history of the Netherlands

history of the Netherlands, a survey of notable events and people in the history of the Netherlands, from its founding in 1579 to the present. For information concerning the period prior to that date, see history of the Low Countries.

“Netherlands” means low-lying country; the name Holland (from Houtland, or “Wooded Land”) was originally given to one of the medieval cores of what later became the modern state and is still used for 2 of its 12 provinces (Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland). A parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarch, the Kingdom of the Netherlands includes its former colonies in the Lesser Antilles: Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten.

The Union of Utrecht

On January 23, 1579, an 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 of Utrecht were the provinces and cities committed to carrying on resistance to Spanish rule: Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland (Guelders), and Zutphen (a part of Overijssel) as the first signatories, followed in the next year by the whole of Overijssel, most of Friesland, and Groningen, all in the north, and in the south by the cities of Antwerp and Breda in Brabant and Ghent, Brugge (Bruges), and Ypres (Ieper) in Flanders. Designed to establish a league for conduct of a war of independence from Spain and ultimately to strengthen the central government in Brussels, the Union of Utrecht became in fact the foundation of a separate state and a distinct country in the northern Netherlands. The new state was named the United Provinces of the Netherlands, or, more briefly, the Dutch Republic, and its government was known in the international community as the States General.

The people of the northern Netherlands began to be distinguished from the inhabitants of the south (to whom the name Flemings continued to cling) by the appellation Hollanders (French: Hollandais; Italian: Olandese; German: Holländer; and so forth), after their principal province. The English, however, came to apply exclusively to the Hollanders the term Dutch, which previously they had applied to all German speakers (from German Deutsch, Dutch Duits). The name Netherlanders, which remained in use in the Low Countries for the inhabitants of the United Provinces specifically and for all those, north or south, who spoke Dutch (Netherlandic), passed out of currency in most foreign countries or came to be restricted to the northerners. The transformation had a price: the erosion of the bond of historical identity between northerners and southerners—or Dutch and Belgians, as they would be called beginning in the 19th century.

The treaty that formed the basis of the new northern union established a military league to resist the Spaniards on a “perpetual” basis, and it provided for closer political arrangements between the provinces than those of “allies” in the ordinary sense. The provinces united “for all time as if they were a single province”; each remained sovereign in its internal affairs, but all acted as a body in foreign policy. Decisions on war and peace and on federal taxation could be made only unanimously. The union did not throw off the formal sovereignty of the king of Spain, but it confirmed the effective powers of the provincial stadtholders (formally the “lieutenants,” or governors, of the king) as their political leaders (there was no “stadtholder of the United Provinces,” as foreigners often assumed, although several of the provincial stadtholderates were often united in the same person). The union moved away from the religious settlement embodied in the Pacification of Ghent of two years before and toward a predominance of the Calvinists and their monopoly of public practice of religion in the key provinces of Holland and Zeeland.

The immediate political significance of the union was that it complemented the Union of Arras, concluded earlier in January, which began the reconciliation of the southerners with King Philip II of Spain. The two “unions,” parallel but opposite, thus undermined the policy of William I (Prince William of Orange) of collaboration between Roman Catholics and Calvinists throughout the Low Countries in resistance to Spanish domination, which required mutual toleration between the religions. But it took some time before the “general union,” with its base in the States General at Brussels, fell apart irrevocably.

For another half decade the prince struggled to keep intact the broader union and at the same time to ensure its military and political support from abroad. Although Archduke Matthias of Habsburg, named governor-general by the States General in 1577 after the deposition of Don Juan, remained the formal head of state until 1581, Prince William continued to exercise his leadership. That the prince was the head and heart of the rebellion was recognized by Philip II in 1580, when he put him under the ban of outlawry. William’s Apology in defense of his conduct was followed in 1581 by the Act of Abjuration (Akte van Afzwering), by which the States General declared that Philip had forfeited his sovereignty over the provinces by his persistent tyranny. This was a declaration of independence for the whole of the Low Countries, but the military and political events of the next decade limited its permanent effect to the northern provinces under the “closer union” of Utrecht.

Foreign intervention

Yet independence did not become William’s objective even after the proclamation of the Act of Abjuration. Archduke Matthias returned home in 1581 after William turned to François, duke of Anjou, who agreed to take over the “lordship” of the Low Countries in 1580. The prince hoped for assistance from the duke’s brother, King Henry III of France, and considered the lordship of Anjou as only a kind of limited, constitutional sovereignty like that which the rebels had hoped to impose on Philip II at the beginning of their rising. Anjou, however, saw the lordship as a means to total dominion over the Netherlands. Irritated by restraints upon his authority, he even attempted the seizure of power by military force, which resulted in the so-called French Fury of January 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.

As the Spaniards steadily overran 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. Upon Leicester’s departure, the United Provinces put aside all efforts to obtain a foreign protectorate and stood forth as an independent state.

