Holland

The Netherlands

When the Romans reached the mouth of the Rhine River in the year 50 B.C., they found themselves in a flat, sandy region, chilled by the cold north winds and prone to frequent flooding by the North Sea. They also found several tribes, perhaps of Germanic origin, who lived by hunting and fishing. The central region was oc... Read on

The Netherlands

When the Romans reached the mouth of the Rhine River in the year 50 B.C., they found themselves in a flat, sandy region, chilled by the cold north winds and prone to frequent flooding by the North Sea. They also found several tribes, perhaps of Germanic origin, who lived by hunting and fishing. The central region was occupied by the Batavians, as mentioned by Plinius, while the Franks, a Celtic race, had settled in the south, and the Frisians thrived in the north. The Saxons, the most Germanic of all, lived mainly in the region northeast of the Rhine.

Nevertheless, despite their common origin, these populations differed greatly from one another. At first, it seemed that the Roman conquest was a boon to all, but soon revolts broke out; the first to rebel were the Frisians, followed by the Batavians. Both tribes joined together in 68-70 A.D. under the leadership of Claudius Julius Civilis, who was the organizer of the whole revolt. Nevertheless, the Romans were able to keep their legions in the territory for over three centuries – it was not until 300 A.D. that the pressure of the Germanic tribes began to make headway against the Roman domination. The Batavians were wiped out almost immediately and only the Frisians in the north managed to survive and oppose the Frankish onslaught. It was just as hard to Christianize the region as it had been to conquer it. In the south the conversion of the heathen was carried on by the Merovingian kings, in the north by two Anglo-Saxon missionaries, St. Willibrord and St. Boniface. Yet, the Frisians, for example, stubbornly clung to their paganism for at least two hundred years. During the Carolingian domination the emphasis on evangelization continued. On one hand, Charlemagne used force to subdue the Frisians and Saxons, while on the other, he gave them the laws that would govern them for centuries. At the same time, he divided the country into various provinces ruled by counts, who were actually vassals of the emperor. But even at this time the Dutch not only had to wage war against the elements, the most terrible of which was the sea, but they also had to stand up to just as dreadful human foes, the Vikings, whose savage incursions and forays meant the sacking, looting, and devastation of the Dutch towns. In 841 Charlemagne died and his vast Carolingian empire began to fall apart.

Several power struggles later, Holland, and with her, Belgium found themselves part of the Germanic empire. During the Middle Ages, the Netherlands existed as a group of regions under the rule of the Counts of Gelder and Holland, the Duke of Brabant, and the Bishop of Utrecht. This period of Dutch history is mainly characterized by the internecine fighting among the various townships, by now wealthy and powerful in their own right, although foreign dynasties, such as those of Wittelsbach, Bohemia, Luxembourg, and Burgundy, would later overcome the local ones. The Burgundy dynasty managed to dominate all the others when Philip the Bold married Margaret of Flanders; his grandson, Philip the Good, went about consolidating his grandfather’s power by creating a huge state which took in all the other provinces and setting up a powerful regular army. He established provincial courts (administrative and law), and was also responsible for the creation of the office of stathouder a kind of governor who officially represented the emperor, wielding both political and military authority. Philip the Good was succeeded by Charles the Bold who died in a battle against the Swiss in the year 1477.

