Netherlands

“ The Netherlands have always been a favorite topic for the speculation of those philosophers who derive a large part of national character from geographical conditions. A land that needed reclaiming from the sea by hard labor, a country situated at those two great outlets of European commerce, the mouths of the Rhine and the Scheldt, a borderland between German and Latin culture, naturally moulded a brave, stubborn, practical and intelligent people, destined to play in history a part seemingly beyond their scope and resources. ”

“ To have been born in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, to have been a king, to have had Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands as a birthright, and not to have been inspired with a spark of that fire which glowed so intensely in those favored lands and in that golden age, had indeed been difficult. ”

“ As such Holland could not have been other than the sanctuary for the rights of mankind. The great number of Englishmen in the Netherlands, and the reciprocal influence of the Netherlands upon these Englishmen—an influence all too little marked by English historians—prepared the way for transplanting to this country the seeds from which has sprung the large tree beneath the bounteous shade of which nearly seventy millions of people take shelter to-day, and, while they rest, rejoice in full security of their rights and their freedom. ”

“ The Netherlands Become an Independent Country.—Who were these Dutch, or Hollanders? How came they to wrest from Spain and Portugal a colonial empire, which they hold to-day without loss of prosperity or evidence of decline? In the north of Europe, facing the North Sea, is a low, rich land, intersected by rivers and washed far into its interior by the tides, known as Holland, the Low Countries, or the Netherlands. Its people have ever been famed for their industry and hardihood. ”

“ The pictures painted of the republic by shrewd and caustic observers, not inclined by nature or craft to portray freedom in too engaging colours, seem, when contrasted with those revealed of Spain, almost like enthusiastic fantasies of an ideal commonwealth.
During the last twenty years of the great war the material prosperity of the Netherlands had wonderfully increased. They had, become the first commercial nation in the world. ”

“ We have seen the astonishment which the wealth and strength of the Netherlands excited in their English visitors. They were amazed by the evidences of commercial and manufacturing prosperity, by the spectacle of luxury and advanced culture, which met them on every side. Had the Queen—as it had been generally supposed—desired to learn whether the Provinces were able and willing to pay the expenses of their own defence before she should definitely decide on, their offer of sovereignty, she was soon thoroughly enlightened upon the subject. ”

“ In the northwest comer of the Continent were situated the Low Countries — the seven Dutch provinces that we collectively call Holland, from the name of the most important, and the Austrian Netherlands. The story of the rise of the Dutch Republic is one of the marvels of the history of Europe. Throughout the seventeenth century the little republic was extraordinarily prosperous, and her merchant vessels brought her untold wealth from every part of the world. ”

“ Furthermore, in those centres of civic life, whose mercantile and industrial prosperity had in the Europe of the later Middle Ages been the real source of the importance of the Netherlands and of the Burgundian monarchy, that prosperity was except in certain specially favoured seaports helplessly and hopelessly on the wane; and the great communes which had of old been its most favoured seats, were, in the truthful words of a modern historian, smitten to the heart. ”

“ To the foreigner Holland or the Northern Netherlands must always appear a land of dykes and canals, the one not more important for protection than the other as an artery of communication; spreading commerce and supporting national life. Napoleon, with naïve comprehensiveness, called Holland the alluvion of French rivers. Dutch patriots declare with legitimate pride, 'God gave us the sea, but we made the shore,' and no one who has seen the artificial barrier that guards the mainland from the Hook to the Texel will disparage their achievement or scoff at their pretensions. ”

“ The history of the Netherlands is, then, essentially that of a patient and industrious population struggling against every obstacle which nature could oppose to its well-being; and, in this contest, man triumphed most completely over the elements in those places where they offered the greatest resistance. ”

“ The most industrious and valuable part of the population left the land in droves. The tide swept outwards with such rapidity that the Netherlands seemed fast becoming the desolate waste which they had been before the Christian era. Throughout the country, those Reformers who were unable to effect their escape betook themselves to their old lurking-places. ”

“ New-Netherlands is a fine, acceptable, healthy, extensive and agreeable country, wherein all people can more easily gain a competent support, than in the Netherlands, or in any other quarter of the globe, which is known to me or which I have visited. ”

“ The Netherlands are a rich prize. Not merely their industrious and ingenious population, but their taxable capacity would make the German Empire easily the head State of Europe. If Holland has not the valuable coal and iron mines of Belgium, she has an important mercantile19 marine, and most valuable colonies, including a possession in India. The economic importance of the Netherlands to Germany, and possession of the ports of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Antwerp, is manifest. ”

“ Its trade, its wealth, and its prosperity, were gradually transferred to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the towns of Holland and Zealand; and the growth of Dutch commerce attained its proud maturity in the establishment of the India Company in 1596, the effects of which we shall have hereafter more particularly to dwell on.
The exciting and romantic enterprises of the Portuguese and Spanish navigators in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries roused all the ardor of other nations for those distant adventures; and the people of the Netherlands were early influenced by the general spirit of Europe. ”

“ CHAPTER I FROM THE INVASION OF THE NETHERLANDS BY THE ROMANS TO THE INVASION BY THE SALIAN FRANKS B.C. 50—A.D. 200 The Netherlands form a kingdom of moderate extent, situated on the borders of the ocean, opposite to the southeast coast of England, and stretching from the frontiers of France to those of Hanover. The country is principally composed of low and humid grounds, presenting a vast plain, irrigated by the waters from all those neighboring states which are traversed by the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheldt. ”

