poor, Roman Catholics and Calvinists. Moreover, Don Juan died in 1578 and was succeeded by Alessandro Farnese (duke of Parma and son of the earlier governess Margaret), who was conspicuous for his military and diplomatic gifts, which made him a worthy opponent for William and who may be credited with removing Calvinist control in the south and with the return of loyalty to the king in the southern provinces.

Notable, too, was the appearance in the north and south of movements toward "closer unions," which within the whole of the United Netherlands were to bring about greater community of interests between certain provinces. On Jan. 6, 1579, the Union of Arras (Artois) was formed in the south among Artois, Hainaut, and the town of Douay, based on the Pacification of Ghent but retaining the Roman Catholic religion, loyalty to the king, and the privileges of the estates. As a reaction to the accommodation of Artois and Hainaut, the Union of Utrecht was declared, at first including northern principalities but later drawing signees from the south. This unity was eventually broken by military force. ( C.v.d.K./W.B.)

History of The Netherlands

(1579 to the present)

The early history of the Low Countries, including the area now occupied by the Kingdom of The Netherlands, has been treated in the preceding section. Treated in the following section is the history of the modern state of The Netherlands, beginning with its establishment in 1579.

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, and Ypres 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 nation in the northern Netherlands. The new state was named the United Provinces of the Netherlands, or, more briefly, the "Dutch Republic," and 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 of 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 (Nederlands), 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, Dutchmen and Belgians as they would be called in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The treaty that formed the basis of the new northern union established a military league to resist the Spaniards but on a "perpetual" basis, and it provided for closer political arrangements among 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 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). The union moved away from the religious settlement embodied in the Pacification of Ghent of two years before (see above) 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 dovetailed with the Union of Arras, concluded earlier in the month, which began the reconciliation of the southerners with King Philip II of Spain. The two "unions," parallel but opposite, thus undermined the policy of 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 among 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 assure 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 the duke d'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, resulting 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 of 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 the Silent'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 Parma. 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 the emergence of the States-General diplomatically recognized by England and France as an independent state. (see also Index: pensionary)

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 through 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 were 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. Even England 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 at the level of handicraft production. Dutch agriculture also responded to the new needs. Grain production was encouraged in the inland provinces, while the polders of the delta islands and along the coast were drained and diked, providing pastureland for a flourishing dairy industry.

THE TWELVE YEARS' TRUCE

The Twelve Years' Truce that 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 which 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 or not 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. (see also Index: Netherlands Reformed Church, The)

The Twelve Years' Truce did not, however, end internal 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, together with two of his chief supporters in Holland (including the great jurist Hugo Grotius) and an ally in Utrecht, was 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 71 years old, 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 these 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 that 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. (see also Index: Dort, Synod of)

WAR WITH SPAIN (1621-48)

The war resumed in 1621 under Maurice's leadership. But his touch of victory was gone, and the republic appeared 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. (see also Index: Eighty Years' War, Habsburg, House of)

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 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. (see also Index: Stuart, House of)

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, but 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. (see also Index: Westphalia, Peace of)

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 eighty 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 nation 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. (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 as 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. That conflict 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. (see also Index: Anglo-Dutch Wars)

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, de Witt 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, 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 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 stand-off Peace of Breda (July 31, 1667), followed in January by an Anglo-Dutch alliance compelling France to make peace with Spain. (see also Index: Spanish Netherlands, Breda, Treaty of)

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. (see also Index: Dutch War)

WILLIAM III

The tide of war now turned against the aggressors. The Dutch navy under Admiral 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, 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. (see also Index: Nijmegen, Treaties of)

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 her 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 true in 1650-51. Resentment had built up against the harshness with which the prince had governed the country for three decades, 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 or not 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. (see also Index: stadholderless periods)

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 in 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 investment. Yet the economic burden of repeated wars caused the Dutch to become one of the most heavily taxed peoples in Europe. Because the role of agriculture was secondary, taxes were to some extent 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.

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. (see also Index: slave trade)

Society.

The social structure that evolved with the economic transformation of Dutch life was complex and marked by the predominance of the business classes that later centuries called the bourgeoisie, although with some significant differences. It was an unabashedly "aristocratic" country, socially and politically. 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 except Zeeland, 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 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. (see also Index: pillarization)

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 nation'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 the studies that helped transform modern thought.

