Discovering The Dutch

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revised and enlarged edition
Discovering
the Dutch
On Culture and Society of
the Netherlands
EMMELINE BESAMUSCA & JAAP VERHEUL [ EDS.]
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Copyright Statement: All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable
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discovering the dutch
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Discovering
the Dutch
On Culture and Society of
the Netherlands
– revised and enlarged edition –
Edited by
emmeline besamusca
jaap verheul
amsterdam university press

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ISBN 978 90 8964 792 4

e-ISBN 978 90 4852 609 3
NUR 688
© Emmeline Besamusca and Jaap Verheul / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2014
Cover design, book design and image research: Kok Korpershoek

Cover illustration: Victor Torres
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Table of Contents
Note for the Revised Edition 11
Introduction 13
emmeline besamusca and jaap verheul
Neither Wooden Legs nor Wooden Shoes:
Elusive Encounters with Dutchness 16
wiljan van den akker
Society
1 Citizens, Coalitions, and the Crown 21
emmeline besamusca
Queen Máxima: Enchanting the Monarchy 23
Binnenhof: Traditional Heart of a Modern Democracy 26
2 Politics between Accommodation and Commotion 33

ido de haan
Pillarization: Pacification and Segregation 34
Pim Fortuyn: Libertarian Populist 39
3 Economy of the Polder 45

jan luiten van zanden
Bulbs, Flowers, and Cheese: The Agricultural Face of an Urban Economy 45
Royal Dutch Shell: Corporate Legacy of Colonialism 49
4 Dilemmas of the Welfare State 57

lex heerma van voss
Labor Productivity: Balancing Work and Leisure 58
Pensions: Well-Deserved and Well-Funded 63
5 Randstad Holland 69
ben de pater and rob van der vaart
The Amsterdam Canal Ring: Urban Heritage of the Golden Age 70
The Port of Rotterdam: Logistical Hub of Europe 75
6 Distinctive within the Global Fold? 83

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paul schnabel
The Elfstedentocht: Beating the Forces of Nature 86
Sinterklaas: A Controversial Morality Tale 91
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History
7 From the Periphery to the Center 97

marco mostert
The Roman Limes: A Cultural Meeting Place 99
Hebban Olla Vogala: The Beginnings of Literature 105
8 The Golden Age 109

maarten prak
The Tulip Bubble: Horticultural Speculation 111
William of Orange: Founding Father 113
9 A Tradition of Tolerance 121

wijnand mijnhardt
Hugo Grotius: Founder of Enlightenment Thought 124
Baruch de Spinoza: Philosopher of Liberty 126
10 From Colonial Past to Postcolonial Present 133

gert oostindie
Slavery: Recognizing a Black Page in Dutch History 134
Indonesian Independence: Silenced Warfare, Hesitant Reconciliation 139
11 The Second World War: The Dilemmas of Occupation 145

christ klep
Ausweis: The Dangers of Identity Registration 148
Anne Frank: Icon of the Holocaust 152
12 Religious Diversification or Secularization? 157

david bos
The Portuguese Synagogue: Monument of Asylum 162
Mosques in the Polder: Corner Stones or Stumbling Blocks? 165
Arts & Culture

13 The Making of Rembrandt and Van Gogh 171
ghislain kieft and quirine van der steen
Vermeer: Interior Fantasies 175
Mondrian: Is this Art? 179
14 Style and Lifestyle in Architecture 183

rob dettingmeijer
The Rietveld Schröder House: Icon of Architecture for the Modern Age 187
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The Royal Tropical Institute: Architectural Symbol of Colonialism 194
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15 Literature, Authors, and Public Debate 199
frans ruiter and wilbert smulders
Multatuli: Anti-Colonial Literature 202

The Assault: Writing the Second World War 206
16 Three Feminist Waves 211

rosemarie buikema and iris van der tuin
Joke Smit: Mobilizing Female Discontent 213
Dolle Mina: Second-Wave Feminism and the Media 216
17 The Double Bind of Television 223

sonja de leeuw
Broadcasting Guides: Mediating Identities 224
Utopia: Selling a Window on the Future 231
18 Global Dutch 235

marjo van koppen
Afrikaans: Creolized Heritage 242
Frisian: Acknowledging Linguistic Pluralism 244
Contemporary Issues
19 Living with Water 249
rob van der vaart
The Beemster Polder: Masterpiece of Designed Reclamation 250
The Great Flood: Inducement for the Delta Works 253
20 Excellence and Egalitarianism in Higher Education 261

jeroen torenbeek and jan veldhuis
Aletta Jacobs: Emancipation through Education 265
University College Utrecht: Challenging Academic Traditions 269
21 Immigration and Diversity 275

han entzinger
Indonesian Rijsttafel: Sharing the Table 277
Ahmed Aboutaleb: Mayor of a Diverse City 283
22 Legal Culture 287

wibo van rossum
Coffeeshops: Controlled Permissiveness 290
Smoking Ban: Between Health and Liberty 294
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23 Idealism and Self-Interest in the World 299
duco hellema
Hollanditis: The Politics of Pacifism 301

Srebrenica: A Catastrophic Peace Mission 306
24 In Foreign Eyes 311

jaap verheul
Hans Brinker: Morality Behind the Dikes 315
Frau Antje: Ambassador of Dutchness 318
Notes 323
About the Authors 335
Illustrations 341
Index 343
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The Netherlands

geomedia, faculty of geosciences, utrecht university
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Note for the
Revised Edition
It is a pleasure to present an updated and enlarged edition of Discovering the Dutch. In

comparison with the 2010 edition we have made a number of changes that we expect
will increase the usefulness of this book for readers around the world.
All existing chapters have been updated to match advances in the relevant schol-
arly discussions. Some chapters, especially those that describe recent political, constitu-
tional or policy developments, required substantial updating. The political landscape
of the Netherlands has undergone remarkable transformations in recent years: a king
assumed the throne in 2013, a number of welfare state arrangements had to be ad-
justed to the realities and expectations of today’s society, and other developments and
changes over the past few years required alterations in the text of several chapters, too.
Responding to the feedback we received from our students and many international
readers, we have added four new chapters that in various ways highlight the complex
interconnections of Dutch culture and society with the wider world. We hope that the
addition of these chapters will add a useful global dimension to the book.
What has remained unchanged in this new edition is the enthusiasm with which
all authors and the editors have tried to present their inside perspective to the outside
world. We hope that the new itinerary will open up fresh trails and pathways to dis-
cover the Dutch.
emmeline besamusca and jaap verheul

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Introduction
by emmeline besamusca and jaap verheul
This volume is intended as a helpful guide for anyone interested in exploring the cul-
ture and society of the Netherlands. Like any dedicated tour guide, it builds on inside
knowledge and native familiarity. All chapters are written by experts in their field who
bring their personal perspectives, enthusiasms and some local color to their topics.
Rather than offering exhaustive, data-filled overviews, they engage in conversations
with the reader about what they feel is essential to an understanding of the Netherlands.
They may even politely try to persuade their readers of a few convictions and insights.
While building on inside knowledge, this volume anticipates the outside perspec-
tives and expectations of new audiences as well. Some traditions, structures or cultural
institutions that are simply taken for granted by the locals beg for explanation to new-
comers and outside observers. More importantly, such a comparative perspective is
essential to put the Netherlands on the global mental map. This volume, then, can best
be understood as a helpful dialogue between knowledgeable connoisseurs and those on
their way to becoming one.
It is tempting to start the journey with a conversation about Dutch identity. Global
popular culture is full of references to articles or habits considered “typically Dutch.”
For some foreigners, essential “Dutchness” is expressed in the omnipresence of bicycles,
either the nameless thousands that are stacked near railway stations or the elegant
transport bikes urban parents have acquired to transport their offspring to day care
centers. Those interested in foodways may think of the many varieties of licorice known
as drop, the addictive stroopwafels and pannenkoeken, or the nutritious stamppotten with
mashed potatoes served in winter. To sports enthusiasts, the Netherlands may invoke
the image of fans at international sports events who invariably manifest themselves in
playful orange outfits, suggesting a sense of colorful and exuberant patriotism. Those
with an eye for art may visualize the Netherlands as seen in the urban skating scenes
painted by Hendrick Avercamp or the neatly arranged interiors of Johannes Vermeer.
Others may compare the Dutch landscape to the squares and lines of Piet Mondrian and
Gerrit Rietveld, constructed as it seems by the methodical Dutch engineers who are said
to have carved their country out of the sea. These observers may look for the origins of
unique Dutch traits in the collective struggle against the water which regulated not
only geography, but society as well. Others point at the Dutch social tradition of gezel-
ligheid that is expressed in the circular seating at birthday parties, the festivities around
the yearly arrival of Sinterklaas or the persistent urban myth that the Dutch always
keep their curtains open so that the neighbors can check the order and cleanliness of
their household. More critically minded observers may associate the particular charac-
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ter of Dutch social behavior with provincialism, penny-pinching materialism or even

blunt rudeness, as may be apparent from the absence of a service-oriented attitude in
shops and restaurants, or from candid directness in business meetings.
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Yet Dutch national identity cannot be captured in such anthropological observations or
examples of folklore and tradition, even if they offer a rich source for emotional identi-
fication – or differentiation. Nor can a demarcation be drawn around “Dutchness” that
represents it as a sheltering haven against the modern forces of globalization, Euro-

peanization, individualism or multiculturalism. If nothing else, the Netherlands is a
highly modern, densely populated country that is interconnected with the world by a
myriad of trade relationships, migratory movements, cultural exchanges, international
networks, alliances and collaborations. As a result, Dutch national identity is not static,
but rather the outcome of a continuous process of identification, negotiation and explor-
ation. Yet this incessant interaction does not make Dutch culture and society indefin-
able and inaccessible. On the contrary, this book hopes to show some of the many routes
that open up vistas of the vibrant distinctiveness – and familiarity – of Dutch society.
This volume organizes perspectives on Dutch culture and society into four differ-
ent sections. The section on society explores the most characteristic institutions and
arrangements of the Dutch state and body politic. As a constitutional monarchy with a
long democratic tradition, its political culture was long characterized by an denomina-
tional segregation within society that is often described as “pillarization.” Although
these fault lines have largely disappeared after the 1960s, they left marks in the polit-
ical arena well into the twenty-first century. The Netherlands is also known for its
internationally oriented economy which is organized around well-established welfare
arrangements and a consensual political culture that is sometimes affectionately de-
scribed and even promoted as a “poldermodel.” In spite of the rural images of wind-
mills and tulips, the western Randstad is one of the most densely populated and cosmo-
politan spots in the world. As this section shows, the Netherlands is distinctive from
other Western nations, notwithstanding the homogenizing forces of modernization
and globalization. The next section on history shows a Dutch past that is marked by a
slow rise from the obscurity of a swampy river delta, a dramatic revolt against the
Spanish empire, and a subsequent period of global enterprise, republican freedoms and
stunning riches during the seventeenth century. Legacies of the Golden Age, such as
traditions of tolerance and religious multiformity, continued to manifest themselves in
the following centuries. The myriad of threads of culture and power that connected the
Netherlands with its overseas territories in “the East” and “the West.” left a more con-
troversial legacy of this period of mercantile wealth that is still visible and contested in
present-day society.
The Second World War formed a dramatic defining moment in the twentieth
century as Dutch society experienced the atrocities of war and genocide and faced
dilemmas that influenced, and continue to influence, public culture and debates about
governmental powers, discrimination, and international interventions to the present
day. Following the complex historical thread of religion helps to explains why the
Netherlands, in spite of its seemingly secular way of life, are routinely described as a
“Calvinist” nation – even by devout Catholics or agnostics – with roots in strong reli-
gious identification and dissension.
The section on art and culture guides the reader on a tour of cultural expressions
and traditions that support the Dutch in their claim to international fame as a cultural
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nation. It is an intriguing question, however, to which degree the works of some of the
famous Dutch painters can be regarded “typical” of Dutch art, as the examples of
Rembrandt and Van Gogh illustrate. The character of Dutch architecture, which has
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traditionally been inspired by views on society and reflected social values, is changing
now that building seems to be increasingly regarded in terms of real estate develop-
ment. In the realm of literature the position and role of authors has been subject to
cultural changes as well, as was experienced by Willem Frederik Hermans and Gerard
Reve, two of the most influential writers in modern Dutch literature. The Dutch
approach to emancipation and integration – seen by many as a distinct contribution to
the global debate – is illustrated through an analysis of three feminist cultural artifacts
which reflect Dutch feminist thought in three consecutive waves. The medium of
Dutch television, that brought the world into the living rooms, called for a broadcast-
ing system that reflected essential aspects of the Dutch cultural landscape. In reverse,
Dutch produced (reality) television formats now entertain audiences around the globe.
Another global connection is formed by the Dutch language, which developed from its
West-Germanic roots in the early Middle Ages into a language with 23 million speakers
around the world today.
The last section on contemporary issues explores public debates in Dutch society at
the beginning of the twenty-first century. A threat to Dutch existence, which consist-
ently attracts foreign attention as well, is posed by the ubiquitous water that continu-
ously requires protective measures and difficult choices. The intellectual horizon of
the Netherlands – the Dutch mindset – is very much a product of the internationally
acclaimed tradition of its higher education, which in turn has been shaped by the aspi-
rations and historical developments of the society it serves.
Many impassioned discussions about Dutch identity have been sparked by issues
of immigration and cultural and religious diversity, and their political and social conse-
quences. Equally fundamental to an understanding of Dutch society have been the re-
curring public debates about ethical issues such as prostitution, abortion, drugs, and
euthanasia. Some of these vital questions have been met at times with policy compro-
mises that have confounded government, public, and foreign onlookers alike. The per-
vasive international outlook is also expressed in a foreign policy that is informed by
both self-interest and idealism. All these challenges and achievements have shaped a
particular Dutch culture and society and also determined the foreign perspectives on
the Netherlands.
As all the chapters aim to illuminate the reader on issues related to Dutch culture
and society, some common themes reappear throughout the volume. Some, such as
“pillarization,” tolerance and the “poldermodel,” go right to the heart of the Dutch
social fabric. Others, such as urbanization, the Golden Age and internationalization,
are connected with the specific historical traditions of the Netherlands. Inevitably, such
core concepts are discussed in connection with a variety of topics in this volume, and
may appear in a different light as they are discussed and interpreted by the authors, as
reality sometimes escapes uniform definitions and categories. This multifocal perspec-
tive on such shared themes only underlines the central position they necessarily should
have in an understanding of Dutch culture and society.
All these chapters can be read in the successive order of a textbook, or one may
decide to venture out on a free-flowing tour, as all chapters are written so they can be
read independently. The reader is further encouraged to browse the many vignettes
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on canonical Dutch personae and phenomena that are sparked throughout the book.
Some topics also appear in the historical canon that has been commissioned by the
Dutch government in 2007, but many other vignette topics are related to contemporary
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society. Although these miniature windows on Dutch culture and society are connected
with themes of the chapters, they can also be followed as a separate trail.
We would like to thank all of our colleagues who took up the challenge to share
their insight into the culture and society of the Netherlands by connecting their aca-
demic expertise as scholars to their personal expertise as natives. We hope that, in offer-
ing their many perspectives and as many possible road plans to travel, this volume will
offer the reader an enjoyable experience in discovering the Dutch.
Neither Wooden Legs nor Wooden Shoes:

Elusive Encounters with Dutchness
by wiljan van den akker
I’m travelling by train somewhere in the United States. It is my first trip to a

country I believe I know because I have seen it on television ever since I was a
child. I am completely absorbed in a new book that I’ve saved for what was
going to be a long trip. The man sitting next to me carefully looks at the cover
several times before asking me in a polite and soft voice what language I am
reading. When I explain to him that my book is in Dutch, more specifically that
it is a history of modern Dutch literature, he starts to smile: “Do the Dutch really
have a literature of their own?”
I immediately realize that this encounter might end up being one of the
amusing stories that one happily brings back home as a souvenir of the journey.
A tale that fits quite well within the prejudices we share about identities:
people not knowing their language or geography. That is to say: the other people.
Not us, the Dutch, of course. The stranger on the train and I start a gentle con-
versation and the trip becomes so enjoyable that I don’t even notice that the
train has arrived. With a “Nice talking to you, nice meeting you,” he vanishes
into the crowd. And I realize that this ending to the story will also fit into the
familiar picture later on. “They don’t mean that. They are used to superficial
conversation.” Unlike us, in the Netherlands, where we have constant discus-
sions with each other about Schopenhauer, Spinoza or Sartre while traveling
by public transportation. Because we are never superficial. Shallowness is
something for the others only.
National identities are like stories and, as with every story, always contain
some truth. The only problem is how to find that part, the part that actually is
true. One thing seems clear: the less we know about the others, the easier it
becomes to define their identity. Perhaps we construct these myths of iden-
tities out of a fear of being alone or alienated. As long as we do not have to
question our way of life – our rules, our habits, our laws – as long as we keep on
telling ourselves that our customs are normal, that they belong especially to us
or even to the natural order of things, we will be safe. The rules, habits and
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laws of the others seem strange, or even unnatural.

What does not fit into our frame of reference will be isolated, stored and
recognized as different later on. It is remarkable that when traveling we say
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that we yearn for difference, but cannot help looking for resemblances. The
problem, however, is that most of these similarities hide themselves behind
the mask of difference and can at best be recognized after a long period of very
close observation. And vice versa: what seemed so different can end up being
strikingly familiar.
The famous columnist and professor of Slavic literature, the late Karel van
het Reve, once put it brilliantly. Suppose, he said, that you are leaving for work
by bus in the morning. Someone with a wooden leg is struggling to get a seat.
You look at him, feel sorry for the man and travel on. In the evening, traveling
home by bus again, there is a woman with a wooden leg sitting in the back.
What a coincidence, you tell your wife over dinner, two wooden legs in one day.
If your marriage is good, she will smile, thinking: could there be a more inter-
esting story to tell? Now suppose the same thing happens during a short visit
to a foreign country. There is a good chance that you will tell everybody: “They
have an awful lot of wooden legs over there!”
There is no such thing as a Dutch identity and yet there is. No, we are
not the country where tulips bloom everywhere and where everyone wears
wooden shoes. And yet there are more tulips here than in any other country
and I have never seen an Italian wearing wooden shoes. But what defines this
identity and who is defining?
How broad is this national identity? We joke about the Belgians, defining
ourselves as being as different from them. But we feel like brothers and sisters
once confronted with Asian colleagues. We even joke about some of our own
fellow countrymen, defining an “us” that somehow excludes “them.” And are
we in Utrecht not different from people living in Rotterdam? The circles tend to
get smaller and smaller until, in the end, we are alone with our own and small
identity.
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“Dutchness” is a very ambiguous term, like “Frenchness” or “German-

ness.” Once you try to grasp it, it will fade away. Once you deny it, it will pres-
ent itself. It boggles the mind. But isn’t this what the mind is for? For trying to
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understand ambiguities, for looking at the same thing from different angles,
for constantly wondering? By traveling, either in real life, or by way of books?
Last year I was traveling by train in Germany. A man in his fifties, noticing
me reading a Dutch history of German literature, adamantly tried to convince

me that the Dutch language was a German dialect. I spent an entire hour try-
ing to explain that he was mistaken. By the time we arrived in Cologne, I had
to admit that my efforts had been fruitless. When the train stopped at the sta-
tion, he said, shrugging his shoulders, that he disliked literature anyway and
that there was only one true author: William Shakespeare. Did I know him?
“Who, William Shakespeare? Never heard of him,” I replied and left, pledging
to myself that if there is going to be a next life, I would become a salesman. Of
wooden legs.
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Society
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chapter 1
Citizens, Coalitions,
and the Crown

by emmeline besamusca
The Netherlands is often described as a country of paradoxes. Born in the sixteenth

century as a republic within a world almost exclusively dominated by monarchies, it is
now one of the few constitutional monarchies left in a world in which the republican
form of government is the rule rather than the exception. In a nation that is thoroughly
modern and democratic, the monarchy – which seems an embodiment of tradition and
authority – enjoys surprisingly broad and stable public support. In fact, although the
Dutch almost pride themselves on the absence of patriotism and flag-waving, it is only
the monarchy that evokes symbols of nationalism comparable to that of other nations,
and citizens gladly unite under the orange color of the Dutch royal house.
The Dutch political stage does not particularly contribute to a sense of political
unity, since it is highly fragmented into a large number of political parties and move-
ments boggling the mind even of the most invested local insider. Such fragmentation is
enhanced by an electoral system based on the principle of proportionality, allowing
all voices to be heard in the elections. With turnout rates for national elections around
75 percent on average, a substantial part of the Dutch electorate seems to consider it
important to have their voice be heard. It may seem paradoxical then that actual govern-
ment formation can lead to outcomes which seem to contradict the public voice, as it is
subject to negotiations between political parties. Furthermore, the prime minister is
not elected, but appointed by “royal decree,” and so are the heads of the provincial
governments and the city mayors.
Dutch representative democracy thus seems to be determined by a delicate but
self-evident balance between active citizens’ participation in political elections and
governance by coalitions and appointed executives. Amid this paradoxical interplay of
political forces, the hereditary monarch serves as a symbol of national unity and repre-
sents the continuity of the nation.
The Orange Dynasty

The Netherlands was a republic until the early nineteenth century. The Republic of the
Seven United Netherlands, which surrendered to French rule under Napoleon in 1795,
was replaced by a Batavian Republic, which in turn made way for a Kingdom of Hol-
land under Louis Bonaparte – the emperor’s brother – in 1806. When the French occu-
pation ended in 1813 the European powers – convinced that monarchies would secure
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the desired stability after the Napoleonic period – preferred the Netherlands to remain
a monarchy. The monarchy was therefore not an entirely Dutch choice. The candidate
for the Dutch throne seemed undisputed though: the son of the last stadtholder, who
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had fled to England upon the approach of the French armies, accepted the throne as
King William I.
The House of Orange has been part of Dutch history from the beginning of state-
hood, when William of Orange-Nassau (1533-1584), fondly called “the Father of the
Fatherland,” became the leader of the Dutch Revolt, which ultimately resulted in the
birth of a Dutch state. Neither William of Orange nor his direct successors were mon-
archs, but they played a crucial role in the Dutch Republic as hereditary stadtholders,
especially in the public mind. Here lie the origins of the so-called “Orange Myth,”
which holds that the Oranges are protectors of freedom and act in service of the people.1
This perception certainly accounts for the popularity of the royal family still today.
However, the support for the monarchy cannot just be attributed to the long-standing
history of the Orange family and the Netherlands; the qualities of the person on the
throne play a crucial role as well.
The Dutch constitution stipulates that the throne is held by William I (1772-1843)
and his lawful successors, carefully defining the line of succession. In this context, a
distinction between the function and the person needs to be made. Yet, although it is
said that the person should remain hidden behind the function, it is inevitable and, one
may argue, essential that the person colors the function. After all, it is not the institu-
tion, but the person serving as king who has to secure the public support on which the
monarchy rests.
Contrary to what one might expect, the monarchy seems to have gained, rather
than lost support throughout the twentieth century. The respective personalities of the
successive queens – in the absence of male heirs, the Dutch throne has been in female
hands from 1890 until 2013 – seem to have suited their time remarkably well. The un-
flinching and headstrong personality of Queen Wilhelmina (1880-1962), who formally
ascended the throne when she became of age in 1898, served her well during the years
of occupation in the Second World War, which she spent in London. She was a beacon of
hope for many in occupied territory, who would regularly listen to her voice in broad-
casts of “Radio Orange.” Her only daughter Juliana (1909-2004), who assumed the
throne in 1948, wanted above all to be “normal.” In a famous picture, she is riding a
bicycle, her purse strapped on the carrier. She was “the anti-authoritarian mother of the
fatherland,” who used to invite the Dutch public to her “house” on her birthday on 30
April, Queen’s Day (Koninginnedag), where they would parade by her, standing on top
of the stairs of her palace at Soestdijk amid her family.
In 1980, Juliana abdicated in favor of the eldest of her four daughters, Beatrix
(1938- ), the “professional,” who transformed her position into a “job.” Instead of invit-
ing the public to come to her on Koninginnedag she paid a visit to two carefully se-
lected locations, accompanied by other members of the royal family. She was regularly
portrayed behind a desk in her “working palace,” Noordeinde in The Hague, and was
said to be extremely dedicated, well-informed, and well-prepared. Her eldest son,
Willem Alexander (1967- ), was inaugurated on 30 April 2013, as the first Dutch king
since 1890. The display of Orange enthusiasm around the country reflected national
surveys showing that more than 80 percent of the population wants to see the monar-
chy continued. King Willem Alexander and his wife, Queen Máxima, seem to under-
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stand their role as a mutual relationship with the Dutch: during an annual balcony
scene they are cheered by the public, while they themselves are regularly seen cheering
in the public gallery during international sports events. In balancing the traditional,
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royal rituals with a modern, “ordinary” presentation, they render a convincing face to
the monarchy for many Dutch to identify with.
Of course, not everyone in the Netherlands is an eager royal watcher. Yet, the pub-
lic at large seems to agree that the monarchy is functioning well: a head of state who
has been prepared for his job for half a lifetime, and an absence of disturbing scandals
affecting the image of the Netherlands abroad. On the contrary, even skeptics have to
agree that it can be profitable to include members of the royal family in economic dele-
gations abroad, as doors may open to royalty that may otherwise remain closed.
Therefore, one may consider the monarchy a sound investment, as it positively con-
tributes to the international visibility of a relatively small country.
The monarchy continues to enjoy broad support in society at large. Solidly rooted
in the collective memory of the citizens and supported by occasional displays of tradi-
tion, the monarchy represents the continuity of the nation. Perhaps it is the very
strength of the monarchy that it is not the product of political elections and political
campaigning. The neutrality of the king allows all citizens to unite in the so-called
“orange sentiment” (het oranjegevoel). As such the monarchy can be regarded as the
embodiment of the heart of the nation.
Queen Máxima: Enchanting the Monarchy

In 2002, Crown Prince Willem Alexander married Argentinean-born Máxima
Zorreguieta. With her engaging personality, natural spontaneity and stylish
appearance, she has rapidly become the most popular member of the royal
family.
The start of Máxima’s relation-
ship with the Netherlands was not
without difficulties. She became sub-
ject to a fervent public debate because
her father had served as Minister of
Agriculture during the exceptionally
cruel military regime of General Videla
(1976-1981). This made it seem ques-
tionable whether her marriage to the
crown prince would receive the par-
liamentary consent that is constitu-
tionally required for a marriage of all
members of the House of Orange in
line of succession. Yet, Willem Alexan-
der stubbornly refused to give up his
intention to marry Máxima, even sug-
gesting he would prefer love above the
Dutch throne. A political debate was
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ultimately prevented after Máxima’s

father was persuaded not to attend
the wedding.
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In her first public appearances in 2001, Máxima stole many hearts with her
presence, her radiant smile, and her charming Dutch, flavored with a Spanish
accent – proving her talent for the public aspect of her future role. And as she
shed a few tears during the wedding service upon hearing the tango “Adios
Nonino” – which Astor Piazolla wrote for his father – the public realized she
was not just a princess, but also a young woman giving up her country, and a
daughter without her father present on her wedding day.
Máxima has since disarmed any opponents left and greatly contributed to
the popularity of the monarchy, adding a charm to the royal appearance,
which is invaluable to the royal family’s media presence. With her sense for
fashion, she has rapidly become a style icon. Another part of her strength is
that she seems to sincerely enjoy her public functions. She has a natural talent
of showing sincere interest, without personal preferences. After all, the monar-
chy should remain strictly neutral. In 2007, her contribution to the presenta-
tion of an official report on “Identification with the Netherlands” was received
rather critically, not only because of its content – she stated that “the Dutch
identity does not exist” other than in many different contours and colors – but
also because it was generally considered too outspoken for a member of the
royal family.
In order to secure the continued public favor on which it depends, the
monarchy needs to strike a right balance between dignitas and humanitas, roy-
alty and normalcy. The members of the Orange family need not only to be seen
in official functions, but to be personally “known” and liked as well. Even
though the public at large does not actively seek royalty news as disseminated
by the – rather modest – tabloids, the Dutch media regularly present carefully
orchestrated moments in the family’s life, such as skiing holidays or the chil-
dren’s first day at school. In all the media attention surrounding her, Queen
Máxima convincingly manages to balance her “royal” and her “normal” image,
combining her public role with that of working mother of three daughters, and
a loving wife of her husband.
King and Crown

The Kingdom of the Netherlands, as it was formally constituted by charter in 1954,
consists of the Netherlands and three countries in the Caribbean: the islands Aruba,
Curaçao, and St. Maarten, which represent less than 2 percent of the population of the
kingdom.2 The position of the Dutch king is thus somewhat similar to that of the
English monarch who rules over the sixteen nations that form the Commonwealth.
The Dutch government is formed by the king and his ministers, together called
“the Crown.” However, the king has neither political responsibility nor any formal
power, since the rule is maintained that “the king is inviolable; the ministers are
responsible.” This principle of “ministerial responsibility” – which pertains to the
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other members of the royal house as well – is central to the Dutch constitutional
monarchy. It renders all actions of the king subject to ministerial approval, and bills
and all other “royal decrees” need a minister’s signature. In this context, “royal” does
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therefore not refer to the king’s personal decision, but rather represents the unity of the
Crown.3 The king’s signature is required for all bills to become law as well, but as he is
to remain neutral and stand above the parties, his refusal to sign remains a rather theo-
retical scenario.
One of the most visible moments when the king acts as head of the government is
during the opening of the parliamentary year, on the third Tuesday of September. Since
the Second World War the tradition has been established that the monarch arrives at
the government center in full royal pomp in a golden carriage pulled by eight horses
and escorted by court dignitaries and a military escort of honor, with people cheering
and waving along the route. As stipulated in the constitution, the king then addresses
the joint session of the two houses of Dutch parliament in the Ridderzaal in The
Hague. Since the “Speech from the Throne” (troonrede), which outlines the plans of the
government for the coming parliamentary year, is written by the office of the prime
minister, it is the voice, but not the words or opinions of the person serving as king,
that are heard.
Yet, the king is an unavoidable factor in the political process, given his constitu-
tional position, the average length of his reign, and the royal privileges which the nine-
teenth-century British economist Walter Bagehot famously defined as the right “to be
consulted, to encourage, and to warn the government.” 4 To that end, the king regularly
consults with the prime minister, and thus is one of the best informed people. As he is
assured of popular support that Dutch politicians can only dream about, ministers are
well advised to at least listen carefully to any comments the king may have.5 The posi-
tion of a nonelected member in the government has given argument to the suggestion
to exclude the king from government, which could be effectuated by amending the
constitution. However, political parties favoring such a point of view have thus far been
very reluctant to press the issue, knowing that there is little support among the Dutch
public at large for such a reduced role for the king.
Government by Coalition
The actual government is left to the Council of Ministers. This “Cabinet” – headed by
the prime minister, who is theoretically equal to his colleagues – is an executive council
which initiates laws and policy and is collectively responsible to the parliament. Since
any government needs the support of a majority in parliament – traditionally divided
by about a dozen different minority parties – it is usually formed by a coalition of two
or more different parties. Consequently, in the Dutch political vocabulary the term
“coalition” has become synonymous with “Cabinet of Ministers.”
The necessity for coalition certainly has its advantages. Since it is almost unavoid-
able that some parties participate in various consecutive coalitions, they represent a cer-
tain continuity. Furthermore, coalitions guarantee that a broad spectrum of political
voices is represented in the government. By the same token, the differences between the
coalition partners call for continuous negotiations, which may prove to be difficult,
lengthy, or simply impossible, in which case the debate is stalled or given to a commit-
tee to be studied, as a strategy to preserve the coalition. The necessity for coalitions has
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other weaknesses, too. Forming a coalition in such a fragmented political field is usu-
ally a cumbersome and time-consuming process, during which the country is virtually
left without a government. Furthermore, voters can never be sure whether or not their
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party will actually end up participating in the coalition, and adamantly proclaimed
points in the election campaign may be given up during coalition negotiations.
Consequently, this process renders the electoral results rather inconclusive, as the elec-
torate does not directly determine the formation or the agenda of the new government.
Neither does the electorate directly determine the selection of the ministers, not even
that of the prime minister, as the candidates are put forward by the negotiating parties.
This means that a new government leader can rise out of total obscurity, as was the case
with Christian democratic backbencher Jan Peter Balkenende, who ended up leading
four successive governments between 2002 and 2010.
The mechanism of appointed instead of elected heads of government also applies
to the provincial governments, which are led by a “Commissioner of the King” (Commis-
saris van de Koning), and to the municipal government, which is headed by an appointed
mayor. This appointive principle is traditionally defended in terms of quality: appoint-
ment procedures allow selecting well-qualified candidates, without being blinded
by other factors that may influence public elections. Furthermore, it is argued that a
mayor should stand above the parties and is thus best appointed instead of elected.
City councils therefore present candidates based on their personal merit, skills, and
experience, although a careful balance among the major political parties is maintained,
especially in the largest cities; the mayor of Amsterdam, for instance, is traditionally a
social democrat.
Binnenhof: Traditional Heart

of a Modern Democracy
The Binnenhof, or “Inner Court,” physically represents the political heart of the
Netherlands. The parliamentary buildings surround an enclosed square which
is accessible to all citizens, allowing them to accidentally meet members of
parliament or ministers, or to offer petitions or messages in carefully directed
protest gatherings. The exterior of the complex is generally used as visual
reference to national political events on the Dutch television news.
The centerpiece of the Inner Court is the Hall of Knights, the Ridderzaal,
which was built in the thirteenth century by Count Floris IV and completed by
his son Floris V, as part of a hunting lodge. The village which developed around
this residence was named ’s Gravenhage (literally: The Count’s Forest). In the
late sixteenth century, this village became the meeting place of the States
General of the Dutch Republic, a choice designed to avoid favoring any par-
ticular city over another. Den Haag (The Hague), as the city became known, has
remained the parliamentary center ever since – even though Amsterdam is the
official capital of the Netherlands.
Since 1904 the Hall of Knights is the venue of the formal opening of the
parliamentary year on Prinsjesdag (Princes’ Day), the third Tuesday in Septem-
ber, an event wrapped in traditions and rituals. The king promptly arrives just
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before 1 p.m. in the golden carriage, which was presented to Queen Wilhel-
mina by the city of Amsterdam in 1898. Seated on the throne in the Hall he
reads – in exactly twenty minutes – the troonrede, outlining the plans of the
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government for the coming year. Thereupon he returns to Noordeinde Palace,

where he appears on the balcony, together with the queen, waving to the
invariably assembled public. Whereas the speech itself may present progress
and new ideas, the ritualized format of the event secures the continuity which
the monarchy is to represent. Meanwhile in parliament, the Minister of Finance
presents the budget accompanying the new plans, thus illustrating that not
the king, but the ministers are responsible for the plans of the government.
A new meeting hall for parliament was completed in 1992. The architect
Pi de Bruin masterfully managed to position it between the already existing
buildings – thus leaving parliament where it should be – and incorporating the
original outer walls into the new structure, creating a symbolic bridge be-
tween past and present. The principle of dualism between the executive
branch (government) and legislative branch (parliament) is architecturally
translated in the design of the meeting hall: seated in a semi-circle, the mem-
bers of parliament are not facing each other, but face the enclosed section that
is reserved for members of government.
The council of ministers is chaired by the prime minister or premier. His
office is located at the Inner Court, in a small tower affectionately known as
the Little Tower (“Het Torentje”), where hypothetically the cameras of the na-
tional evening news could catch him at work. Or one may even accidentally
meet him on the Inner Court, which remains open and accessible, a symbol of
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an open democracy.
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Decentralized Unitary State
The administrative and electoral structure of the Netherlands is divided into national,
provincial, and municipal levels. Additionally, twenty-four so-called “water boards”

(waterschappen) are responsible for issues related to water management. As the constitu-
tion assigns the legislative competencies to the national level only, the Netherlands –
notwithstanding the plural in its name – is formally a unitary state.6 However, some of
these competencies are delegated to the lower levels, whose role can thus be described
in terms of cogovernance and autonomy: serving as a link between national legislature
and local reality, implementing national legislation at the local levels.
The national parliament – or the “States General,” in the terminology dating back
to the period of the Republic of the United Provinces – consists of two houses: the
House of Representatives or Lower House (Tweede Kamer, second chamber), and the
Senate or Upper House (Eerste Kamer, first chamber). The role of parliament is to repre-
sent the public, to control the government, and to pass new legislation.
The fact that the House of Representatives is often loosely referred to as “par-
liament” indicates that it is perceived as the center of the political process. The 150
members are directly elected at least every four years, according to the principle of pro-
portionality, “one man, one vote.” Given the absence of any specific electoral threshold,
only 0.67 percent of the votes – the number of votes cast divided by the number of seats
in parliament – is necessary to gain a seat. The provincial councils (Provinciale Staten)
and the municipal councils (Gemeenteraden) are elected every four years as well.
Participation has lately fallen back to around 50 percent. The elections for the provin-
cial councils usually attract even fewer voters. As intermediaries between the local and
the national authorities, provinces deal more with authorities and representatives than
with citizens and are thus less visible and consequently less appealing.
In the public eye, the most important role of the provincial councils is to elect the
75 members of the Senate (Eerste Kamer, first chamber). Although elected by the provin-
cial councils, they are not expected to represent specific provincial or other territorial
interests. If anything, the members of the Senate – usually experienced politicians – are
to render an additional dimension of consideration and care to the parliamentary deci-
sion-making process: once a bill has been accepted by a majority in the House of
Representatives, it needs to pass through the Senate as well. However, since both cham-
bers are not elected at the same time, their political composition may differ. As a result,
the Senate may choose to block decisions already taken in the House of Representatives.
Such cases inevitably lead to questioning the existence of the Senate. Yet, proposals to
eliminate it altogether stand little chance, as the required constitutional change needs
to obtain support of the Senate as well.
Two Ideological Dimensions

Although a proportional electoral system does not necessarily cause a fragmented polit-
ical field, it is safe to say that it favors small parties. The Dutch political spectrum is
characterized by fragmentation and minority parties. The position of these parties
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could traditionally be understood by considering two ideological dimensions, which

created three distinct ideological “party families”: social democrats, liberals, and
Christian Democrats.
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The first dimension, dividing parties in left-wing and right-wing positions, is mainly
related to socio-economic issues and the preferred role of the government in this
domain. The social democrats – the Labor Party (Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA) – on the
left, embrace the principle of solidarity: it should be a fundamental responsibility of

the government to redistribute the available means equally and justly, to reduce
income differences, and to protect the weaker members of society (under the umbrella
of a welfare state). The parties on the right – the People’s Party for Freedom and
Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie, VVD) and the more intellectual
and progressive Democrats 66 (Democraten 66, D66) – value the principle of individual
freedom: the hand of the government in the lives of individual citizens should be
limited, and in the economic realm a free market is favored, without curtailing creative
entrepreneurship by government regulations, or tax pressures. In the Dutch political
terminology the term “liberal” is used for the parties that tend to favor freedom from
state intervention, which is sometimes confusing for those who are used to the very
different way the term is used in countries like the United States.
A second dimension distinguishes between confessional and secular political
thinking. For the confessional parties – the Christian Democratic Alliance (CDA), the
Christian Union (Christenunie, CU), and a small orthodox Protestant party (Staat-
kundig Gereformeerde Partij, SGP) – religious principles serve as inspiration. This
becomes most apparent in ethical, nonmaterial issues: the confessional parties support
a distinct government position, whereas nonconfessional parties – social democrats
and liberals alike – prefer to leave such issues primarily personal, individual decisions.
In socio-economic issues, confessional parties take a position in the middle of the left-
right scale, emphasizing the concept of a “caring society,” where looking after each
other primarily becomes the responsibility of individual citizens.
With the decline in ideological thinking and increasing secularization in the last
decades of the twentieth century, the dividing lines between the parties have begun to
fade. In 1994, the first coalition government of social democrats (red) and liberals (blue)
was formed – the so-called “purple coalition” – illustrating that the traditional opposi-
tion between left and right was no longer as divisive as it once had been. The confes-
sional parties, which were still losing votes, ended up in the opposition for the first
time.
New parties were established, such as Green Left (Groen Links), a merger in 1989 of
four small progressive parties. The Socialist Party (SP), combining a rather radical left-
wing political agenda with mobilizing political protest and neighborhood campaigns,
entered parliament in 1994. In addition, one-issue parties emerged, such as the Party
for the Animals (Partij voor de Dieren, PvdD) in 2006 and the Elderly People’s Party
(50+) in 2009. Such parties can perhaps best be seen as politicized action groups, as they
present opinions on specific issues rather than a coherent political ideology.
From Stability to Volatility

For a major part of the twentieth century, the three main party families mentioned
above dominated electoral behavior. Today, voting behavior is no longer as predictable
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as it once was. Party identification is decreasing, as is also illustrated in declining party

membership. Voters may change their preference from one election to the next, and in-
creasing numbers of people work their way through online voting advice applications
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to identify the party which best suits their opinions. The electoral volatility that
resulted from a significant increase of floating, undecided voters has put more pressure
on election campaigns.
In the election campaigns, personalities seem of increasing importance to secure

public support. Traditionally, the role of the candidates was rather modest. Political
parties present a list of candidates, balancing gender, regional, social and ethnic back-
grounds, age groups, and so on. A “vote of preference” (voorkeursstem) may be given by
indicating a specific name on the list: women are, for instance, known to vote for the
first female candidate of the party of their choice. Yet, most voters routinely give their
vote to a party by simply indicating the first name on the list. It is thus in fact the party,
and not the voter, assigning seats in parliament. Yet, supported by the visual media, the
candidates today, and especially the candidate on top of the list (lijsttrekker), seems to
personify the party and has to appear to be trustworthy to the voters. This is impacting
the traditional boundaries between their public and private sphere, as politicians now
have to present themselves in entertainment programs and lifestyle magazines, reveal-
ing aspects of their private life in an attempt to win voters’ sympathy and trust.
In 2002, the first political group was formed around a personality altogether: the
List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). Combining social democrat and liberal standpoints, flavored
with personal experiences, Fortuyn can best be labeled a “populist,” claiming to repre-
sent the voice of the general public. In doing so, he positioned the public in opposition
to the politicians: the established politicians were suggested to have been serving their
own interests rather than adequately attending to the interests of the ordinary, hard-
working citizens. The torch of populism is carried on by the Freedom Party (Partij voor
de Vrijheid, PVV), started in 2006 by Geert Wilders. In addition to fueling discontent
against political establishment, Wilders argues he protects the interests of the “ordi-
nary Dutch public,” by way of targeting “outsiders,” such as immigrants and Muslims,
but also, for instance, the influence of the EU. Parallel to a diminishing position of the
political parties, the rise of the Freedom Party seems to indicate a certain public dis-
satisfaction, concentrating on the widening gap between politics and the public.
In order to increase public involvement, the call for directly electing members in
the executive branches has been strengthened. In selecting a new mayor, some munici-
pal councils have asked the population for their preference in a consultative referen-
dum. An elected mayor, though, has not yet happened, and neither has a directly
elected prime minister. It has also been suggested that the Netherlands should adopt
the decisive referendum as a way to ask the citizens to express their view on new legis-
lation, as the ultimate means of granting the people direct influence on national policy.
However, no political majority exists for the necessary constitutional reforms to intro-
duce such a referendum, or even a corrective legislative referendum, allowing for the
public to express an opinion on laws already agreed on by parliament. Direct public
impact on the political process remains limited to elections.
Yet, it cannot be concluded that the Dutch representative democracy in general
lacks public trust.7 Rather than in declining voters’ turnout at elections, dissatisfaction
is materializing in volatile electoral behavior, which has made Dutch political life less
predictable and the electoral campaigns therefore rather more interesting.
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Further Reading
Andeweg, Rudi B., and Galen A. Irwin. Governance and Politics of the Netherlands. 3rd rev. ed. London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Bovens, Mark, and Anchrit Wille. “Falling or Fluctuating Trust Levels? The Case of the
Netherlands.” Political Trust: Why Context Matters. Edited by Marc Hooghe and Sonja Zmerli.
Colchester: ECPR Press, 2011.
Holsteyn, Joop J.M. van, and Galen A. Irwin. “Never a Dull Moment: Pim Fortuyn and the Dutch
Parliamentary Election of 2002.” West European Politics 26, no. 2 (2003): 41-66.
Kessel, Stijn van. “Explaining the Electoral Performance of Populist Parties: The Netherlands as a
Case Study.” Perspectives on European Politics and Society 12, no. 1 (2011): 68-88.
Lechner, Frank J. The Netherlands: Globalization and National Identity. New York: Routledge, 2008.
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chapter 2
Politics between
Accommodation and Commotion

by ido de haan
On 6 May 2002, Pim Fortuyn was killed. He was the leader of a new populist party, sim-
ply called List Pim Fortuyn (LPF), which was leading the polls for the national elections
that were to take place nine days later. Dutch prime minister Wim Kok told the New York
Times that day: “I feel devastated by this. What went through my head was, ‘This is the
Netherlands, the Netherlands, a nation of tolerance.’” While his reaction testified of the
inclination toward – or at least the self-image of – a politics of peaceful accommoda-
tion, the murder of Fortuyn was a symptom of a broader tendency. Dutch politics in
fact appeared to move away from time-tested models of conflict resolution, toward a
much more eventful and antagonistic political climate. The nation known for its toler-
ance suddenly seemed to have turned into an intolerant nation, where ethnic minori-
ties were targeted by populist politicians. Progressive parties in turn were accused of
muffling the debate on the drawbacks of the multicultural society under a blanket of
political correctness. Adding to the confusion was the fact that the fear of “Islamiz-
ation” of Dutch society was voiced by the manifestly gay Fortuyn, and that progressive
values of gender equality and sexual liberty were suddenly presented as the core of
Dutch identity. That identity was considered to be endangered by the overly tolerant
attitude toward the more traditional attitudes among Moroccan and Turkish minor-
ities. Careful accommodation appeared to have been replaced by constant commotion.
In the years after the murder of Fortuyn, new populist leaders came to the fore.
While not all were equally successful, Geert Wilders, a renegade from the conservative
liberal party (VVD), gained substantial electoral support with his Freedom Party (PVV),
and between October 2010 and April 2012 even had a pivotal influence in the minority
government of the VVD and the Christian Democrats of the CDA. Even more import-
ant, the political agenda as well as the public debate became more polarized, creating
room for more radical political standpoints. As a result of this remarkable transform-
ation in Dutch politics, many have begun to question the received opinion about the
predominance of peaceful accommodation as the core of Dutch political culture. What
was in fact the nature of the politics of accommodation? What were the causes and con-
sequences of its transformation? How did Dutch political elites respond to these
changes?
Politics of Accommodation
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From the beginning of the twentieth century, Dutch politics and society became “pil-
larized”: segmented into denominational and ideological groups, each with their own
political parties, schools, universities, trade unions, broadcasting companies, hospitals
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and many other examples of social organizations. The system of pillarization had been
remarkably stable between 1917 and the middle of the 1960s. It survived the severe
criticism of intellectuals outside and even inside the pillars, as well as the German occu-
pation between 1940 and 1945. After 1945, all major parties returned to the scene, be it
under new names: the Protestant parties ARP (Anti Revolutionaire Partij) and CHU
(Christelijk Historische Unie) returned unaltered, while the Catholic party was reestab-
lished as the Catholic People’s Party (Katholieke Volkspartij, KVP), the social democrats
merged with progressives from all sides of the political spectrum into the Labor Party
(Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA), and the more conservative-oriented liberals formed the
People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie,
VVD). More importantly, the pillars were able to impose their pattern of organization
on all aspects of society, by controlling life from the cradle to the grave, just like the
emerging welfare state in which pillarization became deeply entrenched.
The “pillarized” division of society constituted a pervasive, structuring force in
Dutch society, even though some groups stayed clear of the grip of the pillars, such as,
for example, intellectuals, writers and artists, substantial parts of the world of business
and industry, and also large groups of urban youngsters. Pillarization reached its high-
point in the 1950s, as becomes clear by one of the most telling indicators of cultural
segregation, the number of “mixed marriages”: the number of marriages between part-
ners of different pillars actually declined between 1945 and 1960. In a political sense
pillarization also reached its zenith at that time, with the five main political parties
receiving 95 percent of the vote, while the electoral support for each of the parties was
remarkably stable. The stability of the system was strengthened by putting divisive
political issues on ice. This turned the “pillarized” civil order as a whole into a “frozen
party system” in which parties and groups inside the political system had an insuper-
able advantage over interests not represented by the cooperating elites.1
Pillarization: Pacification and Segregation