Charles was succeeded by his daughter, Marie of Burgundy, who having married Maximilian of Austria, son of the emperor Frederick III, brought the Netherlands under Austrian domination. In 1500, Charles, the son of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, was born in Gand. He was king of Spain by way of his mother, and Duke of Burgundy and the Netherlands by way of his father. In 1519 upon the death of his grandfather, Maximilian of Austria, he was elected Holy Roman Emperor and at this point he could truly boast that the sun never set on his empire. As comprehensive and tolerant as he was in political matters, Charles V, a devout and zealous Catholic, could not accept the Protestant religion of the Netherlands. It was under his reign – as enlightened as it was in other respects – that the religious persecutions got underway. At the same time, the development of the Reformation and the resulting Dutch opposition to the Catholic religion, had a dual effect, for it was at the same time a fight to uphold a principle and a way of opposing the foreign invaders. In 1555, following Charles V’s abdication, Charles’ son, Philip, rose to the throne. He was completely unlike his father. Having grown up in Spain, he spoke neither French nor Dutch, and worse still, he had no inkling of what the problems of his subjects were. In short, his way of thinking, cultural background, and character were all thoroughly Spanish. A tremendous unbridgeable gap developed between Philip and the Dutch people who in the meantime had become more and more firmly entrenched in the Calvinist doctrines. This led to the formation of a movement to oppose the heavy-handed Spanish interference into Dutch affairs. The leaders of the anti-Spanish movement were the Count of Egmont, the Count of Hornes, and the Prince of Orange, William of Nassau, called “Willem de Zwijger,” that is to say, William the Silent, because he used to keep his mouth shut and his ears wide open. During the months of August-September 1566 the exasperation and rage of the people boiled over. Churches and monasteries were sacked, profaned, burnt, and destroyed. Philip’s reaction was swift and terrible. He sent the Duke of Alba, otherwise known as the “Iron Duke” at the head of a mighty army to crush the country under a reign of terror.

The result was numerous executions, among which those of the Count of Egmont and the Count of Hornes, the death sentence was inflicted on William of Orange (who in the meantime had fled the country), and the rebel cities were sacked and burned down. This marked the start of a long and bloody war between Spain and the Netherlands, still torn by the fierce internal conflicts between Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists then raging. The outcome of this bitter struggle was the Union of Utrecht of 1579 which established the full autonomy of the Seven Provinces of the North and designated Dutch as the official language of the country. In 1584, in Delft, a Frenchman named Balthazar Gérard assassinated William the Silent and the leadership of the opposition passed to his son Maurice – who repeatedly offered the Dutch crown to Henry III of France and Elizabeth of England, trying to exploit their fierce rivalry with Spain. Things took a turn for the better when the Dutch made up their minds to rely on themselves and on themselves alone; thus the Republic of the United Provinces with the States General at the head of it was born from the ashes of the Union of Utrecht. Under the command of Prince Maurice the united army aided by the British fleet was able to defeat the Spaniards on both sea and land, so that in 1609 Philip was forced to acknowledge the independence of the Dutch republic and sign a twelve year truce with its representatives. Under the Treaty of Westphalia signed in 1648, all of the European powers recognized the new state, although this did much to increase the hostility of the great naval powers, mainly England. Thus Holland, her independent status no longer threatened, could concentrate her efforts on economic development, the result of which was that shortly afterwards, she became the richest state in Europe. Dutch ships sailed the high seas in direct competition with the British fleet and when Spain refused access to the Portuguese ports, the Dutch went off to Java to load their cargoes of precious spices. Then, in 1602 Johan von Oldenbarnevelt founded the East India Company, soon followed by the West India Company in 1621. From far-off Oriental and African trade routes, Holland’s merchant ships brought home spices, salt, gold, rice, ivory, and perfumes. The Dutch who stayed home were kept busy too – they were engaged in weaving, ship building, herring fishing, whale hunting, diamond cutting, and ceramic making. Merchants and the middle class in general came to dominate the whole structure of Dutch society. The economic boom was paralleled by a cultural flowering, especially in the fields of art and philosophic thought. Little Holland gave the world geniuses such as Erasmus, Spinoza, Grotius, Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Hobbema.