Scientific activity in the United Provinces also reached a high level. The physicist Christiaan Huygens approached 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 like the historian P.C. Hooft or the poets Constantijn Huygens and Joost van den Vondel, who 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 Jan Vermeer, were painted for these markets, but the greatest of Dutch painters, Rembrandt, broke through the boundaries of the group portrait to create works with his own extraordinary mood and inward meaning. The landscape painters, notably Jacob van Ruisdael, captured the distinctive Dutch flat land, 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 heavily dependent on English goodwill; yet the rulers of the country 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 landed estates, 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; a medical scientist like Hermann Boerhaave or a jurist like Cornelis van Bynkershoek was 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 than elsewhere. The poor as such were not labourers but 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, which denied free will, and supporters of Rome; 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 who had been completely disfranchised (although not to wageworkers or to paupers). (see also Index: Austrian Netherlands)

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 like 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 the 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 War of Independence (1775-83), when they attempted to continue and expand their profitable trade with the new American nation as well as with France. Dutch flirtations with the Russian-sponsored League of Armed Neutrality, resisting 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. (see also Index: United States War of Independence)

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 the 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 upon 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 overweigh 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 RULE (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 fact 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 political system of the new type, 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; equal status was accorded to all religious denominations, including Roman Catholics and Jews. 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 did not choose their representatives 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. (see also Index: United Kingdom)

As trade declined and industry languished, the Netherlands began to change in economic character toward a primarily agricultural country. 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 among them, or at least passively accepted its dictum, given by coups d'état organized or approved by the French army command. In 1805, Napoleon 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 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 were 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 past decade with London's connivance. King Louis's resistance to his brother's efforts and his refusal to put French interests ahead of 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, losing heavily 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, 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 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 given sovereignty over the southern Netherlands, which included both Belgium and Luxembourg. During the campaign against Napoleon after his return from Elba in 1815, Dutch troops played a major role in his defeat at Waterloo. (see also Index: William I)

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 countrymen 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, although 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 were returned to Dutch sovereignty by England 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, despite the abandonment of the monopoly formerly maintained under the East India Company. (see also Index: international trade)

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; but 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 Hollanders. William's efforts to assume the control that Napoleon had possessed over the Belgian 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--to 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, 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 archbishop 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 after World War II. During this period, political parties of the modern type took shape, organized along religious and ideological lines; to the original Liberal, Protestant, and Catholic parties were eventually added Socialist, Conservative-Protestant, Communist, and minor parties. As no single party was able to emerge with a majority, coalition politics became inevitable. The central issue of political controversy became the "school conflict" (schoolstrijd), which pitted the liberal (and later socialist) advocates of public schools against the combined Protestant and Catholic parties, which demanded that the state support private ("special") schools equally with the public schools. For several decades, the 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 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 anticlerical 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. The other major issue of the latter half of the 19th century was the role of the Dutch East Indies. The income received by the Dutch treasury from Indonesian taxes helped balance the national budget; yet the revelations of harsh conditions in the distant archipelago made it impossible to maintain the "culture system," which had been introduced to force the production of certain crops for export, while the long Achinese War drained the treasury.

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, Holland, 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 fell off, with most Dutch farmers producing dairy and meat products for the market; 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 in Limburg, 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 the middle-class business and professional men, and the 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 in Europe, Protestant conservatives faced major difficulties, especially during the first half of the 20th century, when they protested the modernizing ideas of the Reformed (Hervormde) church; their efforts to create independent religious communities met with sharp resistance from the government, which, it should be noted, did not interfere in non-Protestant religions. Some of the Gereformeerden (the older name for "Reformed" used by the conservatives) emigrated, many of them to the United States; but, by the latter half of the century, persecution ceased. (see also Index: Protestantism, Netherlands Reformed Church, The)

The cultural life of Holland 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 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 world 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 Holland. 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.

The work of public administration under German 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 a few 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 "dive under" (go 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 postwar period.

After the war many aspects of Dutch life changed dramatically. Wilhelmina and her government returned from exile to reestablish a government more strongly democratic than ever, with both universal suffrage and proportional representation in elections. 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, so that the Dutch were able to avoid drastic inflation until the introduction of a new taxation system in the late 1960s.

Dutch industrialization moved forward with speed and depth, expanding to include the large-scale production of steel, electronics, and petrochemicals. Holland, putting aside the policy of neutrality as a failure, entered vigorously into the postwar Western alliances, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the various organizations of European unity (the Common Market); 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 granted it full independence. The Netherlands Antilles remained part of the Dutch kingdom, although no longer under the authority of the government at The Hague; Surinam became independent in 1975 and was renamed the Republic of Suriname in 1978.