From the end of the nineteenth century until the 1960s, Dutch society has been
culturally and institutionally segregated. Catholics, Protestants, Liberals, and
Socialists each created their own social and political institutions. An orthodox
Protestant, for instance, would belong to a Protestant labor union, read a
Protestant newspaper such as Trouw, and vote for the Anti-Revolutionary
Party (ARP), whereas a Catholic would join a Catholic labor union, read the
Catholic newspaper de Volkskrant, and vote for the Roman Catholic State Party
(RKSP). It went without saying that one could only shop at a grocer, baker, or
butcher of one’s own “pillar.”
Most importantly, most denominations founded their own schools. One
might say that “pillarization” originated out of a demand by orthodox Protes-
tants, and Catholics for truly Reformed or Catholic schools, while liberals and
social democrats continued to support the school system of the nineteenth
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century, which, religiously speaking, was largely neutral. The ensuing political
battle over governmental funding for education was solved in the famous
Pacification of 1917, guaranteeing public and privately established denomina-
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tional schools equal financial support. This pragmatic arrangement, which

was formalized in Article 23 of the Dutch constitution, is often viewed as the
institutional capstone of pillarization.
The American political scientist Robert Dahl once argued that the Nether-
lands were a theoretical impossibility. How was political stability feasible in a
society where social divisions were so strongly institutionalized, and where
the leadership of the pillars mobilized its members on the basis of strict inter-
nal discipline, negative mutual stereotyping and social exclusion of those who
refused to conform to the pattern of pillarization?
Dutch-American political scientist Arend Lijphart answered this question
in his classical formulation of the pillarization theory, in which he presented
the “politics of accommodation” as the essence of the Dutch political system.8
While political elites stirred up their constituencies with their manifest polit-
ical rhetoric, he argued, they showed prudent constraint in their dealings in the
backrooms of politics. They aimed for practical compromises, in which mutually
acceptable outcomes were guaranteed by the rule of proportionality between
pillars and the secrecy of negotiations. When a compromise was not feasible,
elites were able to depoliticize the issue by referring it to technocratic advis-
ory boards, or by postponing a decision by turning it over to committees of
wise men.
From this perspective, the politics of accommodation provided a way of
peacefully integrating newly emerging social groups, such as orthodox
Protestants and socialists, into Dutch society. Yet, from another perspective,
the politics of accommodation aimed not at emancipating and integrating, but
at mobilizing and disciplining a constituency, which could function as the
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storm troopers in the struggle between political elites, aiming to get a grip on
the social upheaval of a modernizing mass society. This point of view also
affected the perspective on the Pacification of 1917. This agreement was now
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no longer seen as the moment when political disagreements were solved, but
on the contrary, as the institutionalization of the conflicts between pillars that
only then developed into full-blown social networks.
The 1950s were not just the highpoint of pillarization, however, but also the period
when the system began to show its first cracks. Indicative of these fissures was the offi-
cial warning (Mandement) the Dutch bishops issued in 1954, in which they threatened to
excommunicate all Catholics who sympathized, or even engaged with, social demo-
crats. Was this a sign of ultimate assertiveness, or of increasing uncertainty on the part
of the Catholics? Although historians are still undecided on the issue, it is clear that
this threat signaled the beginning of deteriorating relations between the pillarized
political elites, finally in 1958 resulting in the end of twelve years of political cooper-
ation between the Catholic and the social democratic party.
Political interaction became much less predictable in the following decade, leading
to a major political crisis and a landslide defeat of the Catholic KVP in 1967. This in-
augurated a long period of restructuring of the party system, which initially hurt the
confessional parties the most. After prolonged and difficult negotiations, the Catholic
and Protestant parties agreed in 1980 to merge into Christian Democratic Appeal
(Christen Democratisch Appèl, CDA). The social democratic party initially profited
from the problems of the confessional parties, reaching its apogee in the middle of the
1970s, when its leader, Joop den Uyl, led a progressive coalition. The party scored an
all-time high of 35 percent in the elections of 1977, crowding out the other small left-
wing parties of communists, pacifists and radicals, which finally merged in 1990 into
Green Left (Groen Links). However, the success of the social democratic party was only
short-lived, since it fell into a deep electoral and ideological crisis in the 1980s, only to
reemerge in the middle of the 1990s under the leadership of Wim Kok, who aimed to
liberate the party of most of its socialist inheritance.
The Dutch politics of accommodation lost its resilience in the mid-1990s, however.
In 1994 the conservative coalition of liberals and Christian Democrats, which had
formed three consecutive governments under prime minister and CDA party leader
Ruud Lubbers that lasted a total of twelve years, finally came to an end. The CDA, which
was out of power for the first time, fell into a deep crisis, losing almost half of its votes
and even more of its self-confidence. Just like the Christian Democrats had done in the
late 1990s, the PvdA lost half of its electoral support in 2002. The party of Pim Fortuyn,
which had profited the most from the defeat of the PvdA, in turn imploded almost
completely in 2003, making room for a series of other political newcomers to experi-
ence their fifteen minutes of fame. As pollsters and political scientists have acknow-
ledged, radical swings in voters’ preferences have made it much more difficult to give
an accurate prediction of electoral results.
Underneath these political changes lie social and cultural processes that are often
summarized by catchy phrases like individualization, fragmentation, secularization,
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and – the most popular – ontzuiling (depillarization). Since these concepts do not tell us
much, it is more useful to point to three major developments: in the composition of
society, in the functioning of the state, and in the political mediation between the two.
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Social and Cultural Changes
To begin with, the social composition and cultural perspective of Dutch society has
changed dramatically since the 1960s. Until that time, the Netherlands had a sub-
stantial agricultural sector and an industrial working class. The latter formed a reser-
voir of political mobilization that quickly disappeared after the rise of wealth and the
transition to a service and knowledge economy since the end of the 1950s. At the start
of the twenty-first century, most people belonged to the middle class and lived in sub-
urban areas or even in newly developed cities in the polders, such as Almere – estab-
lished in 1976 and already the seventh-largest city in the Netherlands.2
A remarkable convergence of cultural values has taken place within this very large
middle class. While the 1960s are often depicted as the era of radical experimentation
– exemplified by relatively marginal social groups, such as students and intellectuals –
the more decisive transformation might actually be the sudden and widespread accept-
ance of progressive cultural values among the majority of the Dutch population.3 Yet,
while the cultural homogeneity of the majority of the population increased since the
1960s, ethnic diversity also increased due to the immigration of people from the former
colonies, labor migrants from the Mediterranean region, and refugees from all over the
world. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the population of the Netherlands
reached sixteen million, three million of whom originated from elsewhere – almost
half from Western countries such as Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the
United States, and the other half from non-Western countries. In the Netherlands these
non-Western immigrants are called allochtonen, “those who come from elsewhere.” The
combination of a massive shift to progressive values among the native Dutch middle
class and the influx of ethnic minorities has resulted in a country where progressive
values receive wide support, while at the same time an increasingly intolerant attitude
has emerged toward the new minorities that deviate from this progressive consensus.4
Pillarization and the Welfare State

These changes are not unique to the Netherlands, but are characteristic of all Western
countries. Yet in the Netherlands, these developments were reinforced by two addi-
tional factors. The first is the scope of the welfare state. Together with the Scandinavian
countries, the Netherlands has one of the strongest welfare states, which has taken care
of people from the cradle to the grave. This is a development that was strongly pro-
moted by the pillars. Welfare state programs often were carried out by “pillarized”
institutions such as hospitals and organizations for social work. Welfare provisions also
indirectly contributed to the legitimacy of political parties and trade unions, which
were able to guarantee their constituency’s social security and a high standard of living.
Secondly, the leadership of the pillars had always been concerned about the moral
effects of the welfare state, fearing that its materialism would undermine the norm-
ative foundations of society. They also believed that true human development consisted
of individual mental or even spiritual growth, or – as it was called in the 1950s – “free-
dom in connectedness.” As a result, Dutch political elites were committed to a kind of
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preemptive progressivism, in other words, they aimed at stimulating the development

of individual autonomy as a precondition of responsible citizenship and social stability.
For example, the Department of Social Work, established in 1952 as a bulwark of
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Catholic organizations for social work, changed in the 1960s into the Department of
Culture, Recreation and Social Work, which presented itself as the vanguard of a society
on its way to a more relaxed and playful social well-being. In this way, Dutch elites
strongly contributed to the culture shift of the 1960s and 1970s that undermined the
pillarized social network their authority was built on.
The erosion of elite authority was exacerbated by the development of the state. As
a result of the disintegration of pillarized networks, it became ever more difficult to
channel and aggregate the demands of citizens. American neoliberal political scientists
of the 1980s described this as the mechanism of rising expectations, provoked by the
tendency of the bureaucratic state to provide an increasingly wide range of services.
Again, this more general development had a specific Dutch twist. In response to the
erosion of pillarized authority, many of its organizations started to look for alternative
sources of legitimacy, which they generally found in a more service-oriented mission:
they argued that they deserved a role in the execution of the welfare state because they
were actually able to deliver the goods. Many of the formerly pillarized organizations
now formulated new “mission statements,” presented in colorful brochures, and tried
to represent the modern, cost-efficient and market-oriented version of the public sector
that was promoted in the management theories that became known as New Public
Management.
The rising – and increasingly varied – expectations of citizens were met – and even
stimulated – by the former networks of pillarization. It created a welfare state in which
ever more detailed and specific legislation was introduced for an increasing number of
handicaps and setbacks. This in turn contributed to the emergence of a managerial and
technocratic style of governance. The highpoint of this development were the two con-
secutive “purple” coalitions of social democrats (red party colors) and liberals (blue)
that governed between 1994 and 2002. These were not only the first coalitions created
without the participation of any of the confessional parties since 1917, but were also
coalitions that presented themselves as explicitly nonideological, in which the social
democratic party, in particular, “had shaken off its ideological feathers,” as its leader
Wim Kok argued. The coalition was to be held accountable for its practical results, not
for its ideological intentions.
And so it was: the purple coalition lost thirty-six of its eighty-three parliamentary
seats in the election of 2002. Ironically, the coalition had led the country through a
period of unprecedented prosperity, yet it was held accountable for a series of unfor-
tunate events and policy failures: in the years leading up to 2002 public scandals
erupted over disastrous fires, continuously delayed trains, waiting lists at the hospitals,
but, most importantly, over the apparent failure of the government to adequately
address the problems of second- and third-generation immigrants. According to the
populist leader Fortuyn, the social democrats in particular had evaded these complex
issues by promoting a soft multiculturalism, while abandoning the concerns of the
“true Netherlanders” and the poor autochthonous people in the older districts of the
major Dutch cities.
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The Disconnection of State and Society

The rise and fall of Fortuyn’s populist movement LPF point to a third development,
which is the transformation of the relations between state and society. During the
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period of pillarization, an almost seamless network of institutions existed by which the
demands of citizens were channeled to the state and – vice versa – policy measures were
implemented in society. Political parties played a central role in this network. Party
leaders were often also the editor-in-chiefs of the newspapers of their own pillar, and
parties had a strong grip on their own public broadcasting companies. Connections
were also strong with the pillarized trade unions. Even Wim Kok started his career
within the social democratic trade union NVV, and was its president before he was
tapped as party leader of the PvdA.
Yet the role of parties eroded in the course of the 1980s. Membership declined,
from almost 500,000 for the confessional parties and around 150,000 for the PvdA
in the 1950s, to respectively 65,000 and 55,000 in 2012 – while the population grew
by 50 percent. Political parties remained the main channel for recruitment of political
personnel, yet the pool from which people were selected was reduced to the most active
citizens. As these were in general the highest educated, many observed the emergence
of a “diploma democracy,” in which meritocracy became a new form of privilege.5
Moreover, the media became independent from the pillars. The national newspaper de
Volkskrant lost its Catholic identity and turned into a bulwark of progressivism, while
the social democratic newspaper Het Vrije Volk lost many of its subscribers before its last
issue appeared on 30 March 1991.
The public broadcasting companies kept their identity for a longer time, mainly
because their broadcasting license was based on the idea that they represented a rele-
vant group in society. But their ratings suffered from the competition of commercial,
private broadcasting companies, which tried to gain access into the broadcasting sys-
tem since the 1960s, until they finally succeeded in 1989. As a result the media became
much more independent from political parties and powers, and thus developed into an
alternative channel for the articulation of social interests.
Consequently, political parties and their representatives in parliament and govern-
ment lost much of their legitimacy, a tendency that was exacerbated by the technocratic
style of government of the 1990s. Citizens did not lose their trust in the democratic
system as such, nor was there a decline in voter turnout – this had been invariably high,
around 80 percent since mandatory voting was abolished in 1970. Yet the politicians
themselves became increasingly worried about the relationship with their constitu-
ency. When Fortuyn voiced the populist cliché that the “political class” had lost its
connection with the “real people,” especially those who were said to suffer from the
burdens of multiculturalism, he was expressing a concern that was already widespread
among mainstream politicians. This both helps to explain the success of Fortuyn, as
well as the lack of a reply to his populist challenge.6
Pim Fortuyn: Libertarian Populist

Pim Fortuyn was the colorful populist who is credited with exploding the polit-
ical consensus system in the Netherlands by mobilizing resentment against
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immigration and the political elites.

W.S.P. (Pim) Fortuyn (1948-2002) was born into a Catholic family. He stud-
ied sociology in Amsterdam, where he immersed himself in critical theory and
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Marxism, and explored the gay scene. He became a charismatic lecturer of

radical sociology at Groningen University, where he received a PhD for a well-
researched and balanced dissertation on the policies of the economic recon-
struction in the Netherlands between 1945 and 1949.
His academic career stagnated in the late 1970s, perhaps due to his quarrel-
some character. He left the university to become a professional policy consult-
ant and acquired some fame by his efficient management of the introduction
of the national public transportation card for students. Increasingly convinced
of the inefficiency of many government organizations, the former Marxist
embraced privatization and the rolling back of the state. His inaugural lecture
as Professor of Labor Relations at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in 1991
was pointedly entitled “Without Civil Servants” – a theme to which he consist-
ently returned in all his later work and for which he found a wider audience
after he became a columnist for the rightist weekly Elseviers Weekblad. In
several books he addressed issues of bureaucracy, the educational system and
the healthcare system.
In the mid-1990s, Fortuyn was a well-known speaker for disaffected entre-
preneurs who resented the “soft” policies of the nanny state. After several
attempts to become prominent within a number of parties, Fortuyn began to
present himself as “politician without a party,” and as a savior who would be
able to lead the country back to prosperity. He also began to criticize immigra-
tion and multiculturalism, and warn against the “Islamization of the Nether-
lands.” After 9/11, increased media attention for these issues helped his voice
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to gain momentum.
Late 2001 he was invited by a platform of disenchanted former social
democrats to become the leader of a new national party: Livable Netherlands
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(Leefbaar Nederland). He made a spectacular impression in the media with his
acceptance speech, ending by saluting the audience, shouting, in English, “At
your service!” Notwithstanding the remarkable rise of the party in the polls,
Fortuyn managed to anger his party with his anti-immigration rhetoric and
resigned as party leader in February 2002. Two days later he established a new
party, List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). After winning a landslide victory with “Liveable
Rotterdam” in the local elections in Rotterdam on 6 March 2002, Fortuyn
became a media sensation, irresistible to politicians and journalists alike, none
of whom were able to cope with his inflammatory rhetoric. The polls for the
national elections on 15 May predicted a huge success for the LPF: “Mark my
words, I will become the next prime minister of this country,” Fortuyn proph-
esied. On 6 May, however, he was shot dead by an animal-rights activist who
later declared he considered Fortuyn to be a danger to society. The life of the
political dandy had ended, yet his death marked the beginning of a calamitous
period in Dutch politics.
The Politics of Fear

In response to the rise of populism, a significant part of the Dutch political elite has
adopted its politics of fear, based on the evocation of dangers only they would be able to
ward off. Again, the rise of populism is not a strictly Dutch phenomenon. There is a re-
markable resemblance between Fortuyn and later populist leaders such as Rita Verdonk
and Geert Wilders, and the Front National in France, Austria’s Freiheitliche Partei
Österreich (FPÖ) of the late Jörg Haider, the Flemish Vlaams Blok of Flip de Winter, the
Schweizerische Volkspartei of Christoph Blocher, and even in Italy with the Lega Nord
and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. All of these parties had a strong impact on the political
system by mobilizing an anti-political and anti-establishment sentiment, an attack
against foreigners within the country, and a deep resentment of international, notably
European integration. In each country, these populist basics were amplified by more
specific issues such as the language conflict in Belgium, the division of North and
South in Italy, or the anti-European sentiment in Switzerland. Moreover, the tradit-
ional parties have also reacted differently in the various countries. While the Flemish
Block has been isolated within a cordon sanitaire, the Christian democratic Austrian
People’s Party (ÖVP) collaborated with the FPÖ in a coalition between 1999 and 2005.
In the Netherlands, even though its leader was murdered, the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF)
won 17.3 percent of the votes in the elections of 2002, becoming the second-largest
party with twenty-six seats in Dutch parliament. The LPF was then invited by the
Christian Democrats and liberals to form a coalition government. After only eighty-six
days the coalition collapsed, due to internal struggles within the LPF, leading to their
electoral defeat in the intermediate elections in 2003.
Despite the short-lived success of the LPF, many of the populist themes have found
other outlets. The LPF has been succeeded by the anti-Islam radical Geert Wilders, who
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gained international attention with his short film Fitna in 2008. After he left the liberal
VVD, Wilders won 6 percent (nine seats) in the parliamentary elections of 2006. A year
later, another liberal renegade, Rita Verdonk, created the movement Trots op Nederland
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(Proud of the Netherlands), which for a while also scored high in the polls. Even though
Verdonk’s success was short-lived, Wilders was more successful, obtaining 24 of the 150
seats in the House of Representatives in 2010, which gave him a decisive influence on
the minority government of VVD and CDA.

Even more remarkable is the adoption of populist themes in other, more main-
stream parties. Especially after the murder of controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh
by a radical Muslim on 2 November 2004, there has been a strong tendency to adopt a
much more negative stance against foreigners and a widespread call to reinforce Dutch
national identity. For instance, the Christian democratic politician Maxime Verhagen
called for a renewal of the awareness of a Dutch Leitkultur (leading culture), while Jan
Marijnissen, the leader of the Socialist Party (a formerly Maoist splinter that became
the voice of the disenchanted underclass) argued in favor of belonging to a Heimat
(native region) – in both cases the adoption of German words indicated they said
something new for which their vocabulary was insufficient. Prime Minister Jan Peter
Balkenende on various occasions also stressed that “the minorities profited from a
more demanding approach ... A society should be demanding and conscious of the
values of the community, the mastery of the language, and the meaning of its history.”
Also the social democratic PvdA – which was accused by Fortuyn of having become a
multiculturalist “leftist church” – began to stress the need to listen to the autoch-
thonous Netherlanders, while Lodewijk Asscher, the social democratic Minister of
Social Affairs in the coalition government of VVD and PvdA, issued a “code orange”
warning for a coming flood of immigrant labor from Eastern Europe in 2013.
The result of all this has been a long series of heated debates. Some of these focused
on the potential dangers of Islam, threats posed by Moroccan youngsters and the
nature of Dutch identity. For instance, the refusal of some imams to shake hands with
women and the wearing of a head scarf were discussed as signs of a rejection of Dutch
society. After a number of politicians of Moroccan descent were installed in parliament,
a debate ensued whether their double nationality and the possession of the Moroccan
passport (Morocco does not acknowledge the right to denaturalization) was an indi-
cation of their insufficient integration in Dutch society. Following the economic and
financial crisis in 2008, the debate shifted in part to the problems of European integra-
tion, leading to an increasingly widespread skepticism about solidarity with economic-
ally weaker states in the European union, as well as a growing resentment against the
demands of “Brussels” (which were in fact strongly supported by consecutive Dutch
governments) for austerity and deficit reduction. Again, this is not only a Dutch phe-
nomenon – the Euro-crisis fueled anti-Europeanism in the whole of the European
Union. But it is again remarkable how the Dutch PVV aims to play a leading role in the
self-contradictory effort to create an all-European movement against Europe.
The Self-Image of the Dutch Nation

In response to these changes, historians have begun to question the self-image of the
Dutch nation. According to many scholars, the politics of accommodation had a long
pedigree in the “consociational” tradition that stood at the basis of the Dutch Republic,
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and even before that time had developed out of the common struggle against the sea
and the shared interest in building and guarding the dykes to protect the country
against flooding. From this perspective, the elite’s “rules of engagement” that emerged
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at the end of the nineteenth century were an adaptation of older elite practices. These
rules were now applied to the new problems of emerging social groups such as the
orthodox Protestants and socialists, who claimed cultural recognition and a fair share
of the national wealth. The politics of accommodation became a way of peacefully inte-
grating new groups into the Dutch state.
In response to the disintegration of the politics of accommodation in recent years,
scholars have begun to emphasize more violent episodes in Dutch political history. Yet,
as the Dutch-American historian James Kennedy has argued, it might not be so much
the violent nature of Dutch political transformation, as its sudden and also massive
character that is striking. The Netherlands is a country of consensus, yet there are
moments this consensus undergoes a rapid and collective transformation, as a result of
the proactive attitude of Dutch elites.7 In the 1960s this contributed to a dramatic shift
to progressive values. In the first decade of the new century, the pendulum has swung
to the other side, creating a political commotion that hinders the peaceful accommoda-
tion of the conflicts of the twenty-first century.
Further Reading
Buruma, Ian. Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance. New York:
Penguin, 2006.
Daalder, Hans. “Consociationalism, Centre and Periphery in the Netherlands.” Politiek en Historie:
Opstellen over de Nederlandse Politiek en de Vergelijkende Politieke Wetenschap, 21-63. Amsterdam:
Bert Bakker, 1990.
Galema, Annemieke, Barbara Henkes and Henk te Velde, eds. Images of the Nation: Different Meanings
of Dutchness, 1870-1940. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1993.
Hendriks, Frank, and Theo A. J. Toonen, eds. Polder Politics: The Re-Invention of Consensus Democracy in
the Netherlands. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001.
Lijphart, Arend. The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands. 2nd rev. ed.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
Mudde, Cas. Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Schuyt, Kees, and Ed Taverne. 1950: Prosperity and Welfare. Dutch Culture in European Perspective,
Volume 4. Basingstoke: MacMillan Palgrave, 2004.
Visser, Jelle, and Anton Hemerijck. A Dutch Miracle: Job Growth, Welfare Reform and Corporatism in the
Netherlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997.
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chapter 3
Economy of the Polder

by jan luiten van zanden
The Dutch sometimes think they are different. They like to talk about things being
“typically Dutch.” Similarly, economic historians have suggested that the way in which
the economy is managed is rooted in the particular past of the Netherlands – in its
Golden Age, from which it inherited, for example, a strong focus on the outside world,
or, as we will discuss, the “poldermodel.” In many ways, however, the Dutch are very
similar to other Europeans – and should be placed between Germany and the United
Kingdom, in more ways than mere terms of geography. Accordingly, the history of the
economy during the twentieth century can be understood as just another example of
the rapid growth and modernization that occurred in the whole of Europe.
If one looks more closely, there are some “typically Dutch” features as well. This
does not primarily concern windmills or flower bulbs, but the way in which the econ-
omy is managed, the particular “business system” of the Netherlands. With this con-
cept economists and sociologists have tried to develop the idea that business firms are
rooted in the culture of their society and therefore function differently in different cul-
tures. It has been argued that the way in which not only specific companies but also the
economy as a whole is governed, reflects the underlying values of a society. The “busi-
ness systems” of Japan, Italy, or the United States are different from those in Germany
or the Netherlands. The “poldermodel” is perhaps the best known concept that
describes some of the features of the business system of the Netherlands.
Bulbs, Flowers, and Cheese:

The Agricultural Face of an Urban Economy
It is a bit of a paradox that one of the most densely populated and urbanized
societies in the world is also one of the largest exporters of agricultural prod-
ucts. Dutch farmers export huge quantities of cheese, meat, tomatoes, flowers,
and bulbs, and are in this field only beaten by the United States and France –
two huge countries by comparison. Again, the explanation lies in a distant
past, in the Golden Age. Before the Industrial Revolution proximity to markets
was a key ingredient of the success of farming. From the late Middle Ages on-
wards, Dutch society was highly urbanized. Farmers learned to cater to the
needs of urban citizens, and increasingly specialized in high-value products
such as milk, butter, cheese, vegetables, and bulbs. Ecological conditions also
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played a role. In the low parts of the country, in Holland, Utrecht and Friesland,
conditions for growing bread grains were rather unfavorable; instead, farmers
concentrated on livestock farming, and bought (imported) rye and wheat on
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the market in return. When England and Germany began to industrialize during
the nineteenth century, Dutch farmers switched to export production of the
same commodities.
These trends continued in the twentieth century. What was added was a
relatively efficient system of agricultural research, education and extension
services, largely managed by the agricultural sector itself, and sponsored by
the state. Also, cooperative agricultural banks emerged – which merged into
today’s Rabobank – supplying funds at low interest rates to the farming com-
munities. And when the Great Depression of the 1930s struck the Dutch econ-
omy, it was agriculture that was supported first by the government. A set
of policies to guarantee minimum prices was established, which eventually
developed into the European agricultural policy that became an important
feature of the EU.
The new agricultural system concentrated on the further increase of the
productivity of agriculture. It became quite good at increasing the quantity
of output – more cheese or tomatoes produced at lower prices – but until
recently was less successful in improving the quality of output. And the con-
centration of large scale agricultural activities in such a tiny country also lead
to growing environmental problems, especially in regions where the “bio-
industry” (pig and chicken farming) was concentrated. Having such a dynamic
agricultural sector has therefore become a bit of a mixed blessing.
Long Term Trends in the

Twentieth-Century Economy
Sometimes one picture can tell more than ten sentences. The graph in Figure 1 describes
the evolution of income per head of the population in the Netherlands and the United
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States between 1900 and 2006. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century there
was a gap: people in the United States were on average better off than those in the Nether-
lands. Dutch economic modernization had been rather slow during the nineteenth
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100,000
10,000
1,000
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
figure 1 – gdp per capita in the united states (red) and

the netherlands (blue), dollar value of 1990 (after angus maddison)
century. This was the period of the Industrial Revolution, the period of the steam
engine, which began in the United Kingdom in the eighteenth century. The Netherlands
however continued to rely on its service sector and its highly productive agriculture –
both part of the heritage of the Golden Age. During the “Second Industrial Revolution”
of the 1880s and 1890s, new technologies linked to electricity and oil began to funda-
mentally change the economy. Although these new technologies originated in the
United States and Germany, Dutch companies were rather quick to absorb them and
sometimes even took a lead in the new industries that emerged. The companies Philips
and Royal Dutch Shell are the best examples of this renewed “awakening” of the econ-
omy. The graph also shows that the gap between the Netherlands and the United States
– then the richest country in the world – clearly narrowed between 1900 and 1930. The
depression of the 1930s struck the United States even harder than it did the
Netherlands, and in the worst years of the 1930s the disparity between the two com-
pletely disappeared. But soon a new gap emerged: during the Second World War the
economy of the United States expanded rapidly – its highly successful war economy
was one of the reasons why the allies were able to defeat Germany and Japan. The
Netherlands, quickly conquered by Nazi Germany in May 1940, suffered quite badly
during these years – although Dutch estimates after the war perhaps tended to some-
what exaggerate this.
When in 1945 the Second World War ended, the two economies were therefore at
quite different points: the Dutch were impoverished while the American economy had
grown spectacularly during the war years. In 1947, when the recovery of the European
economy was barely underway, the US Secretary of State Alfred Marshall announced a
plan to come to the rescue of Europe, the famous Marshall Plan. It consisted of large
donations of US commodities and funds to Western Europe. Because the Dutch econ-
omy was in such a bad shape, and its deficit on the balance of payments was so high, the
Netherlands profited considerably from the European Recovery Program, as it was offi-
cially called. It was an attempt to link these two fates: oversupply of goods in the
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United States versus the scarcity at the other side of the Atlantic. Similarly, the post-war
years were very different too: the United States rapidly moved into “mass consump-
tion” during the 1950s, while the Netherlands and other European nations, although
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they recovered very successfully, did not enter a phase of mass consumerism until the
1960s. Due to the big gap between the two regions, Europe tried to emulate the Amer-
ican example in almost all fields: technology, management ideas and marketing skills,
all were eagerly adopted from the other side of the Atlantic. The American challenge
was also taken up in the political field: European countries – sometimes gently induced
by the United States – began to cooperate more intensely, which ultimately resulted,
amongst others, in the present European Union.
During the 1950s and the 1960s the gap declined sharply: Europe was catching up,
partly by copying and adapting the technologies developed in the United States. But
Europe also did things in its own way: it expanded its welfare state dramatically – the
Netherlands took the lead in this process in the 1960s and 1970s. During the golden
years before 1973, the view developed – thanks to the ideas of economist John Maynard
Keynes – that growth could permanently be secured by, on the one hand, the welfare
state, which would stabilize the economy because people would not lose their income
when unemployed, and on the other hand by a better management of the demand side
of economy (via Keynesian budget policies). As a result, politicians thought that taxa-
tion and real wages could be increased almost without limits. The general euphoria was
further stimulated by the discovery of rich fields of natural gas in the north of the
country, which meant a tremendous boom to the Dutch economy. The expectation of
endless growth ended suddenly in the 1970s. Due to high inflation, high wage costs,
high levels of taxation, and, as a result of all this, low profits for enterprises, a period
of slow growth began. Unemployment – which had been close to zero in the 1960s –
increased again and many workers retired early or moved to other forms of welfare.
The economy only recovered very slowly.
Again, during the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, the United
States was considered exemplary. Here, the “Third Industrial Revolution” began – the
revolution of information technology, personal computers and the internet. American
companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Intel and Google took the lead, and European firms
found it difficult to emulate their example. Philips – one of the few electronics com-
panies that survived the onslaught of Japanese competition in the 1970s and 1980s –
was only moderately successful in this, and after 2000 decided to move into other direc-
tions, such as lighting and medical equipment. The gap between the Netherlands and
Western Europe in general on the one hand and the United States on the other
remained more or less constant in these years. Although the difference in productivity
had been relatively small since the 1970s, the gap remained because Europeans pre-
ferred to work less hours – they enjoy longer holidays, but also have more people
dependent on unemployment and disability benefits (WW and WAO). The relatively
well-developed welfare state meant that inequality did not increase significantly
during these years, whereas in the United States and in the United Kingdom income
differences grew very rapidly.
What is equally striking about the graph is, of course, the consistent increase in
income levels. The Gross Domestic Product per capita increased by a factor of almost
seven between 1900 and 2006, which meant that, on average, the Dutch can now buy
about seven times the number of consumption goods that our (great)grandparents had
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at their disposal when they were young. This process of “modern economic growth,”
which began during the Industrial Revolution, was accompanied by structural changes
in the economy. The agricultural sector declined rapidly, even though the Netherlands
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had already since the seventeenth century been a predominantly urban and service
oriented society, whereas at the same time the industrial sector expanded and large
industrial companies emerged. After the process of industrialization came to a halt
around 1960, it was the service sector that grew most rapidly: new employment
emerged in such sectors as education, medical services, government, banking, insur-
ance and tourism. Industrial products were increasingly imported from “low wage
economies” – Japan at first, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia later on, and most recently, main-
land China.
At the same time, a process of globalization occurred, although this was much less
of a change for a small and open economy such as the Netherlands than for large and
closed economies such as the United States. International capital markets expanded
dramatically and – until very recently – firms operated increasingly on a global scale
and were constantly involved in “restructuring” their activities. Much employment
moved from the West to East or South Asia. Yet, in spite of globalization, national
economies continued to have their own development paths; the Dutch poldermodel is a
good example of such a national turn in the phase of globalization.
Royal Dutch Shell:

Corporate Legacy of Colonialism
One of the distinctive features of the Netherlands in the centuries before 1949
was its huge colonial empire, which consisted mainly of present day Indonesia,
then called the Netherlands East Indies. This comparatively huge colony – with
a population many times that of the Netherlands itself – contributed much to
the economic development of its “mother country” (although it is a slightly
more complex question whether Indonesia also profited from being a colony).
Part of this legacy is, arguably, one of the most successful companies of the
twentieth century, Royal Dutch Shell. In 1907 this company was established as
a result of a merger between Royal Dutch, a Dutch-owned company with large
oil concessions in Indonesia (mainly on Sumatra), and the “Shell” Transport
and Trading Company, a British company with oil possessions in the same
colony, but on another island, Kalimantan. Since Royal Dutch acquired a 60
percent share in the new company they tended to see it as a “Dutch” company.
Because it mainly used the brand of Shell in its marketing, the British could
likewise see it as “their” business. When its American subsidiary became larger
and larger, and also started to sell its own shares on the New York stock ex-
change, it adapted so well to the United States that it was often also consid-
ered to be an American company.
From small beginnings – the two companies that merged in 1907 were
set up in 1890 and 1898 as relatively modest businesses – Royal Dutch Shell
became the main challenger of the biggest company on earth, Standard Oil
Company and Trust, the corporate empire of John D. Rockefeller and his asso-
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ciates. It was relatively successful, also because anti-trust legislation in the

United States led to the partition of Standard Oil in a number of different com-
panies (in 1911). After 1907 Royal Dutch Shell rapidly spread its activities from
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Indonesia to all other continents, bought oil concessions in the United States,
Russia, Romania, Venezuela, and Egypt (before 1914), and set up marketing
organizations in all parts of the world (including China, India, and Africa).
Between 1907 and the mid-1920s it became the largest oil company in the
world, with a truly global presence. Afterwards, competition with Standard Oil
of New Jersey increased again, and the two companies continued to battle
over the dominance in the oil industry in different parts of the world.
For a small country like the Netherlands, Shell (as it usually is known) was
really a huge company. During the two world wars tensions within the com-
pany surfaced, but somehow the management teams that controlled it were
able to keep things together. In more recent times Shell caught the attention
of the world by being involved in Third World conflicts (in Nigeria, Zimbabwe
and South-Africa), or by policies which were considered not to be very environ-
mentally friendly (such as the “dumping” of the oil storage buoy Brent Spar).
The Dutch still own a relatively large portion of its shares, its international
headquarters is in The Hague, and it still has a large impact on – for example –
Research and Development that is carried out here. In these respects it is still
one of the most visible legacies of the colonial past of the Netherlands.
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The Poldermodel
Growth and structural change were normal features of the Western European
economies in the twentieth century. But in some respects the Dutch economy was dif-
ferent. In the 1990s economists and sociologists began to develop the idea that there
are various roads to economic modernity, and that economies can be organized in dif-
ferent ways, reflecting the institutions and cultural values of these societies. They argue
that markets and the actors in those markets – such as firms, unions, and the state – are
embedded in the culture of their society. A labor market in Indonesia is different from
one in the Netherlands, and the same applies to the way in which business is organized,
the state intervenes in the economy or trade unions play their role. Within the “devel-
oped” world, two major types of “business systems” have been distinguished. Continen-
tal Europe generally has the coordinated market economies (CME), of which Germany is
perhaps the best example. They contrast with the liberal market economies of the Anglo-
Saxon world. In the CME’s of Western Europe the state plays a large role in the econ-
omy, trade unions are also quite important, and banks and companies engage in long-
term relationships. The stock market, on the other hand, is much less important than
in the Anglo-Saxon world.
The Netherlands is an example of a CME with some peculiar sets of institutions
and values. The concept of the poldermodel is often used to typify the special features of
this economy. What is the poldermodel? The most heroic, but historically disputed inter-
pretation of this concept is that the Dutch, in their incessant battle against the water,
set up their own institutions, the water boards (waterschappen), to cope with the
management of water. Because of the vital and comprehensive nature of the problem
– every citizen had a clear interest in keeping the water out – relatively democratic
institutions developed already during the Middle Ages to handle this. Farmers with
land in the polders convened at meetings where they discussed the problems that had
to be solved and tried to make decisions on the basis of consensus, and where they
elected the managers of these polders that had to execute the decisions made. As a re-
sult, a bottom-up process of democratic decision making emerged, based on meetings
and elections, which was – so the story goes – to form the basis for the political system
of the country. The fact that the Dutch still convene in many a meeting, that decision
making is still largely based on consensus and compromise, and that trade unions,
employers organizations and the state still attempt to monitor the economy in this
collective fashion – all these facts are explained with reference to these medieval roots.
Historians do not completely agree on this picture, however. There is some debate
about the question how democratic these polders actually were in the Middle Ages.
More importantly, it is not clear how to link these institutions of water management to
current political traditions. Probably there is a much stronger tradition in “democratic”
decision making related to the governing politics of the cities that emerged in the same
period. The Netherlands from early on was also a heavily urbanized country – in par-
ticular the west – and the urban communities that arose in the Middle Ages were
governed in a similar way. Moreover, they continued to dominate Dutch political life in
the early modern period, and produced the urban bourgeoisie that was the backbone of
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Dutch politics from the sixteenth century onwards. The “poldermodel” therefore may
well have originated in the medieval citizenship of Dutch cities rather than in its water
boards.
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The way in which the poldermodel has been reinvented as an idea in the 1980s and 1990s,
refers to only a small – yet strategically important – part of the governance of the econ-
omy. In the 1970s, similar to the rest of Western Europe, the Dutch economy went
through a difficult period: unemployment increased, wages and taxes were probably
too high, and profits too low. Although trade unions were initially not eager to change
this situation of high wages, they gradually became convinced that something had to
be changed. Their power was undermined because they were losing members as a result
of growing industrial unemployment, and the Central Planning Bureau (CPB, a
government agency that published analyses of the causes of the economic problems),
managed to convince the unions that wage costs were too high.
To meet these economic challenges, the government, the trade unions and the em-
ployers’ organizations reached the famous Wassenaar Agreement in 1982. The unions
now agreed to moderate the demand for wage increases, the employers promised to
shorten the workweek to stem the tide of rising unemployment, and the government
agreed not to interfere with the new compromise. From 1982 onwards this policy of
wage moderation was successfully implemented. Wage costs increased much less than
elsewhere in Western Europe, in particular compared to Germany, and this strongly in-
creased Dutch competitiveness in comparison with its major trading partners, again,
especially compared to Germany, its most important neighbor.
As a result, employment increased rapidly from the early 1980s onwards, particu-
larly in the new service industries that became increasingly important in these years.
Also, the unions agreed on various measures which improved the flexibility of labor
markets such as stimulating part-time work and an increasing role played by temp
agencies. At the same time, the various Dutch governments were quite successful in
lowering taxes and achieving a gradual liberalization of the economy – very similar to
what was happening in Great Britain and in the United States at the same time. In
short, due to the cooperation between the three “social partners” – trade unions, em-
ployer’s organizations and the government – the Netherlands was quite successful in
adapting to the changed conditions of the 1980s and 1990s, to the “post-industrial
society” and the age of globalization.
This all sounds too good to be true perhaps – and there are of course disadvantages
of the poldermodel as well. It has been pointed out that an advanced country such as the
Netherlands should not compete with low wage costs. It cannot really compete with
countries like India and China anyway. Low wages also make industry lazy – because
there is insufficient inducement to develop labor-saving technology or new products.
More in general, given its high level of development, the Netherlands should concen-
trate on high-tech products based on new Research and Development (R&D), and on its
highly skilled labor. Government policies should aim at increasing R&D, which is quite
low in the Netherlands by international standards. This being said, as a solution for the
problems of the 1980s the policy of wage moderation was initially quite successful.
The Wassenaar Agreement did not come out of the blue. First of all, already in the
1950s and early 1960s a similar policy of wage moderation – again with the full cooper-
ation of the trade unions – had been carried out with the same purpose, creating full
employment and enhancing economic growth. More importantly, directly after 1945 new
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institutions had been created which facilitated the negotiations between the “social
partners” that formed the basis of the policy of wage moderation. The most important
of these institutions is the Social and Economic Council (SER), where the three parties
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meet and freely discuss all important economic and social issues. It was the SER that
laid the basis for important new agreements such as the Wassenaar Agreement. Another
innovation of the post-1945 period, initiated by Jan Tinbergen, the famous economist
and Nobel laureate, was the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (Centraal
Planbureau or CPB), initially meant as a “planning agency” to map out the recon-
struction of the economy after 1945. Its powers were rather limited however, especially
when compared with “real” planning agencies of the communist world, and it develop-
ed into a more or less independent think tank, that produces annual and even three-
monthly forecasts of the economy and “white papers” analyzing main economic issues.
The poldermodel is based on traditions of bargaining and consensus decision mak-
ing, still relevant even today. Dutch governments, for example, are always composed of
different political parties, as no single party ever has had an absolute majority in parlia-
ment. Before a coalition is formed, a number of parties have to negotiate a “coalition
agreement,” and once the coalition has been appointed, some kind of balance between
the political parties involved has to be maintained, because estranging one of them may
imply that the coalition will lose its majority support in parliament. This is just one –
albeit an important – example of the significance of bargaining in society. We see simi-
lar practices in business. Large companies in the Netherlands were usually not led by a
single Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who takes all major decisions – as is usual in the
United States – but were managed by boards of directors, teams of managers of whom
the chairman was not more than the first among equals (“primus inter pares”). This
may sometimes have delayed decision making, as consensus is needed, which means
long meetings and detailed discussions. But one can also argue that this must have en-
hanced the quality of the decisions made since they are based on more information,
coming from all managers involved. Perhaps even more important, it may have lowered
the costs of implementing these decisions, as all managers feel responsible for the deci-
sions made, and therefore more committed to the outcome of the decision
making process.
However, a tendency in the 1990s to adopt Anglo-Saxon examples has meant that
in the Netherlands the model of the all-mighty CEO has become more fashionable too.
In at least one example, the downfall of ABN-AMRO in 2008, it has been demonstrated
how risky such a strategy can be: if the CEO fails, the whole company can go down.
The 1990s not only witnessed the successes of the poldermodel – the Dutch “job
machine” became famous for producing very high levels of employment – but also
growing criticism of the poldermodel. Decision making was supposed to be very slow and
not very transparent. After all, who was really in charge of a certain firm: the chair of
the board or a team of managers? This decision-making model was therefore con-
sidered unfit for the demands of a globalizing world. With the growing power of share-
holders in the international economy – who preferred transparency – there was a grow-
ing tendency to implement aspects of the Anglo-Saxon system, both in business and in
government. One can also argue that to some extent Dutch society accommodated
these pressures in a typically Dutch way – flexibility and openness to the outside world
have also been long-standing features of the business system. It appears that the finan-
cial crisis of 2008 has put an end to this pressure to copy the “superior” American or
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British way of doing things – the future is open again.