The exciting intellectual atmosphere and the stimulating liberty in the intellectual world even attracted a great thinker like Descartes who spent 20 years of his life in Holland and wrote his Discourse on Method in Leyden. Great spiritual discoveries went hand in hand with great geographical discoveries: Tasmania, New Zealand, the Cape of Good Hope, and Cape Horn were discovered and explored. A group of Dutch pilgrims settled in the colony of New Amsterdam, later known as New York. All of this wealth and splendor began to excite the jealousy of England, Holland’s biggest rival on the seas. After numerous skirmishes, Cromwell got the English Parliament to approve the Navigation Act in 1651. It provided that foreign ships could only unload goods from their own territories in English ports and in addition were obliged to render homage to Britain’s naval power. In short, the English demanded that their supremacy be recognized. The constant battles they were compelled to wage against the British wore down the Dutch people’s resistance and self-confidence. A number of their colonies were lost and several ports could no longer be considered safe. After England, it was France’s turn to undermine the shaky Dutch empire. Louis XIV, in keeping with his expansionist aims, managed to mobilize several anti-Dutch powers, thereby forcing the Netherlands to take part in several exhausting joint wars. It was not until 1697 and the Peace Treaty of Ryswick that the long struggle finally drew to an end. At that point, the current Stathouder of Holland, William III of Orange, as husband of Mary, daughter of James II, was already king of England and could justly rejoice in the diplomatic victory he had been able to procure, i.e. the Netherlands, England, Prussia, and Austria were allied together in a joint effort against the Catholic countries, France and Spain. When William died in 1702, the Orange dynasty died with him and the leadership passed to the Orange-Nassau fine (which still rules Holland). Throughout the 18th century there was an alternation of republican and monarchist sentiment, whereby creating fertile terrain for the new ideas filtering in from revolutionary France. The army of the Convention entered the Netherlands, thus putting an end to the existence of the almost 200 year old Republic of the Seven Provinces.

The last of the stathouders, William V, crossed the English Channel and sought refuge in England. The state born from this insurrection in 1795 was known as the Batavian Republic, but it was extremely short-lived, for in 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte set his brother Louis upon the Dutch throne. Louis was able to win the affection of his subjects in a brief time, but the “continental blockade” brought about the rapid decline of Dutch overseas trade. The Netherlands was thus annexed to the empire and in 1810 became a province of France. In 1813 the dynasty of the Orange was restored, and on November 30 the son of William V, who had taken the name William I, landed in Scheveningen. After the French defeat at Waterloo, the joint forces decided to reunite the northern and southern Low Countries in a single realm. The decision was sanctioned by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and Holland, Belgium, and the Duchy of Luxembourg were united in the Reign of the Low Countries under the rule of William I of Orange-Nassau. This proved to be a terrible mistake, since after more than two hundred years of political, linguistic, religious, and economic separation, the northern and southern provinces were divided by an unbridgeable gap: the northern population was Protestant and spoke Dutch, the southerners Catholic and spoke French, while the Flemish spoke Dutch, but they too were Catholic. These factors were further complicated by the political aspira tions of the English who, fearing a strong naval rival on the North Sea, did their best to exploit the rebellious uprisings in Belgium and strongly backed its independence movement. This diplomatic coup reached its goal when in 1831 after a pacific revolution, Belgium broke away from the Low Countries and Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, grandson of the English king George IV, rose to the throne. Under the next two monarchs, William II and William III, Holland enjoyed a long stretch of relative economic well-being and renewed expansion. Agriculture, industry, and commerce once more flourished, Indonesia was colonized, and social reforms could be enacted. The neutrality proclaimed by Holland in World War I did much to further her political prestige. William III’s reign was of brief duration and his daughter Wilhelmina soon succeeded him. Then, during the night between May 9 and May 10, 1940, despite the country’s declared neutrality, Hitler’s troops overran the Dutch borders and started bombing the country. No previous warning and no formal declaration of war had been issued. This shameful event was followed by five long years of blood and tears for the Dutch people who were encouraged to resist bravely by their Queen from her London exile. Finally, in 1945 the country was liberated. In 1948, after a reign which had spanned almost 50 years, Wilhelmina abdicated in favor of her daughter Juliana who, starting from the post-war period and continuing up to our day, has been witness to Holland’s rebirth and renewed splendor.

close