Dutch political alignments since the mid-20th century have undergone few shifts. 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 his military offices. 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 called pillarization (verzuiling)--the organization not only of political parties but of labour unions, businessmen's organizations, social and sport clubs, and many professional groups on the basis of membership in a religious-ideological "pillar," either Roman Catholic, Protestant, or humanist (the latter including liberals and socialists). 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 religiously 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. Some 25 years after the end of World War II, the system began to disintegrate. New political parties were formed, most importantly the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA), inclusive of all major Christian factions. The Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid [PvdA]), keeping its distance from the more extreme leftist groups, joined with the CDA in forming a coalition government in 1989. 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. (H.Ro.)

For later developments in the history of The Netherlands, see the BRITANNICA BOOK OF THE YEAR.

For coverage of related topics, see SPECTRUM, sections 921, 923, 961, 963, 969, and 972, and the Index.

Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY

General works.

An extensive source of information on all aspects of the country is The Kingdom of The Netherlands, a collection of 17 short booklets published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and updated frequently. Further resources may be found in PETER KING and MICHAEL WINTLE (comps.), The Netherlands (1988), an annotated bibliography.

Physical and human geography.

H. MEIJER, Compact Geography of The Netherlands, 5th rev. ed. (1985), is a brief survey of geographic conditions. Informative atlases include R. TAMSMA, The Netherlands in Fifty Maps (1988); and Atlas of the Netherlands (1963-77). AUDREY M. LAMBERT, The Making of the Dutch Landscape, 2nd ed. (1985), provides a historical geography. Modern Dutch society is explored in JOHAN GOUDSBLOM, Dutch Society (1967); GERALD NEWTON, The Netherlands: An Historical and Cultural Survey, 1795-1977 (1978); HANS VAN AMERSFOORT (J.M.M. VAN AMERSFOORT), Immigration and the Formation of Minority Groups: The Dutch Experience, 1945-1975 (1982; originally published in Dutch, 1974); and WILLIAM Z. SHETTER, The Netherlands in Perspective: The Organizations of Society and Environment (1987). Dutch economic history and conditions are addressed by MARC DE SMIDT and EGBERT WEVER (eds.), A Profile of Dutch Economic Geography (1984); RICHARD T. GRIFFITHS (ed.), The Economy and Politics of the Netherlands since 1945 (1980); and HERMAN VAN DER WEE and EDDY VAN CAUWENBERGHE (eds.), Productivity of Land and Agricultural Innovation in the Low Countries, 1250-1800 (1978).

History. General works:

PETRUS JOHANNES BLOK, History of the People of the Netherlands, 5 vol. (1898-1912, reprinted 1970; originally published in Dutch, 8 vol., 1892-1908), is a classic history of the northern territories, although now outdated, particularly so on the history of the Middle Ages. HENRI PIRENNE, Histoire de Belgique, 7 vol. (1900-32), a brilliantly written history extending to 1914 by the famous Belgian historian, covers for the period of the Middle Ages the northern as well as the southern parts of the Low Countries, although emphasis is on the south (the post-Revolt period is covered only for the south). GEORGE EDMUNDSON, History of Holland (1922), is an excellent general work, although better for the republican than the modern period. IVO SCHÖFFER, A Short History of the Netherlands, 2nd rev. ed. (1973), provides a useful history of the northern Netherlands. An excellent general synthesis written by expert authors is J.A. BORNEWASSER et al. (eds.), Winkler Prins Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 3 vol. (1977-78). PIETER GEYL, Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche stam, rev. ed., 3 vol. (1948-58), is a monumental work in which the linguistic-ethnic unity of the Dutch-speaking Low Countries is emphasized. D.P. BLOK et al. (eds.), Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 15 vol. (1977-83), is an extensive history of both the northern and southern Low Countries from Roman times to the present day, with detailed bibliographies. The Dutch-speaking part of actual Belgium is considered in MAX LAMBERTY et al. (eds.), Twintig Eeuwen Vlaanderen, 15 vol. (1972-79). Other works concerning the same area include RENÉE DOEHAERD et al. (eds.), Histoire de Flandre: des origines à nos jours (1983), an excellent and up-to-date general synthesis; and A.G.H.A. BAART and J. LOUAGE (eds.), Culturele geschiedenis van Vlaanderen, 10 vol. (1982-83), a more popular version by good scholars of the general history of art, literature, and daily life. The French-speaking regions have been competently dealt with by ÉMILE COORNAERT, La Flandre française de langue flamande (1970); LOUIS TRENARD (ed.), Histoire des Pays-Bas français (1972, reissued 1984); and HERVÉ HASQUIN et al. (eds.), La Wallonie: le pays et les hommes, 6 vol. (1975-81).