The formation of a new government

Although derived from historical institutions, the government of the United Provinces was in practice largely a new set of institutions, not created but confirmed by the Union of Utrecht. Their primary force lay in the provinces, seven in number (Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijssel, Friesland, and Groningen), which were ruled by assemblies of provincial States representing the towns and the landed nobility. Although the stadtholders (who after a few years came to be drawn exclusively from the house of Orange) were elected by the States of the provinces, they at the same time possessed important prerogatives in the selection of members of the town governments from which the provincial assemblies ultimately derived their authority, and they were the acknowledged military leaders of the republic. Central government passed from the Council of State to the States General, which was more explicitly subordinated to provincial authority. Although it conducted the military and diplomatic work of the republic, the States General failed to obtain effective rights of direct taxation (except for import and export duties assigned to the admiralties), and its major decisions were taken under the rule of unanimity.

In practice, the province of Holland, by far the wealthiest province in the union and the contributor of more than half the revenues of the central government, became the preponderant political force in the country, along with the stadtholders of the house of Orange. The relationship between Holland and the house of Orange governed the republic’s politics for the two centuries of its existence. As collaborators, Holland and the princes of Orange could make the clumsy governmental system work with surprising effectiveness; as rivals, they imperiled its potency as a state, at least until one or the other emerged a temporary victor, but neither force was able to rule permanently without the other.

The decades immediately after 1587 were marked by close collaboration between Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, “advocate” of Holland (the legal and executive secretary of the provincial States), and Maurice of Nassau, William I’s second son (the first, Philip William, became prince of Orange and remained loyal to Spain). Maurice was named stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland and became the commander of the republic’s armies. The result was a series of military triumphs over the Spanish forces under Alessandro Farnese, duke of Parma and Piacenza. Maurice recaptured the Dutch territories north of the Rhine, Lek, Waal, and Maas (Meuse) and extended them southward into much of Brabant and enough of Flanders to cut off Antwerp from the sea. These victories are recorded in the historical memory of the Dutch as “the closing of the garden,” the territory that became the republic of the United Provinces and then (with a few additions) the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands. These victories were accompanied by England’s and France’s diplomatic recognition of the States General as the government of an independent state.

Ascendancy of the Dutch economy

The military prowess of the fledgling republic rested upon the wealth of Holland—which managed in wartime to maintain and extend its trade to all Europe and, after the turn of the century, even to East Asia. Amsterdam replaced Antwerp, the great port on the Schelde River, as the principal warehouse and trading centre for all Europe, even while Holland maintained the leadership in shipping it had already garnered during the 16th century. The foundation of Dutch economic prosperity lay in the fishing and shipping industries. Even during the period of Antwerp’s ascendancy, ships from Holland and Zeeland had carried a large portion of the goods that passed through the Schelde, and now that Amsterdam had taken over from Antwerp, Dutch shipping only expanded its predominance. Dutch fishermen had harvested the North Sea for centuries, and the salted cargoes were sold widely throughout western and central Europe.

Dutch trade benefited, as had that of Flanders, from the location of the country at the nexuses of the great north-south and east-west trade routes of Europe. To these was added the route to the East Indies early in the 17th century. Amsterdam and the lesser ports of Holland and Zeeland became the principal European suppliers of grain and naval stores from the Baltic, to which they shipped manufactured goods and wines from the south. Germany’s principal exports were now shipped down the Rhine, as Dutch ports replaced the Hanseatic towns of northern Germany. The bulk of French exports were carried in Dutch ships, and even Spain and Portugal depended on the Dutch for grain and naval stores (thereby enabling the Dutch to finance their war of independence). During the 17th century the Dutch assumed a major role in supplying grain and other northern commodities to the countries of the Mediterranean and also became the principal importer of spices and other luxury goods from the East. England too relied to a great extent upon Dutch shipping. The Dutch advantages lay not only in their situation but also in the efficient design of their bulky flyboats (fluiten), manned by small crews at less cost than any of their competitors.

Modern banking institutions developed to meet the needs of the vastly expanding trade. Amsterdam’s “exchange bank” was instituted in 1609 to provide monetary exchange at established rates, but it soon became a deposit bank for the safe settling of accounts. Unlike the Bank of England, established almost a century later, it neither managed the national currency nor acted as a lending institution (except to the government in emergencies). Private bankers met the need for credit, as well as acting as brokers in financial transactions. The need for commercial exports, as well as a growing population at home, spurred industry in many towns. Although the shipbuilders on the Zaan, northwest of Amsterdam, and the sugar refiners in particular developed large-scale operations, sometimes including machinery, Dutch industry generally remained small in scale, as indeed nearly all manufacturing was in the 17th century.