Summing up, the development of the Dutch economy during the twentieth century
has in many ways been similar to that of Western Europe in the same period. In terms
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of growth and structural transformation it was not much unlike that of Belgium,
Germany, Denmark or the United Kingdom. Compared with the US, there was a
process of rapid catching up going on in the years 1950-1973, but since the 1970s the
differences between both sides of the Atlantic have more or less stabilized. If we dig
somewhat deeper we discover a particular business system that is unique to the Nether-
lands. It is based on old traditions – although it is still unclear if the poldermodel was
really invented in the “polder.” But this version of the coordinated market economy has
adapted successfully to the challenges of the twentieth century. New institutions were
created that facilitated cooperation between employers and trade unions both in the
post-1945 world of rapid economic recovery, and in the post-1980 period of advancing
globalization. After the crisis of 2008/2009 it appears that the world economy is going
through another phase of rapid changes – it may well be that the poldermodel will again
make it possible to adapt to these shocks too.
Further reading
Sluyterman, Kate Eveline. Dutch Enterprise in the Twentieth Century: Business Strategies in a Small Open
Economy. London: Routledge, 2005.
Visser, Jelle, and Anton van Hemerijck. A Dutch Miracle: Job Growth, Welfare Reform and Corporatism in
the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997.
Zanden, Jan Luiten van, Stephen Howarth, Joost Jonker and Kate Eveline Sluyterman. A History of
Royal Dutch Shell. 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Zanden, Jan Luiten van. The Economic History of the Netherlands in the 20th Century. London:
Routledge, 1997.
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chapter 4
Dilemmas of the
Welfare State
by lex heerma van voss
In 2007 American journalist and writer Russell Shorto settled in Amsterdam to become
Director of the John Adams Institute. Over the following months and years, he sub-
merged himself in Dutch society. Among his experiences were receiving unsolicited
payments: some €500 every quarter with the one-word explanation kinderbijslag (child
allowance). Upon first receiving this money, Shorto looked up the website of the
benefactor, the Sociale Verzekeringsbank (Social Insurance Bank), where the reason for this
financial transaction to every parent residing in the Netherlands was explained as fol-
lows: “Babies are expensive. Nappies, clothes, the pram ... all these things cost money.
The Dutch government provides for child allowance to help you with the costs of
bringing up your child.” Similar surprises continued to materialize over the subse-
quent months. At the start of a school year the Social Insurance Bank transferred €316
to his account for every schoolgoing child, to help pay for books. Other American ex-
pats who settled in Amsterdam had equally grown to appreciate Dutch social security.
Shorto’s friend Julie discovered that Dutch universal health care did not only cover the
cost of the midwife when she gave birth – at home, following Dutch tradition – but in
addition a week-long maternity assistance, as well as regular checkups at a public
health clinic. Day care for Julie’s children was subsidized, so she could afford to con-
tinue her writing career. Another friend learned to appreciate the benefits of social
housing, which allowed living in an affordable place.
Although Shorto seems to have taken a liking to the Dutch system, he realizes that
some of its features will make many foreigners view the Dutch welfare state as a form of
socialism. And at least one aspect of it seemed to confirm this. Shorto: “For the first few
months I was haunted by a number: fifty-two. It reverberated in my head; I felt myself a
prisoner trying to escape its bars. For it represents the rate at which the income I earn,
as a writer and as the director of an institute, is to be taxed.” 1
What Shorto so vividly described is the difference between the Dutch welfare state
and the arrangements he grew up with in the United States. His experiences illustrate
the well-known division between three types of welfare states that Danish welfare state
specialist Gøsta Esping-Andersen categorizes as liberal, social-democratic and conser-
vative.2
Along with for instance Australia and Canada, and in some ways also the United
Kingdom, the United States represents a typical liberal welfare state. Liberal welfare
programs are lean and avoid interference with the market. They primarily target the
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very poor. Entitlement rules are strict and to be a welfare recipient generally carries a
social stigma. Middle-class citizens cover their own risks and save for their own pen-
sions through private insurance. Hence, the liberal welfare state is relatively cheap and
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taxes can be low. However, the resulting transfer from rich to poor is limited, and
differences in income between these two groups remain substantial.
Social-democratic welfare states, such as found in Scandinavia, are so termed by
Esping-Andersen because social-democratic parties took the lead in establishing them.

However, since they did so in cooperation with farmers’ parties, more than lower-class
interests are taken into account. Hence, recipients include the middle classes. As en-
titlement is nearly universal, receiving a welfare payment does not necessarily carry a
stigma. As everyone is entitled to relatively high levels of welfare, market involvement
is limited and social and economic differences between citizens remain small. However,
high taxes are needed to pay for all this.
Esping-Andersen’s third category is found in continental Europe. He calls it con-
servative because rights are linked to social status, and the welfare state is used to sus-
tain distinctions, not to make them disappear. Catholic parties were often responsible
for putting this type of welfare state in place. Consequently, social security is targeted
at keeping mothers at home and hence day care, for instance, is typically under-
developed. The state aims to fund only those programs that are not already well organ-
ized by civil society. As the level of benefits is positioned between that of the two other
types, so does the tax level. The Netherlands are usually counted among the latter wel-
fare states. Yet, as the Dutch system includes some traits of the social-democratic type,
it is sometimes considered to belong in that group.
Labor Productivity: Balancing Work and Leisure

Dutch productivity per hour is among the highest in the world, but due to the
low number of working hours, Dutch productivity per work year is less impres-
sive. Long holidays and short working weeks mean that the number of working
hours a Dutch employee puts in, both during a year and during their whole
working life, is much lower than in most developed countries.
Included in the money transferred to American writer Russell Shorto’s
bank account was “vacation money.” In May his employer paid him roughly an
extra month of salary. Shorto: “This money materializes in the bank accounts
of virtually everyone in the country just before the summer holidays; you get
from your employer an amount totaling 8 percent of your annual salary, which
is meant to cover plane tickets, surfing lessons, tapas: vacations. And we aren’t
talking about a mere ‘paid vacation’ – this is on top of the salary you continue
to receive during the weeks you’re off skydiving or snorkeling.”
Labor participation is also low because many women prefer part-time
jobs, in order to combine a career with actively raising children, since – com-
pared to other Western countries – school meals, day care facilities, nannies
and au-pairs are rare in the Netherlands. Until the 1960s, married women in
the Netherlands only seldom had paid jobs. This changed from the 1970s
onwards and nowadays the Netherlands are among the leading European
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countries in female paid employment. However, many economists and polit-

icians argue women should seek out full-time jobs, both in the interest of their
careers as well as the national GDP.
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Something similar applies to retirement. In the 1980s, when unemployment
was high, schemes to enable employees to retire early were popular. For a few
decades it became possible to take early retirement from age sixty or sixty-
two. Twenty years later the problem had changed completely: in the 2000s the
Dutch feared that its ageing population would be unable to staff the economy
and pay for old age benefits. The 2008 recession allayed the fear for a shortage
of workers again.
The effect of the Dutch welfare state is that the Dutch are able to refuse
low paid jobs. This is immediately visible to anyone visiting the Netherlands.
Compared to an American restaurant, a Spanish bank or a Hungarian depart-
ment store, the Dutch equivalent is poorly staffed. As the Dutch nevertheless
eat out, do financial transactions and buy goods, these low staff levels turn up
in the economists’ statistics as high productivity per hour. The welfare state
allows the Dutch to have a
preference for paying people
to stay at home instead of
working in humble jobs. This
has become a real preference,
with many Dutch feeling ill at
ease when they are in over-
staffed banks or restaurants.
Whether it would not be bet-
ter for people to work in low
paid jobs rather than getting
paid to do nothing, is a matter
of debate.
Roots in the Golden Age

Towns intensify the problems of poverty. Rural poor are drawn to towns because they
hope to find work there, whereas family farms inherently offer opportunities to the
old and the invalid to carry out useful tasks, and produce food and shelter for family
members. By moving to a town, rural poor cut themselves off from these means of
survival and often from family ties. During the seventeenth century – its Golden Age –
the Dutch Republic already was one of the most urbanized countries in the world.
The towns had to provide other ways of taking care of the poor, the destitute and the
diseased. Whilst in small villages this was achieved informally – the rich giving alms
directly to the poor as they met each other in the street, or the village community decid-
ing how to support the poor with food or some land – more elaborate arrangements
were necessary in towns. Specialized institutions were established to take care of
impoverished subpopulations. It was not unusual for rich citizens to leave money in
their will to found almshouses around small courts (hofjes) that would house a limited
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number middle class elderly who needed support. Well into the twentieth century,
these hofjes – some six hundred were built in Dutch towns over the past centuries –
functioned exactly as intended. Currently they are sought after dwellings with a historical
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flavor and have developed into tourist attractions. For orphans and the elderly, towns
built larger institutions, which were so magnificent that they already drew tourists as
early as the seventeenth century. Even today, former poorhouses in Amsterdam are
impressive enough to serve as housing for university administrations or prestigious

museums.
All these charitable organizations were funded by a variety of sources: individuals
leaving money to charities, door-to-door collections, offertory-boxes in churches, and
money confiscated from convents and other religious institutions at the time of the
Reformation. If urban charitable institutions were short on money, the towns expected
the religious communities to take care of their needy fellow believers. This added to the
variety and quantity of institutions, as separate Protestant, Catholic and Jewish relief
agencies were established. Additionally, it was not uncommon for guilds and other pro-
fessional organizations to take care of illness and poverty among their membership.
Others copied these mutual arrangements and created separate widow funds or health
insurances, some of them as fully commercial enterprises and others non-commercial
in every sense of the word. Some of the town or religious programs distinguished be-
tween different social categories of recipients. Orphaned children of citizens were fed
and housed better than those of town inhabitants without citizen status. “Deserving”
middle-class recipients could receive relief at home, in secrecy, so the stigma of being
on the dole would be avoided. The poor from the working class would sometimes
receive relief only if they agreed to move to the poorhouse.
By the nineteenth century, this mechanism had resulted in a patchwork of welfare
institutions and arrangements. Some of the needy were able to work this system to
their advantage, receiving dole money from several charities, or even bargaining to
change from one Protestant denomination to the other if they would receive more poor
relief. Consequently, a number of proposals were put forward to streamline the system
and make relief rules more rational and uniform. However, some had a vested interest
in maintaining the system, among whom the voluntary officials of private charities and
churches who felt that they were doing an important job, or the churches that looked at
poor relief as an important service to members of their congregation and as a way to
keep their poor on the straight and narrow path. Typically, attendance at the Sunday
service was expected of those on relief. Social theorists – representing especially ortho-
dox Protestant circles, but also other churches – felt that what had developed organic-
ally in civil society was to be preferred over a system governed through state bureau-
cracy. Therefore the state was only to interfere with church or private charity when
these proved unable to take care of “their” poor.
The notion that the role of state relief should only be subsidiary to private charity
was ideosyncratic to Dutch society and was maintained as an ideal well into the twen-
tieth century. By that time essential social services, such as education, health care and
poor relief, had become so expensive that churches were no longer able to pay for them.
Yet, by public funding for private welfare arrangements, Dutch politics managed to
keep the ideal of civil society charity intact. Thus, Catholic hospitals or Protestant
schools were factually funded almost completely by the state, as long as they met
certain basic standards.
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The Dutch state preferred to act only in a subsidiary way and deliberately not only
called upon private, often denominational, organizations to execute part of the welfare
provisions, but also offered ample political room to organized employers and trade
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unions. These organizations claimed that they had a better insight in the economy and
consequently were in the best position to administer welfare funds, especially those
related to employment, which were funded by contributions from employers and
workers anyway. Consultation with all social organizations concerned, the so-called
poldermodel, became a hallmark of Dutch politics.
These ideals notwithstanding, during the first three quarters of the twentieth cen-
tury, the national state rationalized this organically grown patchwork of private chari-
ties, denominational boards, employers’ and workers’ representatives administering
funds and arrangements run by local, regional and national authorities. During the
First World War and again during the economic crisis of the 1930s, the government felt
compelled to actively interfere in an attempt to prevent the existing unemployment
relief from collapsing under extraordinary demands. Between 1945 and 1963 an exten-
sive welfare state was created. Within less than two decades, state pensions at age 65,
unemployment and disability benefits, child allowances (that so surprised Shorto) and
better health-care arrangements were put into place. The capstone of this new social
building was the General Relief Act of 1963 (Algemene Bijstandswet), which aimed at sup-
porting everyone in need but not covered by one of the other arrangements. Whereas
up until then relief had been a favor, offered by a private or denominational charity,
Dutch society now recognized that everyone, who for whatever reason was unable to
earn their own income, was entitled to an income paid by the state. The change from a
favor to a right immensely improved the position of people on relief. The minister who
introduced the General Relief Act, argued that the poor should have enough income to
“put some flowers on the table now and then.” Although especially the socialists and
Catholics were the most ardent supporters of these social programs, they could count
on broad support within Dutch society and politics.
A similar broad support for the idea that married women should stay at home
prevailed in Dutch society and politics. Compared to other countries, married women
were hardly represented on the labor market; until the 1950s, female teachers and civil
servants were even fired upon marrying, as was the norm rather than the exception in
many other jobs as well. Welfare arrangements reflected this: child allowance was
offered to support families in raising their children, but no program existed to finance
day care. Conversely, by increasing the agency of individuals to act, the welfare state
also entailed unintended side-effects. The General Relief Act of 1963 is a good example.
Previous to this Act, the lack of a regular income often discouraged women from
divorcing their husbands even in case of insurmountable marital problems, as so few
married women held paying jobs. The General Relief Act entitled women to an income,
even when their former husbands were not ruled to pay alimony. This unforeseen
consequence of the welfare state enhanced the freedom of women to file for divorce if
they wanted to.
Overall, the entitlements created by the General Relief Act were much larger than
had been anticipated. In 1965, some 140,000 people received welfare (bijstand). By 1985
this number had risen to 580,000, a more than fourfold increase in twenty years. The
spectacular growth of the Dutch economy between 1945 and 1973 allowed for a growth
of the welfare state after the introduction of the General Relief Act, creating ongoing
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improvements in social legislation until the 1970s. Programs that had originally only
been targeted at wage earners were expanded to cover all Dutch citizens. In 1960 thirty
out of every hundred people received some sort of relief. Ten years later that number
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had risen to forty-five. The expense involved had increased from 10 percent of the
national income in the 1950s to 25 percent in 1974. In the 1970s the economic down-
turn kicked in and as a result in 1980 almost seventy people were receiving some sort of
welfare support for every hundred working, and by 1990 eighty-five.

By the 1970s the welfare state was complete. But almost as soon as its construction
was finished, it came under attack. The aforementioned increase of recipients and the
percentage of the national income involved in social security led to constant debate and
permanent reconstruction, especially since the Dutch welfare state faced a number of
acute dilemmas.
Does the Welfare State Work?

In the 1980s and 1990s many economists argued in favor of trimming the welfare state,
if not abolishing it altogether. The welfare state was said to stifle “bottom-up” initia-
tives. The unemployed had no incentives to find a job or set up a business, nor were
welfare recipients inclined to improve their positions themselves, while high taxes pre-
vented businesses and the rich to spend money in the way they saw fit. All of this would
slow down economic growth. It would appear the welfare state was just a cumbersome
detour to poverty.
One way to test this assumption is to look at the overall development of the Dutch
economy and compare it with the development of a liberal welfare state. The graph in
figure 1 in the previous chapter does just that: it compares income (technically: GDP)
per capita in the Netherlands and the United States. The graph shows that income per
head in the Netherlands has almost always lagged behind that of the United States, but
also that economic growth has on the whole been very similar. The growth of the Dutch
welfare state after 1945 has not visibly constrained Dutch economic growth compared
to that in the United States.
Furthermore, the Dutch welfare state delivers. Not only to Russell Shorto’s bank
account, but also in terms of its own goals. Inequality in income was reduced. For in-
stance, comparative research conducted in the Netherlands over the 1985-1994 period
has shown that in any given year about 25 percent would fall below the poverty line
without transfers through the welfare state. Dutch welfare brought that figure down
to 5 percent. In the United States, which would have a comparable percentage of poor
people without interference, welfare only reduced this to 18 percent.3 The system was
also popular with the Dutch population. From the mid-1980s onwards and following
international trends, lower benefits and cutbacks on social security slowly reduced the
degree to which the welfare state decreased income differences in the Netherlands.
During all this time the majority of the Dutch population wanted exactly the opposite:
smaller, not larger differences between rich and poor.
In the 1980s some Dutch political philosophers predicted that the welfare state
would lead to “ego-centrism, immorality and consumerism.” In fact, this is not what
has happened. The majority of the Dutch continue to cherish a strong work ethic. They
prefer work over relief and think that those on welfare should try to find a job. This
consensus includes the recipients of welfare themselves. Only elderly unemployed with
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little schooling consider attempts to get a job a waste of time. For this particular group,
this attitude is a sign of realism, rather than a lack of work ethic.
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Pensions: Well-Deserved and Well-Funded
Dutch pensions are funded in three tiers. Every Dutch citizen is entitled to
basic AOW, an acronym which stands for Algemene Ouderdomswet or General
Pensions Act, but has come to be a shorthand for retirement pay. Old-age pen-
sions for all citizens over sixty-five were introduced in 1947, a feat perennially
linked to the name of the minister of Social Affairs, Willem Drees, a social
democrat. It is paid from tax money: those currently working pay for those
currently retired. If a couple lives together, both receive 50 percent of the net
minimum wage. An individual old age pensioner receives 70 percent. In 2014
this was €1,100 per month. From 2014 the retirement age will be raised by a
couple of months every year, to take into account the rise of life expectancy.
A majority of the people
who retire receive a pension
in addition to the AOW. Some
pension funds cover a branch
of the economy, others are
limited to the employees of one
large firm. Pensions are saved
throughout a working career.
Pension funds raise total retire-
ment pay to 70 percent of the
average wage earned over one’s
working life. In 2008, the Dutch
pension funds together held
some €700 billion.
This immense amount of capital means that Dutch pensions are among
the most solidly financed in the world. In 2011, the capital of the Dutch pension
funds equaled some 135 percent of GDP, compared to 95 percent in the United
Kingdom, 25 percent in Germany or less than 1 percent in France.4 From the
1990s onwards, pension funds tried to raise their income by investing more
in stocks, which made them more vulnerable to market downturns. In the
2008/2009 credit crunch they lost considerable sums and many fell below the
level to which their expected claims should be covered by their capital. As a
result, some pensions had to be lowered.
About 50 percent of the money paid out as Dutch pensions are AOW-pay-
ments, 45 percent is paid out by pension funds. The remaining 5 percent are
individual private investments. These have grown over the last decades, as
many foresee that old age entitlements will dwindle. A strong point of the cur-
rent Dutch system is that it predicts pension levels. This frees the individual
from worrying over his or her investments, but of course it only transfers this
worry to the pension funds.
The pension system is a prime target for welfare state reform. Raising the
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mandatory retirement age will make it easier to finance pensions, and at the
same time increases the number of people working and thus paying taxes and
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social insurance premiums. With that in mind, from the turn of the century the
government has struck down measures that promoted saving up money to
finance early retirement. From 2014 the retirement age in the Netherlands will
go up by a couple of months each year. Another measure that has been debated
over the past years is making the retired pay more taxes. However, most politi-
cal parties are weary of proposing this, fearing that they may chase away the
elderly, who are an increasing percentage of the electorate.
Costs and Management

This rosy picture, however, should not detract from the fact that there are real dilem-
mas. One is associated with the costs of a welfare state. As already argued, the Dutch
are essentially willing to shoulder the costs of their welfare state. But even so, paying
too much for welfare could be detrimental. In the 1980s the debate focused on the
“wedge” between income before and after taxes. If employers and workers have to fork
up the costs of social insurance, the wedge might become too large and production
could be transferred to countries with smaller wedges, and therefore smaller gross
wage costs.
One prominent example is the contribution to the disability insurance. When the
Work-Disability Insurance Act (Wet op de Arbeidsongeschiktheidsverzekering, WAO) was
introduced in 1967, the premium added just over 4 percent to what companies paid in
wages, but this had risen to more than 20 percent by 1983. Why did the disability insur-
ance grow so much? The WAO was administered in each branch by a bipartite indus-
trial insurance board (bedrijfsvereniging), in which trade unions and the employers were
represented. If there was a groundbreaking decision on eligibility to be made, it was
referred to a committee of representatives of these organizations. There were good
grounds for this procedure. The funds had been raised by workers and employers. The
organizations simply represented their members by administering their money, as they
represented them in many other ways. Furthermore, the representatives were knowl-
edgeable about work in their branches and thus considered themselves to be in a good
position to judge which handicaps prevented workers from making a living in their
branch of industry.
However, they had also other interests to look after. By the 1980s, the Dutch econ-
omy had been hit by two oil crises, and unemployment was on the rise. In several ways
it was more attractive for workers to get disability relief than to be put on unemploy-
ment relief. Disability pensions were somewhat higher and unemployed workers were
supposed to find a new job. The representatives of workers and employers often were
able to strike a deal by which older and superfluous workers received WAO benefits.
The industrial insurance boards were very efficient in remitting the right amount to
the right bank accounts every month, and they never had to bother about getting their
clients back to work. As a result, by the early 1980s, the number of people on disability
pensions threatened to reach one million. Politicians were worried about the costs of
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the welfare state. Relief payments were cut back. The industrial insurance boards were
held accountable for the fact that they had never worried about the number of people on
relief. In fact, nobody had ever asked them to do so.
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This situation was not unique to the Dutch welfare state, even if industrial insurance
boards represent a rather Dutch institution. At the same time that the Dutch had many
people on disability pensions, the Belgians had as many on unemployment relief, and
the Danish and the British on poor relief. In each country unemployment was met by
the kind of relief that offered the best deal in the respective welfare system. In the
Netherlands, a parliamentary committee concluded that the social partners had used
the disability pensions improperly. Consequently, new principles for the administra-
tion of social insurances were laid down by law in 1995. The implementation of social
security and monitoring the system were separated. Workers’ and employers’ organiza-
tions were kept at a distance. In 2005 the WAO was replaced by a more restrictive sys-
tem which paid benefits to disabled workers depending on their “earning capacity,” the
degree to which they were able to work (Wet Werk en Inkomen naar Arbeidsvermogen, WIA).
Recurring economic crises and the desire to bring down the volume of welfare entitle-
ments led to similar changes elsewhere. Poor relief payments were cut back and muni-
cipalities were made responsible for deciding whether, out of their budget, individual
welfare recipients were eligible to additional payments. Businesses were made to pay
sickness benefit partly out of their own pockets, so as to stimulate them to check
whether they could encourage their employees to return to their jobs. Health care in-
surance was revamped to stimulate competition between insurance companies, which
at the same time were obliged to offer all Dutch citizens a basic insurance package at an
affordable rate. Individual citizens were given the option to shoulder more risk them-
selves, against a lower premium.
In fact, the ongoing restructuring of the welfare state invariably revolves around a
small set of undesirable outcomes that are to be avoided. It may be cost-effective to
offer insurance on a commercial basis, but if the insurance companies turn away the
“bad risks” social insurance will become even more unaffordable to those who need it
most. A system run by a state bureaucracy may lead to too much red tape, which makes
it more expensive. If the system is run by the people who are most directly involved,
they may use it in a way that is comfortable to their constituency, but costly to the econ-
omy as a whole. So far the solution is that all parties will continue to have some role, so
as to create checks and balances.
The immediate outcome of the restructuring of the Dutch welfare state seems to be
positive. Low wage demands from the trade unions after 1982 restored the position of
the Netherlands on international markets. With this economic tail wind, employment
soared and the share of people on relief fell correspondingly. In 1982 the Dutch were
near the top of European nations in spending on social security, and in the percentage
of people on relief. By 1998 the Netherlands had descended to the European average.
There were a few drawbacks as well. As welfare payments failed to keep up with infla-
tion, the gap between rich and poor – which had grown smaller for decades – started to
grow again. The Dutch complained about appalling conditions in old people’s homes
and dirty toilets in schools. But on the whole, the system held well.
Long-Term Dilemmas
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Although the Dutch welfare state seems to be doing fairly well at the moment, there are
problems looming ahead. The openness of Dutch society and economy to European
measures and to economic globalization are potential threats to the system. A particular
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problem is ageing: the percentage of the population over sixty-five will increase, as
women give birth later, fewer children are born and people live longer. Today, for every
person of sixty-five and older the Dutch population counts about four people in the age
bracket 20-64, who must earn an income and pay for the pensions of the elderly, or take
care of the pensioner’s health and other needs. Around 2060 there will be only two left
to work and pay for every pensioner. From 2014 the Dutch try to counter this problem
by gradually raising the retirement age.
But long before that date, the Dutch welfare system will be subjected to another
severe test. The economic crisis in the early twenty-first century tested it and made the
long-term sustainability of the system a pressing concern. In fact, with its historical
roots in the crisis of the 1930s, this test was exactly what the system was designed for.
Although the system withstood the test, it changed some minds. Now unemployment
seemed a larger problem than urging women and seniors to participate on the labor
market. Pensions were lowered and the retirement age was raised. After cuts on day
care, the Shorto’s may no longer qualify. But even if it is continually being trimmed, the
Dutch welfare state will remain for the foreseeable future a welcome surprise to visitors
like Russell Shorto.
Further Reading
Gier, Erik de, Abram de Swaan and Machteld Ooijens, eds. Dutch Welfare Reform in an Expanding
Europe: The Neighbors’ View. Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 2005.
Mooij, Ruud de. Reinventing the Welfare State. The Hague: CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic
Policy Analysis, 2006.
Swaan, Abram de. In Care of the State: Health Care, Education and Welfare in Europe and the USA in the
Modern Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Visser, Jelle and Anton Hemerijck. “A Dutch Miracle”: Job Growth, Welfare Reform and Corporatism in
the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997.
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chapter 5
Randstad Holland
by ben de pater and rob van der vaart
Some 40 percent of the Dutch population and almost 50 percent of the jobs are concen-
trated in an area that is about 20 percent of the national land surface: the urbanized
ring connecting the four largest cities of Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, and
Utrecht, located in the three provinces North-Holland, South-Holland and Utrecht.
Without any doubt “Randstad Holland” (literally: “Rim City” or “City on the Edge”), as
this area is called, is the country’s core region.1 The image of this area as the center is re-
inforced by the common international practice to use “Holland,” the name of the
largest two provinces in the Randstad, as an equivalent for the Netherlands.
The economic, political and cultural dominance that this part of the Netherlands
has exerted for more than four centuries has manifested itself in a variety of domains.
The standardized language that is now spoken in the Netherlands originated in
Holland and gradually became the official language over the last two hundred years.
This powerful Randstad, which not only dominates the Netherlands but is also one of
the largest conurbations in Europe, justifies special attention in this chapter.
Urban Demography
A topographical map of the Netherlands from around 1900 shows an empty and
scarcely populated country where only about five million inhabitants lived. It shows
vast stretches of uncultivated land, innumerable and generally tiny fields and mead-
ows, many unpaved roads, here and there a railway or a canal, and many small villages.
Cities are compact and relatively far apart, mostly of the same size they had two hun-
dred years earlier.
Around 1900 the Randstad as we know it today was in fact non-existent. The cities
of Holland had been the largest cities of the country since the Golden Age, but they
were modest in size and wide apart. Only Amsterdam was an exception: with about half
a million inhabitants in 1900, it was much bigger than the numbers two, three and four
on the ranking list: Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht. Table 1 shows that the top-
four has not changed in order since then, although Amsterdam is not as advanced as it
once was. Rotterdam has benefited from its excellent water-connections with the fast-
industrializing Ruhr region in Germany and has become a globally important harbor.
With the seat of the government, The Hague also grew fast, due to the rapidly growing
number of civil servants in a modernizing and expanding state system. Many retiring
people, returned from colonial service, chose to live in The Hague as well. Utrecht ben-
efited from its central location and its improving connections in all directions by water,
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road and rail. As important location for many factories, offices and institutions, Utrecht,
too, experienced considerable population growth after 1900.
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ranking inhabitants ranking inhabitants ranking inhabitants
1795 1795 1899 1899 2000 2000
1 Amsterdam 221 1 Amsterdam 511 1 Amsterdam 1003

2 Rotterdam 57 2 Rotterdam 320 2 Rotterdam 990
3 The Hague 38 3 The Hague 206 3 The Hague 610
4 Leiden 31 4 Utrecht 102 4 Utrecht 366
5 Utrecht 31 5 Groningen 67 5 Eindhoven 302
6 Groningen 23 6 Haarlem 64 6 Leiden 250
7 Haarlem 21 7 Arnhem 57 7 Dordrecht 241
8 Dordrecht 18 8 Leiden 54 8 Heerlen 218
9 Maastricht 18 9 Nijmegen 43 9 Tilburg 215
10 Delft 14 10 Tilburg 41 10 Groningen 192
table 1 – the ten largest cities of the netherlands in terms of population (x 1,000)
1795, 1899, 2000
Data: Central Bureau of Statistics. Municipal data for 1795 and 1899; urban agglomeration data for 2000
– agglomerations are defined as central city plus adjacent urbanized municipalities.
Amsterdam may have remained the largest Dutch city, but in a European context it has
clearly lost position. Still the fourth largest European city in 1750 (after London, Paris
and Naples), it slid to a sixteenth position in 1850 and even a twenty-fifth position in
1950.
The Amsterdam Canal Ring:

Urban Heritage of the Golden Age
The semi-circular canals Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prinsengracht, in the
center of today’s Amsterdam, are easily recognizable on the city map. This
canal ring is a fine example of Dutch urban design of the seventeenth century.
In 2008, the government nominated the canal ring for the UNESCO-World
Heritage status as “an international icon of urban architecture.” The canal ring
is part of the city’s response to the need for urban expansion and development,
during a phase of massive immigration, housing shortages and lack of urban
space.
Already at the end of the sixteenth century, the urban government hesi-
tantly took its first steps towards urban expansion. But large-scale develop-
ment only started in 1613, following a master plan that had been designed by
the town carpenter, Hendrick Jacobszoon Staets, and approved by all layers of
government: urban, regional, Republic. The master plan took all conceivable
aspects into account: dispossession and repossession of land, expansion of the
urban defenses, financing, a geographical separation of functions in the newly
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developed urban zones, aesthetic principles of design.

The above-mentioned canals – in fact their western sections up to the
current Leidsegracht – were part of the plan and designed as a residential zone
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for the well-to-do. Port expansion, on three rectangular islands to the west,
and a new popular housing and artisan district (Jordaan) were other elements
of the master plan. All these elements were realized, but within forty years it
became evident that further expansion was needed.

Between 1656 and 1662, a further extension of the canal ring towards the
east took place, among the same circular lines, to the other side of the river
Amstel. It was in this zone that some of the most grandiose canal houses were
built. The so-called “Golden Bend” of one of the canals, Herengracht (the sec-
tion between Leidsestraat and Vijzelstraat), is probably the best example of
the wealth that had been accumulating in the city during the Golden Age of
Dutch hegemony in colonial trade. Large houses, in fact urban palaces, line up
along this section of Herengracht, built by rich merchants, bankers, patricians,
and other wealthy inhabitants. However, during this new phase of urban
development it became evident that Holland’s trade hegemony was in decline.
Economic development slowed down and some of the new urban spaces
remained underdeveloped till well into the nineteenth century.
The canal ring today not only demonstrates the urban wealth of the
seventeenth century. Since the “grachtengordel” has also become a desirable
residence area for Dutch celebrities from the world of art and politics, it is
among the Dutch public sometimes known as a symbol of intellectual preten-
tiousness. However, to the observer, it first and foremost exemplifies typical
Dutch urbanism – the omnipresence of water, relatively small-scale develop-
ment, and the sight of bicycles everywhere.
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In 1900 the population density of the cities of Holland was very high. Inconveniences
such as noise and smell pollution were an accepted fact of urban life, particularly dur-
ing the summer. As a result, the wealthier urban classes started to move to villages in
the surrounding countryside, where more spacious dwellings were constructed in a

green and pleasant environment. These migrants were in fact the first commuters:
wealthy people from Amsterdam, for example, living in villa villages in the forest area
of “Het Gooi” (to the southeast of Amsterdam) and using the train or streetcar to get to
their work in Amsterdam. Initially, these urban classes used their suburban homes only
during the summer, but gradually it became more common to live in the countryside
throughout the year. Such suburbanization is a phenomenon that gained enormous
dimensions during the twentieth century.
The cities of Holland not only expanded, but urban density decreased simultan-
eously. The use of space gradually became less intensive. In 1850 the nine largest cities
of what we now call Randstad had an average population density of 21,600 inhabitants
per square kilometer.3 By 1940 the average density had declined to 11,800 inhabitants
per square kilometer, and the figure continued to go down to 7,100 in 1970 and 4,600
in the year 2000. The built-up surface of these nine cities multiplied by a factor twenty-
two between 1850 and 2000, whereas the population of these cities only grew by a factor
4.6. Today the urban density of the cities of Holland is still very high in comparison
with, for example, the urban zones in the southwest of the United States. But Holland’s
urban population density of around 1850 was at the same level as in many cities of
China today, or cities of what is still often called the “third world.”
The long-term population growth of the three provinces in which the Randstad is
located (North-Holland, South-Holland, and Utrecht) shows the combined effect of urban-
ization and suburbanization. These provinces had 1.2 million inhabitants in 1850 (or 39
percent of the national population) and seven million inhabitants in 2000 (44 percent of
the national population) – an increase of almost a factor six over one and a half century.4
This is the result of a concentration process in the distribution of the national
population, with the Randstad gaining population and other parts of the country losing
inhabitants in relative terms. The regions commonly called “the North,” (provinces of
Groningen, Friesland, and Drenthe) and the Southwest (province of Zeeland) lost pos-
ition throughout this period. They jointly housed 22 percent of the Dutch population
in 1850 (0.7 million people) and only 13 percent of the population in the year 2000 (two
million inhabitants). More than before, these regions are now the periphery of the
Netherlands, with population densities that are relatively low for Dutch standards
(approximately two hundred inhabitants per square kilometer), an ageing population,
few employment opportunities, and a surplus of out-migration. Until the late 1950s,
mainly unemployed farm laborers moved from the periphery to the West; nowadays,
many well-educated young people move to the Randstad area where most knowledge-
intensive economic activities are located. In reaction to this concentration trend, the
provinces of the North and Southwest try to create counter-images of the hectic, expen-
sive and overcrowded Randstad and present themselves as places of leisure and open
space, thus trying to attract new inhabitants.
It should be remarked here that extensive and languishing peripheries do not exist
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in the Netherlands. In terms of scale and intensity of periphery problems, no Dutch

region compares to places such as the Scottish Highlands, the north of Scandinavia,
inland Spain, Southern Italy or many Eastern European regions.
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The two other parts of the country, “the South” (provinces of North-Brabant and
Limburg) and “the East” (provinces of Gelderland, Overijssel, and Flevoland), have
maintained their relative position quite well. Together, they housed 39 percent of the
national population in 1850 and 43 percent in the year 2000. During the late nine-
teenth and particularly the early twentieth century, it was mainly the process of indus-
trialization that explains the relative demographic vitality of these regions. Many
textile factories, attracted by the relatively low wages, were located in the cities of the
East (in Twente) and the South (Tilburg, Helmond). The city of Eindhoven experienced
rapid population growth thanks to the employment provided by electronics company
Philips. The coalmines in the south of Limburg caused Heerlen to develop into a
genuine coal city. The new industrial cities of the east and south attracted many
migrants from the surrounding countryside as well as from other parts of the country.
During the 1920s, for example, the lamp or radio factories of Philips actively attracted
hundreds of families from the northern province of Drenthe. Miners from surrounding
countries came to the newly established coalmines of southern Limburg. International
labor migration to the industrial centers became more common in the 1960s, as was the
case in all Western European countries, with the influx of so-called “guest-workers,”
originally from countries such as Spain and Italy and later from Turkey and Morocco.
Nowadays it is no longer industrialization that explains population growth in the
east and south of the country. Substantial parts of these regions are now within the
sphere of influence of the expanding Randstad. Families as well as companies move
away from the expensive and crowded Randstad area, and try to escape from its traffic
jams and lack of space. By settling down in adjacent regions of North-Brabant,
Gelderland, or Flevoland, these families and businesses may still enjoy the benefits of
relative proximity to metropolitan facilities and services, while escaping from the dis-
advantages of agglomeration. As a result, the Randstad is expanding towards the south
and east, mainly along the motorway corridors with new industrial estates and busi-
ness parks. This trend is visible along all main transportation axes: south of Rotterdam
towards Breda, east and southeast of Utrecht towards Arnhem and Den Bosch, or
northeast of Amersfoort in the direction of Zwolle. Increasingly, these motorways are
flanked by businesses with a “sight location”: visible from the motorway and easily
accessible by car rather than by public transportation.
Already during the 1980s, regional planners invented the term “Central Nether-
lands Urban Ring” as a proxy for the expanding Randstad. It is easy to identify this
urban “ring” on a map: if we start in the east (Arnhem and Nijmegen) and proceed anti-
clockwise, we see an oval of cities: Utrecht, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Leiden, The Hague,
Rotterdam, Dordrecht, Breda, Eindhoven, and back to our starting point. The concept
of a Central Netherlands Urban Ring has fallen into disuse, but the U-shaped and pro-
longed urban zone of the Netherlands has become more of a reality.
Suburbanization and urban expansion were not the only reason for the declining
urban densities in the west. Falling birth rates contributed as well: the average number
of persons per household and per house decreased dramatically. But the decline of
densities and the expansion of urban space were accompanied by another important
process: the geographical separation of functions. Around 1900 a spatial mix of hous-
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ing and work was still the norm, with wealthy commuters as the only exception.
Although the larger cities had streetcars and more and more people could afford a
bicycle, the vast majority of the urban population walked to the workplace. For many
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The Randstad in 2000
74
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urban dwellers workplace and home were the same: artisans usually lived behind their
workshop; maids and servants, still numerous in those days, slept in modest rooms in
the attic of the house of their employers.
But gradually society became more mobile, which facilitated the geographical sep-
aration of functions. Factories, causing inconveniences such as noise and air pollution,
moved to industrial zones at the city-borders. In many new housing areas the only non-
residential functions allowed were retail functions. Separation of housing, work and
leisure became the creed of urban and regional planners, a professional group of civil
servants that gained considerable power over urban development. Motorways, public
transportation, and bicycle lanes connected the geographically separated new housing
zones, employment areas, and leisure zones. Distances from home to work increased.
The number of commuters grew spectacularly. In 1928, only 5 percent of the working
population was commuting. In 1947 it was 15 percent, in 1971 37 percent. In 1986 over
half the national working population (52 percent) was commuting and since then the
figure has gone up even more.
Urban expansion and declining urban density, a separation of functions and in-
creased geographical mobility: the figures are quite revealing. In 1900, a Dutch citizen
traveled about 1,000 kilometers per year on average, mainly on foot. Nowadays, a
citizen covers 12,000 kilometers, mainly by car. The modern map of the Randstad
reflects this rise in mobility – a striking contrast to the situation around 1900.
The Port of Rotterdam:

Logistical Hub of Europe
The port of Rotterdam, one of the largest in the world, is a major gateway to
Europe for global trade and the most important window to the world for
European exporters. It is accessible for the largest tankers and cargo ships, and
within one-day travel distance it includes a consumer market of about one
hundred million people. The port zone stretches out over some forty kilo-
meters, from its oldest parts in the heart of Rotterdam to its newest zones that
were reclaimed from the sea.
During the phase of Dutch global trade hegemony in the late sixteenth
and first half of the seventeenth century, Rotterdam was not at all an import-
ant colonial port. It only had a modest share in colonial trade. Investors and
entrepreneurs were concentrated in Amsterdam, clearly favored for colonial
port development. This was partly caused by the fact that the accessibility of
the Rotterdam port from the sea was problematic.
The history of Rotterdam and its port goes back to around the year 1250.
In those days, a dam was constructed in the estuary of the small river Rotte, in
order to avoid salinization of the river. A small settlement developed, where
goods were loaded manually from coastal ships to riverboats and vice versa.
Later on, the settlement also increased its role as a fishery port.
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The port of Rotterdam as we know it today goes back to the second half of
the nineteenth century. The German Ruhr region began to develop as a mining
area and an industrial region. Rotterdam, well connected to the Ruhr region by
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the river Rhine, was the natural harbor for Germany’s imports and exports.
Access to open sea was greatly improved by the “New Waterway” (Nieuwe
Waterweg), a canal cutting through the dunes at Hook of Holland (Hoek van
Holland) designed by hydraulic engineer Pieter Caland. The combination of
demand and accessibility gave an enormous boost to the port.
The harbor zone was severely damaged during the Second World War; the
rebuilding of it was a top priority during the post-war reconstruction years.
Activity boomed because of European integration, economic growth during
the 1960s, and later on of course economic globalization. From a Dutch per-
spective, Rotterdam is now one of the two international hubs (together with
Schiphol Airport) that are crucial for the open national economy.
The neoliberal and highly competitive phase of globalization, that set in
during the 1980s, not only created opportunities for the port of Rotterdam, but
also many threats. Competition between ports is fierce, also within the Le
Havre (France)-Hamburg (Germany) range in northwestern Europe. In order to
remain competitive, ports need excellent and diverse hinterland connections –
by rail, road, pipeline, and water. It is therefore that the Dutch state has in-
vested heavily in the new “Betuweroute,” a freight railway connecting Rotter-
dam with Germany. It remains to be seen to what extent this railway, heavily
contested during the construction phase by action groups, environmentalists,
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planners and others, will give the port competitive edge in the future.
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Territorial Planning:
Between Vision and Reality
The Randstad was born during the twentieth century when a handful of distinct cities
was transformed into a more coherent network of agglomerations, which were con-
nected by flows of commuters, goods, and shoppers. This urban conglomerate folds
around an open zone of farmland, lakes, streams and ditches, which became known as
the “Green Heart” in the 1970s.
In the 1950s, the concept Randstad was already commonplace among planners, and
gradually, during the 1960s, the term became part of Dutch vocabulary. It was the
British geographer and planner Peter Hall who introduced the concept “Randstad
Holland” to the international academic and professional community of planners. His
famous book The World Cities (1966) includes chapters about London, Paris, Moscow,
New York, Tokyo, the Ruhr urban region, and also – much to the pleasure of the Dutch
– about Randstad Holland. He praised its unique poly-centric character: he predicted
(wrongly) that the typical problems of mono-centric world cities such as traffic jams
would not be as intense in the poly-centric Randstad with its separation of functions:
banks and culture in Amsterdam, national government and international governance
in The Hague, harbor and wholesale functions in Rotterdam. He warned against the
usurpation of the green central space by urban expansion – otherwise Randstad might
lose its unique character and become “another formless urban sprawl,” just like so
many already existing around the world.
It was certainly not the intention of the national planners to give up the Green
Heart; in fact, it was their opinion that this central green space should remain as open
as possible. In his book, Peter Hall complimented Dutch planners and politicians for
this policy intention – he felt that foreign colleagues had a lot to learn from Dutch met-
ropolitan planning. However, in practice it proved to be extremely difficult to maintain
the Green Heart as an open space. In matters where the government had a final say, the
ideal of the Green Heart indeed often had priority. One example is the decision of 1996
to construct a tunnel for the high-speed train (HSL) from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol
to Rotterdam, Brussels, and Paris, seven kilometers in length under one of the most
beautiful parts of the Green Heart, in spite of the considerable extra costs. As a result,
for the price of about 500 million euro, the open landscape between Leiderdorp and
Hazerswoude has remained undisturbed.
But at the provincial level and particularly the municipal level, many decision
makers saw no harm in, for example, residential development in the Green Heart.
Constructing new neighborhoods improved their financial position, an increasing
population was considered vital for local shops and other services, and a lack of new
dwellings could force young couples to leave. Furthermore, since detached or semi-
detached houses with a garden and a parking lot are very difficult to find in the urban
areas, the demand for houses in the nearby Green Heart was huge. Businesses were
more than willing to settle there as well, given its proximity to all major cities and
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Thus, in spite of national spatial policy goals, numerous
housing estates, office blocks, and industrial zones, with accompanying infrastructure,
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arose in the Green Heart. A good example is Hoofddorp in the Haarlemmermeer

polder: until the 1960s just a small village close to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, but
today a suburb of almost American proportions.
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The only policy area almost completely controlled by the government was the social
housing sector. Since the construction of major new development zones was primarily
financed from the national budget, national planners could enforce choices in line
with national spatial policy goals, such as sparing the Green Heart. During the 1960s,
1970s and 1980s, large-scale subsidized residential development zones were therefore
“bundled” in so-called “growth-nodes” on the outer ring of the Randstad, mostly within
twenty to thirty kilometers from the cities. This resulted in major migration flows from
the cities to the newly available residential areas, for example from Amsterdam to the
north (Purmerend, Alkmaar, Hoorn) and northeast (Almere, Lelystad). Unfortunately,
most Randstad companies and businesses were not inclined to move in the same direc-
tion. As discussed above, they preferred relocation to the centrally located Green Heart
or to the borders of the big cities. As a result, many commuters routinely drive every
workday by car from, for example, Purmerend to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, thus
contributing to the traffic jams that have become a structural and daily phenomenon –
even in the “poly-centric” Randstad.
This policy of bundling large-scale housing in “growth-nodes” has now become
planning history. Since the 1990s, large-scale housing developments are no longer
planned in municipalities perhaps fifteen to twenty kilometers away, but in locations
directly adjacent to cities. These new neighborhoods are known by the acronym
VINEX, after the governmental memorandum that instituted them.5 But not only the
location of large-scale new housing has changed over the decades, even more important
is the erosion of regulating the power of the state. In line with trends such as privatiza-
tion, deregulation and more generally a stronger reliance on “the market,” the govern-
ment has willingly reduced its role in the (social) housing sector and consequently also
lost a great deal of its power over location decisions. The largest “VINEX” neighbor-
hood now under construction is called Leidsche Rijn, directly west of Utrecht. Many of
its inhabitants work in Utrecht, or elsewhere in the Randstad area. With many of them
commuting by car, they contribute to the congestion problems that characterize the
complex urban space of Randstad.
Since many immigrants moved into the urban dwellings that were vacated by the
new suburbanites, large cities in the Randstad have become the focal points of the new
multicultural society, with all its inherent attractive and problematic aspects. While the
total number of “non-Western” immigrants in the Netherlands is about 1.8 million
(one million first generation immigrants and 0.8 million second generation immi-
grants) or about 11 percent of the national population, they make up 35 percent of the
population of the four big cities of Randstad, even forming the majority in some neigh-
borhoods.6 These “concentration neighborhoods” are mainly urban areas constructed
between 1870 and 1970 for either working classes or lower middle classes. Local
governments, believing that geographical clustering of non-Western migrant groups
hinders their integration into Dutch society, try to fight spatial segregation and
to stimulate the development of mixed neighborhoods, ethnically as well as socio-
economically. It is questionable, however, whether clustering and segregation are in-
deed a handicap to integration, since there is little empirical evidence of the relation-
ship between geographical and social segregation.7
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Between Unity and
Fragmentation
Born almost accidentally as an idea at some point during the twentieth century, the
Randstad urban area is clearly not a historically well-established region – a vernacular
region or imagined community – that its inhabitants can easily identify with, as in the
case of traditional regions such as for example Twente (in the east) or Brabant (in the
south). People living in the Randstad area may feel attachment to their city, as inhabitant
of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, or Utrecht. But there is no Randstad identification. A news-
paper called “Randstad Today” does not exist, nor a soccer club named FC Randstad,
since newspapers or sports clubs are linked to the individual cities and serve as instru-
ments for local identification. In some cases, social identification is at an even lower
level of scale: people may identify themselves as an inhabitant of Amsterdam-North or
Rotterdam-South.
Identification with a home city or local region always implies the opposition to any
other city or region: there can be no “us” without a “them.” A good example of this can
be found in a study of key actors in the Rotterdam art sector.8 These art sector profes-
sionals could only talk about their city by contrasting it to Amsterdam. In their eyes,
Amsterdam is a smug, provincial, navel-gazing city where people talk endlessly and do
not work. Rotterdam is the city of doers, of rolled-up sleeves – “no words but deeds,” as
the well-known club song of soccer club Feyenoord has it. The interviewed cultural
elite of Rotterdam apparently does not shy away from any cliché or stereotype.
The idea of a Randstad clearly does exist in the minds of people in other parts of the
country, who use it as a “them” against whom to construct their own identity. The idea
of Randstad does exist in Brabant or Limburg, for example, where the Randstad is used
for the “other,” a bastion of the cold and businesslike “Hollanders.” For many people in
the rest of the country, Randstad is the area that is consistently favored by the political
insiders in The Hague. This view seemed to be confirmed when a newspaper analyzed
the hundreds of widely publicized field trips the ministers of the new government in
2007 made to get a good notion of what was going on in Dutch society. The newspaper
showed that 70 percent of these working visits took place in the Randstad region; hardly
any ministers visited the north, Zeeland, or Limburg as regional politicians from these
“peripheries” angrily pointed out.
True enough, since the 1980s the national government has mainly supported the
economically strong regions of the country to stimulate international economic com-
petition. Traditional regional policy, based on the principle of solidarity, has largely
been taken over by the European Union. “The Hague” now mainly invests in the Rand-
stad region in order to maintain its competitive position against metropolitan centers
such as London, Paris, the Flemish cities, the Ruhr region, and Frankfurt.
If the Randstad is hardly a unity to its own inhabitants, available research also un-
dermines the idea that it is one powerful and real network city. Some experts continue
to believe that the Randstad is a unity; polycentric, but nevertheless one functional
whole and therefore comparable to mono-centric world cities. Others stress the co-
existence of two distinct and functionally quite separated urban zones: a north wing
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(Utrecht-Amsterdam-Haarlem) and a south wing (Dordrecht-Rotterdam-The Hague-

