The Netherlands

E

The Golden Age

In the early 17th century, when eventual Dutch independence was assured, an era of great commercial prosperity opened, as did the so-called Golden Age of Dutch art, with painters such as Rembrandt and Jan Vermeer. By the mid-17th century the Netherlands was the foremost commercial and maritime power of Europe, and Amsterdam was the financial center of the Continent.

Within The Netherlands, the growing population and prosperity led to the rapid growth of cities. The new financial elite invested heavily in land reclamation (most natural lakes in Holland were reclaimed during the first half of the 17th century) and built large numbers of country houses.

E

1

Exploration and Colonization

About 1600 a Dutch merchant expedition of three vessels sailed from Amsterdam to Java. This was the first of numerous journeys that left Dutch geographic names scattered over the globe, from Spitsbergen to Cape Horn and from Staten Island to Tasmania. These voyages resulted in the establishment or acquisition of many trading stations in Africa, Southeast Asia, and America.

In 1602 the Dutch parliament granted to the Dutch East India Company a charter that gave it a trading monopoly with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope in Africa and west of the Strait of Magellan in South America. The charter also conferred many sovereign powers on the company, including the right to wage war and to conclude peace. The West India Company (see Dutch West India Company), founded in 1621, established colonies in the West Indies, Brazil, and North America.

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The East India Company established itself first in the Moluccas, or Spice Islands, and later on West Java, where Batavia (modern Jakarta) became the center of the company’s enterprises. These enterprises were devoted mostly to trade and to the establishment of trading posts. Their functions generally did not include governing. Subsequently, pressed by the necessity of maintaining peace among the native rulers, the Dutch began to govern the territories (now called Indonesia) in order to maintain trade.

E

2

Internal Developments

William the Silent had been succeeded in the position known as stadtholder and as military commander by his son Maurice, who in turn was followed by his brother Frederick Henry. These men governed in conjunction with the States-General, an assembly composed of representatives of each of the seven provinces but usually dominated by the largest and wealthiest province, Holland. The stadtholder’s power varied, depending on his personal qualities of leadership, and the office eventually became hereditary in the house of Orange.

Under Maurice, the republic was divided by a religio-political conflict between two factions within the Reformed (Calvinist) church, over predestination. The Arminian, or Remonstrant, cause was championed by Holland under its leader, Jan van Olden Barneveldt; the other provinces and Maurice sided with the Gomarists, or High Calvinists, who prevailed. The dispute ended with Barneveldt’s execution for treason in 1619.

Frederick Henry’s son, William II of Orange, became involved in a bitter quarrel with the province of Holland, and after his death no stadtholder was appointed in Holland and four other provinces for more than 20 years. William III of Orange, who was stadtholder from 1672 until his death in 1702, was also king of England after 1689 (see William III).

F

The Decline of the Dutch Republic

Inevitably, the Dutch and the English, the leading maritime trading nations of the world, came into sharp commercial rivalry and military conflict. The issues between the two countries were contested, but not settled, by the two Anglo-Dutch Wars, the first waged from 1652 to 1654 and the second from 1664 to 1667. As a result of the latter conflict the Dutch lost New Amsterdam in North America but acquired Dutch Guiana (now Suriname). Other wars, costly in lives and money, followed against England and France.

After the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), in which the Dutch were allies of the British against the French, the economic and political power of the Netherlands began to decline. Eventually the Dutch Republic was overshadowed by the expanding power of the United Kingdom on the sea and France on the land.

When William III died without heirs in 1702, a distant relative of his, John William Friso, successfully claimed the Orange title. In 1747 his son became stadtholder in all seven provinces as William IV.

In the late 18th century a struggle broke out between the party of the house of Orange, which had become conservative, and the Patriot Party, which desired democratic reforms. The Orange Party enjoyed a brief triumph with the help of an invading Prussian army in 1787, but in 1795 French troops and a force consisting of self-exiled Dutch citizens replaced the republic of the seven United Provinces with the Batavian Republic, which was modeled on the revolutionary French Republic.

G

The Napoleonic Era and the Union with Belgium

The Batavian Republic survived only until 1806, when Napoleon I of France transformed the country into the kingdom of Holland. In 1810 he incorporated it into the French Empire. While the Dutch were under French rule, the British seized Dutch colonial possessions. After the fall of Napoleon, the independence of the Netherlands was restored in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna. In addition, the territory now comprising Belgium was made part of the kingdom of The Netherlands.

The reunion of the two regions was not a happy one, for they had become widely disparate in political background, tradition, religion, language, and economy. In 1830 the Belgians revolted and established their independence as a sovereign state. A conference in London of the major European powers formulated the conditions of separation in 1831. The stipulations were accepted by the Dutch king under pressure from France and Britain. But when they were later revised by the conference in favor of the Belgians, a Dutch army invaded Belgium and routed the opposing forces. The conditions of separation were again revised and were finally accepted by both countries in 1839.

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