Dutch industry was heavily dependent on trade, and major manufactures grew up in the western towns connected with international commerce. In processing and finishing textiles, Dutch manufacturers were often capable of undercutting competition abroad. Agricultural products were also traded. Of particular note was the tulip bulb market, which experienced explosive growth in the early 17th century as so-called “Tulip Mania” gripped northern Europe. The speculation-fueled bubble burst spectacularly in early 1637, leading to the financial ruin of many of those involved. Grain was produced on Dutch farms, especially in the inland provinces, but, rather than compete with the massive grain imports from the Baltic, coastal agriculture focused on cash crops for use in industry (flax, hemp, dyes, etc.), dairy and livestock farming, and market gardening. This kind of market-oriented agriculture was more profitable than the traditional production of basic foodstuffs.

The Twelve Years’ Truce

The Twelve Years’ Truce, which began in 1609, arose out of political controversies that were to dominate the republic for the next two centuries. The collaboration between the house of Orange and the leaders of the province of Holland, which had thwarted Spain in its reconquest of the Netherlands north of the great rivers, was replaced by an intermittent, but often fierce, rivalry between them, in which the other tensions of Dutch political life were reflected and incorporated: the jealousy among the lesser provinces of a Holland that they considered too wealthy, too mighty, and too arrogant but that they knew they needed for their own defense; the misunderstanding between maritime and landward provinces; the annoyance of landed nobles that they were dependent upon the goodwill of burghers in Holland (they preferred the prince of Orange, whom they saw as one of themselves); the resentment of the popular classes, men of small property and of none, toward the town regents (members of government), from whom they looked to the princes of Orange to protect them; and the antipathy of the Reformed clergy toward the regents, who obstructed their desire to make the state serve the church. The debate over whether to conclude a peace with Spain mingled these various interests with that of the house of Orange, partly because Maurice opposed peace, partly because it involved making some compromise with Spain, and partly because it would mean a reduction of his influence in the state; but the province of Holland in particular, under Oldenbarnevelt’s leadership, felt that the independence and security of the United Provinces had been sufficiently assured to permit a reduction of the immense expenditures for the war. When Spain reduced its immediate proposal to a truce rather than permanent peace, agreed to treat the United Provinces as independent and sovereign, which was just short of outright recognition, and put aside efforts to win guarantees for Dutch Catholics, the pressure for conclusion of a truce could not be withstood.

The Twelve Years’ Truce did not, however, end controversy within the republic. If anything, it only sharpened Maurice of Nassau’s opposition to Holland and Oldenbarnevelt. The staunch Calvinists endeavoured to hold the Reformed Church to the strict orthodoxy expounded by Franciscus Gomarus, a Leiden professor of theology, against the broader, less rigorous tenets upheld by his colleague Jacobus Arminius. The Gomarists demanded that the government uphold their principles because the Reformed Church was the only true church, but they reserved for themselves the right to declare what the correct doctrines were; and they vigorously asserted that other religious groups, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish alike, should be suppressed or at least penalized and restricted. On the other hand, the Arminians had the support of the leaders of Holland and a majority of its towns, who felt that what was in effect the state church had to be under the authority of the government. Both out of principle and out of a desire not to hamper trade with men of all religions, they favoured a broadly inclusive Reformed Church and toleration for those outside its ranks.

The efforts of Gomarists to seize churches for their own use in defiance of town authorities led to incipient civil war. Maurice broke openly with the dominant party in Holland when it attempted to set up little provincial armies in Holland and Utrecht. In 1618 he acted under the authority of the States General—in which the majority of provinces favoured the Gomarists (now called the Contra-Remonstrants because they had opposed an Arminian petition) over the Remonstrants (Arminians)—to crush the resistance of Oldenbarnevelt’s party. Oldenbarnevelt, two of his chief supporters in Holland (including the great jurist Hugo Grotius), and an ally in Utrecht were arrested and tried for treason by a special court instituted by the States General. The defendants affirmed that they were subject only to the authority of the sovereign province that they served. The sentence, which to foes of the house of Orange over the centuries became an act of judicial murder, sent Oldenbarnevelt, then aged 71, with almost four decades of service as Holland’s leader, to his death by beheading in May 1619. Grotius and another defendant (the third had committed suicide) were sentenced to life imprisonment, although Grotius escaped, sensationally, a few years later.

During those fateful months, the Reformed Church held a national synod at Dordrecht. Dominated by the Contra-Remonstrants, the synod expelled the Remonstrants, reaffirmed the doctrines of the church along Gomarian lines, and ordered the preparation of a new translation of the Bible (the famous States Bible, which consolidated the Dutch language much as the contemporary King James Version consolidated English). The triumph of Maurice and the Contra-Remonstrants meant that war with Spain would be a virtual certainty upon the expiration of the Twelve Years’ Truce in 1621—all the more because the Spanish authorities in the southern Netherlands insisted upon including rights for Dutch Catholics in a permanent treaty and even sought an acknowledgment by the States General of the nominal overlordship of the king of Spain. Maurice did not use his new uncontested power to reform the complicated incoherence of the Dutch constitution; the structure of government and the distribution of formal power remained the same. Maurice was not a politically minded ruler and was satisfied as long as he had his way in military matters. The United Provinces remained essentially republican in character.