Leiden). A few go even further, and perceive the Randstad as a rather loose collection of
urban areas without much geographical coherence, citing a governmental study with
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the telling title “Many Cities Do Not Make a Randstad” that shows that only 20 percent
of Randstad inhabitants commute between distinct urban agglomerations.
There is also considerable political debate about the most desirable governance
structure for the Randstad region since the governance density of the Randstad region is
enormous, according to many even stifling. In January 2007 a blue-ribbon committee
suggested to create one regional government for the Randstad as a whole, so that it
could regain its position as a leading European urban region. Although this advice was
not realized, local and regional governments created their own plans for future govern-
ance. The provinces of North-Holland and Flevoland, together with the cities of Amster-
dam, Haarlem, and Almere, proposed to cooperate in the “Amsterdam Metropolitan
Area,” which would create an attractive, competitive and ecologically sustainable
metropolis of two million inhabitants by the year 2040. Inspired by this initiative, the
southern wing of Randstad developed a similar collaborative network, “Metropolitan
Region Rotterdam The Hague”, in which 24 municipalities participate.
These two metropolitan regions are examples of bottom-up local initiatives, in
contrast to the top-down plans of the national government. The coalition government
that came into power after the 2012 elections plans to merge the twelve provinces into
five administrative regions. The first of these five regions that should be created,
according to the responsible Minister, is the “Northern Randstad Region”, the result
of merging the provinces of North Holland, Utrecht, and Flevoland. This project is
meeting fierce resistance from the provinces. The provincial governments point out
that they play a vital role in regional economic development and territorial planning,
particularly since the abolishing of the national Ministry of Housing, Physical Plan-
ning and Environment in 2010, a decision that marked the end of a long tradition of
physical and territorial planning at national level.
History teaches us that ideals are larger than plans, and these plans again are much
larger than available financial resources. Inevitably, the real development of Randstad,
partially influenced by the private sector and by regional and local authorities, will be
quite different from the governmental intentions. A captain may be lacking on the ship,
but Randstad has lots of helmsmen and helmswomen.
Further reading
Cammen, Hans van der, ed. Four Metropolises in Western Europe: Development and Urban Planning of
London, Paris, Randstad Holland and the Ruhr Region. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1988.
Cammen, Hans van der and Len de Klerk. The Selfmade Land: Culture and Evolution of Urban and
Regional Planning in the Netherlands. Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 2012.
Feddes, Fred. A Millennium of Amsterdam: Spatial History of a Marvellous City. Bussum: Thoth, 2012.
Hall, Peter. The World Cities. Third edition. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1984.
Kleijn, Koen et al. The Canals of Amsterdam: 400 years of building, living and working. Bussum: Thoth,
2013.
Kranenburg, Ronald H. Compact Geography of the Netherlands. Utrecht: Royal Dutch Geographical
Society, 2001.
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chapter 6
Distinctive within
the Global Fold?

by paul schnabel
“When the world ends, I’ll go to the Netherlands, because there everything happens
fifty years later.” These words are attributed to the great German poet Heinrich Heine
(1797-1856), although no trace can be found of them in his work. Certainly in the first
half of the nineteenth century, however, there were grounds for this opinion. After the
spectacular prosperity of the seventeenth-century Golden Age, the Netherlands found
itself in a long period of economic, social and cultural stagnation, a predicament that
was also lamented by contemporaries. Today, as well, one frequently encounters refer-
ences in popular culture to the glorious days of the East India Company (VOC) and the
Golden Age. In an unguarded moment, a politician has even referred to “the VOC men-
tality” in urging the country to become more ambitious and internationally orientated.
In the meantime, however, the Netherlands has become a modern nation that is similar
to the surrounding countries in many respects. In which ways is the Netherlands differ-
ent from other Western countries? What makes the Netherlands distinctive, and is it
really so different from other countries?
Historical Continuity
The Netherlands was great before it was the Netherlands. It has been in existence as a
nation-state and as a kingdom for more than 200 years, yet it is difficult for the Nether-
lands to get out from under its past as the great and glorious Republic of the Seven
United Provinces. This historical self-image serves as motivation for the Netherlands to
“do better” and to show the world, once more, how a small country can be great. Entre-
preneurship, perseverance, a mercantile spirit, willingness to take risks, innovation – in
short, “guts” and “nerve” – are the qualities associated with this (and which are described
as the “VOC mentality”). And these would indeed be lacking, were it not luckily the case
that it is always possible to find shining examples of entrepreneurs and companies that
have managed to break free of the lethargy and easy comforts associated with the past.
It is true to say that the Netherlands was and is a trading country, a country of
imports and exports. After Germany, in terms of absolute value, the Netherlands has
the largest volume of exports in the European Union. In 2013 this amounted to more
than 430 billion euro worth of goods, although one should note that the value of
German exports was almost three times higher. Moreover, only half of Dutch exports
are made up of the country’s own goods; the other half consists of re-exports. Just as in
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the seventeenth century, the Netherlands also plays a key role in logistics, storage, and
trade. While the country earns less from these sectors than from its own exports, they
do provide many jobs. The Dutch are the truck drivers and the bargemen of Europe.
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At the international level, the Netherlands is one of the world’s top-ten exporting
countries (mostly ranked fifth or seventh). In terms of the absolute value of its Gross
Domestic Product (GDP), at 600 billion euro in 2013, the Netherlands is one of the top
twenty countries in the world (normally ranked sixteenth or seventeenth). All in all, the
volume of goods exported makes up more than two-thirds of the country’s GDP and
contributes approximately a third of the country’s wealth. Exports of goods (a quarter
of which goes to Germany) and services (more than 100 billion euro) are considerably
larger than imports (390 billion euro in goods and more than 90 billion in services).
In the current period of economic crisis and recession, the trade and services surplus
has only got larger; in 2013, it will be 50-60 billion euro. This is not a good sign, how-
ever, as it indicates that too little consumption and investment is taking place.
A Prosperous Country
The Netherlands is far from poor, although the public debt has almost doubled in the
last six years to 450 billion euro, and in 2013 the country’s GDP was only just back to
the 2008 level (600 billion euro). Real available income per household fell by 10 percent
between 2000 and 2012, to an average of 32,000 euro. Along with the Scandinavian
countries, the Netherlands continues to be one of the countries with the lowest levels of
income inequality, thanks in part to its progressive tax rate and well-developed social
security system. Like almost everywhere else, however, the distribution of wealth is
very imbalanced. More than 60 percent of wealth is in the hands of 10 percent of house-
holds. Two percent of households have monetary assets worth more than 1 million
euro, while 10 percent have debts that exceed the value of their possessions. A signifi-
cant share of non-private wealth lies in the hands of the pension funds, which, with an
investment portfolio worth more than 1,000 billion euro, are among the largest in the
world. Although the regulations are less favorable than they were, the Dutch pension
system is still the best in the world. Statistically, poverty in the Netherlands is thus least
prevalent among pensioners, a situation that may be unique in the history of the world.
Of the population aged over 65, only around 3 percent live on what is considered to be
a low income (around 1,000 euro per month for a single person and 1,500 euro for a
couple). Around 10 percent of adults aged under 65 have to make a living on low in-
comes.
Thanks to the welfare state, purchasing power is well distributed in the Nether-
lands, including in years of crisis. With almost 17 million consumers, however, the
domestic market is small. As a result, large national corporations such as ABN AMRO
(banking), ING (banking and insurance), Ahold (supermarket chain), and KPN (tele-
coms) have attempted to become global players, but only AkzoNobel (paint), DSM
(chemicals), Randstad (employment agency), and ASML (microelectronics) have joined
the much earlier examples of Shell, Unilever, and Philips in really succeeding in this.
The airline company KLM has become part of Air France, Hoogovens (steel) has become
part of Tata, and DAF (trucks) part of Paccar. Fokker (aircraft) and Baan (software) failed
to make it and disappeared. The same is true for the textiles factories, coal mines and
shipyards, with the exception of luxury yacht-building. For more than fifty years, the
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government and the social security system have benefitted significantly every year from
the natural gas from Groningen. Each year, this involves an amount of 12-14 billion
euro, around 5 percent of the government budget.
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Rapid Adjustments in the Economy
Over the last fifty years, the economy has seen rapid changes. Given the high price of
labor, the Netherlands has to focus on constantly improving labor productivity and on
new knowledge-intensive activities. There is still a fear of becoming a nation of “branch
offices” and subsidiaries. The port of Rotterdam and Amsterdam airport (Schiphol)
both operate on a scale that is many times greater than that needed at the domestic
level. This means that a close eye needs to be kept on the quality and price of service
provision. A large proportion of the 51 million passengers at Schiphol are in transit;
while in the port sector, Antwerp and Hamburg are Rotterdam’s key competitors.
Located close to Schiphol, Aalsmeer is home to the largest flower and plant auction in
the world (with a turnover of more than 4 billion euro). Thanks to the minimal loss of
time and quality, not only can products from the improbably large greenhouse com-
plexes in the immediate vicinity be traded here, but also flowers and plants from
Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, mostly cultivated by Dutch growers.
It is still strange to think that one of the smallest and most densely populated
countries in the world – with an average of almost 500 residents per square kilometer –
is, after the United States, the world’s largest exporter of agricultural products in terms
of value. Cheese and tulips form part of the Dutch brand and identity, but, less iconi-
cally, this is also the case for fruit and vegetables, eggs and meat, and seeds and cuttings.
In no other country in the world has homegrown, exclusive technology played such an
extensive role in shaping agriculture, horticulture, and stock breeding. Nowhere else
do adults drink as much milk, and in no other country do people buy large bunches
of flowers simply to enjoy at home. One doesn’t turn up with a single bloom in the
Netherlands; one brings at least ten, and easily twenty or more.
Agricultural production is achieved with a minimum of labor; less than 1 percent
of the labor force is employed in farming and horticulture. In the 1980s, due to the dis-
appearance of many traditional trades, the Netherlands threatened to become a country
of permanently high unemployment and low labor participation. By means of wage
restraint, specialization and increasing productivity, the downward trend has been
reversed. Eighty-five percent of men and 65 percent of women aged between 20 and 65
are in employment. These are “Scandinavian figures,” which have been put under pres-
sure by rising unemployment and the decreasing availability of work. In 2014, more
than 8 percent of the labor force was unemployed, and it is likely that there was also
hidden unemployment in the growth of the number of self-employed people without
employees (now at 750,000).
Different from Other Countries?

The Netherlands is different from neighboring countries and also unique, in many
respects, in the way its society is organized, but at the same time, the differences are
becoming smaller. The internationalization of culture, increasing individual mobility,
better education, the Americanization of science and technology, the modernization of
daily life: these are processes that are blurring the differences between countries across
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the globe. Everywhere, people are wearing the same clothes, eating the same food,
listening to the same music, driving the same cars and attached to the same comforts.
Besides this, in music, literature and cuisine, there are still individual choices and
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cherished traditions. In 2004, when the Netherlands Institute for Social Research
(Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, SCP) surveyed the Dutch population on what would
disappear in the course of the century, the first things that people mentioned were the
national army, national customs and traditions, and the royal family. The things that
would stay were the Dutch language and delicacies, traditional sports (the Elfsteden-
tocht), and Dutch popular music. That Dutch food now includes pizza and kebabs does
not change this at all; neither does the fact that Dutch popular music now embraces
reggae, hip-hop, rap and of course, dance, with some of the world’s most popular DJs.
The Elfstedentocht: Beating the Forces of Nature

The Elfstedentocht (Eleven-Cities Tour) is a skating marathon of about 200 km
along the canals, small rivers, and lakes that connect eleven historic cities in
the province of Friesland. It can only take place when it has been freezing long
and hard enough for the ice to reach sufficient thickness to withstand the
weight of thousands of skaters. Thus subjected to the uncontrollable forces of
nature, the Elfstedentocht is not an annual event; the last time it took place
was in 1997. This unpredictability enhances its almost mythical status. The
tour combines all the elements of a genuine ritual event: it is heroic, it involves
a struggle of man against nature, it sees many a winner, and it invariably
brings the Dutch together. This turns the world’s longest ice marathon into a
celebration of regional pride and shared tradition.
Skating on natural ice is a favorite pastime of the Dutch. When canals and
lakes are frozen over in winter large numbers of skating tours are organized for
both competitive skaters and occasional enthusiasts, lined by stalls that offer
pea soup, hot sausages and other sturdy refreshments. The Elfstedentocht is
considered to be the ultimate tour of all tours (de tocht der tochten). A group of
competitive marathon skaters are the first to start, usually crossing the finish
line almost seven hours later. They are followed by about 16,000 other partici-
pants, in a collective effort to defeat the circumstances of weather, ice, and
time. It is not just the distance that makes the Elfstedentocht one of the hard-
est tours to complete, but also the fact that it has to be skated in a flat, open
landscape where the wind has free rein, in temperatures well below zero, on
the unpredictable surface of natural ice, and – at least partly – in darkness. Of
the 10,000 skaters that started the infamous 1963 tour with snow storms and
temperatures of minus 18 degrees, only 129 reached the finish. Skaters who
have completed the ordeal are awarded a small commemorative cross. This
token is invariably a lifelong source of pride for the owner.
The status of the event is further enhanced by the fact that it is impossible
to predict whether or not it will take place. Every year at the slightest bit of freez-
ing, a feverish anticipation (Elfstedenkoorts) starts to build up, rising with every
day the temperatures remain below zero. The national evening news will start to
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present reports by assigned “ice-masters” supervising the layer of ice in their par-
ticular section of the route, while experts will discuss the feasibility of “ice-trans-
plants” as a possible solution for those parts of the route that are still weak.
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The Elfstedentocht is an experience shared by the entire nation. Many travel to

Friesland to line the route, support the skaters with warm drinks and food, or
simply fill the streets of the otherwise quiet villages, as if on a national holiday.
Those remaining at home will try to take the day off, too, in order to share in
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the carnival on ice on national television.
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In any case, much of what is considered to be tradition and intangible heritage is much
younger than it would like to appear. The Elfstedentocht is little more than a century old,
and carnival was only celebrated in a few places in the Netherlands in the 1960s. The
Christmas tree and Christmas dinner became widespread only after the war, while the
nativity (always exclusively a Catholic tradition) is clearly making a comeback, and the
Feast of the Epiphany (6 January) is all but forgotten. Valentine’s Day (14 February)
remains controversial and the celebration of Abraham (fiftieth birthday) is hardly wide-
spread. As a national hero, Sinterklaas (5 December) still beats his secular alter ego,
Santa Claus (Christmas), in the popularity stakes. For more than sixty years, the
Netherlands celebrated Queen’s Day on 30 April. For many people, this celebration of
loyalty to the House of Orange was as much as a fixture as “Prinsjesdag,” named in the
constitution as the day on which the king announces the government’s plans for the
coming year to parliament. When King Willem-Alexander, after his inauguration in
2013, made his own birthday (27 April) King’s Day, there was brief protest, but no
change in the ceremonies involved. In a couple of years, hardly anyone will recall that
Queen’s Day was on 30 April, just as hardly anyone in the Netherlands knows that
the Second World War began on 1 September 1939 and officially ended on 8 May 1945.
The Netherlands was occupied by the Germans on 10 May 1940, and in the collective
memory that is also the beginning of the Second World War. The liberation is com-
memorated on 5 May, because that was the day of the German surrender in the Nether-
lands in 1945. In fact, the surrender only concerned the Netherlands north of the great
rivers, because much of the south of the country had already been liberated in
September 1944. Queen Wilhelmina set foot in the Netherlands again on 13 March 1945,
after nearly five years of exile in London. The Dutch East Indies (currently Indonesia)
were only liberated in August 1945. These are all moments to commemorate, but in the
meantime, national commemoration – and hence also the collective memory – has be-
come fixated on 5 May. Liberation Day is a day of celebration, while those who fell in war
are commemorated across the country on the evening of 4 May in a solemn two-minute
silence. At the center of the commemoration is the National Monument on Dam Square
in Amsterdam, with the king and queen laying a wreath. Despite fears to the contrary,
interest in 4 and 5 May has actually increased, rather than decreased, over time.
Spatial Planning
Flying to the Netherlands from the south or east on a clear day, one can almost see the
border approaching. The extent of spatial planning is clearly greater than that in sur-
rounding countries, even though the differences are becoming smaller. In the Nether-
lands, the national government has now only very limited responsibility for spatial
planning. By contrast, in the surrounding countries, and certainly in Belgium, the
government’s organizational role has become stronger. Despite this, seen from the air,
one is struck by the degree to which the Netherlands has been divided up precisely and
its functions marked out: the towns are compact, the structures of neighborhoods are
discernible, the transition to the outskirts is abrupt rather than consisting of sprawling
suburbs. Meadows and fields are marked out in geometric fashion, the beaches are still
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pristine, and nature is conserved with care. Here it is still the case that “God created the
earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands”; not only by draining the marshes and
turning lakes into polders, but also by parceling out the land – practically by the square
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meter – and giving it a purpose which, once assigned, can be hard for even the owner to
change.
The Dutch do not consider their homes to be large, but at 41 square meters per
person, they come out of international comparisons rather well. Only in Denmark,
Sweden, and Luxembourg are the figures clearly higher. It is also remarkable that in
such a densely populated country as the Netherlands, the terraced house, rather than
the apartment, should be the most common form of housing. Sixty-one percent of the
population lives in a terraced house (the average across the whole of the EU is 23 per-
cent); for families with children, more than 80 percent don’t have to live in an apart-
ment and thus have a garden or yard. Less than 20 percent of the population lives in a
detached house (only in Spain is the figure lower). Due to an extremely generous tax
deduction rule, the Netherlands has been transformed from largely a land of renters
into a land of home buyers. Almost 60 percent of the almost 7.5 million households
own their homes, but they do have the highest level of mortgage debt per owner in
Europe. In total, this amounts to 630 billion euro, or an average of 150,000 euro per
owner-occupied house. As a result of the economic crisis, house prices have fallen 20-25
percent on average, which means many owners are in difficulties with their mortgages.
In an expression that resonates with the Dutch, their houses are said to be “under
water”: the mortgage is higher than the market value of the house.
While the Netherlands is the country with the highest level of mortgage debt, it
also has the largest share of social housing. Three out of every four rental homes are
owned by housing corporations, which are primarily responsible for providing good
and affordable housing for households on average incomes (up to around 35,000 euro
gross per year). Rapid population growth, at a rate unparalleled in Europe (from 5 mil-
lion in 1900 to 10 million in 1950, and almost 17 million today), combined with a rapid
fall in household size (from almost 5 people in 1950 to an average of 2.3 today), led to a
housing shortage, a situation that remains today. Despite this, the housing stock has
grown from fewer than 2 million homes in 1950 to 7.5 million at present. There are
comparatively few real second homes in the Netherlands, and most municipalities also
discourage temporary residence. If one includes holiday park chalets, mobile homes,
and boats, around 4-5 percent of households have a second home in the Netherlands
and 2-3 percent of all households have a second home abroad, mainly in France, at a
maximum distance of a day’s drive from the Netherlands.
What one cannot see is the spatial planning involved in the complex infrastructure
of cables, pipes, and sewers that lies under the ground. While this is also the case else-
where, there are few countries that have such an advanced system of hidden utilities as
the Netherlands. This is also partly true of the transport infrastructure. Not only are
there more “structural works” (bridges, viaducts, flyovers, and tunnels) per square kilo-
meter in the Netherlands than anywhere else in the world, but also nowhere else is the or-
ganization of traffic, through the provision of up-to-date information on congestion,
jams, accidents and diversions, so advanced. With almost 8 million private cars, 1 million
hire vans, trucks and buses, and almost 20 million bicycles, this has also become neces-
sary. In a country where the greatest distance between two cities never exceeds more than
around 300 kilometers (less than 200 miles), around 1 billion kilometers are traveled
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every day, with more than 70 percent of these by car. The bicycle is the favorite form of
transport over short distances: 6 percent of kilometers traveled, but more than a quarter
of all journeys. This is a European record in any case, but probably a world record as well.
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High Up in the Right Rankings
The Netherlands enjoys a high ranking in all kinds of global comparisons. The World
Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report ranks the Netherlands as the eighth best
functioning economy, after Switzerland, Singapore, Germany, and the Scandinavian
countries. In international comparisons, the Netherlands always emerges as the most
southerly Scandinavian country. It comes third (from bottom) in the World Misery
Index (after Sweden and Germany), fifth in the World Happiness Index (after the
Scandinavian countries and Luxembourg), second on the European Human Develop-
ment Index (after Norway), fourth on the European Better Life Index (after the Scan-
dinavian countries), third in terms of GDP per capita in Europe (after Luxembourg and
Norway in 2011, although it has since been overtaken by Germany and Denmark). Its
ecological footprint is less pleasing; “we need three planets to sustain our pattern of
consumption,” was the Netherlands Institute for Social Research’s terse summary of
the outcome of the calculations. Of course, this is a direct consequence of a very high
population density combined with a high level of prosperity.
Geert Hofstede, who is undoubtedly the most-cited Dutch social scientist at the
international level, has become well known for his research into the cultural differ-
ences between countries (2001). He has found important differences, including
between neighboring countries, with regard to qualities such as individualism, egali-
tarianism, carefulness, flexibility, long-term orientation and reserve. Along with the
Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands is one of the countries with a strongly individ-
ualistic culture, a high degree of equality and informality in its relations, a highly
developed welfare state, a high degree of adaptability to changing circumstances, and a
strong orientation toward the long term. The differences with Central and Western
European countries, and also Anglo-Saxon countries, are not absolute, but they are
clearly discernible.
Taking into account the great number of similarities, it is rather surprising to
notice how little mutual orientation exists between the Netherlands and the Scandi-
navian countries. The Netherlands is primarily oriented toward the United States and
England, its main economic partner is Germany, and it shares its language with the
Flemish part of Belgium. Even in a religious sense, the links with Scandinavia are weak.
The latter countries have Lutheran established churches; the Netherlands does not have
an established church, but has traditionally been dominated by Calvinism, in addition
to having a strong Catholic presence. But both Scandinavia and the Netherlands – and
perhaps also northern Germany – are characterized by populations that are for the
most part no longer religious, have a high average level of education, developed welfare
states, civil societies made up of active citizens, well-functioning governments and rela-
tively informal social relations and lifestyles. While this does not bind these countries
together, it does link them in structural and cultural sense.
The End of Pillarization

The Netherlands fits a pattern that is more commonly found in Northern than in
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Western or Central Europe. The Netherlands does not fit this pattern perfectly, how-
ever, and just like all of the Scandinavian countries, it also has its own clear characteris-
tics. But these are less pronounced now than they were in the past. Pillarization – which
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was so characteristic of Dutch society, especially between 1900 and 1960 – has almost
completely disappeared. More than 60 percent of the population does not feel, or no
longer feels, connected with a religion. An average of two churches close their doors for
good each week, and this process has been underway for years. Of the Catholics (who
made up 40 percent of the population half a century ago), only a very small percentage
still attend church regularly. The figure for the hervormden (Protestants) is even lower,
and a decline is also clearly discernable among the gereformeerden (members of the more
orthodox Dutch Reformed Church, 9 percent of the population). As a result of immi-
gration, especially from Turkey and Morocco, more than 5 percent of the population
identifies as religious Muslims. There are more than 500 mosques in the Netherlands,
yet only 5 remain of the 500-plus small and large monasteries and nunneries that were
to be found in a Catholic province such as North Brabant fifty years ago. Almost all
Catholic priests, fathers, nuns, and monks who remain in the Netherlands are aged 65
or (much) older.
The confessional political parties, which used to be able to count on more than one
of every two parliamentary seats, no longer even have one in every six. Schools and hos-
pitals are often still Protestant or Catholic in name, but they are frequently religious in
name only. It should not be forgotten that these institutions were rarely owned by
churches or religious organizations, but in most cases were only founded by Catholic or
Protestant citizens. Schools retain their links to their origins in their names or atmos-
pheres, but have no links to the church or belief, and there are no differences between
them in terms of the subjects taught or lesson schedules. The public broadcasting com-
panies, which were traditionally heavily pillarized in the Netherlands, have been forced
to merge with one other, leaving little space for differences in their philosophy of life.
Being in competition with commercial broadcasters since 1990 has also forced the
established broadcasting organizations to put the taste of the general public at the
heart of their programming.
Partly as a result of the once strong influence of the religious parties, and also
because the Netherlands remained neutral in the First World War and did not have to
send any men to the front, married women in the Netherlands were always first and
foremost housewives. Fifty years ago, only 2-3 percent of married women worked out-
side the home, and then mostly as “helpers” (as they were called) in their husbands’
businesses (farms or shops). Nowadays, 65 percent of women aged between 20 and 65
work outside the home. Uniquely, the Netherlands is the world champion of part-time
work: 70 percent of women and 20 percent of men work part-time. This largely stems
from the desire to be able to look after one’s children oneself, even when adequate and
affordable childcare is available.
Sinterklaas:
A Controversial Morality Tale
Rituals and traditions contribute to a sense of shared identity. The number one
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tradition in the Netherlands is, without any doubt, the celebration of Sinter-
klaas. The festivities start when this legendary winter holiday figure arrives
in mid-November, and culminate in the celebration of his birthday on the
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evening of December 5. Although Sinterklaas evokes a sense of belonging and

continuity, and enjoys growing popularity over Christmas, some aspects of this
Dutch tradition evoke debate and discontent.
The collective ritual of Sinterklaas is constructed along a traditional nar-
rative that has evolved from generation to generation since the mid-nine-
teenth century. According to popular lore, Sinterklaas, whose name derives
from Saint Nicholas, is an ancient bishop who lives in Spain. He arrives in mid-
November in the Netherlands by steamboat, dressed in red mantle and full
episcopal regalia, including a miter, crozier and ring, and meets the awaiting
crowds on his white horse. He is accompanied by a burlesque group of black
helpers, called Zwarte Piet (Black Pete), who are dressed in carnivalesque
Renaissance pantaloons and jerkins, make gymnastic caprices, and toss
around ginger nuts (pepernoten). This carefully staged event is covered by
national television and repeated locally.
The following weeks children place their shoe in front of the fireplace,
sing Sinterklaas songs, and hope for small presents to be delivered by Zwarte
Piet, who climbs the chimneys at night. On the evening of December 5 families
sit together, and share the many gifts that have been delivered in a burlap sack
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at their doorstep. Traditionally these presents or “surprises,” small self-made

gifts, are anonymously exchanged, accompanied by a small poem or rhyme,
containing playful criticism or expressions of praise and affection, which the
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recipient has to read out loud. Sinterklaas is constructed as a morality tale in
which virtuous behavior is rewarded with sweets and presents, and the fear of
reprimand is symbolized by the rod that is wielded by Zwarte Piet.
The persona of Zwarte Piet has developed considerably over the years.
Possibly originating as a Moor or a chimney sweep, he was increasingly racial-
ized toward the end of the nineteenth century. Since the 1960s, however,
increasing criticism about the typecasting of Zwarte Piet led to his transform-
ation from an ignorant servant to the clever companion or even manager of
Sinterklaas. Yet, his clownish image remained, and so did the color of his skin:
impersonating Zwarte Piet still involves a black face, big red lips, wigs of dark
curly hair, and golden earrings that recall the institution of slavery. The discus-
sion achieved an international dimension in 2013 when a UN committee
suggested an investigation of the possible racist connotations of this tradition.
A majority of the Dutch public immediately went up in arms; a Facebook page
in support of the Zwarte Piet (the “Pietietie”) counted two million supporters
within a few days. Although Sinterklaas seems a cherished and widely
supported cultural tradition, the debate revealed that the racial constructions
that are embedded in the symbolism of this children’s holiday remain contro-
versial in a multicultural society.
Rapid Modernization
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Netherlands undertook a rapid and surprisingly radical
transition from being a largely conservative society to being a progressive one. Photo-
graphs of the same people in 1960 and 1970 reveal greater differences in terms of cloth-
ing and hairstyles than those between 1970 and 2010. Between 1965 and 1975, the
Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, was one of the places where cultural
changes and shifts in social relations happened the fastest, and these changes were also
institutionalized to a certain degree. In no other country was (and is) the contraceptive
pill more popular than in the Netherlands; abortion became de facto a woman’s deci-
sion from 1970 onward (the new legal regulation only came ten years later); in Europe,
homosexuality became socially visible and acceptable in the Netherlands for the first
time; pornography became freely available; and prostitution looked like it could
become a “normal” profession (this latter development, however, did not take place).
Cannabis was easily obtainable, and the same was true for hard drugs such as heroin.
The Netherlands became Europe’s social laboratory. In the Netherlands, homosexuals
were able to marry for the first time (2.5 percent of marriages), euthanasia was legally
sanctioned for the first time (3 percent of deaths) and, thanks to effective information
provision and contraception, the number of abortions remained low (33,000 per year,
with an overrepresentation of women born outside the Netherlands and Europe).
In the meantime, the Netherlands no longer has a monopoly on all these areas.
Other countries have gone down the same path, and in some cases (deregulation of
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cannabis, extending euthanasia to children), they have even gone further. At most, one
could still say that from the beginning, support for the changes was remarkably high in
the Netherlands, and this remains true today.
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In many respects, the Netherlands has become more normal: more normal as a member
of the European Union (and a critical member, at that), but also more normal as a
modern Western country. When the king said, in the King’s Speech of 2013, that “the
classical welfare state is slowly but surely changing into a participatory society,” this
means, above all, that the government will cover less and the citizens will have to pay
for more – or do more – themselves. Despite this, in the coming years, the welfare state
will still take up almost 75 percent of the government’s budget (260 billion euro in
2014). Of all the differences in style and culture, it is the difference in living standards
between the Netherlands and surrounding countries that has increasingly narrowed
over time. In a political sense, as well, the Netherlands is looking more like the other
countries in the EU, where – with the exception of Germany – governments tend not to
keep going for long. From being traditional progressives, the Dutch have now largely
become modern conservatives: scared of losing the wealth and security they have
gained, and attached to the achievements of the second half of the twentieth century:
a strong sense of national identity, a well established welfare state and a high level of
personal freedom in lifestyle.
Further Reading
Goudsblom, Johan. Dutch Society. New York: Random House, 1965.
Hofstede, Geert. Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations
across Nations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001.
Jonker, Jedid-Jah. Countries Compared on Public Performance: A Study of Public Sector Performance in 28
Countries. The Hague: Netherlands Institute for Social Research, 2012.
Lechner, Frank J. The Netherlands: Globalization and National Identity. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Yerkes, Mara A. Transforming the Dutch Welfare State. Bristol: Policy Press, 2011.
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History
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chapter 7
From the Periphery

to the Center
by marco mostert
The story of the delta before the Dutch nation is somewhat different from the later his-
tory of the Netherlands. That later history, however, cannot be understood without
knowledge of what went before. The Dutch Republic did not emerge in a single instant;
it was made possible by earlier developments, and the culture and society of early
modern times was heavily indebted to those of the Middle Ages. We have to start our
story even further back, with the advent of the Romans. They came to the region where
the rivers Rhine, Maas and Scheldt reached the sea during the first century BCE. They
felt far away from home. One of them, the historian Tacitus, remarked in the first
century CE that the inhabitants of the delta, as this region can best be called, seemed to
be half-man and half-fish. The land ran out here to make place for the sea, and with the
land all that a Roman might call “civilization” came to an end. More than a thousand
years later, when Hartbert, the bishop of Utrecht, came to the coastal abbey of Egmond
in 1134 to dedicate its new church to saint Adalbert, he felt he had arrived “at the
extreme margin of the earth.”
In the long first millennium of our era the delta of the Rhine and its hinterland
was a border region between the most important political spheres of influence of the
day and their neighbors. Because it seems to be an almost universal human inclination
to identify spheres of influence with the dominant civilizations of the people who live
in them, the region may with some justification be thought to have been situated in the
periphery of civilization. This did not mean, however, that the inhabitants of the delta
experienced disadvantages due to their marginal situation. Quite the contrary. They
participated in the Mediterranean civilization of Rome, and Batavian legionaries were
thoroughly Romanized. Later, they shared in the civilization of the Franks, who, after
the departure of the Romans, increased their sphere of influence in these parts. At the
same time, they shared in the proceeds of Frisian trade. In the eighth and ninth cen-
turies, when they definitively became part of Christian civilization, some continued to
do things in their own ways. Later, it proved to be advantageous to live in a border
region between the German and French spheres of influence. Contacts overseas, mainly
with the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian areas, thrived.
At the end of the first millennium, things gradually began to change. The centers
of Western civilization moved north. Especially after the year 1000 land reclamation
laid the foundation for economic growth, and in the fifteenth century the development
of towns, hesitant at first, resulted in a relatively urbanized region which was in
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constant contact with economic powerhouses such as the Rhineland and Flanders.
Economically, the delta was now part of the center of Europe. After the initial mis-
sionary efforts in the seventh and eighth centuries, Christianity had become the
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dominant religion, and in the later Middle Ages urban forms of spiritual life devel-
oped here.
On the eve of the Reformation, the influence of the inhabitants had spread far
beyond the delta, so that the region may be said to have become part of the center of
Europe in religious matters as well. In the thirteenth century the culture of writing
and literacy, too, had developed to levels similar to those elsewhere in Latin
Christendom, making the delta part of the center in this respect as well. Printing
with moveable type was invented in Mainz, in fifteenth-century Germany. Yet the
persistent myth of its invention in Haarlem, in the county of Holland, is understand-
able against the background of the flourishing of manuscript culture and the subse-
quent role the delta was to play in the development of the culture of the printed
word.
The Romans
The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar in the first century BCE marked the initial con-
tact of the inhabitants of the delta with the force of the Roman Empire. The country
looked very different from today. The East and South consisted mainly of sand and
loam, except where the rivers made their way to the sea. The western and northern
parts of the country consisted of peat bogs and marshes. The coast was marked by sand
dunes which were pierced by rivers and creeks, waterways which might shift their posi-
tion from one year to the next.
Habitation was concentrated on the sandy deposits of the river banks and under
the protection of the dunes. The soils were easier to plough there, and sweet water
was readily available. In these low-lying areas wind, water, and land were in a delicate
balance. A slight rise of the sea level could render large areas inhabitable, forcing the
inhabitants to abandon their settlements.
It is improbable that Caesar himself ever set eyes on the coastal landscape. When he
moved away in 49 BCE no troops were left behind. The Romans came back when
Emperor Augustus (27 BCE-14 CE) decided that all of Germania, including the areas to
the east and north of the Rhine, had to be conquered. From then onwards the area
south of the Rhine was to form part of the Empire for some four centuries. The plans
for conquest were soon abandoned, but contacts with people living there were main-
tained. Thus, we find Frisians trading with the Romans. They even drew up contracts
for the sale of cows according to Roman legal rules.
The delta was important as a border region. The Roman army could use it as a base
of operations, and soon military camps were built on the banks of the Rhine. From the
middle of the first century CE until the second half of the third century CE peace pre-
vailed, under the protection of the Roman legions which developed their settlements
along the Rhine into a permanent border (in Latin: limes). The rivers were crucial to the
Romans from an economic point of view since they connected the Rhineland with its
important cities and the cereal-growing province of Britain.
Forms of literacy were introduced. The traces of small cords found on many minus-
cule lumps of lead – discovered recently through the use of metal detectors – have been
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convincingly interpreted as the remains of the seals used to close wax tablets. Some 120
small boxes have been found that were used to protect the wax seals of letters.
Interestingly, they were found also in civilian Batavian settlements. The language used
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when dealing with the Romans was Latin. The soldiers recruited to the Roman army
managed to speak, and sometimes also write, this language.
During the time of the Roman presence, peace did not always prevail. Sometimes
there were locally inspired revolts, such as that of the Batavi in 69 CE. Problems with
maintaining order in the center of the Empire played a role too. In the third century the
Romans temporarily abandoned the Rhine border, and in the fifth century the border
was given up definitively. Thus the delta came to form part of the periphery of another
sphere of influence, that of the Franks.
The Roman Limes: A Cultural Meeting Place

In the center of Utrecht, a narrow canal marks what was once the border of the
Roman Empire. The branch of the Rhine, which once was controlled by Roman
soldiers, is now just one of the canals dissecting the city. Here, right at the foot
of the present-day cathedral, is the location of the limes, the border between
Roman and non-Roman controlled territories. In the second century the limes
in the Low Countries continued across the North Sea to Hadrian’s Wall in
Britain, and to the east by the Rhine, upstream roughly to Coblenz, and hence
overland to the upper reaches of the Danube. The territories controlled by the
limes in the Low Countries belonged to the province of Germania Inferior,
which had its capital at Cologne.
Where the limes lay was determined both by accidents of physical geo-
graphy and the fortunes of the Roman Empire. The river Rhine, designated by
Julius Caesar to be the border, branched out in the Low Countries; the branch
flowing through the present-day towns of Utrecht and Leiden into the North
Sea was chosen. Along the limes, military settlements were constructed of
various sizes and forms. Nijmegen was the most important strategic settle-
ment where legions were stationed. Along the Rhine itself, a series of castella
(fortresses) was built, situated a few miles from one another. Some of the
castella have subsequently been destroyed by the sea or by the rivers changing
their courses; the rests of some others have remained visible for long periods
of time.
Excavations have shown that the castellum at Valkenburg (near Leiden)
was rebuilt five or six times. It was built at a crossroads of the route along the
Rhine and the route at the feet of the dunes. An earthen wall and palisade of
100 by 125 meters was erected around the fortress. A civilian settlement flour-
ished next to the castellum and further along the Roman road granaries, a
watchtower, a cemetery and possibly some shrines could be found. Around 180
CE the castellum was reconstructed once more: the walls and headquarters
were rebuilt in stone, the other buildings in wood. In the fourth century at
least part of the fortress was still functional. After the final departure of the
Romans, it is quite possible that the deserted castellum became a quarry for
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the local inhabitants.