“ The Netherlands, or the Low Countries, were seventeen provinces occupying the flat lowlands along the North Sea,—the Holland, Belgium, and northern France of our own day. Most of the inhabitants, Flemings and Dutch, spoke a language akin to German, but in the south the Walloons used a French dialect. At first the provinces had been mere feudal states at the mercy of various warring noblemen, but gradually in the course of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, important towns had arisen so wealthy and populous that they were able to wrest charters from the lords. ”

“ Now there was no king in the Netherlands, not even a lord paramount, but a host of small autocrats, quarrelling for ever among themselves, and therefore at their wits’ end for the means of maintaining their own existence and their feuds. ”

“ The Netherlands now became the earliest theatre of an entirely new movement, the consequences of which were destined to affect the whole world. This country was occupied toward the sea by a people wholly maritime, excepting the narrow space between the Rhine and the Vahal, of which the Salian Franks had become possessed. The nature of this marshy soil, in comparison with the sands of Westphalia, Guelders, and North Brabant, was not more strikingly contrasted than was the character of their population. ”

“ The history of the Franks becomes, therefore, the history of the Netherlands. ”

“ Compared with other nations of the same stock and with a genius no less practical, the denizen of the Netherlands appears better balanced and more capable of being content. We do not see in him the violent passions, the militant disposition, the overstrained will, the bull-dog instincts, the sombre and grandiose pride which three permanent conquests and the secular establishment of political strife have implanted in the English ”

“ The share of the Netherlands in the history of the Renaissance, on the other hand, is, insofar as it has not already come under notice here, comprehended in a single name-Erasmus. The ducal Court, as has been seen, was not indifferent to intellectual abilities of many sorts and kinds; the examples of his father and half-brother were in a sense bettered by Bishop David of Utrecht, and a fresh impulse was given to the patronage of learning and its appliances by the English consort of Charles the Bold. ”

“ Motley to sneer at them quite so often because they were not to an impossible degree in advance of their age. The proclamation of a republic in the Netherlands marked of itself the beginning of a new era,—an era when flourishing communities of men were no longer to be bought and sold, transferred and bequeathed like real estate and chattels, but were to have and maintain the right of choosing with whom and under whom they should transact their affairs. ”

“ The whole territory of the Netherlands was girt with forests. ”

“ Introduction Netherlands Background: The Kingdom of the Netherlands was formed in 1815. In 1830 Belgium seceded and formed a separate kingdom. The Netherlands remained neutral in World War I, but suffered invasion and occupation by Germany in World War II. A modern, industrialized nation, the Netherlands is also a large exporter of agricultural products. The country was a founding member of NATO and the EEC (now the EU) , and participated in the introduction of the euro in 1999. ”

“ You must not fail, signor, to visit the building; even in its unfinished state it will cause you astonishment."
"The Netherlands is a favored country," said the old Deodati. "If the climate is not as mild as in our own beautiful Italy, the men are bold, active, intelligent, industrious, and learned, and they possess all the qualifications requisite for the material prosperity and moral progress of a nation. ”

“ Flanders once subjugated, it would not be long before the Spaniards were swept from the obedient Netherlands as thoroughly as they had been from the domains of the commonwealth, and all the seventeen provinces, trampling out every vestige of a hated foreign tyranny, would soon take their natural place as states of a free; prosperous, and powerful union. ”

“ But this unpromising morass, protected at last by heavy dykes against the invasions of the ocean and the overflow of its streams, was destined to become the site of cities which at one period were the richest and most potent of Europe, and the seat of one of the foremost commonwealths of modern times.
No country in Europe made greater progress in civilization during the mediæval era than the Netherlands. At the opening of the sixteenth century they contained a crowded and busy population of 3,000,000 souls. ”

“ It is washed by several rivers, four of which are noble streams, namely, the Scheldt, the 55Lys, the Scarpe, and the Dender; and there are several canals, the chief of which is that between Bruges and Ghent.
Thus, in whatever way it be considered, Nature seems to have made ample provision for the happiness of the People: how far they are so, you shall hear when I come to give a general view of the Netherlands——that which is applicable to Austrian Flanders being equally so to all the other parts of the Netherlands, excepting those under the dominion of the Republic of the United States. ”

“ The character of the Church in the Netherlands must be seen, in order to understand the nature of the great struggle which will, by and by, be narrated.
The two potentates of what in after times constituted the, seven United Provinces, the Dutch Republic of later history, and their High Mightinesses, the States-General, were in this early time the Count of Holland and the Bishop of Utrecht. In the rest of the Netherlands, the petty sovereigns became far more numerous. ”

“ In Holland and Zeeland the towns attained to an advanced condition of prosperity and importance later than in Brabant, just as the latter had lagged behind Flanders. Yet, though the growth of the towns in the Northern Netherlands was relatively slow, neither was their commercial and industrial progress hampered, as was the case in Germany, by too close a control on the part of transmitted interests, nor was their political life, like that of the Flemish communes, handed over to the gusts of the market-place. ”

“ Perhaps the most important factor in the wealth of the Netherlands at this early period was that it became in one town or another the sole market for English wool, and England in the early ages of Flemish industry was the only country from which this indispensable article could be supplied, at least in any quantity, and the only country also from which it was supplied of good quality. ”

“ At a word, we could use those people and make them Netherlanders. Our neighbours must put up with it, and the people who now go to the New-Netherlands are not lost or destroyed, but are as if they were placed at interest, for we know how fast the population increases. ”

“ The two classes of what forms at present the population of the Netherlands thus followed careers widely different, during the long period of the Roman power in these parts of Europe. While those of the high lands and the Batavians distinguished themselves by a long-continued course of military service or servitude, those of the plains improved by degrees their social condition, and fitted themselves for a place in civilized Europe. ”