History of the Low Countries to 1579:

The prehistory of the Low Countries is presented by SIGFRID J. DE LAET, The Low Countries (1958), the only general survey in English on the topic, but now out of date in many respects; L.P. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, The Rhine/Meuse Delta (1974), on prehistory and Holocene geology in the Dutch coastal wetlands; H.T. WATERBOLK, "Archaeology in the Netherlands: Delta Archaeology," World Archaeology, 13(2):240-54 (1981), a short evaluation of Dutch archaeology in the last decades; and J.H.F. BLOWMERS, L.P. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, and H. SARFATIJ, Verleden Land: Archeologische opgravingen in Nederland (1981), a full-colour presentation of modern-day archaeology in the Netherlands, from the Middle Paleolithic up to post-medieval times. W. JAPPE ALBERTS, H.P.H. JANSEN, and J.F. NIERMEYER, Welvaart in wording: sociaal-economische geschiedenis van Nederland van de vroegste tijden tot het einde van de Middeleeuwen, 2nd enlarged ed. (1977), presents a social and economic history of the northern Netherlands during the Middle Ages, with emphasis on the economic aspects. É. DE MOREAU, Histoire de l'Église en Belgique, 5 vol. (1945-52), with exhaustive bibliographies, and a supplemental vol. containing maps (1948); and R.R. POST, Kerkgeschiedenis van Nederland in de Middeleeuwen, 2 vol. (1957), are extensive handbooks of the church history of, respectively, the southern and the northern Netherlands. D.P. BLOK, De Franken in Nederland, 3rd ed. (1979), offers a brilliant portrayal of the early history of the northern Netherlands. P.C.J.A. BOELES, Friesland tot de elfde eeuw: zijn vóór- en vroege geschiedenis, 2nd ed. (1951), is an authoritative work on early Frisian history, with a lengthy English summary. FRANÇOIS-L. GANSHOF, La Flandre sous les premiers comtes, 3rd ed. rev. (1949), recounts the history of the important principality of Flanders, tracing its origins and ending with the eventful crisis of 1127-28. HENRY STEPHEN LUCAS, The Low Countries and the Hundred Years' War, 1326-1347 (1929, reprinted 1976), is a reliable and richly documented account of political events. A series of books by RICHARD VAUGHAN, Philip the Bold: The Formation of the Burgundian State, rev. ed. (1979), John the Fearless: The Growth of Burgundian Power, rev. ed. (1979), Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (1970), and Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy (1973), are well-documented studies of the Burgundian dukes and the growth of their political power. J. HUIZINGA, The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought, and Art in France and the Netherlands in the XIVth and XVth Centuries (1924, reprinted 1985; originally published in Dutch, 1919), is a classic work. WALTER PREVENIER and WIM BLOCKMANS, The Burgundian Netherlands (1986; originally published in Dutch, 1983), is a magnificently illustrated scholarly general synthesis concerning the period 1380-1530. GEOFFREY PARKER, The Dutch Revolt (1977), analyzes the period 1565-1659.

History of The Netherlands, 1579 to the present:

PIETER GEYL, The Revolt of the Netherlands, 1555-1609, 2nd ed. (1958, reissued 1980), and The Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century, 2nd ed., 2 vol. (1961-64), are complementary works. J. HUIZINGA, Dutch Civilisation in the Seventeenth Century, and Other Essays, comp. by PIETER GEYL and F.W.N. HUGENHOLTZ (1968), is a masterpiece of condensation. C.R. BOXER, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800 (1965, reissued 1977), is a vigorously written and well-informed account. CHARLES WILSON, The Dutch Republic and the Civilisation of the Seventeenth Century (1968), is written by an outstanding English historian of The Netherlands. HERBERT H. ROWEN, The Princes of Orange: The Stadholders in the Dutch Republic (1988), surveys the period of the house of Orange. SIMON SCHAMA, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987), and Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813 (1977), are brilliant, innovative studies. E.H. KOSSMANN, The Low Countries, 1780-1940 (1978), offers a penetrating comparison of the history of Holland and Belgium. HENRI GRIMAL, Decolonization: The British, French, Dutch, and Belgian Empires, 1919-1963 (1978; originally published in French, 3rd ed., 1975), includes useful documents, maps, and case studies. AREND LIJPHART, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands, 2nd ed., rev. (1975), provides a sociological study of "pillarization," fundamental for the contemporary period.