Although the castellum at Utrecht was a much smaller affair it never-
theless still symbolized the Roman presence centuries later. The Frankish king
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Dagobert I (†639) built his church within its walls to stress the perceived con-
tinuity between the Roman Empire and the kingdom of the Franks.
The limes formed the border of the Roman Empire, and Roman remains
continued to inspire awe for centuries afterwards. But the limes was hardly
impenetrable. It denoted an area where representatives of the “indigenous”
cultures could meet with the Romans, an exchange took place, of foodstuffs
such as cattle, but also of artifacts, and even of religious ideas. At times the
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limes was more of a meeting place than a border guarded by military force.
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In the Periphery
The Roman border (limes) had never been impermeable. Warrior bands and other
groups moved across the Rhine, and tried to settle in the Empire. Quite soon, they came
to be known collectively as the Franks. They seem to have originated in the East of the
present-day Netherlands, and to have moved south in several stages, first as allies of the
Romans. At the end of the fifth century, Merovingian King Clovis (466-511) founded a
durable Frankish kingdom in the north of present-day France, and in the course of the
next centuries they tried to increase their territories. King Dagobert I (†639) managed
to gain access to the delta. Further aspirations were thwarted by the Frisians, and the
next centuries would see the advance and retreat of Franks and Frisians, trying to gain
control of the mouths of Rhine and Maas, and thereby of the rich trade network
centered on Dorestad, a few miles upstream from Utrecht.
The early medieval Frisians cannot decisively be identified with the Frisians of
Roman times. The sea level seems to have risen, forcing the earlier coastal Frisians to
abandon some, if not all, of their settlements. They may have played a role in the migra-
tions to Britain which resulted in Anglo-Saxon England. In the seventh and eighth
centuries, however, the areas under the dunes were once more densely settled, and their
inhabitants were once again called Frisians. They took part in a trade network which
connected Britain, Scandinavia, Germany and territories beyond. Dorestad, on the
Rhine, was one of its most important trading centers. Because of the Frisian trade’s
importance, “Frisian” could in Old English become a synonym for “trader” or “sailor.”
As a corollary of these economic activities, the delta participated in a veritable “North
Sea culture” in which goods, but also ideas and (oral) literary texts were exchanged. The
Anglo-Saxons also took part in this economic and cultural network. After becoming
Christians, their missionaries came across the North Sea to Frisia and to the Saxons
who had settled to the east of them.
The missionary Willibrord (†739), who became “archbishop of the Frisians,” chose
Utrecht, where Dagobert I had already built a church within the old Roman fortress, to
found his mission post. In time this city was to develop into the main diocese of the
medieval northern Low Countries. Willibrord had Frankish support for his work, but
had to abandon Utrecht whenever the Frisians took control of the area of Utrecht and
Dorestad.
It was also in Utrecht that Willibrord taught the missionary skills to his pupil
Boniface, who was to work mainly in Germany. This work included making the con-
verts renounce their gods and making them pronounce the essentials of the Christian
creed prior to baptism. To this end an English vernacular text was adapted in the
dialect of the coastal areas where Willibrord worked. Boniface took this text with him
to use in his work among the pagans in Germany. The absence of a serious language
barrier between Anglo-Saxons, Frisians and Saxons, who were able to understand one
another without too many problems, allowed the use of insular texts such as these in
the conversion of Germanic-speaking pagans on the Continent.
The Frankish sphere of influence was to extend further northwards after Boniface
was murdered by a group of Frisians at Dokkum, in the north of Frisia, in 754. After his
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death, the Franks retaliated and managed finally to subdue the western parts of Frisia.
Missionary dioceses were instituted on the model of Willibrord’s mission post at
Utrecht. Münster became one of those posts, and in 805 Liudger, who had been born
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near Utrecht and had spent most of his time converting Frisians, became its first
bishop.
For the first time, the delta had become part of a single political unit: the
Carolingian empire of Charlemagne who had become king of the Franks in 768. It was
a fragile unity at best. Under the Carolingian kings and emperors, the region came
under threat from new contestants from the North. The demise of Frisian political rule
over the Rhine had not meant the end of the trade network in which the Frisians par-
ticipated. Its rich pickings continued to attract traders – and raiders. In 810 Frisia was
attacked by “pirates” of Danish origin. This led Charlemagne to organize a navy. Under
his son Louis the Pious the attacks resumed, and in 834 Dorestad was besieged. The
Vikings – as the attackers came to be known – returned at least eight times. Rorik and
his brother Heriold held Dorestad from Lothar I, the son of Louis the Pious. Another
Dane, Godefrid, obtained Frisia in 882 on the condition that he be baptized.
Clearly, the Carolingians did not manage to keep the peace in these parts. Even
Utrecht had to be abandoned by the bishop, who continued to reside for generations
thereafter in Deventer on the IJssel, another branch of the Rhine. The local aristocracy,
better placed to control violence, managed to increase its power bases in the delta.
Gradually, the contours of the later county of Holland were taking shape. Elsewhere
similar processes of power consolidation could be observed. They were helped by the
position of the delta between the major political forces to come out of the Carolingian
sphere of influence: the kingdoms of Germany and France.
Formally, almost all of the delta and its hinterland became part of what was to be-
come the kingdom of Germany in 925. The counts of Holland and Zeeland, the dukes
of Brabant and of Guelders, and the bishops of Utrecht emerged as the most powerful
territorial princes. The bishops had been given their powers by the German kings and
emperors, who tried in this way to extend their control over the principalities on the
assumption that bishops ought not to father children, at least not leave legitimate
heirs. By bestowing dioceses on the candidates of their own choice, the kings hoped to
increase the numbers of their dedicated political supporters. The bishops of Rome
came to object to this practice. With the Concordat of Worms of 1122, the turbulences
between the king – who was supposed to be crowned emperor as well – and the pope
came to a provisional conclusion, when it was decided that the pope was to invest
bishops with their ecclesiastical dignity, whereas the king was to retain the right to
invest them with their secular offices.
The bishops of Utrecht and Liège ended up in the camp of the pope, thereby effec-
tively curtailing the influence of the German king in the Low Countries. From now on
bishops, counts, and dukes might attend the ceremonial assemblies during which the
Emperor showed himself in his regalia, thereby showing in a real sense the existence of
the German Empire. Indeed, count William of Holland himself was chosen king in
1247 and was to rule until his death in 1256. But henceforth politics remained prima-
rily a regional matter.
Land Reclamation, Urbanization,

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Literacy and Spirituality

Although politically on the sidelines, the delta began to escape the periphery of Euro-
pean medieval history in economic, social, cultural and spiritual respect. This was the
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result, first of all, of the work of land reclamation which had started already before the
end of the first millennium, but was steadily increasing in importance. The peat areas
in the western and northern parts of the region had never attracted many inhabitants.
From Flanders to Denmark a wilderness extended, composed of half-consumed plant

rests, almost without trees. Farmers could use this wilderness for pasture and fuel, or
could hunt there and collect honey and wax. But the potential of these wastelands was
only realized when they were turned into arable land through drainage. This slowly
happened over the course of centuries. New settlements could be started either by a
lord inviting farmers or on the initiative of peasant communities. The new reclam-
ations realized by hand, using nothing more than wooden spades that were only rein-
forced with a strip of iron at the cutting edge, produced a surplus which enabled the
population to grow. Once a settlement reached a certain number of inhabitants, it could
acquire the status of parish and have a right to its own parish priest.
Experience in land reclamation was exported everywhere in Europe. Along the
Baltic, for instance, there are traces of “Frisian,” “Dutch” or “Flemish” settlements (the
names seem interchangeable) on land reclaimed in the ways developed in the delta. The
benefits were substantial, but there were also drawbacks. Because peat consists for 80
percent of water, draining the low-lying wilderness made the soil subside dramatically.
The water level of a river might remain considerably higher than that of the drainage
canals on the other side of its bank. Water management soon became a necessity. As
rivers and creeks were directly connected with the sea and its tides, mistakes made
could have repercussions many miles away. Cooperation on a local and regional level
was called for and gradually so-called “water boards” developed which had jurisdiction
over dikes, drainage canals and rivers.
From the thirteenth century onwards, surplus agricultural produce enabled the
development of more complex, multi-functional settlements. Towns began to develop
with a distinctive urban infrastructure. Dordrecht was the first settlement in the
county of Holland which was called a town (oppidum). It developed out of a village in a
reclamation project, where it is mentioned for the first time shortly before 1050. It took
the position of intermediary between England and the Rhineland over from Utrecht,
which had been one of the successors of Dorestad when its harbor silted up. Other early
towns are Maastricht and Nijmegen (which had been important already in Roman
times) and Deventer, Zutphen and Arnhem, on or near the river IJssel.
Trade and crafts provided specialized work for many. The profits were interesting
enough for lords to offer town privileges to promising settlements, or to start towns
literally from scratch. Although not all towns founded in this way prospered, at the end
of the fifteenth century the delta had become one of the most urbanized regions in
Europe. Towns had their own walls and militias, councils, trade and craft regulations,
religious institutions and schools.
The first schools had been attached to ecclesiastical foundations such as monaster-
ies and cathedrals. According to the Fourth Lateran Council, called by the pope in 1215,
each parish church had to have its own school. Apparently, this injunction was taken
seriously in the Low Countries. In the sixteenth century the Italian historian Guicciar-
dini noticed that here even peasants could read. Latin schools were attached to an
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important church. Often, they also had a “lower school” or “writing school” teaching
the rudiments of literacy. In the countryside, a sacristan or verger often doubled as
schoolmaster.
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Schools were too important, however, to leave to the Church. From the fourteenth cen-
tury, the towns tended to take over the Latin schools, and to increase their fame by
attracting renowned teachers. To keep their monopoly on learning, town councils
discouraged “additional schools,” founded on private initiative. In some of these latter

schools, the curriculum was changed to allow for useful subjects such as French, arith-
metic and bookkeeping. Some Latin schools taught at university level; their teachers
had followed a university education in Paris, Cologne, Louvain or elsewhere. Pupils
from the Latin schools sometimes went on to university.
From the thirteenth century, as exemplified by the development of the schooling
system, the culture of the written word differed in nothing from that available else-
where. The uses of writing are wholly consistent with what is known from elsewhere in
Europe. Whereas at the beginning of the twelfth century law was still predominantly
oral, at the end of the thirteenth century the use of charters, legally valid documents,
had become commonplace in securing acceptance for changes in ownership or other
changes in rights. Bills of sale for relatively unimportant purchases were now drawn
up. This development did not happen overnight, however. In the north, in Frisia, the
thirteenth century saw the writing down of laws in the vernacular, so that a shift from
the oral to the written can be said to have taken place here as elsewhere in the delta.
Judging from the surviving charters, however, Frisia seems to have lagged behind in
administrative literacy by a century at least. And it was only at the very end of the twen-
tieth century that promises by word of mouth (for example to buy a house) were no
longer to have any legal validity.
Written literary texts, too, were slowly becoming commonplace. From the early
Middle Ages Latin texts had been imported, and Latin was to remain the most impor-
tant written language because of its prestige as the language of the Word of God. Texts
in the vernacular, even if some had been composed already in the mission post at
Utrecht in the early eighth century, were to become current from the twelfth century
onwards. As a language for written literature, Dutch developed first in the southern
Low Countries; from there, it was gradually introduced in the delta. As for Frisian, the
second vernacular spoken, the laws were the first written texts in that language. When
printing was introduced in the delta, less than a generation after “writing without a
pen” had been invented, the presses produced the Latin classics for readers old and new,
but also texts in the vernacular. Many of these early vernacular texts were meant to
further the spiritual life of their readers.
At the end of the Middle Ages, Christianity had developed many forms. The net-
work of parishes and the official apparatus of the dioceses had been nearly perfected.
Religiously inspired care for the poor, orphans and the infirm developed in the towns.
The number of urban monastic foundations grew rapidly: in Amsterdam, more than
one fifth of the town’s surface belonged to the more than twenty monasteries in 1500.
Lay people developed spiritual needs which were catered for by fraternities and other
new institutions of religious life.
Individual Christians, helped by their growing reading skills, developed views
which the Church deemed heretical. They had internalized the message of Christianity,
and were willing to give their lives for their religious ideas. Others started movements
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with the aim of perfecting their personal spiritual life. The Beguines, devout women
who lived a spiritual life in separate dwellings loosely organized as a pseudo-monastic
community, came from the Southern Netherlands. The Brethren and Sisters of the
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Common Life were an indigenous development. Their Modern Devotion inspired self-
reflection and meditation on one’s conscience. This movement was influential far
beyond the delta. In the early sixteenth century, humanists such as Erasmus and
reformers such as Martin Luther were, directly or indirectly, influenced by their ideas.
Hebban Olla Vogala:

The Beginnings of Literature
Just before 1100, a Flemish monk in the Benedictine abbey of Rochester was
trying his pen, and wrote on the flyleaf of his manuscript:
Hebban olla vogala nestas hagunnan,

hinase hic enda thu.
Wat unbidan we nu?
This roughly translates as “All birds have started making nests, except me and
you. What are we waiting for?” It would take until 1932 before a scholar recog-
nized these thirteen words in a manuscript – now in the Oxford Bodleian – for
what they were: the first truly literary sentence in the Dutch language. Since
then, they have been part of the staple diet of all literary histories taught to
Dutch schoolchildren.
Strictly speaking this poetic effusion is a product of the southern Low
Countries in exile, and there is no evidence that its words were ever heard in
the delta. Had they been heard, however, they would have been understood, as
they are written in a language which was close enough to the dialects of Old
Dutch spoken in the northern Low Countries. It would still take some time, how-
ever, before the first literary works in the vernacular would be written here.
It would be a mistake to reduce the history of literature to that of
the authors writing in a particular language. We should also look
at the reception of works written elsewhere,
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and when we do, we ought to look beyond the confines of the dominant
vernacular. Indeed, we should look beyond written literature and take oral
traditions into account as well. Word art is not confined to the written word,
and the Middle Ages were always multilingual. Rather than studying “litera-
ture in Dutch” we should study “literature in predominantly Dutch-speaking
areas,” or more modestly phrased for instance as “literature in the delta.” With
such a perspective we would realize that long before literary works were pro-
duced in Dutch (already in the eighth century), Latin literary texts were
imported. In the mission at Utrecht the lives of saintly missionaries were writ-
ten, and in or around Maastricht the story of Servatius, the first bishop, was
written already in the early eighth century. In the monastery of Egmond, the
abbey of the family of the counts of Holland, hagiography and historiography
in Latin was practiced from the eleventh century onwards, a mere two genera-
tions after the abbey’s foundation. Latin literature was followed by literature
in French and German. Texts in these languages were read, heard and emu-
lated in Dutch, once that vernacular had become an acceptable vehicle for
written literature.
Many stories circulated orally before they were written down, such as the
tenth-century “ghost story” of the priest of Deventer, who was killed when he
stayed the night in his church while the noisy souls of the departed celebrated
their Mass. This exciting story was written down by the German chronicler
Thietmar of Merseburg. It suggests that many similar stories may have been
told and sung, but did not find someone willing to preserve them for posterity,
in Latin or in any other language.
Towards the Center of Western Civilization

Our survey started with developments in the delta after the arrival of the Romans. The
region became an important border region, in which exchanges took place between the
Mediterranean civilization of the Empire and the local populations. Literacy came in
the wake of the Roman legions. After their departure, their place was taken by the
Franks, the Carolingians, and the kingdom of Germany. “Frisians” traded across seas
and along rivers. Christianity came in the seventh and eighth centuries to the mouths
of the Rhine and the Maas, and the Church established itself. From the beginning of the
second millennium, due to land reclamation and, later, urbanization, the delta could
start to move towards the center of Western civilization. In the later Middle Ages we see
growing prosperity, increased schooling and literacy, and new forms of spirituality.
These major contributions to late medieval European Christianity eloquently show
that the delta was now firmly at the center rather than at the periphery of Western civi-
lization.
Politically, during the long period in which these shifts from the periphery to the
center took place, the delta was never a clearly-defined, single entity. It formed part of
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larger entities, such as the Roman and Carolingian empires and the Christian Church.
Several systems of law coexisted. The exercise of power, however, showed marked simi-
larities with that of its neighbors. Daily life was not all that different from the way it
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was lived in neighboring areas, nor were beliefs, neither before nor after the introduc-
tion of Christianity. Maybe, because of the mobility of traders, knowledge about the
world at large was slightly greater here than elsewhere, but we cannot be sure of that.
The inhabitants of the delta did not consider it an entity, but identified with their rela-
tives, region or religion. They did not even speak one single language, and it seems
doubtful if someone from the Frisian islands in the North would have been able to sus-
tain a conversation with an inhabitant of a town in the South East such as Maastricht
about anything other than trade. There was as yet no Dutch state, and identification
with “the Netherlands” was therefore a sentiment that could not yet develop.
Further Reading
Arblaster, Paul. A History of the Low Countries. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Blockmans, Wim, and Walter Prevenier. The Promised Lands: The Low Countries under Burgundian Rule
1369-1530. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Blom, J.C.H., and E. Lamberts, eds. History of the Low Countries. New York: Berghahn, 2006.
Rietbergen, Peter. A Short History of the Netherlands. Amersfoort: Bekking, 2006.
There is no survey available of the early history of the Netherlands in English. Recent titles can be
found through consulting the online International Medieval Bibliography, which can be accessed
through http://www.brepolis.net.
A rendering of the text of Hebban Olla Vogala can be found at https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/-

vogala/id788511078. Other fragments of Middle Dutch and Old Frisian texts can be heard using
the same app.
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chapter 8
The Golden Age

by maarten prak
During much of the seventeenth century the Dutch dominated European and indeed
world trade. The Dutch guilder was the dollar of the seventeenth century, a currency
accepted around the globe. During that same period, the Dutch army and navy were
much-feared combatants. Scientists working in the Dutch Republic were prominent
participants in the Scientific Revolution. Dutch artists from this period, like Rem-
brandt and Vermeer, are household names even today. The history of the Dutch Golden
Age is therefore of much more than local importance.
That history is often told in terms of exceptionalism; the Dutch were the odd man
out in early modern Europe. Many historians have analyzed this Dutch exceptionalism
in terms of modernity. The trouble, of course, is that “modernity” is such an all-embra-
cing and therefore slippery concept. Nonetheless, the concept can be used, if it is disag-
gregated, if precise benchmarks are applied, and if a comparative perspective is used.
This chapter will do exactly that. Rather than assuming beforehand that a society will
modernize across-the-board, it will look at a variety of aspects: the economy, social
developments, political structures, religious identities, and science, to see what – if any-
thing – was modern about the Dutch Golden Age.
The First Modern Economy

Perhaps the most straightforward indicator of the modernity of any pre-modern econ-
omy is the distribution of its workforce. Traditional economies are characterized by
high percentages of their populations working in agriculture; higher numbers in non-
agricultural sectors such as industry and trade, are a sign of economic modernization.
Table 1 clearly shows how substantial numbers of the Dutch workforce had moved to
the towns and in the process exchanged their rural jobs for urban ones. This process,
which already started during the Middle Ages, was at the same time cause and conse-
quence of the Golden Age.
Estimates for various European economies between 1500 and 1800 suggest that
the normal situation was one of stagnation. The Dutch economy, however, went
through a spectacular phase of growth between circa 1580 and 1650; national income
per capita increased by about 50 percent. All sectors of the economy – in Holland the
economy grew by more than 1 percent per annum – contributed to these growth
figures, albeit some more than others.1
The Dutch already had a very substantial share in the trade between Western and
Northern Europe, but the volume of this trade further increased during the first half of
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the seventeenth century. Shortly before 1600 a new series of commercial explorations
was launched, most spectacularly direct voyages to the East Indies and the Americas.
The former would lead to the creation of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde
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Rural Rural
agricultural Urban non-agricultural
England 55 17 28
France 63 11 26
Dutch Republic 40 39 21
table 1: percentage distribution of the workforce in

england, france, and the dutch republic in 1700
Source: E.A. Wrigley, “Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent
in the Early Modern Period”, in Wrigley, People, Cities and Wealth: The Transformation
of Traditional Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), tables 4, 8, and 9.
Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC) in 1602. It was to become the world’s first large-scale
joint-stock company. By 1700 the VOC was employing around twenty-five thousand
persons of whom eighteen thousand were working in Asia. Almost four thousand were
stationed in Batavia (now Jakarta), the town used by the Dutch as their commercial
headquarters in the Indonesian archipelago. Another four thousand were working
aboard ships plying Asian waters, ferrying cargo between the numerous VOC trading
posts set up in Japan, Taiwan and Sri Lanka, on the Indian coast, as well as the various
islands in the archipelago itself. To provision the shipping route between Europe and
Asia, the VOC set up a station on the southern tip of Africa; this station eventually
became Cape Town.
Dutch merchants were less successful in the West. The Dutch West India Company,
or WIC, was late to enter into the competition with Spain and Portugal. As a result,
costs proved higher and revenues more difficult to come by in the American trade.
Despite the windfall, in 1628, of the capture of the Spanish silver fleet, the WIC had a
difficult time making a profit. Its colonies in North America (New Amsterdam, the
future New York) 2, Brazil and the Caribbean, as well the slave stations on the African
coast, required huge protection costs. Brazil was already lost in the 1640s, New Amster-
dam was handed over to the English in 1667.
The booming trade helped launch various new industries, and revive older ones.
Among the completely new industries were diamond cutting, sugar refining and
tobacco spinning, none of which had existed in the Netherlands before 1580. The same
was true for the famous Delft blue pottery, which first emerged as a substitute for
Chinese porcelain, when the supply of that coveted product was interrupted by the
Ming-Qing transition during the middle decades of the seventeenth century. It was so
successful that in the eighteenth century Chinese potteries were producing imitation
Delftware!
The economic boom strongly stimulated consumer demand. There was a strong
upsurge in the quantity and variety of products available to ordinary customers. In the
sixteenth century farmers in the northern province of Friesland had no cupboards, no
paintings and no clocks. Books were only available in the wealthiest households. By the
early eighteenth century all these items were present in even the poorest farming fami-
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lies. This was partly due to the availability of new products that appeared on the market
for the first time in the course of the seventeenth century. These included tulips, which
were starting to be cultivated commercially in Holland shortly after 1600, and as a
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spin-off also led to the production of Delft-blue tulip vases.3 Also tobacco, which was
not only imported, but grown on the sandy soils of the central Veluwe district in the
Netherlands itself. And of course many colonial products, which by 1700 had become
accessible to all social classes.

A distinguishing feature of the Dutch economy was its high level of integration.
The relations between towns and countryside have been characterized as “symbiotic.”
During the middle decades of the seventeenth century an extensive network of new
canals was created, along which towboats maintained a regular service, ensuring easy
(and comfortable) connections between the towns of Holland. These towns were also in
various other respects pivotal to Dutch society.
The Tulip Bubble: Horticultural Speculation

The tulip made its first impact on European history in 1389 in Kosovo, when the
son of the Ottoman sultan rode into battle against the Serbs wearing a shirt
embroidered with tulips. The tulip is a native plant of Turkey and much revered
in that country, where it is known as lale. The Western name probably derives
from a mispronunciation for turband (tulband in Turkish), which was reported
back by early travelers as tulipam, and confused by them with the flower. In
1559 a Swiss physician and botanist, Conrad Gesner (1516-1565), published the
first account and the first picture of tulips in Western Europe.
In those days tulips were cultivated in Europe by a mere handful of bot-
anists. Most notable among them was Charles de l’Éscluse, or Carolus Clusius
(1526-1609), a native of Arras in the
Habsburg Netherlands. Clusius helped
establish the Imperial Botanical Gar-
den at Vienna, at the behest of Em-
peror Maximilian II, and then created
another botanical garden in Frank-
furt, before his appointment as Horti
Praefectus at the recently established
university of Leiden in the Nether-
lands in 1592. Clusius had the largest
collection of tulip bulbs in Europe and
ensured that the university’s botani-
cal garden included numerous var-
ieties of tulips.
By then the tulip had already be-
come a fashionable item in aristocrat-
ic gardens; in the Dutch Republic it
was to become a truly popular flower.
Emanuel Sweerts from Amsterdam
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published his Florilegium in 1612, the

first sales catalogue that included
tulips. Dutch agriculture was already
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highly commercialized and quick to pick up on this new product. As it was, the
soil directly behind the dunes in the vicinity of Haarlem proved exceptionally
suitable for the growing of bulbs. The interest in tulips reached fever pitch
during the 1630s, when a single bulb could exchange hands for the price of a
sizable house on one of Amsterdam’s fashionable canals. Especially in demand
were the so-called broken varieties, which displayed flamed patterns of many
colors, instead of the more common solid coloring. Twentieth-century labora-
tory tests would reveal that breaking occurred as the result of a viral infection
of the bulb. In the seventeenth century it was only understood that the broken
varieties were rare, and therefore valuable. Of the Semper Augustus, perhaps
the rarest of them all, only twelve bulbs were known to exist, and at a certain
point they were all owned by Adriaen Pauw (1581-1653), Amsterdam’s, and later
Holland’s Pensionary, the country’s most important civil servant.
In 1637 the tulip bubble burst, and it took the Dutch authorities years to
sort out the financial mess, which left numerous people bankrupt. Although
observers at home and abroad insisted it had taught the speculators a lesson,
the tulip mania turned out to be a publicity scoop. It would establish in the
public mind, for centuries to come, the closest possible connection between
Holland and bulbs. Thanks to its flowers, Dutch agriculture is still one of the
largest exporters in the world.
Towns and Their Immigrants

Early modern European society was still overwhelmingly dominated by the country-
side. Before 1800 less than 10 percent of Europeans lived in a town, when we define a
town as a community of ten thousand inhabitants and over. Of course there were varia-
tions around this European average, but in the seventeenth century the Dutch Republic
was by far the most urbanized.4 By 1700 one in every three Dutch men and women
lived in a town; in Holland this had reached two in every three. Between 1560 and 1670
the towns of Holland grew by an average of 250 percent.
To a very large extent this growth was due to immigration. The first wave of
migrants arrived in the 1580s and 1590s from the Spanish Netherlands. Amsterdam
was the most popular destination. Its population shot up from 30,000 in 1580, to
105,000 in 1622, on to 240,000 in 1732. Immigrants made Amsterdam into Europe’s
third largest town, after London and Paris. Amsterdam’s population was also boosted
by Jews arriving from Portugal and Spain (Sephardim) and from Central Europe
(Ashkenazim), by Huguenots from France who came over after the repeal of the Edict of
Nantes in 1685, and especially by huge numbers of Scandinavians and Germans, who
flocked to Amsterdam in their thousands throughout the seventeenth century.
Social change in the Dutch Golden Age consisted first and foremost of this com-
bined process of immigration and urbanization. But this in turn entailed other changes.
The economic boom benefited the wealthiest sections of society much more than the
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poorest. The sting was, however, taken out of this greater inequality, by the expansion
of the urban system of poor relief. In the seventeenth century the social security sys-
tems of the Holland towns in particular were said to be among the most generous in
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Europe. No doubt this helps explain why the integration of such large numbers of
immigrants into the urban social framework was realized with perhaps lots of minor
frictions, but very few large-scale conflicts.
In Dutch society, and especially in the seaboard provinces, the towns were domin-
ated in still another way. Whereas in most European countries the aristocracy – in other
words: a rural elite – set the standard for social and cultural modes of behavior, in the
Dutch Republic the urban bourgeoisie was at least as prominent. The famous Dutch
canals were lined with their homes, and in the seventeenth century new canals were
created to cater to the increased demand for bourgeois housing. The majority of these
people had become rich in long-distance trade, but some were also industrial entre-
preneurs. During the seventeenth century, however, several of these families started to
specialize in political office and attendant careers. A new sub-section of the urban elites
emerged, the so-called regents. These were people who sat on the town councils, and
through these positions influenced the course of Dutch politics.
William of Orange: Founding Father

As leader of the Dutch Revolt against Spanish rule and founder of the House of
Orange-Nassau, which rules the country until the present day, William of
Orange has been called the father of the Dutch nation.
William was born in 1533 as heir
to immense landed wealth. He was
the eldest son of the Lutheran Count
of Nassau in Germany who also owned
large properties in the Dutch province
of Brabant around Breda, and at age
11 inherited the sovereign principality
of Orange in France. The Habsburg
emperor Charles V, only allowed him
to accept this inheritance and title on
condition that he would be raised at
the imperial court and convert to
Catholicism. In Brussels, William learn-
ed French and colloquial Dutch, ac-
cepted many diplomatic and military
responsibilities and quickly became
an influential confidant of the em-
peror, earning the epithet “the Silent”
for his ability to conceal his true in-
tentions. When Charles V formally ab-
dicated in 1555 he famously leaned on
the shoulder of the young Prince of Orange. His son, King Philip II, admitted
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William to the influential Council of State and appointed him stadtholder (gov-
ernor) of the key provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht when he departed
for Spain, making William the most powerful nobleman in the Netherlands.
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The relation between William and the absent king quickly soured, however.
William and his fellow nobles felt that the autocratic directives from Spain
trampled on their traditional liberties and privileges. Moreover, they also
began to resent the religious persecution which the devoutly Catholic king
Philip II imposed on the Netherlands to quell the spread of Protestantism.
When the king sent a huge expeditionary army under the Duke of Alba to re-
store order and installed a special court which executed thousands of heretics
and disloyal subjects, among whom two of William’s closes allies, the prince of
Orange fled to his estates in Germany to organize opposition. The failed military
invasions which William launched against Alba in 1568 mark the beginning of a
war that would last eighty years and ultimately resulted in Dutch independence.
Although William’s plans for a union of seventeen Dutch provinces failed,
his brother Jan the Elder managed to unite seven Northern rebellious prov-
inces in a Union of Utrecht in 1579, which two years later formally renounced
its allegiance to the Spanish King. This declaration of independence left William
of Orange the undisputed leader of the new nation, although his formal posi-
tion was never properly settled. After King Philip put a price on his head, William
of Orange was fatally shot in his headquarters in Delft by a fanatic Catholic in
1584, at the zenith of his popularity. His son Prince Maurits succeeded him as
stadtholder of Holland and Zeeland, and later acquired that position in most
other provinces as well, establishing the practice of a Republic with a hered-
itary stadtholder from the Orange dynasty.
Local Autonomy
The linchpin of the urban elites’ dominance over society was their success in monopol-
izing municipal public offices. Due to the specific organization of the Dutch state,
these municipal offices provided direct access to the most relevant channels of power in
the Republic.
In the Middle Ages, the territories that were to form the Dutch Republic, were all
part of the Holy Roman Empire, but in effect behaved like independent states. They
were ruled by dukes (Gelderland), counts (Holland, Zeeland), bishops (Utrecht, Over-
ijssel) or simply dozens of untitled nobles (Friesland, Groningen), none of whom
accepted any superior authority apart from the Emperor – and him only because he was
so distant. This began to change with the ascendance of the Burgundians in the Low
Countries, but it was only under Charles V of Habsburg, during the first half of the six-
teenth century, that the majority of these regions were included in the proto-state of
the Seventeen Netherlands. The Dutch Revolt, which started in earnest in 1568, not
only led to the break-up of this proto-state, but also restored much of the regions’ for-
mer autonomy. As a result, the Dutch Republic became a state mainly for the purposes
of international relations and more particularly its violent form. The main business of
the States General, in which each of the seven provinces held one vote, was foreign
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affairs and the supervision of the army and the navy. Domestic politics was left to the
provinces, which each had their own set of laws, their own political institutions and
traditions, and so on.
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Formally, all the provinces were equal. Holland, however, contributed almost 60 per-
cent of the national budget. Holland could not dictate the country’s policies, but its
opinions were very important. Indeed, there were really only two circumstances that
could provide a counterweight against this domination by Holland. Firstly, Holland

was not always united in its opinion. Conflicting economic interests at times prevented
Holland from taking the lead. The other factor helping to balance the role of the various
provinces was the stadtholder, who was the informal head of state as well as the com-
mander-in-chief of the army and the navy.5 Under the Habsburgs, the stadtholder had
been a provincial governor. The position was in the hands of the most important nobles
of the land, like William of Orange, who was of German origin but owned extensive
properties in the Low Countries. William had been the confidant of Charles V, but even-
tually emerged as leader of the Dutch Revolt, which he helped finance out of his own
pocket.
The provinces, feeling they needed some sort of leader figure (and the money),
decided to continue the stadtholderate, albeit with a restricted mandate and under
their own control. But time and again capable stadtholders from the Orange dynasty
managed to maneuver themselves into a dominating position, often with the help
of the smaller provinces. And when persuasion failed, there was always the army to
support them. In 1618 stadtholder Maurice overthrew Holland’s Grand Pensionary
Oldenbarneveldt, and had him tried (and beheaded) for treason. In 1650 stadtholder
William II staged a coup against Amsterdam. And in 1672 William III returned to
power after the lynching of John de Witt, another of Holland’s grand pensionaries and
the country’s informal leader for almost twenty years.
This political violence was perhaps partly the result of the stadtholders’ double
role as political and military leaders, but it definitely also had to do with their poorly
defined job description. This was a problem more generally of the Republic’s constitu-
tion: it was a hodgepodge of compromises. Politics in the Dutch Republic was essen-
tially the art of squaring this particular circle.
According to the standards of political “modernization” the outcome was disap-
pointing. Centralization completely failed to gain a foothold. The central bureaucracy
in The Hague, moreover, was understaffed and corrupt. And yet, if one looks at the re-
sults produced by this system, it all of a sudden does not look so bad at all. If we accept
that the primary task of the state in the early modern period was to provide protection,
the size of its army is an indicator of effectiveness. According to the most recent esti-
mates the Dutch army in the 1630s and 1640s was about sixty thousand strong. France,
with a population about ten times bigger, at the time had an army eighty thousand
men strong. No wonder that the Dutch were by far the most heavily taxed nation in
Europe. On top of that, the Dutch government accumulated a huge public debt, against
remarkably low interest rates.6 All of this suggests an effective and efficient interaction
between the authorities and their citizens. At a time when most European governments
were fighting their citizens in civil wars revolving around the domestic balance of
power and the degree of civil (religious) liberties, the ramshackle construction of the
Dutch state, and its reliance on local political stand-offs, proved to be an advantage
rather than a handicap.7
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Religious Diversity
One of the hallmarks of modern societies is their capacity to accommodate religious
diversity. During the early modern period, most rulers and their advisers felt that diver-
gent opinions on fundamental issues were bound to undermine the unity of a country’s
population and were therefore a threat to any political regime. Against this back-
ground the Dutch Republic gained a reputation for tolerance, because it managed to
create a society in which people of different persuasions lived peacefully side by side.
As so often, the actual situation was much more complex.8
The Dutch Revolt had been, to some extent at least, a protest against the Inquisi-
tion. Therefore the Union of Utrecht of 1579, which bound the rebel provinces to-
gether in their struggle against Spain and later came to be seen as the Dutch constitu-
tion, famously granted freedom of conscience to all Dutch men and women. However,
the Union also allowed each province to create its own religious order. The Calvinists
had dominated the leadership of the Revolt, and they now stood to profit from its
success. Despite their small membership – perhaps as little as 10 percent of the Dutch
had formally joined the Calvinist Church by 1600 – they were given the exclusive right
to profess their faith in public. To that end, all existing Catholic church buildings were
either handed over to the Calvinists, or confiscated by the local authorities and con-
verted into hospitals, university lecture halls, or simply left to decay. The Calvinist
Church was financially supported by the public authorities from the very start. Only
those who were members of, or at least sympathized with, the Calvinist Church, could
be appointed to public offices.
For a number of reasons, however, the Calvinists were never able to win the hearts
and minds of all Dutch men and women. Clashes over issues of orthodoxy, and espe-
cially the problem of predestination, divided the church during the first two decades of
the seventeenth century – and took the country to the brink of civil war. The Synod of
Dordrecht in 1619 created a split in the church, and the establishment of a rival
Calvinist church, the Remonstrant Brotherhood. When given the choice, the Calvinist
leadership preferred a strict and therefore by definition small church, over an inclusive
one. This in turn made them less popular with many politicians, who saw the Reformed
ministers as a threat to civic peace. For this reason, the Church was placed under strict
political supervision. Moreover, the town councils of Amsterdam and other mercantile
centers in Holland were well aware that religious intolerance was “bad for business,”
and accepted religious diversity both as a boost to trade and at the same time a means to
contain the influence of the Calvinist ministers.
Calvinism’s failure provided space for the other religious communities to carve out
a position for themselves. This was especially true for the Catholics who comprised
about one third of the Republic’s population, but for a long time were tainted by their
presumed association with the Spanish Habsburgs and the Pope.9 Given the size of
their community, their religious needs could not be ignored. The authorities in many
places therefore accepted their meetings (and the celebration of mass) in so-called hid-
den churches, buildings that looked like ordinary houses from the outside, but were
converted into chapels on the inside. In Amsterdam alone almost thirty such churches
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were constructed during the seventeenth century. Their semi-clandestine existence was
known to all – the police registered the arrival of new priests, and pocketed bribes to
leave the Catholics alone. These bribes even became formally regulated during the
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eighteenth century. Catholic charities were allowed to collect money and buy property
to support orphans and paupers of their own community.
Other religious communities could likewise obtain privileges. Jewish merchants,
arriving in the Netherlands from Portugal around 1600, managed to negotiate signifi-
cant liberties in Amsterdam, including access to the town’s citizenship (although on
restricted conditions). There was no Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam, even though most
Jews preferred to live in close proximity of each other. During the seventeenth century
both the Portuguese (Sephardim) and the Central European (Ashkenazim) Jewish com-
munities were allowed to build huge synagogues in Amsterdam; the municipal author-
ities attended the opening ceremonies. In other parts of the country, however, religious
policies were decidedly less tolerant. Around the middle of the seventeenth century
towns like Utrecht, Deventer, Zwolle, and Arnhem, all introduced regulations prevent-
ing Catholic immigrants from obtaining rights of citizenship.
The image of religious tolerance, real enough in some parts of the country, thus
needs to be circumscribed in two distinct ways. First, some regions were distinctly less
tolerant than Holland’s mercantile towns. And secondly, even in Holland tolerance was
a way of life, rather than a principle. The idea of tolerance was accepted by very few
people; in practice, surprisingly large numbers of people nonetheless accepted the
implications of the fact that their neighbors, colleagues and even relatives were of a
different persuasion.10
A Thirst for Knowledge

Religious diversity also helped create the intellectual space for the new philosophical
and scientific developments of the period. Various indicators suggest that knowledge
was highly valued in the Dutch Republic. Of the adult male population of seventeenth-
century Amsterdam, 64 percent were able to sign their names; among females this was
40 percent. The high literacy rates in turn created a solid domestic market for books
and other printed documents, allowing the Dutch publishing industry to take over
much of the European market as well. Many of these books were written by non-Dutch
authors, and in other languages than Dutch.
Some of these authors, however, even though they were born abroad, had moved to
the Netherlands in person. The most famous of these perhaps was René Descartes, who
spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. Descartes was one of many first or
second generation immigrants helping to boost Dutch science in the period of the
Scientific Revolution. Other examples include mathematician Simon Stevin, who came
from the Spanish Netherlands, Christiaan Huygens, inventor of the pendulum clock,
whose parents came from the same parts, and philosopher Baruch de Spinoza, who was
born in a Jewish family that had recently migrated from Portugal to Amsterdam.11
Thus, migration in its own right contributed to the dynamism of Dutch science.
But there were other factors stirring up intellectual ferment. Dutch artisans had
been producing some remarkable instruments. In 1608 a spectacle-maker from Middel-
burg produced the first working telescope. Within a year Galilei was observing the
stars’ movements through his own. Probably less than a decade later another spectacle-
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maker produced the first microscope. Later in the seventeenth century, Anthony
van Leeuwenhoek was able to produce lenses that magnified 270 times – and observe
the hitherto invisible world of micro-organisms through them. Due to the country’s
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unusually wide and intense commercial networks, scholars working in the Dutch
Republic had direct access to a wide range of data previously unavailable in Europe.
Merchants and travelers brought home examples and pictures of plant and animal
species unknown in these parts. These helped stimulate new research, especially in the
life sciences.
Various Dutch authorities made heavy investments in higher education. Before
1575 the area that became the Dutch Republic did not have a single university. In that
year a university was founded in Leiden, primarily to train ministers for the newly
established Dutch Reformed Church. The university’s board of governors bought talent
from abroad. The number of students shot up; less than twenty students graduated
annually from Dutch universities in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, by 1700,
when the number of universities had increased to six, the number of graduates had
increased more than fivefold.
Outlook: The Modernity of the Dutch Republic

In many areas the Dutch Republic was ahead of the competition by the end of the
seventeenth century. Its economic structure was more diversified and as a result more
dynamic, as was demonstrated by the composition of the labor force and economic
growth rates. Due to its economic performance, the western areas in the country in
particular attracted huge numbers of immigrants. This not only provided the country
with a strong infusion of human capital, but also permitted further growth of the
Dutch urban system. Bourgeois elites, already an important social force in earlier times,
further tightened their grip on society. At the same time, urban forms of sociability,
such as guilds and charities, provided stable structures for a rapidly changing social
landscape. Through its citizenship arrangements the government was able to effect-
ively tap the economic resources of the country. This in turn helped make the Republic
into one of the Great Powers of its age, enabling the government to provide protection
for the country’s global trade network.
One element of these favorable citizenship arrangements was the religious free-
doms available to non-Calvinists in the Netherlands. These freedoms were circum-
scribed in various ways, but they were significant nonetheless, as is demonstrated by the
huge influx of religious minorities during the seventeenth century. Human and cultural
capital formation were important aspects of the Dutch Golden Age. Investments in
higher education gave Dutch students access to the most advanced knowledge of the era.
A specific interplay of long-term developments and short-term events helped to
maneuver the Dutch into the distinguished line of relatively small, dynamic regions
that propelled Europe forward during the late medieval and early modern periods. The
fact that these regions were located in northern Italy and the Low Countries is no coin-
cidence. Both areas displayed two crucial features: a high level of urbanization and low
levels of political integration. These features were characteristic of the central urban
belt (or “blue banana,” as geographers call it) of Europe, that connected the two areas
across Switzerland and Southern Germany. In the era before the Industrial Revolution
this was economically the most dynamic part of Europe. The great political innov-
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ations, however, were pioneered in the territorial states, like England, France, and
Prussia. Their advantages of scale would prove more successful in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries.
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Further reading
Bodian, Miriam. Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Davids, Karel, and Jan Lucassen, eds. A Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Republic in European Perspective.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Prak, Maarten. The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: A Golden Age. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005.
Price, J.L. Holland and the Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: The Politics of Particularism. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994.
Schama, Simon. The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age.
London: Collins, 1987.
Vries, Jan de, and Ad van der Woude. The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the
Dutch Economy, 1500-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
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chapter 9
A Tradition of Tolerance
by wijnand mijnhardt
Traditionally the Netherlands is known as one of the most permissive societies in the
Western world. Yet the Dutch brand of permissiveness, which is readily associated with
the acceptance of homosexuality, women’s rights, abortion, same-sex marriage and the
liberalization of soft drugs and euthanasia, originated from the cultural protests of the
1960s and 1970s that would dramatically transform the Dutch landscape.1 As a result
of that social revolution, many Dutch citizens consider permissiveness and tolerance as
essential parts of their self-image and identity, even to the extent of creating a historical
lineage that goes back to the early days of the nation. The seventeenth century, the
Dutch Golden Age, is seen to supply a great deal of corroborative evidence for this
belief. At that time, the Dutch Republic was the only country in which freedom of con-
science was enshrined in the law, resulting in the influx of refugees of all possible reli-
gious backgrounds. Moreover, the Republic was the established Eldorado for authors
and journalists who found the opportunity here to publish works that would elsewhere
be put on the index of forbidden books immediately.
However, contrary to accepted wisdom, a continuous tradition of tolerance in the
Netherlands is impossible to establish. True, the Netherlands experienced remarkable
phases of tolerance in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as well as in the
last decades of the twentieth century. Yet, these periods were exceptions rather than the
rule and they resulted from very specific sets of circumstances. Moreover, both phases
can hardly be characterized by hard-principled tolerance. Upon closer examination of
that tradition, the Dutch practice of tolerance derived from a culture of lenient permis-
siveness and was rarely principled in character.
The Seventeenth-Century Tradition

Historians have found it difficult to understand Dutch seventeenth-century tolerance.
On the one hand the Dutch state was exceptional in early modern Europe in that it had
written the modern idea of freedom of conscience into its constitutional charter. Article
13 of the Union of Utrecht of 1579, which provided the framework for the United
Provinces, explicitly stated that in the Dutch provinces “each person shall remain free
in his religion and that no one shall be investigated or persecuted because of his reli-
gion.” This provision was never questioned by any religious group in the Netherlands
and the Republic experienced a practice of increasing tolerance. Yet, it still was some
major conceptual leaps away from the modern liberal notions of tolerance that were
developed in the later eighteenth century. Moreover, the Dutch, with a few exceptions,
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never developed their own full body of theoretical literature on the subject.2
Dutch elites at the time simply were not engaged in a sophisticated philosophical
debate. They had a state to govern, which from its inception at the end of the sixteenth
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century was fundamentally unstable, especially in matters of politics and religion.
A few examples may illustrate this point. In the young Republic, of the approximately
hundred towns with over 2,500 inhabitants, no fewer than fifty-seven directly partici-
pated in the national decision-making process through the assemblies of the Provincial
Estates. This resulted in an extreme fragmentation of power. In this tough political
school Dutch magistrates learned very early on to avoid the numerous bones of con-
tention and seek compromises acceptable to an ever-changing majority without push-
ing matters to an extreme.3
The way in which the Reformation had been introduced into the Low Countries
made religious diversity infinitely more problematic in the Dutch Republic than it did
in England, France or Germany. Since no denomination had ever enjoyed open or tacit
support from the secular authorities, none of the competing religions ever succeeded in
reaching a strong majority. In the mid-seventeenth century Calvinism and Catholicism
were still at loggerheads, with each about 40 percent of the population, or even less,
while dissenters of an almost unimaginable variety, including those who had not yet
decided to join one of the competing religions, amounted to more than 20 percent of
the inhabitants.4
As a result, quarrels over religion were endemic and took place against a back-
ground of – at least from a European perspective – unrivalled “public opinion.” The
Dutch Republic very quickly had developed into the most urbanized area of Europe.
The 1550-1650 period saw unparalleled economic growth and unprecedented urban-
ization. A fundamental requirement for city-life was some degree of literacy. Almost
from its infancy, the Republic was a very literate society, permeated with commercial
values and skills, and quickly absorbing the flood of publications that issued from the
many cheap presses. The Republic therefore boasted large and mobile audiences who
were interested in politics and all questions of religion. The extensive literate audiences
of the Republic throve on the production and distribution of large quantities of ano-
nymous pamphlets covering internal and external politics and religious affairs, often
garnished with biting political commentary.
Equally central to the atmosphere of instability was the breathtaking number of
immigrants, which made for an exceptional level of diversity: social, geographic, lin-
guistic (inhabitants of Dutch cities were used to hearing a dozen different languages),
and most of all religious. Although many immigrants came from Calvinist territories,
the majority were Lutherans and Catholics, but among them there also were many
Jews, and adherents of a great variety of sects and other persecuted religions. This
diversity produced a complicated system of crossed loyalties that made it extremely dif-
ficult to impose uniform standards of behavior.5 These elements taken together made
for fundamentally unstable political, social and religious structures.
Certainly, the Dutch ruling classes would very much have preferred to force the
population into joining a Unified Reformed Church. They dreamed of a manageable,
broad, and popular established church that would supply a religious refuge to as many
reformed varieties as possible. That the creation of such a broad and popular reformed
church was a failure, however, was a result of the intractability of the Calvinist church
leaders as much as of the prevalent ideals of tolerance. Calvinists were a large minority
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and that is exactly what they wanted to be. Most consistories, the congregation’s
governing body of elders, deacons and other elected officials, were by no means eager to
receive the rank and file of the population into their midst. On the contrary, they
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applied strict rules for admission and laid a heavy emphasis on church discipline with
expulsions as the ultimate penalty, a penalty that was frequently invoked. Govern-
mental use of force in religious matters was equally impossible as it would have
violated the basic provision of the Utrecht Union.

Owing to the fragmentation of sovereignty, the boundaries between the public and
private spheres were not nearly as sharply drawn in the Republic as they were in the
surrounding absolutist states where the authorities, as the carriers of an undivided
sovereignty, tried to dominate public life by all available means. Freedom in the Repub-
lic was great indeed, and praised by many visitors. A considerable number of civic
rights usually associated with those of the nineteenth-century citizen, already existed
in a primitive form in the Republic. However, these rights were quite different from the
Rights of Man and of the Citizen in French revolutionary times. At best they were realizable
options within a fluid governmental practice dominated by compromise. The public
sphere as the explicit domain in which the citizen proudly created a position for him-
self in relation to the state, was continuously being redefined in the Republic.
Most Dutchmen were townsmen. They were also citizens by want of any substan-
tial aristocracy. Quite naturally the Republic knew great hierarchical and social differ-
ences, but city life meant that this inequality could – and at times had to be – lived and
experienced in very different ways. In the towns, the various social classes lived in close
vicinity. The upper classes along the canals, the craftsmen on the long, intersecting
roads, the shopkeepers and the unschooled on the cross-streets, while the poorest of the
poor huddled in the alleys and passageways that every street and canal concealed in
abundance. These often underground passageways and alleys connected a large num-
ber of cellar-dwellings, and backyards crammed with yet another motley assembly of
badly lit, ramshackle houses. This close physical proximity made social differences
clearly perceptible, but at the same time demanded their bridging. The result was an
impressive self-regulating system of contact and social control, teaching the towns-
people to give and take. Within this framework, conspicuous consumption was un-
acceptable and unwise.
Religious as well as social tolerance in the Republic was both principled and prag-
matic. The key to successful social interaction and religious cohabitation was relative
tolerance, or rather a general culture of lenient permissiveness that aimed at the preser-
vation of mutually good relations. Even the authorities were under this obligation. Not
only did the administrative culture require a policy of compromise, city officials simply
did not have the power, militarily nor politically, to enforce religious or social con-
formity, even if they wished to do so. As a result tolerance was much greater in the
Netherlands than elsewhere. However, this freedom can only be understood within the
unstable and complex political framework of compromising discussed above. Nobody
could claim tolerance as a right and Dutch tolerance was contingent on a very peculiar
social and political structure.
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Hugo Grotius: Founder of Enlightenment Thought
Hugo Grotius was a brilliant lawyer and an innovative philosopher who laid the
foundations for international law. He was born as Huigh de Groot in 1583 in the
Dutch city of Delft. A child prodigy, he entered university at the age of eleven
and produced his first edition of a text from the classics three years later.
Grotius became the chief legal advisor of Johan van Oldenbarneveldt, the lead-
ing politician in the early years of the Dutch Revolt. During his service, Grotius
drafted the official position on the
practice of religious tolerance that
would eventually be adopted by most
Dutch regents. He claimed that only
the basic tenets necessary for main-
taining civil order (for example the
existence of God and Divine Provid-
ence) ought to be enforced, while all
other differences on theological doc-
trines should be left to private con-
science. Grotius’ involvement in reli-
gious and political strife caused his
arrest and his confinement for life in
Loevestein castle. He succeeded to es-
cape in 1621, with the help of his wife
and a maid servant, in a bookcase. In
the Netherlands today, he is chiefly
famous for this daring escape.
Through his writings, Grotius, an
exile for the rest of his life, became one of the founders of Enlightenment social
thought. The Christian tradition assumed that human beings were incapable
of living together peacefully. Only divine grace prevented the world from slip-
ping into perpetual murder and mayhem. This constituted divine grace as the
foundation of Christian society and gave human beings a clear choice between
despair, death and destruction, or acceptance of their own sinful insignificance.
Philosophers, however, began to wonder if one could conceive of a passably
functional society without divine grace, based on human endeavor alone. The
question became ever more pressing as Europeans learned more about the
world beyond their continent, about civilized societies that were not based on
Christian dogmas and traditions.
Hugo Grotius became a prominent ideologue in this debate. He demanded
whether it was possible to formulate universal principles of law based on self-
love – the only principle of human action that would be left if God abandoned
the world. Answering this question in the affirmative, he proceeded to devise a
system of natural law (that is, one without any metaphysical foundations)
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based on the right of self-defense, from which logically derived an obligation,

in his view, to avoid harming others. Grotius believed that this line of reasoning
provided a legal basis for a human morality without any divine contribution.
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The consequences were immense. Grotius made it possible to conceive of a
fully functional human society that sidestepped, as it were, the Christian
dilemma. For rather than being faced with a stark choice between despair and
divine grace, humans could achieve a livable society in which life and property
could be safeguarded. On the basis of these principles society – as a human
construct – could be analyzed, discussed and even improved.
Grotius died in a shipwreck near Rostock in Germany in 1645.
Tolerance and the Dutch Origins of

the European Enlightenment
The tradition of tolerance that the Dutch developed during the seventeenth century
had far-reaching effects though. The most important result was the early Dutch
Enlightenment that became one of the major sources of the European Enlightenment.
Dutch intellectual culture was an intellectual battlefield on which three different
groups were competing. The first were the radicals, headed by towering intellectuals
such as theologian Balthasar Bekker (1634-1698), who claimed that theology and phi-
losophy each had its separate realm and who launched a successful attack on the belief
in witches and oracles. But the most important radical of all was the Dutch philosopher
of Portuguese Jewish origin Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677).6 Not surprisingly, the
intellectual skirmishes were triggered off by the intellectual system of French philoso-
pher, mathematician, scientist and writer René Descartes (1598-1650) who trumpeted
reason as the only reliable guide in the material world. After all, it was in Holland that
Descartes published his major works and it was here that Europe’s Cartesian struggles
began, several decades before they took place in France. While Descartes himself still
had entertained strict views on the number of subjects to which reason could be applied,
his Dutch colleagues went much further and also employed Cartesianism, the rationalist
assumption that all certain knowledge can be derived through reason from a number of
innate ideas, to find solutions for all problems of religion and of the interpretation of
the scriptures which in the Republic had become heavily politicized affairs.
The second competing group, the orthodox Calvinists, headed by the Utrecht pro-
fessor of theology Gisbert Voetius (1589-1676), claimed that Cartesianism subverted all
established religion and philosophy by its contention that large parts of the Scripture
should be interpreted figuratively and in terms of their historical context. A third
group that participated in the debate, composed of moderate theologians, tried to steer
a middle course. Their ideas can be traced back to the Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius
(1583-1645).
Initially, the radical Cartesians succeeded in dominating the debate. Lodewijk
Meijer (1629-1681), for instance, an Amsterdam lay philosopher, applied Cartesian
methods to theology in his Philosophia Sacrae Scripturae Interpres, published in 1666. In
his view the Scripture was so full of contradictions and discrepancies, that it would be a
disgrace to God to attribute its authorship to Him. Spinoza, equally setting out from
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Cartesian premises in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) reached even more out-
rageous positions. He claimed to liberate the individual and society from “superstition”
fostered by fear and, by freeing society from superstition and accepted religion alike, to
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liberate the individual from intellectual servitude. The only means towards this end
was bringing the light of reason to biblical studies and undermining the “principle
that it is in every passage divine and true.” 7
By the mid-1670s the heyday of radicals was over, however. Surprisingly, the ulti-
mately successful campaign against the Cartesian radicals was organized not by the
orthodox Voetians, but by the moderates who let themselves be inspired by Descartes as
well. By attacking Spinoza and his friends, these leading intellectuals of the Republic
hoped to fend off the attack of the orthodox Voetians on themselves, show that the new
rational philosophy did not lead to atheism and to pose as the defenders of the reli-
gious and moral order.
A crucial role in the framing of a new consensus in the field of theology and philos-
ophy was played by Herman Alexander Röell (1635-1718), a professor of philosophy
at Franeker University. Röell defended the divinity of Christ and argued against
Spinozism alike, but exploited Cartesianism to the full and went further than any pre-
vious Calvinist theologian. He forged a theology linked to reason and produced a syn-
thesis of the new philosophy and reformed theology, in which Christianity was por-
trayed as the most reasonable of all religions.
Dutch radicalism and its moderate reaction originated from religious and political
issues that were typical of the Republic. Although they were initially only fit for
indigenous consumption, in the decades around 1700 these ideas were disseminated
throughout Europe. Crucial in this respect was the extended series of wars that Louis
XIV imposed on Europe after 1672 in his aspiration to achieve a universal monarchy.
It turned the Republic into the heart of a European wide coalition against French impe-
rial adventures and The Hague into the centre of European diplomatic intelligence. In
this period the city band in the heart of Holland, consisting of Amsterdam, The Hague,
Leiden, Rotterdam, and Utrecht – which would later develop into the Randstad –
became the undisputed focus of the European Republic of Letters and the center of an
emerging European knowledge society. In this cosmopolitan milieu the Dutch urban
Enlightenment – both in its radical and its moderate forms – that had profited so
immensely from the Dutch brand of tolerance, found its European reception.8
Baruch de Spinoza: Philosopher of Liberty

Bento – as he was called by his friends and family – was born in 1632 in the large
Portuguese-Jewish immigrant community in Amsterdam. He was the second
son in a prominent family of modest means. Though he must have been one of
the star pupils in the Talmud School, at the age of seventeen his formal studies
there came to an end as he was forced to help run the family’s importing busi-
ness. In 1656 Spinoza was served the most radical sentence available to his re-
ligious community: he was excommunicated for “monstrous deeds” and “abom-
inable heresies.” Though the documents never made clear what these heresies
exactly contained, it is very likely that he already had explored ideas that
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would become part of his legacy later: the rejection of the idea of a providential
God, the denial of the immortality of the soul and the claim that the Law did
not come from God and therefore could not be binding for Jews or anybody else.
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Spinoza left the Jewish community and soon would leave Amsterdam as well.
After a few years in the small village of Rijnsburg near Leiden (the small house
in which he rented a room is now a museum) he moved to Voorburg near The
Hague in 1663, where he kept himself alive by grinding lenses until his death in
1677. In Voorburg he composed his most influential treatises, the Ethics and the
Theological-Political Treatise that was published anonymously in 1670 and
caused a great stir. His Political Treatise remained unfinished, but it was pub-
lished by his friends, along with other works and unpublished manuscripts.
Spinoza no doubt was the most creative and original disciple of René
Descartes, the French philosopher who coined the phrase Cogito Ergo Sum
(“I think, therefore I am”) and who claimed that the physical world around us
could best be understood by rational means without any divine intervention.
However, whereas Descartes made a sharp distinction between the mind and
the body, Spinoza asserted that everything that exists in the universe is only
one reality. There is only one set of rules governing the whole of the reality
which surrounds us and of which we are part. For Spinoza God and Nature
were just two names for the same reality. As a result, Spinoza’s God is not a
personal God. He cannot be revered nor is he a Creator. No human attributes
can be attributed to him – as was usual in the Jewish and Christian tradition
that saw God as almighty, as a revenging God who nevertheless can also pres-
ent himself as a father to his children.
Because of his naturalistic views on God, the world, human beings and on
the ways human beings arrive at knowledge, Spinoza was able to develop a
moral philosophy that centered around the control of the passions leading to
virtue and happiness and that became the basis of a very important strand in
Enlightenment thought. It laid the foundations for a strongly democratic polit-
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ical philosophy and a penetrating critique of the Scriptures.
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The Contingency of Golden Age Tolerance
Dutch supremacy on the intellectual world market was not destined to last. The relative
peace in Europe after 1715 and the growing practice of tolerance elsewhere made the
Republic serve less often as a refuge for intellectuals and their publishers alike.
England, Scotland and Germany would become important cultural centers in their own
right and in France the new intellectual elite personified by famous philosophers such
as Montesquieu and Voltaire saw the Republic still as an essential European print shop,
but they did not need it anymore as a place of exile. Soon the position of the Republic as
a European clearinghouse for French books and journals began to suffer as well, mostly
as a result of the same sort of structural changes that affected the Republic’s economy
as a whole: the emergence of cheaper and much more conveniently located production
centers elsewhere. In the second half of the century the Dutch book trade only suc-
ceeded in maintaining its international reputation as a production center of classical
and oriental scholarship. Dutch tolerance practices for a very long time had been far
more modern than anywhere in Europe. After 1750, however, the Dutch were sur-
passed by a host of philosophers all over Europe who no longer contented themselves
with the ideal of freedom of conscience, but developed the concept of tolerance as a
basic right of the individual.
Even more detrimental to the Dutch version of tolerance was the dramatic reduc-
tion in immigration numbers. At the end of the seventeenth century contemporaries
began to see economic decline. The inability to compete with much more resourceful
countries, such as England and France, forced the Republic to retire to those markets
where it remained competitive, such as the money market. This change in the economic
structure led to a decline in shipping and industry, which in turn caused a slow polar-
ization of the division of income. Beginning in industrial regions around Haarlem and
Leiden, the polarization drove considerable numbers of the ordinary townspeople
into poverty and pauperism, and even began to threaten the economic security of the
middle classes.
As demand for workers continued to fall, immigration came to a virtual standstill.
While in the seventeenth century immigrants made up about 8 percent of the Dutch
population – albeit with heavy concentrations in the Holland towns where foreigners
could count for between 30 and 40 percent – in the eighteenth century most cities went
into decline. Leiden and Haarlem lost more than a third of their populations and
peripheral cities such as Enkhuizen and Zierikzee even lost more than half. Dutch cities
not only became smaller and more self-centered, they also became much more homo-
geneous. Whereas in the seventeenth century uniformity had become almost impossible
to implement, creating a thriving and innovative culture, in the eighteenth century
uniformity and cultural homogeneity became the norm. This prepared the ground for
an inward-looking nationalism that would engulf the Netherlands from the revolu-
tionary period of the 1800s onwards.9
Central to Dutch cultural homogeneity was a peculiar mixture of visions of
decline, religion and Enlightenment, as developed by Dutch intellectuals. They began
to interpret Dutch society as a moral community in which religion, patriotism, and
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good citizenship were expected to enhance one another. Together they would enable
citizens to overcome the country’s decline and to restore the nation to its former glory.
What mattered to the Dutch was the degree to which someone had acquired knowledge
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and civil virtue supported by religion. This image of the country’s future dramatically
changed the role of ministers of religion. They had to concern themselves more than
before with the cognitive and moral as well as with the religious education of their
congregation. As a result religion was very far from being marginalized around 1800.
On the contrary, religion rather became a prerequisite instead for the undisturbed
spread of enlightenment and civilization. Precisely the preponderance of Christian
religion of whatever persuasion would provide Dutch culture of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries with an inward-looking, unadventurous and conventional
quality that abhorred intellectuals of stature.
It is therefore hardly surprising that quite a few eminent authors and intellectuals
chose to leave the country: the brilliant literary critic and Utrecht professor of Greek
Rijklof Michael van Goens (1748-1810) wandered through the German lands, never to
return. The most influential literary critic and historian of the nineteenth century
Conrad Busken Huet (1826-1886) emigrated to Paris where he died. The famous Dutch
author Multatuli (1820-1887) moved to Germany from where he continued to castigate
Dutch society and politics. Throughout most of the twentieth century the Netherlands
would continue to be the most religious nation in Europe. Church membership and
church attendance were invariably high and Christian parties who since the introduc-
tion of universal suffrage in 1917 dominated national politics, had used their monopoly
to ensure the public funding of religious education out of public means and to en-
shrine Christian morality in the laws of the land.10
Tolerance and Permissiveness

in the Later Twentieth Century
The sudden collapse of Dutch religion in the 1960s stood at the basis of a new phase of
permissiveness and tolerance. Church membership declined and attendance dropped
dramatically. At the beginning of the twenty-first century less than 40 percent of the
population is recorded as belonging to any congregation, and those who still do are much
less involved with church life than ever before. Within one generation religion, that
had been the pillar of society for centuries, was transformed into a ghettoized minority.
It is too simple to explain this radical collapse by reference to processes of secular-
ization and modernization. In the Netherlands modern mass politics had fully inte-
grated politics, social change, and religious fervor in the powerful mix of pillarization
– that is the segregation within society according to church membership and social
status – which had made Dutch religion almost impervious to traditional secularizing
trends. The disintegration of Dutch Christianity had a different background.
From the 1950s onwards the Netherlands once again went through a rapid process
of urbanization and industrialization that would transform the country. The Randstad,
in particular, could rapidly compete with city states such as Singapore and Hong Kong
as the most densely populated region of the globe. These changes produced a novel
world view that encouraged individual entrepreneurship and individual creativity.
Most of all, it favored the introduction into mass culture of the full idea of the self, that
up to then had been confined to a small elite.11
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This cultural revolution exemplified by values such as authenticity, expressivity,

reflexivity, culminating in individual self-fulfillment clashed radically with the inflex-
ible and authoritarian character of Dutch Christianity. It is here that we find the causes
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of the rapid demise of the hold of organized Christian religion over society. Dutch
churches continued to offer a conformist identity that allowed no individual variety,
whereas increasingly the general public perceived the Netherlands as a society of indi-
viduals, who needed to be tolerant of each other’s religious preferences. Soon these
new-born individuals would claim autonomy in establishing their personal life-styles
and their modes of consumption as well. Society needed to provide space for these new
forms of self expression. The state was expected to step back and to discontinue, first of
all, the traditional Christian morality regimentation but also to go easy on the enfor-
cing of all laws limiting the opportunities for individual self-fulfillment. It is hardly
surprising that the new ideals of tolerance and permissiveness fuelled by conceptions
of the expressive self, focused on questions of sex and gender, especially the acceptance
of homosexuality and female emancipation.
The rapid acceptance of the new models of self-expression and tolerance, especially
when compared to other European states, can be partly explained by the fact that this
cultural revolution took place in a homogeneous society. The Dutch were predomi-
nantly white, all inhabitants had received a comparable education and cultural styles
did not differ fundamentally from region to region nor from class to class. Dutch social
homogeneity was so overwhelming that for decades the ever-growing immigration of
guest laborers and their families from Europe’s Islamic fringes, with their totally differ-
ent religious and cultural backgrounds, did not impair the prevalent policies of permis-
siveness and tolerance. As the sojourn of the Islamic workers was supposed to be only
temporary, for a very long time they could remain an invisible and irrelevant category.
In the meantime many Muslims found attractive legal opportunities to organize them-
selves on a religious basis – as the legal framework that had made early twentieth-
century “pillarization” so successful was still in place. As a result, this seemingly easy
integration of Muslims into the Dutch nation through the traditional pillarization
framework could easily be interpreted as another success of tolerance and permissive-
ness Dutch style.
However, Dutch tolerance would turn out to be a contingent affair once again.
Though some adverse opinions could be heard in the late twentieth century, the new
millennium put an end to the atmosphere of optimism, tolerance and permissiveness.
After 9/11, Muslims soon came to serve chiefly as the image of the “Other,” as the oppo-
site of the favored Dutch self-image of a nation of tolerant individuals, as a representa-
tion of a past that the Dutch were now glad to have shaken off and even as a danger as
they might function as the Dutch base for a world-wide Islamic revival.
As a result, Dutch tolerance and permissiveness today seem to be in a quandary.
Muslims now are seriously advised to adopt Dutch tolerance and to restyle their
Muslim religion accordingly. A counter revolution urging the return to more tradi-
tional values seems to be gathering momentum and citizens increasingly ask for non-
permissive and strict government again. Even though the outcome of the debates is by
no means certain, the tolerant and permissive policies of the last quarter of the twentieth
century are very unlikely to return. Dutch culture has entered a new unadventurous
phase that reminds one of earlier periods and certainly will serve as a new impetus to
question the myth of the permanency of Dutch tolerance so dear to Dutch intellectual
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elites.
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Further Reading
Kaplan, Benjamin J. Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern
Europe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Israel, Jonathan. The Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. “The Construction of Silence: Religious and Political Radicalism in Dutch
History.” The Early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic, edited by Wiep van Bunge, 231-262.
Leiden: Brill, 2002.
Kloek, Joost and Wijnand Mijnhardt. 1800: Blueprints for a Society. London: Palgrave/MacMillan,
2004.
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chapter 10
From Colonial Past

to Postcolonial Present
by gert oostindie
Once among Europe’s major colonial powers, the Netherlands today is a postcolonial
nation with over a million citizens with colonial roots. All major colonies were either
lost to European competitors long ago, or attained independence in the twentieth
century. Today, only six tiny islands in the Caribbean are part of the Kingdom of the
Netherlands – not because the Dutch is unwilling to let them go but because these
Antilles do not want to part with the metropolis.
A paradox defines Dutch colonial history and its aftermath. For the Netherlands,
colonial expansion in Asia, particularly in the Indonesian archipelago, was of great
importance, economically, geopolitically, and culturally. The lasting Dutch legacy in
Asia, however, is very limited beyond the fact that colonialism created the geographic
contours of the contemporary Republic of Indonesia. The reverse applies to trans-
Atlantic expansion, which ultimately proved to be of lesser importance and interest to
the Dutch, but left a deep impact on their former colonies.
This chapter will discuss Dutch colonialism, specifically in Indonesia and the
Caribbean, decolonization and its effects on contemporary bilateral relations, and the
postcolonial migrations and their impact on Dutch society.1
A Bifurcated Colonial History

A very short history of Dutch colonialism runs as follows. While Dutch ships were
engaged in incidental explorations and commercial pursuits all over the tropics by the
late sixteenth century, the scale and organization of overseas expansion was greatly
enhanced with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company (VOC, 1602-1799)
and the Dutch West India Company (WIC, 1621-1792). This resulted in a series of trad-
ing posts alongside a number of colonies mainly administrated by these companies.
A glance at the digital Atlas of Mutual Heritage illustrates the enormous expanse
of area once covered by the VOC and the vast number of former settlements, fortifica-
tions, trading posts and so on that reflect this history.2 This string of historical settle-
ments stretched from the Cape Colony in South Africa through Eastern Africa, the
Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, to China and Japan. Most of these settlements
only housed a very limited number of Europeans; and many were short-lived. In a few
other places, such as Cochin in present-day India, the Dutch presence lasted longer but
nonetheless left few traces. Of more significance were the brief Dutch colonization of
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Formosa/Taiwan (1624-1662) and the unique opportunity offered by the Japanese

rulers to Dutch officials and traders to settle the small island of Dejima in the harbor
of Nagasaki (1641-1859). The VOC only achieved genuine long-term colonization and
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permanent settlement in the Cape Colony in South Africa, Sri Lanka, and contemporary
Indonesia.
After the peace of Vienna (1815) concluded the Napoleonic wars, the Dutch colo-
nial empire in Asia was reduced to the major prize of the Indonesian archipelago
(which the Dutch would soon call “Nederlandsch-Indië”). The Dutch state – by now a
kingdom – assumed full imperial powers. The “pacification” of the entire archipelago
was only completed by the early twentieth century. By then, the Dutch East Indies had
become of crucial economic, geopolitical, and also ideological and cultural importance
to the Netherlands. The archipelago would remain a Dutch colony until the declaration
of independence in 1945, even if effective control ended in 1942 with the Japanese
takeover during the Second World War.
In spite of equally ambitious beginnings, the Dutch empire was less successful in
the Atlantic. In West Africa, there were a series of short-term settlements, but only a few
of these, in contemporary Ghana, were long-standing Dutch trading posts. Elmina
(1637-1873) was the most notable and enduring of these. The first two colonies in the
Americas, New Netherland (1609-1664) and Dutch Brazil (1630-1654), were lost fairly
soon to the British or re-conquered by the Portuguese, respectively. The center of gravity
then shifted to the Caribbean and the adjacent Guianas on the northern coast of South
America. Eventually the Dutch held on to six Antillean islands, of which Curaçao
was the most important, as well as four plantation colonies in the Guianas headed by
Suriname.
The Napoleonic wars resulted in British occupations and, Berbice, Essequibo, and
Demerara – present-day Guyana – were permanently ceded to Britain. Suriname and
the Caribbean islands returned into the Dutch realm. Suriname became an independ-
ent republic on November 25,1975, while the Antillean islands still form part of the
kingdom.
Slavery: Recognizing a Black Page in Dutch History

The slave trade and slavery in the Dutch East and West Indies were two circuits
that functioned virtually independent of one another. Although the slave trade
of the VOC may have been of the same magnitude as those in the domain of the
WIC, the impact of slavery was far more important in the Caribbean colonies.
The Dutch role in the Atlantic slave trade is well documented. Dutch slavers
were minor players, embarking some 600,000 or 5 percent of the 12.5 million
enslaved Africans destined for the “middle passage” across the Atlantic. The
Dutch had little qualms about the legitimacy of slave trading and slavery itself.
The British imposed the abolition of the Dutch slave trade in 1807. The Dutch
were later than the British (1834) and French (1848) in ending slavery in the
Americas, but earlier than Spain (1886) and Brazil (1888).
The Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Caribbean colonies are increas-
ingly singled out as the nadir of colonial history. Since the late 1990s, the Dutch
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government and institutions in the public arena have been forthcoming in

financing and otherwise supporting initiatives to commemorate Atlantic
slavery. The Dutch government as well as the royal family have repeatedly
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expressed “deep regret” or “remorse” – although never explicit apologies out

of fear for demands for financial compensation. In the presence of the queen
and prime minister, a national commemorative monument was inaugurated in
Amsterdam, 1 July (Emancipation Day) 2002. A national institute (NiNsee) for
the study and documentation of slavery and public outreach was established
one year later in Amsterdam. Zeeland, once a major slave-trading province,
followed suit in 2005 with its own monument, in Middelburg. In 2006, a plaque
on the beautiful, early-seventeenth-century mansion of the mayor of Amster-
dam indicated that one of its first inhabitants had been an official of the West
India Committee with a special assignment for the Atlantic slave trade. The list
continues to grow.
Public awareness is certainly on the rise. In 2000, 7 percent of a represen-
tative sample of Dutch citizens indicated that among all episodes of Dutch his-
tory commending shame, the Dutch participation in the slave trade was at the
top of their list of embarrassment. By 2008, this percentage rose to 24, making
the Dutch participation in the slave trade the answer most frequently given to
this question. No other episode in Dutch history elicits more embarrassment.
The commemorations/celebrations of Emancipation 150 years earlier inspired
a long series of exhibitions, a television series, educational programs, books,
films and so on.
This does not mean that there is no dissonance. Populist right-wing politi-
cians have protested against the presumed nation-bashing inherent in the
critical recognition of this long episode in Dutch history. Moreover, there are at
times heated discussions about “ownership” of the knowledge and interpret-
ation of this past, distinctions are made between “white” and “black” perspec-
tives, and unresolved debates abound about the legacies of slavery. But at
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least, this is no longer silenced history.
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Contrasting the East and West Indies
While the Dutch started trading in the enormous Indonesian archipelago around 1600
and soon after established trading posts at different places, real colonization dates from
the nineteenth century and was only completed, at least superficially, after bloody
“pacification wars” in the early twentieth century. Some say that the most enduring
legacy of Dutch colonialism are the borders of the present Republic of Indonesia, which
mark the area once claimed by the Dutch state. The system of law also reflects the
Dutch period, as do loan words in the Indonesian language. But on most accounts, cul-
turally, the Dutch impact resembles a scratch on a rock.
This is not altogether surprising if we take demographics into account. On the eve
of the Second World War and hence the end of Dutch colonialism, the “European”
population of the entire archipelago was perhaps half a million, less than 1 percent of
the entire population. This tiny European group in turn consisted of first- or second-
generation European immigrants from many nationalities other than Dutch, collect-
ively designated as totoks, as well as a somewhat larger group of mixed Eurasian origins,
collectively designated as Indo-Europeanen, or indos for short. In colonial classification,
the entire population was categorized into three groups. The second were made up of
“Oriental aliens,” while the third consisted of inlanders or indigenous people. The latter,
internally highly stratified group made up all but a few percent of the entire popula-
tion, estimated at some 70 million in 1940.
The contrast with the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean is enormous. In stark con-
trast to the Dutch East Indies, colonial migrations (re)shaped the Dutch Caribbean. Pre-
Columbian native populations were wiped out on the islands and became peripheral to
colonial society in Suriname. Similar to the rest of “plantation America,” the Dutch
Caribbean colonies were populated by immigrants. Until the transatlantic slave trade
was abolished in 1807 the overwhelming majority of these newcomers were enslaved
Africans; a minority came from Europe. When slavery was abolished in 1863, over 90
percent of the Dutch Caribbean population was of African origins. The subsequent
introduction in Suriname of indentured laborers from British India and Dutch Java
tilted the balance again. Today, half of the Surinamese population is of African origin;
the other half has an Asian background. The numbers of the Dutch Caribbean popula-
tions pale in comparison to that of Indonesia: in 1940, against seventy million in
Indonesia and nine million in the Netherlands, Suriname had a mere 160,000 inhabit-
ants and the six islands together some 110,000.
These highly divergent demographic parameters had obvious consequences for
cultural development and hence contemporary cultural heritage. Perhaps a minor
point, “Dutch” overseas culture was to a large extent broader than just Dutch national,
as so many white immigrants came from other parts of Europe. There simply were not
enough Dutch citizens available and willing to leave their native country, much less
Dutch females. While by definition all overseas European communities creolized both
demographically and culturally, this creolization achieved an extraordinary dimension
in the Dutch orbit. Thus, well into the nineteenth century, the Dutch language was not
even dominant among the European part of the Dutch colonial populations. Neither
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was the Dutch Reformed Church in religious matters. The parameters of colonial rule
were set in the Netherlands and to an extent executed by Dutch officials – but only the
highest ranks of these officials were Dutch.
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Moreover, the numerical insignificance of the “Dutch” European part of the popula-
tion had profound consequences. It has often been observed that the Dutch colonial
legacy pales in comparison to legacies left by other European colonies. Language is the
most striking case in point. Dutch was only spoken by tiny minorities in Asia and left
only a few traces, even in Indonesia. In the Caribbean colonies, Dutch likewise was a
minority language all through the colonial period. The dominant local Afro-Caribbean
language Sranantongo was based on an English, not a Dutch, vocabulary. Dutch only
became a widely spoken language in Suriname in the twentieth century, in a specific
context of educational reform, ethnic competition, and growing orientation and
migration toward the Netherlands. The vernacular on the Windward Antilles was a cre-
olized English, on the Leeward Antilles an Iberian-based Creole language, Papiamentu.
Ironically, in the contemporary Antilles Dutch is still an unpopular second language, in
spite of the islanders’ choice to remain within the kingdom.
A similar observation may be made regarding the religious legacy left by Dutch
colonialism. Christianity remained a minority religion in the Dutch Asian colonies.
In broader Asian perspective, there is nothing particularly remarkable here: of all Euro-
pean colonial powers only Spain, in the Philippines, left a lasting religious heritage.
But in the Caribbean too, there was little Dutch religious zeal. In Curaçao, the European
elites clung to their own Protestant or Jewish convictions, leaving the christening of the
African majorities to Spanish and Spanish American Catholic missionaries. In Suriname,
the hesitant late-eighteenth-century decision to allow for Christianization of the free
non-Europeans and, only from the 1820s onwards, of the slave populations resulted in
the invitation of German Moravians and, later on, Dutch Catholic missionaries. Asian
migration implied the reconfiguration of the colony’s religious landscape; limited con-
certed effort was spent on converting Hindus and Muslims to Christianity and the
results were predictably limited.
As substantial numbers of Dutch were living in the Dutch East Indies and the
migratory circuit was expanding by the year, increasing numbers of Dutch were
acquainted with the colony, followed an education in the metropolis to work there in
public service, the army, or private business, and returned with riches, objects, and
memories which helped to make the Dutch East Indies a part of metropolitan society.
Nothing of the sort applies to the impact of Suriname or the Antilles on the Netherlands,
as there was little migratory connection between the Caribbean and the metropolis.
Decolonization
Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the importance of Indonesia
for the Dutch economy increased. In the last decades of Dutch rule, it was often said
that the Dutch East Indies were “the cork that keeps our economy floating.” While this
would prove to be an exaggeration, there was more substance to the widely felt appre-
hension that without this colony, the Netherlands would descend in the international
picking order “to the rank of a country like Denmark.” There were also less profane and
self-serving motives to cling to Indonesia: the stubborn feeling that much great devel-
opmental work needed to be done under Dutch supervision, that the local population
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was “not yet ready” for self-rule, much less independence, and that the emerging
nationalist movement had little backing among the overwhelmingly uneducated and
poor masses.
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History took a different turn as the Japanese invaded the colony in 1942, effectively
ending Dutch rule. On August 17, 1945, two days after the Japanese capitulation,
Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno, declared independence. It would take more than
four years of bloody fighting, protracted negotiations, and increased international

pressure on The Hague before the Netherlands and Indonesia signed a treaty for the
transfer of sovereignty. These four years, as well as the Dutch effort until 1962 to keep
New Guinea outside of the Republic of Indonesia, poisoned bilateral relations for
decades, probably more than the memory of earlier centuries of Dutch colonial rule.
The decolonization of the Dutch Caribbean followed a different trajectory. There
was no significant anti-colonial movement prior to the Second World War. The example
of Asian and African decolonization and the independence of Indonesia did spark
nationalist feelings afterwards, but initially there was no drive for independence. The
Dutch government, well aware of the damaging effects of the fiasco of its decolonization
policies for Indonesia, was willing to give in to Caribbean claims to end colonialism and
find an alternative half-way status acceptable to its Caribbean territories. In 1954, the
Statuut or Charter of the Kingdom of the Netherlands was proclaimed, giving Suriname
and the Antilles limited self-rule or “autonomy” within the kingdom. Fifteen years
later, failing to see economic or geopolitical advantages in maintaining the self-govern-
ing pseudo-states in the Caribbean and worried about the financial, governmental and
migratory liabilities, the Netherlands started to urge the two remaining colonies to ac-
cept independence. In 1975, a deeply divided Suriname indeed opted for full sover-
eignty – with a majority of only one vote in parliament and without a plebiscite, but en-
couraged by a Dutch “golden handshake” of over 10,000 euros per capita in today’s
purchasing power. One result was a massive Surinamese migration to the metropolis.
The Antilles in contrast refused to accept the dubious gift of sovereignty and have
continued to do so in the decades since. Whereas the Dutch government pressured the
Antilles to become a six-island sovereign state, the islands aimed at preserving their
postcolonial relation with the Netherlands while breaking up the uneasy colonial con-
struction of an entity of six islands scattered across the Caribbean Sea. In 1986, Aruba
attained a separate status, and in 2010 the dismantlement of the Netherlands Antilles
was completed. The three most populated islands (Aruba, Curaçao, and St. Maarten)
have retained the status of an autonomous country within the kingdom, while the
three smallest (Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba) are now Dutch municipalities.
This perhaps counterintuitive outcome of the decolonization process is easily ex-
plained. Throughout the world, there are “confetti of empire,” small geopolitical units
that are still linked in some kind of postcolonial relation to their former metropolis.
The great majority of these are, like the Dutch Caribbean islands, small-scale, insular
entities. International law, as well as the United Nations, states that these former
colonies have the right to choose their own trajectory of decolonization, including the
option of retaining the postcolonial constitutional embedding. Whether in the Pacific,
the Indian Ocean, or the Atlantic, large majorities in all of these nonsovereign territo-
ries have voted against independence. Politicians and citizens alike value the advan-
tages of nonsovereignty – guarantees for democracy, human rights, territorial in-
tegrity; economic support; metropolitan citizenship; and the right of abode – above the
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nationalist, ideological argument for independence. This pragmatism is found in the

Dutch Caribbean islands as well, and although frustrated Dutch politicians might
dream of ousting the islands from the kingdom, this is not likely to happen.
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Indonesian Independence:
Silenced Warfare, Hesitant Reconciliation
Between the declaration of independence on 17 August 1945, and the signing of

the transfer of sovereignty on 27 December 1949, lay over four years of bloody
fighting and protracted negotiations. In the first months after the Japanese
capitulation, unruly nationalists and criminal bands terrorized anyone sus-
pected of sympathizing with colonial rule, brutally killing perhaps some 20,000
thousand totoks and Indos, and unspecified numbers of Chinese and locals. In
the next years, over 100,000 Dutch and Dutch colonial military fought a bloody
war killing over 100,000 Indonesians, both nationalist military and civilians.
Casualties on the Dutch side amounted to some 5,000.
Upon their return in the Netherlands, totoks and Indos found little sym-
pathy for their plight, and neither did the demobilized military that became
identified with a, in retrospect, shamefully illegitimate colonial war. It took
until the 1970s before the “repatriates” from the former colony started to
organize for symbolic recognition and, less successfully, for financial compen-
sation for damages. Not surprisingly, in these circles the first president of the
Republic, Sukarno, was as much hated as he was in much of Dutch society and
politics during the independence war.
Around 1970, there was a short-lived public debate in the Netherlands
about Dutch war crimes allegedly committed during the colonial war for inde-
pendence. Veterans were furious, claiming that they had behaved profession-
ally and protesting that they were being scapegoated. On the basis of a brief
state-commissioned enquiry that looked at the available military sources, the
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Dutch government concluded that there had been no systematic military

violence on the Dutch side, but conceded that there had been unfortunate
“excesses.” Ever since, this issue has surfaced again, invariably leading to
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indignant protests from veteran organizations and repatriate organizations
blaming those favoring systematic research of nurturing ill-founded accus-
ations.
A change of mind-set became evident in 2005 when the Dutch Minister of

Foreign Affairs, Ben Bot, declared that the Netherlands had been “on the wrong
side of history” in the 1945-1949 period. Recently, the Dutch government has
explicitly offered apologies as well as financial compensation to widows of
Indonesian civilians who were murdered by the Dutch military. A thorough
scholarly investigation into the military’s use of violence is still lacking. As time
passes and the number of the surviving members of the military who were
involved in those events grows ever smaller, resistance in the Netherlands has
waned. The Indonesian government, in contrast, seems to have no particular
interest in this period, possibly because to investigate it would deconstruct the
idea of a heroic independence struggle of a unified Indonesian nation against
the Dutch.They may also fear that probing of the past might inspire Indonesian
activists to urge the investigation of, and compensation for, human rights’
violations that took place in the republican period.
The only postwar political violence connected to the colonial period dates
from the 1970s, when militants of Moluccan backgrounds hijacked schools and
trains to foster their ideal of a Free Moluccan Republic (RMS) independent
from Indonesia. The violence resulted in deaths on both sides and did not bring
the RMS any closer to being realized, but it did spark the beginnings of a con-
certed Dutch policy to integrate ethnic minorities.
Postcolonial Migrations
While there had been continuous but numerically insignificant and mainly temporary
migration from the colonies all through the colonial period, a quantitative leap
occurred after the Second World War, involving over half a million postcolonial
migrants and resulting in the formation of distinct postcolonial communities in the
Netherlands. The successive migrations from Indonesia, Suriname, and the Antilles
were all linked to decolonization, but each in a different causal relation.
As mentioned above, the Second World War marked the beginning of the dis-
mantlement of the Dutch colonial empire. The affirmation of the transfer of sover-
eignty to Indonesia on 27 December 1949 sparked successive waves of “repatriation,” a
dubious designation if we take into account that a great number of immigrants from
Indonesia had never set foot in the European Netherlands before and were descended
from families that had made the colony their home for generations. In the aftermath of
the “loss” of Indonesia, some 300,000 Europeans, Eurasians, and Moluccans “repatri-
ated” to the metropolis. This figure is negligible in comparison to an Indonesian popu-
lation of roughly one hundred million in the late 1940s and over 235 million today.
Also, the overwhelming majority were Dutch colonials and Eurasians.
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Whereas this first phase of decolonization caused unrepresentative and propor-

tionally modest migration, the transfer of sovereignty to Suriname in 1975 sparked an
exodus of 100,000 Surinamese out of a total population of less than 400,000, involving
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colonial citizens of all classes, ethnicities, and generations, a cross-section of the entire
population with some overrepresentation of the better educated. Over the next
decades, the demographic growth of the Surinamese community would be a largely
Dutch affair. Estimated at over 350,000, this metropolitan “community” is not much
smaller than the population of Suriname, in 2014 roughly half a million.
Large-scale Antillean migration to the Netherlands, mainly from Curaçao, dates
from the late 1980s and produced an expatriate community of over 135,000 by 2014.
Again, the numerical significance of the migration relates primarily to the islands
itself, whose local population is some 300,000. Antillean migration is not representa-
tive by origins, as the overwhelming majority hails from Curaçao only; almost half of
the Curaçaoan population lives in the Netherlands. In social and economic characteris-
tics the migrants form a representative selection of the insular population. Remigra-
tion figures for these three migrant communities have been insignificant for Indonesia
and very low for Suriname, but substantial for the Antilles. In the latter case, we may
indeed speak of circular migration, even if the demographic growth of the Curaçaoan
population has been heavily concentrated in the Netherlands.
Two general observations are appropriate. First, while it is evident that the diver-
gent processes and outcomes of decolonization influenced migratory processes to the
Netherlands, the causal link was different in each case. Migration from Indonesia was
literally postcolonial in timing and reflected a justified feeling that there was no longer
a place in the young republic for minority sections of the populations representing
the defeated colonial system. Much of the exodus from Suriname predated the actual
transfer of sovereignty and expressed a widespread feeling that a Republic of Suriname
would not be feasible, or that the metropolis offered better chances and more guaran-
tees. Both for Indonesia and for Suriname, the transfer of sovereignty implied, with
some delay, the closing of Dutch borders to future migrants. The outcome of the
decolonization process of the Antilles is paradoxical. Measured by standards of living
and guarantees for democracy and human rights, Antilleans inhabit a privileged
Western world. This is linked to their rejection of independence, a choice which also
implies a continuation of Dutch citizenship and hence the right of abode in the more
prosperous metropolis. For this reason, Antillean migration to the metropolis con-
tinues, partly as a circular affair with people migrating across the Atlantic for shorter
periods of time.
Second, we also need to question current usage of concepts such as “community.”
Surely there is no such thing as one integrated “postcolonial community.” There are
great differences between and within the Indische, Surinamese, and Antillean “commu-
nities,” reflecting different timings of arrival, different colonial antecedents, as well as
differences in ethnic backgrounds, culture, and class. Not surprisingly, these different
backgrounds translated into limited mutual interest and even less self-identification as
belonging to one undifferentiated “postcolonial community.” Moreover, we should be
careful in continuing to think of second and later generations’ descendants as still
forming part of the original migrant community, also taking in account the high levels
of exogamy with the local white population. The affirmation of a postcolonial identity
has increasingly become a question of individual choice rather than a self-evident
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Consequences for Dutch Society
These postcolonial migrations had repercussions both on the sending and receiving
ends. For Indonesia these were limited, as the number of emigrants was proportionally
insignificant and their characteristics were atypical. Migration from Suriname and the
Antilles did not fundamentally alter the ethnic, class or gender base of the sending
communities. However, because of its large-scale character and the ensuing reconfigur-
ation of the Surinamese and Antillean communities as truly transnational, the exodus
has had a deep impact on these Caribbean cultures. It has become very difficult to think
about these without taking the Dutch component into account.
Conversely, there is the impact of these migrations on Dutch metropolitan culture.
With the postcolonial migrations, colonialism has literally come home to the metro-
polis. The demographic consequences are obvious. Today, out of a population of some
16.5 million, an estimated one million Dutch citizens have (some) colonial roots. In the
Netherlands as in other former metropolitan countries, the argument “We are here
because you were there!” therefore rings a familiar bell. The emergence of this postcolo-
nial community has had a direct impact on the Dutch debates about national identity.
And indeed, the colonial antecedents of Dutch history have been more strongly and
critically incorporated in the national narrative than ever before.
It is a truism that the Netherlands changed enormously because of the immigra-
tions after the Second World War. In the immediate postwar years, the government
stimulated emigration to countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South
Africa as the Netherlands was thought to be overpopulated. Ironically, the number of
Dutch migrants to these places equaled the unintended, and not particularly wel-
comed, immigration of “repatriates” from Indonesia. In the next decades, the Nether-
lands became an immigration country, even if it took politicians and the general public
several decades to acknowledge this. All along, there was a substantial immigration
from within Europe, little-publicized until the recent rise of immigrants from Eastern
Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting expansion of the Euro-
pean Union. Next, there were the postcolonial migrations discussed above. Then there
was the formation of mainly Turkish and Moroccan communities as an unplanned con-
sequence of labor recruitment in the Mediterranean in the 1960s. Finally, there was an
ongoing trickle of migration of political and economic refugees, mainly from the Arab
world and Africa.
In the process, the Netherlands transformed willy-nilly into a multicultural society.
As discussed elsewhere in this volume, neither the process nor the outcome was
unproblematic – but on the other hand, there is much reason also to say that these
migrations gave new and refreshing impulses to the ever-changing national culture.
For present purposes, suffice it to focus on the admission, integration, and impact of
the various postcolonial migrant groups. Overall, we may conclude that postcolonial
migrants did better as measured by most social and economic indicators and were more
accepted than other “non-Western” migrants – which is not to say that they did not
encounter serious problems and at times racist or culturalist exclusion.
The relative success of the postcolonial communities may be explained by a combi-
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nation of factors which resulted in a “postcolonial bonus.” Among the beneficial factors
are: a package of legal rights (pre-entrance citizenship rights and hence the right of
abode); social and economic characteristics (a more diverse pre-entry class composition
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and a higher level of pre-entry educational levels); a measure of pre-entry acquaintance
with, and affiliation with, Dutch culture and language; and, finally, a justified, histor-
ically based rhetorical claim for inclusion in the Dutch nation. One might also add that
the great majority of postcolonial migrants had the additional advantage of not being
Muslims in a country which over the past decades developed an ambivalent if not out-
right hostile attitude toward Islam and Muslim communities.
Again, this is not to deny exclusionary reactions in Dutch society toward migrants
from the former colonies. There have always been objections against the admission of
substantial numbers of migrants from Indonesia, Suriname and the Antilles, in this
order. Sometimes resistance to immigration is formulated in outright racist or cultural-
ist terms, at other times arguments are related to class or education. Protests against
immigration did inform political projects to help the Caribbean colonies toward inde-
pendence at short notice, with adversary results in Suriname (the pre-emptive exodus
to “beat the ban”) and no success whatsoever in the Antilles. In the end, however,
no Dutch government has enacted legislation to close the borders for postcolonial
migrants who had citizenship rights – though even today, some politicians continue to
talk of restricting Antillean migration.
That postcolonial migration has changed metropolitan society is all too obvious
for everyone who walks around larger cities or even small villages. As Dutch citizens,
“postcolonial Netherlanders” continue to make their contributions to economy, poli-
tics, and civil society. Demographically and socially, most sections of the postcolonial
“community” are more intimately integrated in Dutch society than other immigrant
communities. Culturally, from cuisine through language and literature to entertain-
ment and sports, migrants from Indonesia, Suriname, and the Antilles and their
descendants have left a strong imprint. And finally, they have changed the ways Dutch
society remembers its own colonial past. Embodying the inherent ordeals of racism,
bonded labor, painful decolonization processes and the like, these migrants literally
brought colonial history home, urging their children as well as wider society to reflect
on the question what colonialism really was, and what it meant for societies and indi-
viduals on both sides of the oceans connected by colonialism, Dutch-style.
Further Reading
Atlas of Mutual Heritage, http://www.atlasofmutualheritage.nl.
Bosma, Ulbe, ed. Postcolonial Immigrants and Identity Formations in the Netherlands. Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2012.
Bosma, Ulbe, and Remco Raben. Being “Dutch” in the Indies: A History of Creolisation and Empire, 1500-
1920. Translated by Wendie Shaffer. Singapore: NUS Press/Athens: Ohio University Press,
2008.
Emmer, P.C. The Dutch Slave Trade, 1500-1850. New York: Berghahn 2006.
Goor, Jurrien van. Prelude to Colonialism: The Dutch in Asia. Hilversum: Verloren, 2004.
Oostindie, Gert. Postcolonial Netherlands: Sixty-Five Years of Forgetting, Commemorating, Silencing.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011.
Oostindie, Gert, ed. Dutch Colonialism, Migration and Cultural Heritage. Leiden: KITLV, 2008.
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chapter 11
The Second World War:

The Dilemmas of
Occupation
by christ klep
On May 4, National Memorial Day, the Dutch commemorate all civilians and members
of the armed forces who died in wars and peacekeeping operations since the outbreak
of the Second World War. The Dutch flag is flown at half-mast and two minutes of
silence are observed at eight o’clock in the evening. In most cities and villages people
gather around monuments, listen to speeches, and lay down flowers to remember the
dead. The official national commemoration, which is attended by the king and queen,
members of the government, military authorities, representatives of the resistance
movement, and survivors of persecution, is held at the National Monument on Dam
Square in the city center of Amsterdam and is broadcasted on public television. Similar
events are organized at other locations, such as the Waalsdorpervlakte in the dunes
near The Hague, where many Dutch resistance fighters were executed during the war.
The following day, on May 5, Liberation Day is celebrated with a wide variety of
festivals, concerts, fairs and other lively events. It can be argued that these two days,
perhaps together with King’s Day on April 27, belong to the few truly national holidays
during which the Dutch display and ponder their national history and identity.
Although the commemorative festivities aim to address above all wider themes of
freedom and liberation from all kinds of war, persecution, and hatred (including links
to domestic debates about the position of minorities), the dates are anchored in the
more specific memory of the Second World War in the Netherlands. The dates were
chosen because on May 5, 1945 the commander of the German army in the Netherlands,
General Johannes Blaskowitz, surrendered to his Allied opponent, Canadian Lieutenant-
General Charles Foulkes in the small town of Wageningen.
The yearly commemoration of what for most people is still “The War” illustrates
the huge impact the Second World War had – and still has – on Dutch society. In com-
mon parlance the twentieth century is divided into prewar and postwar generations.
Even more than half a century later references to the war can be found almost daily in
Dutch newspapers and media. For much of the discussion about a variety of topics such
as the requirement to carry identification documents, official registration of minority
groups, Dutch membership of NATO, abidance to international law, and the participa-
tion in international peacekeeping operations (most notably the fact that a Dutch
United Nations peacekeeping battalion was unable to stop the genocide near the
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Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995), the experience of the Dutch during five years
of German occupation is still an essential frame of reference.
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The German Invasion
When England and France declared war on Germany after its invasion of Poland on
September 1, 1939, the Dutch government still hoped to be able to stay out of the con-
flict. After all, when the First World War broke out, the German army had passed by the
Netherlands in its massive attack, and the belligerents had respected Dutch neutrality,
which was considered of mutual interest to all. Partly with that experience in mind,
Dutch foreign policy remained strictly neutral. Politicians and the population at large
alike tended to believe that war would not reach the Netherlands.
The Dutch Army was mobilized at the beginning of the hostilities, consisting of
about a quarter of a million troops, most of whom were young recruits and poorly
equipped. Since the Eighty Years’ War in the seventeenth century, Dutch defensive
strategy was mainly based on the so-called “waterlinie,” a defense line that consisted of
land that could be flooded in case an enemy attacked. This line, which had been per-
fected and expanded during the nineteenth century, mainly protected “Fortress Hol-
land,” the western part of the country where the major economic and political centers
were located. Although newer defense lines were prepared to the east, the last line of
defense remained the relatively small area behind inundated land and the great rivers
in the West. But this static waterlinie was obsolete and not able to withstand the new
warfare from the air, with bombers and paratroopers.
The German attack in the early morning of May 10, 1940 was perhaps not entirely
unexpected, but still came almost as a complete surprise. The German invasion was
supported by airborne troops, some of which immediately occupied strategic points in
the center of Rotterdam and landed near the governmental city of The Hague, although
they failed to capture the Queen or the government. German troops succeeded in con-
quering the southern and eastern parts of the Netherlands within no more than two
days. Only “Fortress Holland” and the isolated province of Zeeland in the south held
out against the German forces when on the early afternoon of May 14 the German Luft-
waffe bombed the city of Rotterdam, completely destroying the city center and killing
eight hundred civilians. After the Germans threatened to attack other major cities the
next day, commanding General Henri Winkelman was forced to capitulate on May 15,
1940. Dutch military defenses had withstood the German attack for no more than a
mere five days, a defeat that would linger in the Dutch mind for many years to come.
Meanwhile, Queen Wilhelmina, her daughter Princess Juliana, and other members
of the royal family, together with the prime minister and his cabinet had all fled to
England in a controversial decision that would be debated throughout the war, and long
after. In London the government-in-exile continued to govern over the overseas terri-
tories. Especially the Netherlands East Indies remained an important source of raw
materials and money until the Japanese invaded and occupied the colony in March 1942.
Despite Dutch neutrality Germany had decided to invade and occupy the Nether-
lands. The first reason for this decision was strategic. From a military perspective, the
Netherlands was of vital importance for the plan of the German regime to invade
England. The Dutch coast and harbors were an essential jumping board in the German
military plans for the Operation Seelöwe. But occupation of the Netherlands was equally
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appealing to the German regime from an economic perspective. Occupied Netherlands

would become a vitally important economic center during the war and contribute to
the German war effort.
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The German Administration
of the Occupied Territory
National-socialist Germany had two aims for the occupied territories in the Nether-
lands, one mainly economic, the other ideological. First of all, the Netherlands pres-
ented a rich source of economic wealth because of its industrial capacity, agricultural
riches and educated work force. It was in the interest of the German authorities that
citizens in occupied territories would continue their daily lives.
Until well into 1943 the Germans were quite successful in maintaining continuity
and normalcy. They installed a civil authority in the Netherlands that was headed by
the Austrian politician Arthur Seyss-Inquart. This civil administration initially tried
to portray itself as friendly, bound the German military to strict rules and – most
importantly – made full use of the Dutch national bureaucracy, local civil servants, and
mayors, almost all of whom stayed in office. For most citizens in occupied territory life
continued more or less as usual, in spite of war-time limitations such as curfews, black-
outs, and the obligation to carry identity cards. As a result, Germany largely succeeded
in the economic exploitation of the Netherlands.
A second German aim was the “nazification” of the Dutch population. The occupa-
tion authorities hoped to win the Dutch over for the ideology of national-socialism that
had brought Adolf Hitler to power. The Germans tried to convince the conquered Dutch
that the German political system was superior, especially in fighting communism
(bolshevism) and Judaism. Propaganda emphasized that the Dutch and the Germans
were “blood brothers” since they belonged to the same “Aryan race,” the term the Nazi’s
used to describe the master race of people of Northern European descent. After the
German invasion of the Soviet Union they argued that the Dutch should join their fight
against the “red barbarism.”
However, the “nazification” of the Dutch population was not very successful be-
cause it was hindered by several factors. First of all, the Dutch generally tended too
much towards individualism and parliamentary democracy to feel attracted to a cen-
tralist and collective ideology such as Nazism. Denominational and political segrega-
tion, or “pillarization,” as a form of institutionalized tolerance, was a further strength
in Dutch society and largely contradictory to the centralism as embraced by Nazism.
Furthermore the churches, to which 80 percent of the population belonged, provided
an ideological alternative. And, finally, Queen Wilhelmina in London, after the first dis-
appointment about her departure had subsided, presented a very powerful rallying
point for patriotic feelings, symbolizing the unity of the nation. The powerful speeches
in which she regularly addressed the people in the occupied Netherlands through
Radio Orange, a service provided in London with the support of the BBC, turned her
into a strong and beloved figure.
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Ausweis: The Dangers of
Identity Registration
One of the deadliest instruments the German occupation administration used

to control the Dutch population was the introduction of a new identity card. In
April 1941 all citizens older than fourteen years were required to carry a newly
issued identity card (persoonsbewijs). The new identity card was almost impos-
sible to forge and also meticulously registered in a central file system. This
handed the Germans a highly efficient
and almost inescapable registration
system, which they soon put to use in
the persecution of the Jews.
Tragically, the new identification
card, that was to cost thousands of
people their lives, was the brain child
of a dedicated but ruthlessly efficient
Dutch civil servant. Long before the
war broke out, Jacobus Lentz, the
inspector of the national registry
office, had been obsessed with the
creation of a uniform national regis-
tration of all citizens. The govern-
ment had declined implementation,
however, because it felt such regis-
tration conflicted with Dutch cus-
toms and traditions. But once the
German occupation authorities had
expressed the wish to register all
citizens Lentz set to work to develop the most perfect
identity card in Europe. The card, which contained
name, address, place and date of birth, a photo, and a
finger print, was printed on specially produced carton
with small lettering that was impossible to erase,
made use of special ink and glue, and carried a seal
that was attached to the photo and carried a copy of
the finger print. The document also contained a serial
number and date of issue that made it easy to track in the central register. The
card was so perfect that the Dutch resistance movement would never be able
to produce a passable forgery. In April 1944 allied bombers attacked the cen-
tral registrar’s office in The Hague at the request of the resistance.
With equal dedication Lentz started to implement the registration of all
Jewish citizens in a separate file system or Judenkartei. He even compiled a list
of all last names that could possibly indicate a Jewish origin to catch people
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who failed to register. In September 1940 exactly 140,552 Jews and 20,268 citi-
zens of partial Jewish decent were registered in his file system. The files would
be used one year later when the Germans started the large razzia’s with which
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they rounded up Jews in Amsterdam. In January 1942 all Jews were identified
with a large capital J printed on both sides of their identity card and in the file
system. Thus, the Dutch registration system was turned into the most lethal
administrative tool for the identification, segregation, and deportation of Jews

in the Netherlands.
The memory of the dangers connected with a centrally controlled iden-
tity card lingered long after the war. When the Netherlands introduced the
requirement to carry an identification document in 2005, many protested and
cited the war years to warn against central registration, as it could be used to
exclude unwanted persons and could constitute an intrusion of privacy by the
government.
Coping with the German Occupation

It is customary to distinguish three fundamental alternatives in the way the Dutch
population reacted to the policies of the occupation authorities: those of accommoda-
tion, collaborationism, and resistance. Although these are useful categories in under-
standing the behavior of the population, one should keep in mind that reality often
was much more confusing and people reacted differently under various circumstances,
changed positions over time, and were sometimes ambivalent.
The first and most common strategy was that of accommodation. Most Dutch civil
servants such as teachers, police officers, and mayors stayed on their post, some for
formal reasons since a government directive from 1937 ordered them to obey any
“official” authority, others arguing that their resignation would only mean replace-
ment by willing henchmen of the Germans. This grueling dilemma of the “wartime
mayor” became something of a trope in later discussions on civil authority during
occupation.1 As the war progressed, especially from 1942 onwards, the attitudes sharp-
ened on both sides. When the German authorities felt they were slowly losing control
over the war, they reacted with stricter rules and regulations, and acted with increasing
violence. This slowly undermined the willingness to accommodate throughout all
layers of society.
A small part of the population, however, opted for the second alternative of active
collaboration, some in the hope of personal gain, others for ideological reasons.
The Dutch National-Socialist Movement (NSB) had never managed to receive strong
support. Since it was founded in 1931, the anti-parliamentary and authoritarian
“movement” won about 8 percent of the vote in provincial elections, but was already
in decline when war broke out. Even during the occupation, when it was the only legal
party, its membership never exceeded 75,000. The NSB always remained rather
isolated within Dutch society because it had to balance support for Hitler, who was
widely hated in the Netherlands, and Dutch nationalism, which was unacceptable for
the Germans who saw the Netherlands as a province rather than an ally. The leader of
the NSB, the uncharismatic civil engineer Anton Mussert, who was neither a convin-
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cing demagogue nor a strong personality, faced the problem of always being “in
between” since he was not trusted by anyone: not by the Dutch, and even less by the
Germans.
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A similar fate was destined for the about 25,000 Dutch who joined the SS, the elite of
the German military, for ideological or more pragmatic reasons. They were obviously
not liked by the Dutch, but despised by the Germans as well: after all, they were traitors
to their own country, non-patriots. As a consequence, they were always given inferior
tasks, and most were sent to the Eastern front, where many of them died.
The third and most courageous alternative was that of resistance. During the five
years of occupation, probably not more than between ten and twenty thousand people
participated in any form of armed resistance. The small size of militant resistance can
partly be explained by the geographic circumstances providing few places to hide be-
cause of the absence of mountains and forests. Also the geographical position of the
Netherlands between Nazi-Germany on the one side, occupied Belgium to the south,
and the North Sea to the north and west, made resistance difficult to organize. Some
1,700 resistance fighters and others succeeded in completing the difficult journey over
sea or over land through neutral territory. Their destination usually being England,
they were called Engelandvaarders. Also, the absence of a strong military tradition of
armed resistance, the short duration of actual fighting in May 1940 and the prevalence
of a cautious, pragmatic attitude, limited the incentive for armed resistance in the
Netherlands.
Some armed resistance movements executed separate activities, such as sabotage
against military installations and the execution of German officers or known collabor-
ators. But the Germans often reacted with heavy reprisals against the civilian popula-
tion, sometimes summarily executing innocent bystanders. These reprisals fuelled
moral objections to armed resistance for which innocent people paid with their lives.
Some raised the question whether it was morally worthwhile to pay that price. Such
moral debates dominated the political and moral discussions at the time, in which
for instance questions were raised whether or not it can ever be ethically “right” for a
civilian resistance fighter to kill a German. The fact that the Germans, at first, seemed
to behave quite civilized added to such considerations.
Most resistance was unarmed and ideologically motivated. Some acts of resistance
erupted as a direct response to the increasing limitations and restrictions dictated
against the Jewish population. When in the Fall of 1940 all professors at Dutch univer-
sities had to sign a “non-Jew” declaration, professor Rudolph Cleveringa, the Dean
of the Law School at Leiden University, publicly spoke out against it in what was to
become a famous speech. In February 1941, Amsterdam dock workers initiated the first
and only strike in protest against the increasing persecution of the Jewish population.
At the statue of the symbolic “Dock Worker,” which was erected in Amsterdam directly
after the war, this strike is commemorated annually on February 25.
One of the main resistance activities, often carried out in the greatest secrecy by
individual citizens but sometimes organized in informal networks, was to help people
to go into hiding to avoid German arrest. These persons in hiding, or “divers” (onder-
duikers), were not only Jews, but also for instance Dutch men refusing to participate in
forced labor (Arbeitseinsatz) in Germany. Official documents were forged on a large scale
to provide individuals with new identities, and food-ration cards were produced to
supply people in hiding. It is estimated that about 350 thousand people were in hiding
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at one point, assisted by fifteen thousand members of the resistance.

Another major activity of the resistance was the production and distribution of an
underground press, which was extremely important since Germans controlled all
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Dutch newspapers and radio networks. At one point, there were twelve hundred differ-
ent newspapers and periodicals, one printed in no less than a hundred thousand copies
a week. Some of the newspapers that were started during the occupation still exist
today, such as Vrij Nederland (Free Netherlands) and Trouw (Loyalty). Looking back, it is
amazing how such a large scale operation could have been established. People had
to show great resourcefulness, for instance, to find the necessary paper, lead and ink –
at times even producing ink themselves.
The Holocaust
in the Netherlands
An important part of the German administration’s goal to achieve complete nazifica-
tion of the Netherlands was the elimination of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other
groups it considered undesirable or inferior. The persecution of the Jewish population
is one of the darkest periods in Dutch history. Less than 30 percent of the total Jewish
population of about 140 thousand Jews that lived in the Netherlands in 1939 survived
the war. This bleak statistic gives the Netherlands the worst record after Poland. In
Belgium, for instance, about 70 percent of the sixty thousand Jews survived the war;
in Denmark all but one hundred of the 7,500 Jews survived. The contrast between the
image of the Netherlands as a nation of tolerance without a strong tradition of anti-
Semitism, and this grim historical reality has been called the “Dutch Paradox.”
Historians have offered a number of explanations for the dismal Dutch record,
such as the concentration of Jews in Amsterdam and other cities and the lack of hiding
places in the crowded Dutch cities, as well as the thoroughness of the Dutch system of
civilian registration, and the cooperation of mostly law-abiding civil servants and the
Jewish organizations themselves. Some also point at latent anti-Semitism in Dutch
society and the absence of the Queen as leader of symbolic resistance. But Dutch Jews
also faced a ruthless and ideologically motivated German civil administration that care-
fully paced the registration, persecution, internment, and deportation of the Jewish
population in various stages and proved remarkably efficient and radical.2
Within months after the start of the occupation the German administration
announced a series of restrictions and prohibitions which aimed to separate Jewish
citizens from the rest of the population. In 1940 Jews were banned from the civil
service and universities. Early 1941 the German occupation authorities initiated the
next step of registration and concentration. One of the most insidious and far-reaching
preparatory measures was to require all Jews to register in a central file system, which
was followed early 1942 by the requirement to stamp a capital letter J in their identifi-
cation papers and a few months later by the order to wear a yellow Star of David at all
times. Jewish store-owners had to place signs in their shop windows.
After completing the administrative segregation the Germans ordered all Jews
in the country to move to Amsterdam, where they were concentrated in the Jewish
Quarter with the about eighty thousand Jews already living in the capital. Jews were
banned from restaurants, cinemas, and other public places. This operation of adminis-
trative and physical concentration was executed with the assistance of the Dutch police,
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public transportation, and citizens.

Things would rapidly get worse. Foreign and stateless Jews had already been trans-
ported to Westerbork, a former refugee camp in the north-east of the country. In July
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1942 the Germans and their Dutch collaborators started the fateful mass deportation of
other Jews from Amsterdam to Westerbork, which now served as a transit camp from
where trains left for camps in Germany and Poland each Tuesday. Immaculate records
were kept: until September 1944 exactly 103 transports left Westerbork, deporting
97,776 people, most of them to the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor.
From Westerbork and other camps in the Netherlands 107 thousand people were
deported. Only 5,200 returned. At the end of the war an astounding 70 percent of
Dutch Jews had perished.
Anne Frank: Icon of the Holocaust

Anne Frank was born in 1929 in Germany as the daughter of Otto, a Jewish busi-
ness man, and his wife Edith. Immediately after Hitler came to power in 1933
Otto decided to move the family to Amsterdam, where he had business con-
nections. Anne went to school, learned Dutch, and lived the life of any other
girl. When the German occupation
brought persecution of the Jews to
the Netherlands, however, she was
forced to move to a segregated Jew-
ish school and had to wear a yellow
Star of David. When the Germans
started the deportation of Dutch
Jews in July 1942, Otto moved the
family into a secret hiding place
that he had prepared in a house be-
hind his firm at Prinsengracht 263.
The entrance to the Achterhuis, or
annex, was hidden behind a book-
case and only known to four trusted
employees who provided the family
with food and other necessities.
The narrow three-storied house
became the hiding place for Otto
and Edith, their daughters Margot and Anne, the befriended family Van Pels
with their son Peter, and later the dentist Fritz Pfeffer. They lived together in a
confined space, sometimes under unbearable tension, for more than two years,
until they were betrayed and arrested by the German police. In August 1944
the group of eight was deported to transit camp Westerbork, and from there
on to extermination camp Auschwitz. Anne and Margot were transported to
camp Bergen-Belsen where both died of typhus in March 1945, several weeks
before the camp would be liberated. Only Otto would survive.
Inspired by an appeal from Radio Orange to record the memory of the war
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for later generations, Anne, who developed ambitions to become a writer, had
kept a diary. In her notes she confided her daily experiences, reflections on
what she knew happened in the outside world, and the feelings of a young girl
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coming-of-age in a slightly fictionalized form to her imagined friend Kitty.
After the war Otto learned that Anne’s diaries had been rescued from the hide-
away by a friend. It took him until 1947 to get the manuscript published, but
the diary soon became world famous after the English translation was pub-
lished in the United States in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl. The book was
turned into a successful play in New York three years later and in 1959 adapted
for the screen as The Diary of Anne Frank, which won three Oscars.
Anne Frank, probably more than anyone else, gave a face to the six million
victims of the Holocaust. Her diary became one of the canonical texts of the
twentieth century, because of the literary quality that brought the hiding to
life, but also because it was felt to address the universal drama of persecution
and human dignity. The Achterhuis itself, rescued from neglect by international
interest, was turned into a museum in 1960.
A Balance Sheet
Within a few months after the landing of the Allied Forces in Normandy on D-day, June 6,
1944, Belgium and the southern provinces of the Netherlands were liberated. The Allied
attempt to cross the rivers at Arnhem in September 1944 infamously proved “a bridge
too far,” however. Whereas the south of the country was liberated, the north faced
another winter under occupation. For the population in the northern provinces this was
to become the worst period of the war: it was a bitterly cold winter and because trans-
portation had come to a stand-still and large quantities of food were confiscated by the
Germans, little food supplies remained. This led to the starvation of an estimated twenty-
five thousand people, especially in urban areas. During this “Hunger Winter” many city
dwellers tried to survive by skimming the countryside for food, or by eating flower
bulbs. These last months of the war colored the overall memory of the occupation as a
period of suffering, even though most Dutchmen had enough to eat until the last winter.3
The allied forces finally resumed their advance in March 1945; the capitulation of
the German Army in the Netherlands followed on May 5. Parts of the country were left
devastated, large areas in Zeeland were flooded, and 40 percent of industry had been
removed to Germany or destroyed. After the war, the economic damage was regarded as
something that could be repaired, but the psychological damage was far greater. After
all, the Netherlands had not been occupied since the last French troops of Napoleon left
in 1813 and had suffered a severe blow in realizing that the trusted neutrality policy
had proved completely ineffective.
The war did not present a very proud story, which helps to explain why at first
emotions were dominated by a thirst for vengeance: to expose, humiliate, and convict
collaborators, and to take revenge on Germany. No less than 150 thousand people were
accused of collaborating in some form or another, sixty thousand of these accusations
resulted in court cases. Finally, four hundred convicted collaborators faced long prison
terms, and forty were executed. In comparison to Belgium or France, however, the
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period of revenge and retribution did not last very long.

Research of the war years formally started exactly three days after the liberation by
the founding of the National Institute for War Documentation (now Netherlands
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Institute for War Documentation, NIOD), headed by Loe de Jong, a historian who had
worked for Radio Orange in London during the war. De Jong started the public discus-
sion by presenting a popular television documentary series on the Occupation in the
1960s and authored The Kingdom of the Netherlands during the Second World War, the offi-
cially commissioned history of the war that was published in no less than twenty-seven
tomes of about fifteen thousand pages between 1969 and 1988. This study turned De
Jong into the most visible representative of the first generation of historians who de-
scribed the Dutch occupation and holocaust for a broader audience.4
During the first postwar years, public discussion tended to look back on the war in
rather black and white moral terms of “right” and “wrong.” But from the 1980s on a
new generation of historians started to question the heroic story of mass resistance and
suffering. Those historians began to ask new questions concerning the German inva-
sion and the mobilization of the Dutch army in 1939-1940. These questions addressed
military leadership and refuted many popular preconceptions, such as the myth that
the Dutch Army was stabbed in the back, that is to say betrayed by a “Fifth Column.”
Most historians now point at the many continuities in the developments of the mid-
twentieth century, such as pillarization, that were left unchanged by the occupation.
Other publications have analyzed the many differences between various resistance
groups who sometimes fought among themselves, and the size of collaborationism in
relation to the comparatively modest number of resistance fighters.5 In short, this kind
of research led to a more balanced picture in which shades of grey became visible
between the black-and-white dichotomy of “right” and “wrong” that dominated in the
first postwar period.
Looking back at “the” war years is also a way to explore the more general messages
to be learned from the Second World War. The perspective is much wider than that of
fascism and national-socialism, as the historical events of this period are now evaluated
in the broader context of issues such as racism, nativism, and exclusion, versus toler-
ance, human rights, and democracy.
Further Reading
Amersfoort, Herman, and Piet Kamphuis, eds. May 1940: the Battle for the Netherlands. Leiden: Brill,
2010.
Barnouw, David, and Gerrold van Der Stroom, eds. The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical
Edition. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
Boender, Barbara, Peter Romijn, and Johannes Houwink ten Cate. The Persecution of the Jews in the
Netherlands: New Perspectives, 1940-1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012.
Dwork, Debórah, and Robert Jan van Pelt. The Holocaust: A History. New York: Norton, 2002.
Haan, Ido de. “Imperialism, Colonialism and Genocide: The Dutch Case from an International
History of the Holocaust.” In The International Relevance of Dutch History, 301-28. The Hague:
Royal Netherlands Historical Society, 2010. http://www.bmgn-lchr.nl
Lee, Carol Ann. Roses from the Earth: The Biography of Anne Frank. London: Penguin, 2000.
Maass, Walter B. The Netherlands at War, 1940-1945. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1970.
Moore, Bob. Victims and Survivors: The Nazi Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands, 1940-1945.
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London: Arnold, 1997.

Wolf, Diane L. Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2006.
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Further information: Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD):
http://www.niod.nl
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chapter 12
Religious Diversification
or Secularization?
by david bos
Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk is probably the country’s most frequently visited church.
Each year it welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors. They do not come to this fif-
teenth-century “new church” for worship, however. Neither do they come to admire the
building, which oddly lacks a tower. Since the 1980s, it mainly serves for exhibitions,
mostly of treasures from far away and long ago.
Christianity in the Netherlands seems doomed to share the lot of past civilizations
on display at Nieuwe Kerk. Since the 1960s, a thousand church buildings have been
closed down, and demolished or converted into museums, concert halls, schools, apart-
ments, restaurants, clubs, bookshops, or mosques. Many citizens have given up church
membership. In surveys, 40 to 60 percent – depending on how the question is phrased –
say they do not belong to any denomination. Evangelical and Pentecostal churches,
which emphasize conversion and establishing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ,
do grow, but mostly by recruiting members from more conventional Protestant denom-
inations. This massive decline of religious affiliation, exceeded only by Sweden, Estonia,
and the Czech Republic came unexpected. Well into the twentieth century, the Dutch
went to church more frequently than any other European nation. Moreover, from 1918
until 1994, Christian political parties such as CDA participated in each and every gov-
ernment coalition and exerted their influence on society, for example by prohibiting
shops to open on Sundays or after 6 p.m.
It is not easy to say then whether Dutch society is secular or thoroughly religious.
Many citizens themselves do not know what to make of it. Is it a hotbed of Calvinism
or of secular humanism? Of Enlightenment or fundamentalism? Of merchants or min-
isters?
In the Beginning
As in other European cultures, the Dutch calendar testifies to a pre-Christian past. The
first day of the week is not named after the Lord (domingo, domenica, dimanche), but after
the Sun (zondag). Moreover, woensdag, donderdag and vrijdag refer to Germanic gods:
Wodan, Donar (also known as Thor) and Freya. Little is known about their cults,
because they left no texts, statues, or buildings. Public rituals took place in the open air,
outside settlements. Germanic tribes, wrote the Roman historian Tacitus, “do not con-
sider it consistent with the grandeur of celestial beings to confine the gods within
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walls, or to liken them to the form of any human countenance. They consecrate woods
and groves, and they apply the names of deities to the abstraction which they see only
in spiritual worship.”
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Yet, in the southwest of the country now known as the Netherlands, where three
European rivers discharge into the sea, archeologists have found hundreds of votive
stones, dedicated to Nehalennia, a Dutch deity who rose to stardom in the Roman era.
She started her divine career as a local celebrity, but was picked up by sailors who
passed Her sanctuaries. Before going out to sea, they implored a safe return by offering
Her an effigy: a Lady, sitting on a throne, with a basket full of apples on Her lap, and a
dog or wolf at Her side.
Nehalennia and Her co-stars would be outshone by a foreign deity. Instead of
having a proper name, He was referred to with a noun (“God”), and while He Himself
had neither parents nor siblings, and tolerated no rivals, He did have a Son, born from a
Virgin. This Son of God had lived and died as a human being, but had risen, and
ascended to heaven – which was the prospect for all who believed in Him.
This amazing history had taken place in a country even more distant than Rome.
The first to recount it in the Low Countries were priests in the slipstream of Roman
legions. North of the big rivers, the new religion made no headway. Not until the year
630, a church was built in Traiectum (Utrecht), for soldiers of the Frankish king Dago-
bert I, and for mission among the “Frisians.” But priests would not venture among
these “heathens” (from heath) or “pagans” (from pagani: “villagers”). For centuries,
Christianity remained an urban cult.
Christianization was given a new impulse by Anglo-Saxon missionary monks like
Willibrord, who landed in 690 CE. With the support of the pope and the Frankish king
he began to convert the natives. He rebuilt Dagobert’s church, and built a second one,
dedicated to St Martin.1 This Frankish saint became popular among the “Frisians,” and
in some regions has remained so until the present day. On November 11, children go
from door to door with Chinese lanterns, singing in honor of “Sint Maarten,” and
collecting candy.
Willibrord and his assistants lent force to the Word by showing themselves in fine
garments, with shining chalices, jewelry, books, and relics – tokens of a superior civi-
lization. They demonstrated that the indigenous deities were powerless by violating
religious taboos, and destroying holy objects. The English monk Winfrid learned the
perils of this shock-and-awe strategy. When he organized a rally near Dokkum, in 754,
locals took up arms, and killed some of the intruders – among them Winfrid, also
known as Boniface. With him, Western Christianity lost an able missionary, but won a
saint. The story of his heroic life and death was well suited for spreading the true reli-
gion – even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Catholics again con-
fronted Dutch “paganism.”
Conversion implied renouncing Germanic deities, but “superstitions” – such as
“storm making,” idols made of rags or dough, “filthiness in February” and “the things
they do on the rocks” – proved difficult to root out.2 Christianity held out prospects of
civilization and celestial bliss, but what good was that for simple mortals, when luck
was against them?
The Church in the Middle

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It was only at the end of the Middle Ages that a regular church life emerged. Parish for-
mation shaped the countryside, as craftsmen and shopkeepers settled around the house
of God and that of His servant. Before the introduction of signposts, travelers found
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their way in the flat Dutch countryside by keeping their eyes on church towers. Village
priests lived like other peasants, usually with a wife and children. What set them apart
was their proficiency in rituals, and their equally esoteric ability to read and write.
Their command of Latin was limited, however. One priest baptized in nomine patria et
filia et spiritus sancti: in the name of the Fatherland, the Daughter, and the Holy Ghost.
In many city churches, the Eucharist was celebrated several times per day – on the
occasion of a wedding, a funeral or in memory of someone who had recently died.
Wealthy families, guilds, and other associations had “memorial Masses” read for their
deceased members. Were they so worried about salvation, so anxious about the pur-
gatory? Or did they use the church – the platform of Medieval society – to show how
important they were? 3
Around 1500, Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk employed not only a rector and a few
curates, but twenty-two other priests and sixty “altarists” or “memorists” who read
Mass at more than thirty side-altars. Beside churches, every late-Medieval city of some
importance also boasted a few monasteries. Amsterdam was so full of them that a blind
alley was dubbed Gebed zonder end, “Interminable Prayer”: still an expression for endless
work.
Amsterdam was also a pilgrimage destination, thanks to a miracle. In 1345, a man
had received communion on his sick-bed, but accidentally spat out the Eucharist. The
maid threw his vomit into the fire, but the next morning she found the communion
bread intact, hovering in the flames. It was placed in a special chapel, which put
Amsterdam on the map of European tourism.
Revival, Reform, and Revolt

In the late Middle Ages, parish priests were being overtaken from all sides. As retailers
of ritual they had lost out to “altarists” and as pastors and preachers to new religious
orders, who specialized in hearing confession and “talking like Brugman.”4 Literacy
itself no longer impressed, now that many laymen were educated. Also when it came to
piety, chastity, humility, and charity, parish clergy were being surpassed, notably by lay
orders like the Beguines – whose dwellings can be seen at Amsterdam’s Begijnhof – and
the Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life.
The latter group was part of an international movement, Devotio Moderna, which
cultivated an internalized form of religion, popularized by Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation
of Christ. Its founder was Geert Groote, son of a wealthy merchant in Deventer.5 He de-
nounced clerical laxity and immorality and the haughtiness of building an enormous
cathedral (Dom) in Utrecht, partly financed by selling indulgences: shares in the
Church’s spiritual capital
More and more religious dissidents came forward, rejecting everything that stood
between God and the believers. Neither the clergy, nor the nobility, but burghers are
closest to salvation, wrote a dissident priest in 1523, “because they earn a living with
their hands.” Jan van Woerden practiced what he preached; he resigned as a curate,
and took up baking bread. In 1525 Jan de Bakker, as he was now called, was strangled
and burned – as the nation’s first Protestant martyr – mainly for saying that priests
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were allowed to marry. Similar was the fate of Wendelmoet Claesdochter from Mon-
nickendam, who blew it by bluntly saying: “That sacrament of yours is bread and flour
to me.”
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Offensive was also the stance of the Anabaptists (“re-baptizers”) that people should
not be christened until they had confessed their faith. This sounded radical, because
baptism meant incorporation into human society. Renouncing infant baptism was
therefore bound to lead to social disruption. This had become but all too clear in 1535,
when Anabaptists in Amsterdam had tried to realize the Kingdom of God by getting rid
of their earthly possessions – their clothes, to begin with. The authorities crushed the
revolt of these naked arsonists, and had them executed: their hearts were ripped out of
their bodies and flung into their faces.
Anabaptism survived, however. Menno Simonsz., another former priest, became
the patriarch of a new, fundamentally non-violent generation of Anabaptists. Whereas
these “Mennonites” contended themselves with a minority position, shunning all deal-
ings with the state, followers of Martin Luther believed that all of society should
undergo a Reformation, led by government. In many Central-European and Nordic
countries, the monarch chose Lutheranism, and his subjects followed suit. In the Low
Countries, however, the authorities were not likely to do so. That is one of the reasons
why religious dissent began to be dominated by followers of John Calvin, who allowed
not only a top-down, but also a bottom-up Reformation.
In 1566, after decades of meeting in secret or abroad, Protestants manifested them-
selves with “hedge preaching”: open-air church services, usually outside cities. When
the summer had ended, they broke into churches, destroying statues and images. This
“iconoclastic fury” (beeldenstorm) started in Flanders, and spread like wild-fire. Within
two weeks, it reached Amsterdam.
Public Church
Not until 1578 did the merchants who ruled Amsterdam join the Dutch Revolt. An in-
scription on the choir-screen of the Oude Kerk commemorates this Alteration: “The
abuses that crept into God’s Church have been removed from here in the year seven-
eight.” One year later, seven northern provinces concluded an alliance, the Union of
Utrecht, which stipulated freedom of conscience or religion – a radically new idea.
In early-modern Europe, religion was deemed too important to leave it to individual
believers, however. Wherever the Revolt succeeded, Calvinists were given dominance.
For one thing, they gained all the church buildings, and customized them to their
ideals. Altars, statues, and images were removed, the walls and ceilings were white-
washed, and the pews were often moved a quarter turn. Instead of facing the “choir,”
they were now arranged around the pulpit, so that congregants could hear the sermon
– the core of Reformed worship. In the Nieuwe Kerk, on the very spot where the high
altar had been, a sumptuous tomb would be built for Admiral Michiel Adriaensz de
Ruyter. In other churches, too, “sea heroes” were given a saint-like position.
Reformed Sunday morning sermons often lasted a full hour. Before, after, and in-
between, psalms were sung – on full notes and not accompanied by an organ, because
rhythm and instrumental music were deemed profane. Communion (“Holy Supper”)
was celebrated a mere four times a year, and only accessible for those who had been con-
firmed – usually no more than a third of the Reformed “constituency.”
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Although the Reformed Church regarded itself as the only true religion, and
jealously protected its monopoly on public worship – for example by baptizing and
marrying each and every Christian – it lacked both the power and the ambition to drive
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the entire nation into its fold. Becoming a “broad church” would go at the expense of
its purity, its resources – members being entitled to poor relief – and its autonomy. The
Public Church would never become a State Church.
The Calvinist doctrine of predestination offered an explanation of this minority

position: only God decided who would, and who would not be saved. War experiences
seemed to corroborate this; in the southern and eastern regions that were reconquered
by “Spanish” troops, Protestants fled or defected. Even after the States General eventu-
ally prevailed, these regions remained predominantly Catholic, and that is still a basic
feature of the Netherlands’ religious geography.
A second feature is that the regions just north and west of the early-seventeenth
century frontline would become the habitat of particularly strict Calvinists, commonly
called after Staphorst (a village near Zwolle) or the “black stockings” they allegedly
wear. Even in this “Bible belt” many people celebrate St. Nicholas on December 5.
Honoring a “papist” saint is a lesser evil than desecrating Christmas by exchanging
gifts. Thanks to emigrants, “Sinterklaas” – a deliberate corruption, meant to cover up
the “saint” – also made it to the United States, be it deprived of a bishop’s dignity,
moral authority, and wits.
Discord and Dissent

Around 1600, the Reformed Church got caught in a dispute over Calvin’s doctrine of
predestination. Followers of the Leiden professor Jacobus Arminius “remonstrated” an
interpretation that left more room for human choice. This theological dispute brought
the Republic at the brink of a civil war, because it was connected with political explo-
sives: the power balance between Holland and the other provinces, and that between
State and Church. According to the Arminians – also known as Remonstrants – the for-
mer should govern the latter. The conflict was resolved by a church assembly held at
Dordrecht, in 1618-1619. This “Synod of Dort” expelled the Arminians and con-
demned their teachings by proclaiming five doctrinal rules, known in English by the
acronym TULIP. The T stands for “total depravity:” the view that every man – as the
Heidelberg Catechism put it – is “prone by nature to hate God and [his] neighbor” and
“wholly incapable of doing any good.”
The Synod also confirmed that Church and State were equals – a view expressed in
the name given to the small street between the Nieuwe Kerk and the city hall, now a
Royal Palace: “Moses and Aaron Street.” The States-General acquitted themselves of
their Mosaic task by financing a new bible translation, Statenvertaling, which standard-
ized the Dutch language. However, the public authorities were often slow to root out
“false religion.” In cities like Amsterdam, they allowed Mennonites, Remonstrants, and
even Catholics to worship in “hidden churches” like “Our Lord in the Attic” – now a
museum – next to the Oude Kerk. “House churches” is actually a better term, as these
places were far from secret. The authorities tolerated them as long as they paid special
taxes and refrained from advertising, “hard talk” and nuisance, and seducing minors –
conditions similar to the ones for present-day coffeeshops. As Jews and Lutherans were
reckoned to be foreigners, they could build synagogues and churches that were any-
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thing but hidden.
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The Portuguese Synagogue:
Monument of Asylum
Amsterdam’s monumental Portuguese Synagogue testifies to the prominence

of religious minorities in Dutch history and forms an enduring legacy of Jewish
culture.
The first Jews who settled in Amsterdam were Catholic, at least in name.
In Portugal, where they had their roots, they had been forcibly baptized since
1496. It was for its economic opportunities that these Sephardim (from
sepharad: Hebrew for “Spain”) came to Amsterdam, around 1600, and for their
know-how in international trade that they were welcome. Not before long,
some of them came out as being Jewish, and began to return to their ancestral
religion. Imported rabbis, teachers, cantors, and ritual butchers gradually con-
vinced them that this implied a whole way of life. In 1614, the city allowed
them to open a Jewish cemetery, in Ouderkerk. Two years later, it ordered Jews
to abstain from criticizing Christianity, and converting, circumcizing or court-
ing Christians – implying that they were allowed to practice their religion. The
States of Holland decreed in 1619 that every city could deal with Jews as it saw
fit, without forcing them – as many foreign cities had done – to wear a distin-
guishing mark. “It is apparent that God wants them to stay somewhere,” wrote
Hugo Grotius, “so why not here.”
Some Reformed theologians cried shame upon the permissiveness to-
wards “these unclean people” with their “foolish and ludicrous ceremonies”
and “horrible blasphemies,” but others hoped to win Jews for Jesus by showing
them kindness. Besides, their knowledge of Hebrew came in handy for biblical
scholars. It was out of curiosity and intellectual rivalry rather than animosity
that Reformed theologians organized disputations with Jewish scholars. The
latter debated so well that the Sephardic mahamad (“church council”) eventu-
ally ordered them to stop “provoking hatred against us among the gentlemen
who live around us.”
In the meantime, many Jews from Central and Eastern Europe had arrived
in Amsterdam, which they dubbed Mokum: Yiddish for “place”. These Ashke-
nazim were not by far as well educated or well off, most of them being dirt poor.
Nevertheless, in 1671, they opened the first openly visible synagogue in Amster-
dam – and Western Europe. But the Sephardim outshone them four years later
with their magnificent Snoga or Esnoga. Designed by the city architect, with
reminiscences of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, it was the world’s largest
synagogue, which soon became a must-see for foreign visitors and served as an
example for synagogues all over the world. It became home to the seminary Ets
Haim (“Tree of Life”) which owns an unrivalled Sephardic library.
Although the local and regional authorities often restricted the settle-
ment of Jews – Utrecht barred them until 1789 – Jewish communities also
sprang up in many parts of the country, notably in the North and East. Saying
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[de] mazzel for “bye” became as common there as in Amsterdam. Around 1900,
both in Mokum and in the Mediene (“country”), many Jews gave up their
religion – which did not safeguard them against anti-Semitism.
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During the Second World War, about 75 percent of Dutch Jews were killed. The
Portuguese Synagogue was left intact, though, and still serves the religious
purpose for which it was built.
Kingdom Come
For the Reformed Church, the nineteenth century began with a bang. In 1795, French
troops and homebred revolutionaries toppled the ancien régime and its Public Church.
They outlawed public religious display, closed down the faculties of theology, did away
with supervision of schoolmasters by Reformed pastors, and announced that the latter
would have to be paid by their congregants. For the “formerly dominant church” the
end seemed near.
But the bang blew over. Revolutionaries made way for Napoleon, and after him,
King William I restored the education and payment of Reformed clergy. On March 30,
1814, he was “sworn in and invested in state.” The King was not crowned, and neither
would his successors be – not for want of a crown, but for lack of a state church, with a
bishop to do the job. The ceremony did take place in a church, however: Nieuwe Kerk,
of course.
Like Napoleon, William valued religion as an instrument for nation-building.
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He reorganized the Lutheran, the “Israelite,” and the Reformed Churches. Since the
“Synod of Dort” (1618-1619), the latter had had a decentralized structure because the
States-General, weary of church infighting, had not allowed any more national synods.
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But a unitary state needed a unitary church. In 1816, government imposed a central-
ized form of church governance, which contained no provisions to safeguard doctrinal
purity. Calvinism was deemed an obstacle for making the Church broad enough to
include a nation of faithful citizens.

Dissatisfaction with this lack of ideological discipline, with the centralization of
church governance, and with liturgical renewal – hymns, rhythmic singing, and organ
music – broke out in 1834. A handful of orthodox pastors, and thousands of members
seceded from the Netherlands Reformed Church, and established a denomination of
their own. They called it gereformeerd – the Dutch word for “Reformed” that had been
common until the end of the eighteenth century, when the more indigenous sounding
term hervormd came into vogue. The authorities broke up their church services, impris-
oned them, and quartered soldiers in their houses. Frustrated by this lack of religious
freedom, many emigrated to the United States, where they founded “Dutch Reformed”
Churches.6
Freedom, Equality,
and Brotherhoods
Beside orthodox Calvinists, Catholics and liberals, too, were displeased with the auto-
cratic regime. Their time came with Thorbecke’s 1848 Constitution that again prom-
ised equal treatment. In 1853, almost three centuries after the Dutch Revolt, Roman
Catholic bishops returned on the scene.7 Protestant commentators raised a hue and cry,
prophesying censorship, Inquisition, and burning heretics at the stake – doom scen-
arios that sound quite familiar to twenty-first-century ears.
Down-to-earth Protestant theologians were worried, too, because they foresaw
that bishops would outshine them as opinion leaders. They defended their status by
emphasizing a strong point: their openness to scholarship. In 1857-1858, the Haarlem
pastor Conrad Busken Huet published Letters on the Bible, explaining that Holy Scripture
was “purely a human creation.” This enraged orthodox Protestants, who gained power
through democratization: in 1869, members of the Reformed Church were given the
right to elect members of church boards and, indirectly, pastors.8
Amsterdam’s first “democratically elected” pastor was Abraham Kuyper. In 1870,
he held his inaugural sermon in the Nieuwe Kerk. Ten years later, he presided the in-
augural ceremony for a neo-Calvinist “Free University” (VU) there. And another six
years later, he and his supporters sawed their way in – the dramatic culmination of the
1886 Doleantie: a second, bigger secession. Kuyper and his followers soon merged with
the Seceders of 1834. Besides inventing neo-Calvinism, he re-invented his community
as an ethnic minority, with usages of its own. Pronouncing the final, silent e in Heere
(“Lord”) and the “ch” in Christus (“Christ”) as [kh] instead of [k] became a shibboleth of
gereformeerden. It placed them on an equal footing with Catholics, who often spoke with
a southern accent and led the way in “pillarization”.9
Discipline and Emancipation

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Since the 1795 Revolution, public schools were no longer Reformed, but they con-
tinued to offer a non-sectarian, ethical form of Christianity. Jews hardly objected, but
Catholics and Orthodox Protestants did – the former because there was too much Bible
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talk, the latter because there was too little. They agreed to disagree, and founded
private schools – for which they jointly demanded public funding.
The 1917 Pacification gave them this, and to this day, two thirds of all schools are,
at least nominally, Catholic or Protestant. Aside from schools, many other “pillarized”
organizations were founded to screen the faithful from the siren songs of modernity.
Socialism became a redoubtable competitor for Christianity in areas where class-
conflicts were rife. This explains why the first regions with a high percentage of
non-members were Zaan and Friesland, not the big cities. All over the country, many
hervormden quit in the 1920s, when for the first time they were asked to pay a contrib-
ution. Money was needed, now that the “silver cord” between state and church was
gradually being untied.
During the Second World War, when it was confronted with Nazism, the Nether-
lands Reformed (Hervormde) Church regained ideological self-confidence. After the war,
too, it pronounced upon many moral and political questions, often taking a progressive
stance. In 1950 it stated that there was nothing wrong with sex, that it was not mainly
meant for procreation, and that birth control was therefore allowed. With statements
like this, it distanced itself from the Catholic Church, which – thanks to high birth
rates – outnumbered it since 1930. Since1960, there are even more Catholics than all
Protestants taken together – yet still many Dutch will say that theirs is a nation of
Calvinists. Whereas in 1809, 55 percent belonged to the Hervormde Kerk, in 2000 this
was true of just 8 percent. In 2004, hervormden, Lutherans, and mainline gereformeerden
merged into a new Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN).10
Well into the 1950s, the Dutch Catholic Church remained the most conservative in
Europe. In 1954 the bishops forbade the faithful not only to join the Labor Party, but
also to read social-democratic newspapers or listen to “red” radio programs. Discipline
worked; it kept Catholics on the straight and narrow, while urging these formerly
second-rate citizens to rule the country. But Catholic intellectuals felt that pillarization
had resulted in fossilization, and cautiously pleaded for change.
The tide turned in their favor in 1958, with the advent of Pope John XXIII. Within
a few years, the Dutch Catholic Church became the most progressive in Europe – exem-
plified by the 1966 international bestseller New Catechism. Whereas Pius X and Pius XI
had called Dutch Catholicism exemplary, the Vatican now began to worry. From 1970
onwards, it curbed progressivism by parachuting conservative bishops. Then the per-
centage of Catholics began to drop: from 41 percent in 1971 to 25 percent in 2010 – and
even much less if people are asked whether they feel members. When John Paul II
visited the country in 1985, he encountered empty streets, and a deputy of the laity
who talked to him like a Dutch uncle.
Mosques in the Polder:

Corner Stones or Stumbling Blocks?
Like headscarves, mosques are visible indications of religious difference which
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tend to spark heated debates on things unseen.

Although the Kingdom of the Netherlands had considerably more Muslim
than Christian subjects until Indonesia gained independence, it was only in
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1955 that the first mosque in the Netherlands was built, in The Hague. Its
founders came from Surinam and belonged to the Ahmaddiyya movement –
which is deemed heretical by most other Muslims. Since the municipal author-
ities did not approve the design until it had been stripped of all typically
Oriental or Muslim features, the Mobarak Mosque initially looked rather like a
nursing home. The two small portal turrets it now sports were added in the
1960s, and the minaret as recently as 2005.
The Turkish and Moroccan “guest workers” who came to the Netherlands
in the 1960s had even less conspicuous places of worship. As far as these young
men were observant Muslims, they performed their ritual prayers in a quiet
corner of the cramped boarding-houses where they lived or the factories
where they worked in shifts. Religion became more important to them when
they brought their families over,
which made them directly respon-
sible for their children’s education.
Moreover, after many had lost their
jobs in the 1970s they derived a sense
of dignity (or even superiority) from
their religion.
Numerous factory buildings,
cinemas, schools, and churches were
converted into mosques, often in-
cluding classrooms, offices, a tea-
house or two, and shops. At present,
there are some 450 official mosques,
which come under various denomi-
nations. Some of them are controlled
by foreign governments, others re-
ject “State Islam” – but not always
“Petrol Islam” – and promote views
that are either considerably stricter
or more liberal.
A growing number of Muslim
prayer houses are newly built, like the Turkish Yunus Emre mosque in Almelo
(1974). In public discussions on such projects, the architectural design is usu-
ally interpreted as a direct indication of the religious community’s integration
into Dutch society.11 Large buildings with tall minarets and other “ethnic” fea-
tures are deemed triumphant, backward intrusions upon mainstream Dutch
society – much like neo-gothic Catholic churches were in the late nineteenth
century.
The construction of Rotterdam’s Essalam Mosque, Utrecht’s Ulu Cami,
and Amsterdam’s Westermoskee have lead to passionate debates about free-
dom of religion, the role of foreign and/or fundamentalist sponsors, separation
of “Church” and State, the utility of religious communities for civic integration
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– and parking problems. Is there need for large mosques? Surveys suggest that
the percentage of “second generation” Moroccan-Dutch Muslims who go to the
mosque every week has more than tripled: from 9 percent in 1998 to 33 percent
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in 2011.12 But are these figures not too good to be true? American research has
shown that people attend church much less often than what they report.
Rather than reflecting actual behavior, their responses express intentions and
identifications. In view of the harsh criticism on Islam in Dutch public debate it

is only logical that young Muslims – notably the Moroccan-Dutch – stand up
for their parent’s religion. This makes it hard, even for them, to say how exactly
their ways of believing and belonging are changing.
Born-Again Citizens
Have the Dutch had it with religion? Since 1983, the Constitution no longer mentions
churches. But in thatose same years, a Christian peace movement (IKV) organized the
largest political demonstration in Dutch history. Moreover, thousands have discovered
post-Christian spirituality, under the guidance of a guru, a psychic-healer or the “mind-
style magazine” Happinez – the Netherlands’ best selling glossy. Telecasted charity col-
lections, funerals of celebrities, and silent marches – invented by nineteenth-century
Catholics to evade the ban on processions – mobilize and move masses of people. While
almost 80 percent of those who do not reckon themselves to belong to any particular
religion never attend religious services, less than a third of them say that they are “not
at all religious.” Religion, the provision of meaning and belonging, has grown more
diverse; its prime location has shifted from societal institutions to the inner self.
Believing without belonging is normal by now.
But, unlike the era of pillarization, citizens of different persuasions no longer
agree to disagree. Since 1989, when Muslims rallied against Salman Rushdie, strong
religious convictions are in bad odor – the smell of burning books, buildings, and
bodies. While many Dutch profess to be religiously indifferent, they show touchiness
about other people’s religion, calling them at the littlest little thing to publicly account
for their beliefs and practices. Newcomers are taught to separate church and state, but
in order to “integrate” them, that sacred principle is sometimes violated, for example
by government attempts to raise “enlightened” imams.
Saying “God bless the Netherlands” is not done, even at the end of the annual
Speech from the Throne. But the two euro-coin still bears the motto “God be with us.”
Civil religion – connecting the nation, its monarchy and some Supreme Being – comes
to light most clearly on May 4, when the king and queen place a wreath on the National
Monument on Dam Square, after listening to a speech from the country’s highest
pulpit, in the Nieuwe Kerk. And then, all observe two minutes of silence.
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Further Reading
Cherribi, Sam. In the House of War: Dutch Islam Observed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Haaren, Saskia van, and others. Christianity in the Netherlands: Highlights from Museum
Catharijneconvent. Utrecht: Museum Catharijneconvent, 2006.
Knippenberg, Hans. “The Netherlands: Selling Churches and Building Mosques.” The Changing
Religious Landscape of Europe, edited by Hans Knippenberg, 88-106. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis,
2005.
McLeod, Hugh. Religion and the People of Western Europe, 1789-1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997.
Rooden, Peter van. “Long-term Religious Developments in the Netherlands, ca 1750-2000.”
In The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000, edited by Hugh McLeod and
W. Ustorf, 113-129. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Sengers, Erik, ed. The Dutch and Their Gods: Secularization and Transformation of Religion in the
Netherlands since 1950. Hilversum: Verloren, 2005.
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Arts &
Culture
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chapter 13
The Making of
Rembrandt and Van Gogh

by ghislain kieft and quirine van der steen
Rembrandt and Van Gogh are names familiar to every reader and every visitor of muse-
ums, and both of them are usually considered prime examples of Dutch painting. In
every history of Dutch art substantial and deserved attention is given to their paint-
ings; sometimes even beyond the point of being reasonable. By far the most expensive
study in art history was the “Rembrandt Research Project,” which tried to establish
once and for all the exact size and boundaries of Rembrandt’s oeuvre. The project was
so big, that it was said it could be seen from the moon. However, it failed to achieve its
aim: art historians continue to quibble over Rembrandt. A former director of the
Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum used to say that every Dutch student of art history
should write his or her doctoral thesis on Rembrandt (although he failed to do so him-
self ). A considerable amount of money is spent on researching Van Gogh’s legacy as
well. In the most ambitious project ever initiated by the Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam – the museum which boasts the most visitors of all Dutch museums – more
than fifteen years of research have recently been invested in newly publishing the
complete correspondence of Vincent Van Gogh, including images of all the works
mentioned in the letters.
Both painters are worldwide known to be “Dutch artists”. That the Dutch public
proudly considers them to be Dutch as well, was illustrated when in a public poll in
2004 television viewers were invited to elect “The Greatest Dutchman of all Time,” and
Rembrandt and Van Gogh both ended in the top 10. Interestingly though, both artists
were an exception rather than exemplary when compared to other Dutch painters of
their time, which could raise questions as to the nature of their “Dutch” character.
Rembrandt: A Dutch National Artist?

Dutch history is rich in many very good painters, and the history of the geographically
broader defined “Low Countries” even more so. However, Rembrandt (1606-1669) was
just “one of the boys,” both in his own time and later on in the eighteenth century when
Dutch paintings attracted the attention of foreign collectors. When glancing through
the list of auctions of that era, other Dutch painters stand out. First and foremost there
is the name of Gerrit Dou (1613- 1675), a former pupil of Rembrandt, and in his wake
that of other painters of a similar bent, like Frans van Mieris (1635-1681) or Adriaan
van der Werff (1659-1722), names hardly familiar to the public nowadays.
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Dou, Van Mieris and Van der Werff were considered typical Dutch painters of the
genre. “Genre” is a term used for the depictions of seemingly everyday life, like snap-
shots. Such – often small-sized – paintings, depicting scenes of the decent, bourgeois,
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Dutch interiors, but also the scenes of taverns and brothels or sometimes odder topics,
were produced in enormous quantities during the seventeenth century. Gerrit Dou’s
“Dropsical Woman” (fig. 1, Louvre, Paris) is a good example of such a painting, typical
of his painstakingly precise style. It also attests of Dou’s international fame in former
times: it was said that this very
Dutch painting, then in Turin,
was given to a French general
during the siege of that Italian
city in 1799, in order to avoid the
French ransacking Turin.
Yet, the subject of the paint-
ing could raise questions. Who
would want to paint a girl suffer-
ing from dropsy? On closer inspec-
tion, however, one learns the girl
has another kind of “illness”: she
is lovesick. The man standing next
to her, in his fanciful dress, is in-
specting her urine in a urinal, and
concludes that the young maiden
unknowingly must be pregnant,
much to the tearful distress of the
others, for she is not married. This
interpretation is confirmed by the
fact that the subject was painted
time and again in the seventeenth
century. A snapshot it is not, but
more the theme of a comedy or a dubious farce. Certainly not the kind of good, clean
family-life the Dutch obviously wanted to be known for.
Other Dutch painters, whose work fetched high prices in the eighteenth century,
were for example Jan van Huysum (1687-1749) or Maria van Oosterwijck (1630-1693),
virtually forgotten nowadays. They were painters of still life, another very Dutch kind
of painting, depicting flowers or food, for instance. Van Huysum and Van Oosterwijck
were specialists in painting flowers, often in very precise arrangements. Today, they
look very normal, even commonplace, but those flowers were precious – tulips came
from Turkey – and never bloomed at the same time. The food in still life paintings is
luscious, exotic and luxurious: lobsters from Norway, citrus fruits from Spain, grapes
from France. In the seventeenth century this was a kind of culinary pornography.
Similar things can be said about landscapes: although the genre is very Dutch, the sub-
jects often were not. The Dutch loved mountainous scenery set in sunny Italy, or Ger-
many, or even Sweden or Brazil; it was only for the foreigners to later prefer the cliché
of flat grasslands, windmills and cows.
In this array of Dutch specialties – genre, still life, landscape – the work of Rem-
brandt does not fit. He rather seems an exotic Dutch painter, who was not “made in
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Holland.” He approached his trade far more dramatically than other Dutch painters as
he competed on an international level. It is true that a large part of his oeuvre consists
of portraits, with a special fondness for self portraiture, but even there he often tried to
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be a narrator. Most representative of that affinity is perhaps the self-portrait that he
made in 1640, after seeing Titian’s portrait of Ariosto, copying the exact pose of the
Italian poet in his own painting (fig. 2, National Gallery, London).
Rembrandt’s famous “Nightwatch” (Nachtwacht)

is in itself just a group portrait of one of the
Amsterdam civic guards. As such this was
a fairly common commission, but Rem-
brandt carries it out in his own way: it
looks like an episode in a theatrical drama,
not of people posing, but of playing out a
role. What the scene is all about we do not
know, but it decidedly has all the looks of
a history painting. Similarly, in his later
“Staalmeesters” – a group portrait com-
missioned by the Syndics of the Draper’s
Guild, a rather prosaic office – it looks as
if a grand, ominous or heroic decision has
just been made.
Rembrandt was a painter of history
pieces, which was never a genre consid-
ered to be particularly Dutch, and rightly
so, because it was an international genre
of painting, developed in Italy. Although the young Rembrandt once proudly professed
that there was no need for him to go to Italy, that was just a way to stress his ambitious
“Italianate” outlook. For he added that what one could see scattered around in Italy,
could be seen in Holland in a concise way, since Amsterdam in the seventeenth century
was rapidly becoming the transit port of all kinds of goods, including Italian art. And
indeed this interest is everywhere to be seen in Rembrandt’s work; his “Blinding of
Samson” (fig. 3, Städel Museum, Frankfurt) is both in size and cruel sublimity compara-
ble to works of such artists as Titian or Michelangelo.
Rembrandt indisputably was interested in dramatic painters like Caravaggio,
whose chiaroscuro he did not know firsthand, but definitely through Dutch followers
such as Gerrit Honthorst (1592-1656) and Hendrick Terbrugghen (1588-1629). These
very competent, Dutch painters of the early seventeenth century, originating from
Utrecht, are known as the Utrecht Caravaggists. They were not very Dutch, and hence
they are practically forgotten. Yet Rembrandt was their heir.
The fate of the Utrecht Caravaggists in later times, being forgotten or rather being
denied their Dutch birthright, is emblematic of what happened in the early historio-
graphy of Dutch art. In the nineteenth century art history was written in a nationalistic
register of thinking. It was the age of expressions of nationalism such as national
anthems, flags, passports and capitals – things both romantic and bureaucratic. Dutch
artistic inventions, therefore, such as landscapes, still lifes or genre painting – the sort of
artwork foreigners initially thought interesting and were willing to pay for – suddenly
seemed somehow to represent the pure, unadulterated face of the Netherlands. Any-
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thing else, obviously coming from abroad, was to be reproached at best as “import” or
as a form of “decline” of the Dutch character or words to that effect.
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Yet, in that cult of patriotism, it was precisely the odd-one-out, Rembrandt, who
became the true, national artist. It is difficult to say exactly why: maybe it was the very
un-Dutch grand manner of his work that made him fit to become a hero. Of course, the
country had many untold heroes, but few romantic, stirring heroes. Only Admiral
Michiel Adriaensz de Ruyter (1607-1676) readily comes to mind: the sort of man, in
other words, fit to be honored with an oversized bronze statue on a square – another
custom from the nineteenth century.
But in terms of this retrospective typecasting, history could not find much of a
heroic scale in that purified canon of Dutch artists, painters as they were of tulips, cows,
brothels and dropsical girls, to put it negatively. At best, though, Dutch seventeenth-
century art has offered the pictorial equivalents of Japanese haikus – think of Vermeer
– in that it forces the viewer to concentrate on the beauty of practically nothing. Zen-
like maybe, but not epic. Perhaps with the exception of Rembrandt.
Remarkably the fame of Rembrandt as a painter in the Dutch national tradition
only took off in the course of the nineteenth century, as royal and aristocratic collec-
tions were moved to museums that were accessible for the public. Such democratiza-
tion of art was initiated under the French occupation in the early 1800s, when the art
collections of the stadtholder became the nucleus of a truly national museum, which
moved to Amsterdam in 1808. Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch” became the undisputed
masterpiece in what would be called the “Rijksmuseum Amsterdam,” Rembrandt’s
fame as “the” national artist was established when he became the first painter to be
honored with a statue, which was unveiled in 1852 on the Rembrandtplein in Amster-
dam. When the Rijksmuseum moved to the present location in 1885, architect P. J. H.
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Cuypers designed a special hall for the “Nightwatch,” at the end of a gallery of fame,
and in 1906 a separate extension was built for the painting, even further emphasizing
its canonical status. Thus Rembrandt entered the consciousness of the wider public.1
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Vermeer: Interior Fantasies
Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is definitely famous. His name often appears

second to Rembrandt’s as one of the great Dutch painters of the seventeenth
century. In contrast to Rembrandt, who was already a well-known painter dur-
ing his life, Vermeer’s name was not really made until a good 200 years after his
death, when his works reappeared in the late nineteenth century.
Compared to Rembrandt, Vermeer was a different kind of painter. Scholars
still discuss the actual size of Rembrandt’s oeuvre, which consists of about three
hundred paintings. Scholars agree that the oeuvre of paintings by Vermeer is
thirty-four – with further discussion about two more. This relatively small oeuvre
is sometimes explained by the fact that he did not have a large studio with many
pupils. Yet, one cannot be certain, since very little is known about his life. During
his lifetime, Vermeer was not completely unknown; his name and descriptions
of his works appear in some contemporary journals and books. However, very
few people knew his paintings, and in the years after his death, many works
were attributed to other painters and disappeared into private collections.
It was not until the late nine-
teenth century that scholars and art
lovers rediscovered Vermeer and his
paintings. Instantly, his paintings be-
came famous, for obvious reasons.
“Girl with a Pearl Earring” is special,
even in reproduction. A young girl
looks over her shoulder directly at the
observer. Her headdress and one of
her earrings, a beautiful pearl, domi-
nate the image. Her mouth is slightly
opened as if she is expecting some-
thing, which gives the painting an al-
most sensual atmosphere. The lumi-
nous quality of Vermeer’s paintings,
combined with a very serene, Zen-like
tranquility makes them unique.
The paintings by Vermeer fit the
period they were made in: they almost always depict interior scenes with one
or a few people engaged in something. It is not always obvious in what exactly,
which gives rise to all kinds of speculation, also among scholars. In a way, that
makes Vermeer’s paintings even more interesting: we have no idea what
stories he wanted to tell the viewer, or if there are any. Consequently, we like
to fantasize about them, try to figure out what a character is doing and why, as
if it is a stage we look at. True or not, those fantasies can (and have) lead to
novels and movies, such as “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” In a novel with the same
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title, Tracy Chevalier tried to find an answer to the question about the identity
of the girl. The novel was made into a movie by Peter Webber in 2003. Is there
truth in the book or movie? Not very likely, but the fantasy is wonderful.
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As a result of the movie and the world-wide distribution of reproductions her
image has become familiar to many. But believe us, the mass media reproduc-
tions by no means come close to experiencing the real painting as it can be ad-
mired in the beautifully renovated Mauritshuis in the Hague.
Van Gogh: The Invention of an Artist

In contrast to Rembrandt, it would be surprising if anybody ever thought of Vincent
van Gogh (1853-1890) as a “typical” Dutch artist. The fact that he was born in the
Netherlands seems just as coincidental as, say, the fact that the Eiffel tower was built in
Paris: it might as well have been elsewhere. His work does not look Dutch; as a matter
of fact, it does not look like anything familiar. Yet, Van Gogh himself aspired to be a
painter in the canonical art tradition. Throughout his short life he was full of breath-
less admiration for other “true” painters and desperately tried to become or to be an
artist. However, his contacts with the professional painters, whose help or instruction
he solicited, were always to remain very short and somehow uncomfortable.
It was not until he was around the age of twenty-seven that Van Gogh decided to
become an artist, after having failed at a religious career. In that year, 1880, he worked
for a few weeks in the studio of Anton Mauve (1838-1888), a fairly typical painter of the
so-called “Hague School.” He painted by and large in the idiom of the Dutch landscape
painters of the seventeenth century. Yet, contrary to the Dutch landscape paintings of
that period – when Italianate and mountainous scenery was often preferred – the
painters of the Hague School specialized in a picturesque genre of beaches, heaths and
woods. This fondness for the “typical” Dutch landscapes decidedly originated in the
nineteenth century, and these painters contributed, probably more so than anyone else,
to establishing the image of Holland as made up of grass, milk, and speckled cows.
(fig. 4, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).
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Van Gogh did not stay more than a few weeks with Mauve. In the winter of 1885-1886,
Van Gogh entered the Antwerp Academy of Art, but again his stay did not last much
longer than a few months. He left for Paris, where he studied for a while in the atelier of
the French painter Fernand Cormon. Notwithstanding such rather short-lived and un-
successful attempts to work within an established artistic context, Van Gogh would
never be short of connections with the art world. He always stayed in contact with
Dutch and later also with French artists, many of whom he met while staying in Paris.
Yet, by no means did Van Gogh lack the desire to become a normal artist in the
traditional sense of the word and to establish a name for himself in the world of art. He
just did not have the character for it. Incidentally, he did not seem to have the right mind
for anything. He was restless, overempathic and oversensitive, more or less patiently
supported by his family, especially his younger brother Theo, who was an art dealer.
It was to this brother that
Van Gogh directed many of the
hundreds of letters he wrote.
About eight hundred of his let-
ters have been preserved and se-
lections of them are still widely
published in many languages,
providing an invaluable source of
information. They give insight
not just into his life, but also
into his thinking about art and
being an artist – as if, rather than
only to Theo, he was writing them
for posterity also. Although Van
Gogh wrote with staggering hon-
esty, it should not mislead us in
thinking that he was naïve: those
letters are very much a careful pic-
ture of what he liked us to think
about him, ear and all. (fig. 5,
Courtauld Institute Galleries, Lon-
don). Inadvertently, he was thus
creating his own persona, portraying himself as an artist with an oeuvre to leave to later
generations. The letters, as well as many of his self-portraits, attest to the fact that Van
Gogh was evidently convinced about one thing: that he was truly an artist.
From among the almost nine hundred paintings and eleven hundred drawings he
created in just ten years time, Van Gogh was consciously fashioning a personal, coher-
ent oeuvre, as if he wanted to leave a legacy of his paintings for posterity (and to make
things easy for later curators and art historians). The concept of creating a personal
oeuvre, to reveal one’s artistic personality to the world, was not completely new in the
nineteenth century. Yet, Van Gogh considered it an almost religiously inspired life’s
commitment to leave a “legacy to humanity.” 2
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Rather critical about his own work, he considered a large part of his work as just
studies, created for use in the studio only. Clearly distinguishing between “studies” and
“paintings,” his true oeuvre – the artistic essence of his work – was only to consist of the
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“finished” paintings he worked on and corrected in his studio. In his letters he men-
tions this oeuvre to consist of fifty (or later he mentions thirty) paintings. Among the
paintings that he considered being part of it are the “Potato Eaters,” – the first work he
was to name “a painting” – made in Nuenen, in the south of the Netherlands, in 1885.
Most of his oeuvre however consists of paintings he made in the south of France –
where he lived and worked from 1888 onwards – among which “the Bridge at Langlois”
(1888) and the “Nightcafé” (1888).
Painting in the nineteenth century was subject to change. Two developments
proved instrumental in the artists’ search for new directions and means of expression.
Although painters still had studios, they were no longer restricted to only painting
there, because of what might seem a simple invention: the tube. Combined with mass
produced paint, it now became possible for the artist to simply take tubes of paint in all
sorts of colors outside and paint en plein air – although the outdoor circumstances were
not necessarily ideal. In his letters Van Gogh described that he was working in such a
strong wind that sand was blown into the wet paint, or that the sun was almost too hot
to bear. Remarking on the weather while painting in this way is very characteristic of
the nineteenth century.
Being able to paint outside allowed for more spontaneity in the creative process.
This was related to another important development, caused by the invention of photo-
graphy. For centuries, creating realistic images had been an important function of art
and artists. Because of photography, “realism” in visual art was slowly given another
meaning or interpretation. Painting as realistically as possible was no longer that
important: for a realistic image, a photograph could be taken. Instead, painters increas-
ingly attempted to show the reality of the artist himself. Not copying or imitating
nature, but presenting the artist’s perception of it – a process in which spontaneity was
considered an important factor. This intention of showing the personal way in which
he experienced the world around him was certainly what Van Gogh did and aimed for,
and this intention became all the more obvious in the work he painted in France.
Van Gogh did not lack knowledge of art history – in fact, he knew a fair bit about it,
as he often admired and studied the masters of the past. He appreciated the seemingly
spontaneous way in which Rembrandt, and also Frans Hals, used paints and brushes.
Time and again he sets the admirable examples before his mind’s eye in his letters:
Hammer into your head that master Frans Hals, that painter of all kinds of
portraits, of a whole, gallant, live, immortal republic. Hammer into your head
the no less great and universal master painter of portraits of the Dutch repub-
lic: Rembrandt, that broad-minded naturalistic man, as healthy as Hals him-
self. I am just trying to make you see the great simple thing: the painting of
humanity, or rather of a whole republic, by the simple means of portraiture.3
Yet, Rembrandt’s gestures are always controlled and choreographed. Van Gogh does
not dance: he often rages. Even the paintings he made in France – or perhaps especially
these – with their sunny, bright and yellow glare, are at the same time uncomfortable,
even agonizing, dark gestures of throwing paint on a canvass. “Style” is a word that can
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no longer be used here. Van Gogh devoted his artistic life to searching his own style.
Sadly, in the appreciation of his work, his intentions and the essence of his quest
were after his death soon to be overshadowed by biographical data about his short
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artistic career. Although a great deal is known about the personal life of Rembrandt,
this hardly compares to the extensive and detailed knowledge about Van Gogh. Facts
about his life are widely known among the general public: he was poor, he lived in
France (the last five years of his life, that is), he cut off his own ear, he never sold a paint-
ing during his life (well: just one) and he committed suicide. The idea that an artist
should suffer for his talent, that life should not be easy, that there is a price to be paid
for this talent, that the true artist is poor and successful only after death: this romantic
cliché of an artist was not an invention of Van Gogh. But what he accidentally invented
is what kind of painting should go with it. During his life, Van Gogh was an oddity;
after his death he set the standard.
When he died in 1890, Van Gogh left an incomplete oeuvre. His brother Theo was
stuck with his brother’s innumerable, unsold paintings and drawings. In the sub-
sequent twenty years, the family managed to sell some of them, but eventually they
donated the largest part of the collection to the Dutch state. This Van Gogh collection,
the largest in the world, is now on display in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Thus Vincent van Gogh became a Dutch painter.4
Afterthought
The rest, as they say, is history. Both Rembrandt and Van Gogh somehow – and sadly –
became legends, made into the two most famous Dutch painters. In a sense, Rembrandt
and Van Gogh are indisputably Dutch painters. Yet, they are the false emblems of Dutch
art history – a history which is much more diverse, complex and interesting.
The fact that the most extensive collections of works by Rembrandt and Van Gogh
are to be admired in the Netherlands is not a result of a deliberate policy of the Dutch
government, but is owed to the generosity of private donors. The fact that the finest
works by Rembrandt are to be seen in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Maurits-
huis in The Hague is the felicitous product of the struggles of some art lovers who per-
suaded the rich middle classes to pay for them. The donation of the Van Gogh family
led to the founding of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. In addition, the wealthy
private collector Hélène Kröller-Müller (1869-1939), wife of the shipping magnate
Anton Kröller, formed the basis for the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, which pos-
sesses another substantial number of Van Gogh’s paintings and drawings.
The fame of Rembrandt and Van Gogh has placed them in the same league as
mass fantasies such as Napoleon, Sisi (Empress Elisabeth of the Austrian-Hungarian
Empire), Marilyn Monroe, or Elvis, and made them into Dutch brands for the tourist
industry. Their works are reproduced to serve as souvenirs “from Holland,” albeit that
these are not necessarily “made in Holland.”
Mondrian: Is this Art?

A rectangular painting with a white background that is divided by black lines,
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with some colored panes in red and yellow. That is what one observes when
looking at this painting by Piet Mondriaan (1872-1944), or “Mondrian” as he
wrote his own name. To be honest: it would appear to some that they could
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have been made by a four-year-old. Yet, easy and simple as they may seem at
first sight, the paintings by Mondrian are decidedly not.
Mondrian had a very long career and painted in many different styles,
which was not uncommon for an artist around the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury. However, Mondrian is particularly famous for the kind of paintings he
created in the second half of his career. It is obvious that this kind of painting is
in so many ways different from the work made by Rembrandt, Vermeer or even
Van Gogh, as there is no recognizable image. Art in the nineteenth century
changed and realism was slowly given a different meaning. To Van Gogh, real-
ism already meant something different than it did to Rembrandt. But to Mon-
drian, realism was an entirely new concept altogether. Mondrian asked him-
self what a painting really was. To him, it was an object of its own, a flat,
two-dimensional piece of wood, covered with canvas on which things can be
drawn or painted. He considered it remarkable that for years and years,
through the image they tried to paint on it, artists made that canvas look like
something it is not: a three-dimensional object. For someone who believed in
the laws of nature and respected them, this was something he no longer
wanted to do.
Mondrian did not come to this idea overnight. Nor was he the only one, as
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other painters were dealing with similar questions. Yet, they found different
answers. To Mondrian a canvas was also a natural object and should be part of
the larger nature it was an element of. In his view, the entire world around him
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was nature: not only the trees and the fields, but also man-made objects such
as the house one lives in. Nature he considered to be dominated by two direc-
tions: vertical and horizontal, and by the primary colors: red, yellow and blue.
In his paintings, Mondrian wanted to express those natural elements. After

some time, he no longer used realistic objects as examples, but only the natural
rhythm of nature: panes of primary colors, divided by vertical and horizontal
lines in their own rhythm, emphasizing the flatness of the painting.
Because all reference to objects have gone, observers sometimes tend to
see abstract paintings as simple and easy, but they are everything but that. The
attention and thought given to these works leave the observer a concept to be
discovered, and a rhythm to be felt.
Further Reading
Fuchs, Rudolf Herman. Dutch Painting. London: Thames and Hudson, 1996.
Luijten, Hans, Leo Jansen and Nienke Bakker, eds. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters; The Complete,
Illustrated and Annotated Edition. 6 vols. London: Thames & Hudson, 2009; Dutch edition:
Vincent van Gogh: De brieven; De volledige, geillustreerde en geannoteerde uitgave. 6 vols.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009. http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg
Schwartz, Gary. The Rembrandt Book. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2006.
Slive, Seymour. Dutch Painting, 1600-1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Wetering, Ernst van de. Rembrandt: The Painter at Work. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press,
2009.
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chapter 14
Style and Lifestyle

in Architecture
by rob dettingmeijer
Architecture today offers a paradox: on the one hand it is more popular than ever, on
the other hand it is losing all the aspects that once defined this art and craft. More full-
color magazines, websites, books and tourist destinations with a great emphasis on, or
totally devoted to, architecture are published than ever. But this architecture is more
about images than about objects. In contemporary architecture, tastes are changing
even faster than fashion. Ben van Berkel of architect’s firm UN-studio proudly claimed
that “the architect is the fashion designer of the future.”1 Is this the result of the fact
that the production of buildings is increasingly seen in terms of materialistic real estate
development rather than a functionalist approach to provide shelter or as a meaningful
reflection of social values? In this process the idea of architecture as a slow art, meant to
survive the centuries and taking place in landscapes or townscapes loaded with memo-
ries and artifacts of distant times, seems to be almost lost.
In Utrecht, both faces of architecture can be found. In the “Brainpark” of the
Utrecht University (and other institutions for research and higher education) an open-
air museum of the latest trends in architecture with star-architects has been built and is
still under construction. The renowned architect Rem Koolhaas and his Office of Metro-
politan Architecture – who have designed the master plan for the Utrecht University
campus – but also UN-studio, Mecanoo, Wiel Arets, Neutelings and Riedijk, Jan Hoog-
stad and many more famous architects or young architects on their way to become
famous, all seem to be engaged in a competition to show the most impressive, colorful,
weird or funny designs.
Battle Between Gothic and Renaissance

It is also telling, however, that the ceremonial center of Utrecht University is still
located in the heart of the old city: the Academiegebouw (University Hall, page 184), situ-
ated just inside the limits of the Roman castellum, which was built to defend the north-
ern border of the empire, formed by what was then the stream of the river Rhine. It was
within the remains of this castellum that some of the first Christian churches in the
Netherlands were constructed and a diocese was founded. The oldest part of the Acade-
miegebouw, the Auditorium, dates back to 1462. It was built as a chapter house of the
Cathedral. The Union of Utrecht, regarded as the foundation of the Dutch Republic,
was signed in this room in 1579. This spiritual and historic center was the obvious
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choice as first seat of learning in 1636.

Two hundred and fifty years later the citizens and the Province of Utrecht offered
to incorporate this hall into a new building satisfying the growing demand in the
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university for space. Academic education was considered the responsibility of the
national government, which also owned large parts of the grounds and buildings that
were to be incorporated in the new building. So the government offered help in the per-
son of J. van Lokhorst, national architect for buildings of education. However, the local
government and the university preferred Eugen Gugel, professor of Architectural
Design at the Polytechnic in Delft. Gugel designed a monumental neo-renaissance
building directly next to the former cathedral and connected to the cloister. This was
met with heavy criticism by Van Lokhorst, who even felt obliged to make a new design
in the neo-gothic style. It became a national issue and only after more than four years a
compromise was found. The building kept the Renaissance facades but found a new
location. The “new” plan folded itself around the monumental staircase so that it fitted
into the corner of the square. Buildings had to be bought and demolished for this solu-
tion, but the government paid the extra costs. As a kind of revenge Victor de Stuers, the
indefatigable leader of governmental-sponsored cultural conservation who had fuelled
the conflict, ordered to place a new monumental entrance in the gothic style as close as
possible to the new building.
This story clearly illustrates that the difference of opinion was not about the func-
tion, but about the meaning of the building. The choice of style implicated a choice of
vision on what the best moral civilization in the past and for the future was. In Europe
in general the choice for neo-renaissance meant the choice for humanism or even for
materialism as in the case of the famous architect and theorist Gottfried Semper. Gothic
was considered by many as the true Christian style or even the most rational style, as
E. E. Viollet-Le-Duc stated. In the Netherlands this ideological watershed was even
stronger. The emancipation of the Roman Catholics in the last quarter of the nine-
teenth century found expression in the building of a large number of Catholic, neo-
gothic churches.2 At the same time the national identity was clearly constructed around
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the Dutch Revolt by the seven Protestant provinces against Catholic Spain. Conse-
quently, the “Dutch Renaissance” or “Old Dutch” architecture of this period and most
of the Golden Age was seen as the national style.
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The architect of most of the Catholic churches was Pierre Cuypers.3 He became the
architect of the Roman Catholic circle that gained power in the governmental circles
and in the capital Amsterdam. Grouped around a free-style gothic church near the
Vondelpark in Amsterdam they built their ideal picturesque village of villas and even a
beerhouse. It was this Roman Catholic circle that enabled Cuypers to realize two of the
most monumental profane buildings in Amsterdam: the Rijksmuseum (1876-1885,
above) and the Central Station (1882-1889, with A. L. van Gendt). Both buildings were
built in a mixed style but many, including the king, still considered them too gothic
and “church-like.”
Building with “Community Art”

Upon leaving the Central Station in Amsterdam one can already see the Amsterdam
Stock Exchange (1884-1903), although this north side of the building intentionally
blends into the old cityscape. Seen from this angle it is hard to believe this is considered
by most historians and architects as the start of modern architecture. The vast brick
wall at the Damrak screening two large halls covered with iron and glass roofs caused
almost everybody to think it was a modern ugly building. This “bourgeois opinion”
helped the architect, H.P. Berlage, to become the father of modern Dutch architecture.4
Comparing the first designs of Berlage and Th. Sanders more or less to a renaissance-
style, and looking at the way the second designs of Berlage evolved, incorporating the
examples and theories provided by architects Semper and Viollet-Le-Duc (mentioned
above) who pioneered in neo-styles, it is clear that an architecture for the twentieth
century was born, but with its roots in the previous age. In the iconographical program
of the sculptures, tiles and texts, an utopian socialist vision was clearly expressed,
which was rather strange for a “palace for trade.” This Dutch version of the Gesamt-
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kunstwerk was called Gemeenschapskunst (Community Art). It was the ideal of many in the
first half of the last century, so many sculptures, reliefs, stained-glass windows, and
other applied arts are still visible even in social housing.
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It is not surprising that Berlage did like his design for the Dutch union of diamond
industry workers (Algemeene Nederlandsche Diamantbewerkersbond, ANDB) much
better, because the Community Art was much more appropriate there. In the Stock
Exchange, the brokers felt so ill at home that they commissioned a new exchange
building (1909-1912) on the same square (above, building to the right). They chose
Eduard Cuypers, a nephew of Pierre, and partly trained at his office. The building is
in the restrained fin de siècle style, De
Nieuwe Kunst, that was popular at that
time. The firm of Eduard Cuypers was so
successful among the Dutch elite and in
the Dutch East Indies that it served as a
school for nearly every Amsterdam archi-
tect of the next generation. So one could
consider Eduard Cuypers the true father
of the Amsterdam School, rather than
Berlage who often has been given that
tribute.
Without doubt the most famous pro-
ducts of the Amsterdam School can be
found in the Spaarndammerbuurt (left).5
Michel de Klerk composed three blocks
(1913-1915; 1915-1916; 1917-1920) in a
flamboyant way, making him interna-
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tionally famous overnight. No side of a

building block looks the same and the
sometimes complicated combinations of
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different types of dwellings, a school and even a post-office in the last block astonished
everybody. In other parts of the city a large number of houses in this style were built as
well. Many foreigners visited these examples of modern architecture and the social
democrats even used these visits in their propaganda during the elections. This masked
the fact that the first social-democratic alderman, F.M. Wibaut, hoped (like most other
political parties) to provide shelter for the working class in one-family houses and not
in large building blocks. But even under the new Housing Act of 1901 this proved to be
impossible in almost all cases. Socialists still longed for the “Garden City,” although
only occasionally sections could be realized, mostly at the fringes of the city (e.g. in B.T.
Boeyinga’s Tuindorp Oostzaan (1922-1924)).
The Rietveld Schröder House:

Icon of Architecture for the Modern Age
The Rietveld Schröder house is on the UNESCO-World Heritage List as “an out-
standing expression of human creative genius in its purity of ideas and con-
cepts as developed by the De Stijl movement,” the modernist art movement
that flourished in the 1920s. Incidentally, architects connected with De Stijl at
the time did not consider it the best example of De Stijl architecture, a recogni-
tion which only came later.
The house is revolutionary in at least three aspects: the translation of the
way a widow with children wanted to express her modernity; the way a building
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is no longer about walls, but about spaces in the inside connected as directly
as possible with space outside; and the way the house is best appreciated by
moving, because there is not one ideal observation point.
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Rietveld was already well-known for his modern furniture and interior designs
among a small circle of people who wanted to propagate modern living. One of
his admirers was Truus Schröder. When her husband died in 1923 she decided
to move into a smaller and new house with a view over the meadows. She liked
the open skies so much she chose to live on the first floor. She and Rietveld held
the opinion that every function of a dwelling should require an active decision
to perform it. In this way one space could be used for different functions at dif-
ferent times. So by moving panels in a different position the kitchen can turn
into a dining room; a bathroom is created by folding surfaces out of the wall.
Most spectacular is the way sliding walls can divide the first floor into small
sleeping rooms, or make it part of the continuous space of the living room.
Rietveld started the design process with a simple cubic form. He had
already created a large wooden model of a design by architect Cornelis van
Eesteren and artist Theo van Doesburg for Léon Rosenberg, the owner of the
Galerié de l’Effort Modèrne in which the first De Stijl exposition in Paris was
held. It deconstructed one solid box into an abstract composition of horizontal
and vertical planes. Rietveld did the same with his cube: first by applying colors
and shades of gray to suggest depth; second by subdividing the planes of the
cube and taking them almost apart. At first glance this just looks like an ab-
stract play, but the horizontal protruding planes give shelter for the sun and
the vertical planes give shelter against too much light and openness for the
sleeping areas. The living and dining room area can be opened up so far that
even the corner disappears. Rietveld himself said that the small poles in the
primary colors were meant to create the suggestion of a scaffolding with only
glass and no walls behind it.
In later designs Rietveld was less sculptural and fitted more into the
mainstream of modern architecture. He designed his own version for the Exis-
tenzminimum, the Kernhuis, but could never realize it. Only near the end of his
life he was asked to build social housing projects and more prestigious buildings.
Striving for a New Way of Life

The Housing Act of 1901 had opened the possibilities of subsidies for building low-cost
housing. Mostly such low-cost housing was realized by housing associations, with low
or even interest-free loans from the government. But from the middle of the 1920s on-
ward private capital invested as much as or even more than the successive governments
did.
The Housing Act also proscribed that every city of more than ten thousand inhabi-
tants and cities with a sudden increase of the population by more than one fifth should
design an extension plan. In this way housing became the most important tool in
urban planning in the Netherlands.6 The most famous example of this new urban plan-
ning is Amsterdam South. In the first plan (1900-1904) Berlage designed a picturesque
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cityscape, under the influence of foreign city planners and theoreticians such as the
noted Austrian architect Camillo Sitte. His second plan (1915-1917) shows a more dra-
matic, almost baroque monumental style that was adapted to the view from modern
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transportation such as car or tram rather than that of a pedestrian. Berlage was also
involved, mostly as aesthetic advisor, in other cities such as The Hague, Groningen,
Utrecht, and Rotterdam. At the core of his designs was his belief that, as the cathedrals
were the expression of the Middle Ages and palaces and castles the expression of the
totalitarian civilization, the well composed building blocks of social housing would be
the expression of the coming civilization of socialism.
Modern architecture therefore was not so much about creating a different style, but
about providing elements for a new way of life. Rotterdam succeeded in building the
most social housing projects, although they hardly looked like “palaces for the work-
ers.” In the meadows, many kilometers away from the southern outskirts of the city, an
initiative of the local elite succeeded in building one of the few examples of social hous-
ing that could be compared with the “garden cities” in England. The initial plan of
Vreewijk (literally: “Neighborhood of Peace”) was designed by Berlage (1915-1916),
but other architects built far more pragmatic, traditional one-family houses on a larger
scale, amidst well-composed streets, canals, small squares, and around common greens.
But to the northwest, bordering on the old city of Rotterdam, the dream of the small
family dwellings proved to be as impossible as in Amsterdam. J. J. P. Oud designed his
building blocks in two neighborhoods: Spangen (1918-1920) and Tusschendijken
(1920-1922).7 Although they all looked beautiful on pictures and provided consider-
ably better living conditions than the inner city, they were still too crowded to the liking
of social democrats and progressive liberals, and far too luxurious for the conservatives.
How important the idea was to have at least a front door and a window overlooking the
street is demonstrated in the design by Michiel Brinkman for Spangen (above) which
provided for an elevated street (“luchtstraat”) thus providing not only the necessary
number of new homes, but also satisfactory privacy for the homes on the higher level.
Oud had one chance to design a real alternative to Vreewijk: Kiefhoek (1927-1928),
also situated at the southern border of the town. But most of the inhabitants and even
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Oud himself thought it was a failure. The design was meant to be realized in concrete,
and not with second quality brick and with hardly any fundaments. However, it did not
alter the international reputation of Oud as one of the best designers of the Existenz-
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Minimum dwelling as the Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) presented in
Frankfurt in 1928. In the rhetoric of the avant-garde, the houses in Kiefhoek formed an
alternative for the “farmhand sheds,” as they called the houses in Vreewijk. The archi-
tectural innovations of Oud could not prevent more conservative buildings being built
in far greater quantities than in the Kiefhoek model. The only clear exception is the city
of Hilversum, where W.M. Dudok built almost a new town with a town hall, many
schools, and even a cemetery in a moderate modern architectural language, which was
nationally and internationally much appreciated.8
Modern architecture – in what later would be called the International Style – was
even more an exception in more prestigious buildings such as government buildings,
banks, offices, museums, and not to mention churches, although technical innovations
were as much or even more used than in the modern looking buildings. A good exam-
ple of the average taste is the Museum Boymans (1935), designed by A. van der Steur.
One of the most outspoken exceptions to this case are the buildings commissioned
by the tobacco, coffee and tea firm Van Nelle.9 Most famous is the Van Nelle factory it-
self (below), although the success is almost as much the result of the manager of the
company, C. H. van de Leeuw. The first element of the design is the office block, which
curves alongside the access way and is crowned with a circular tearoom, looking like the
bridge of a modern steamer. The tobacco-, coffee- and tea-buildings follow with de-
creasing heights, as there are fewer stages in the preparation of tea in comparison with
the tobacco. The raw material is transported from the warehouses and boiler house-
block near the river Schie in glazed transport belts into the buildings. The construction
consists of slender armed concrete floors supported by mushroom pillars; a curtain
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wall envelops the buildings. The staircases and the access to the washrooms, strictly
separated for men and women, stood tower-like against the main buildings. At night
the effect of the transparency was even more dramatic. This architecture was meant to
make the employees healthier and happier. Three managers of this firm, Van der Leeuw
included, believed so much this architecture could be a vehicle for new men, that they
let Van der Vlugt design their own new villas at almost the same time.
Reconstruction and
Dreams Turning into Nightmares
The Dutch could stay neutral in the First World War, but in 1940 the Germans invaded
the country. Rotterdam and Middelburg were bombed to force the nation to surrender.
The rebuilding of Rotterdam and Middelburg showed more or less to the extreme the
two possibilities that were open to all planners in all the devastated cities.10 Middel-
burg restored its great monuments and rebuilt the rest of the town almost with the
same typology as before the disaster, but the city-plan was cleverly adjusted to foreseen
future developments, especially the increase of traffic. Rotterdam started as blank as
possible by tearing down all ruins and clearing the way for a far more rationalized city-
plan, with new bridges, great parkways and boulevards, and creating newer and larger
building blocks. But the original plan by Witteveen was still considered to prescribe too
much the form of the future city. In secret meetings – sometimes in the tearoom on top
of the Van Nelle building – the leading industrialists and bankers decided that a mod-
ern city center almost without dwellings should be kept open to future developments
and traffic would be given total supremacy. In doing so they acted as if they had read
the Charter of Athens, which stated that working, living, and recreating must be sepa-
rated, with traffic as the structure connecting them. The outline sketched by C. van
Traa, grouping only functions, was even more formless than the General Extension
Plan for Amsterdam (the famous Amsterdams Uitbreidingsplan, 1935) outlined by C. van
Eesteren, president of CIAM. It was exactly this formlessness that paved the way for
new building types, such as the Wholesale Building (Groothandelsgebouw) by W. van
Tijen and H.A. Maaskant (1951), with a street for lorries running through the building,
and the more internationally influential Lijnbaan, by the firm of Van den Broek and
Bakema, consisting of shops, offices and flats, with one of the first absolute divisions of
the different forms of transport.
In the meetings of CIAM after the war, the Dutch were still much admired for their
bold compositions of new dwellings at the outskirts of Rotterdam, like Pendrecht and
Alexanderpolder, or the new village, Nagele, in the new polder. But this was only a very
small part of the production of dwellings, theaters, schools, and churches. Most of this
production used the lay-out and even the product development as was presented for
the first time in the “competition for inexpensive dwellings” in 1934. In and after the
war this was developed into a set of suggestions and regulations (“wenken en voor-
schriften”), which were used as a guideline for all the building of houses. What was de-
fined as Existenzminimum (minimum for existence) became the maximum allowed.
Younger architects cried out that the dream of avant-gardist and elegant designers like
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Rietveld, Van der Vlugt and Duiker was lost. Aldo van Eyck stated that the profession
had never had so many opportunities, yet had failed so deeply.
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From New Forms of Dwelling
to New Forms for Roofs
The young architects, like Van Eyck and Bakema, concluded the wrong persons and in-
stitutions profited of the manifestos of CIAM and decided to liquidate the organization
in Otterlo in 1959. As Van der Leeuw stated at the opening of the meeting: Van Nelle in
Rotterdam and Bauhaus in Dessau, which before the war had been seen as beginnings,
proved after the war to be the highlights of a discipline deep in crisis. Bakema tried to
keep the big scale and fast production for large companies and organizations under
control with his “story of the family,” Van Eyck tried to combine the tradition of the
modern avant-garde, classical and vernacular architecture, and used institutions, such
as an orphanage (1960) or a house for single mothers with child (1981), as testing grounds.
But when the orphanage opened it had only one orphan in addition to a lot of problem
children who had to be kept under surveillance. The pill changed single mothers from
victims into proud independent women, and very soon the house for single mothers
with children was changed into a refuge for battered and exhausted housewives.
Society was changing much too fast for architecture.
Mainstream building had little to do with an individual architect designing build-
ings, let alone demonstrating possibilities for a more social world. It was the time that
the Bijlmermeer – an extension of Amsterdam in a polder to the south-east of the city
(page 193) – was built with mega-blocks that were even larger than Le Corbusier ever
built for dwelling. At the heart was a belief in modern, flexible and mobile mankind
living in spacious flats in endless parks. Instead the “Bijlmer” became housing for new
immigrants: people from Surinam fleeing their new independent state and opting for
the Dutch nationality, and families of the working class imported from Mediterranean
countries. Although these circumstances were at the root of the failure of the Bijlmer,
the architecture was blamed and people even became nostalgic about their dwellings in
the noisy and dark old city.
Almost the same thing happened with the shopping mall Hoog Catharijne in
Utrecht. The initial idea was to create a greater and more compact version of the
successful Lijnbaan in Rotterdam – floating above the ground and directly at the inter-
section of railways and freeways with abundant room for parking. But after tests in the
wind tunnel, it was decided to opt for a closed and air-conditioned shopping mall with
added offices and some expensive flats. However, not only consumers flocked into the
new environment, but also drug addicts and the homeless.
The inhabitants of the old neighborhoods that had to be demolished to make way
for highways, freeways and renovations protested and sometimes won their cases
against the government. This countermovement cleared the way for architects to design
in wilder and happier forms and formats. Even the politicians agreed it was time for
a change, now the housing shortage was becoming less pressing. The most favorite
elements – such as small individual rooftops and decorative elements, suggesting indi-
vidual dwellings in large scale renovations – were taken from Aldo van Eyck’s projects,
first for the city of Deventer and later for Zwolle. Architects such as Herman Hertz-
berger or Piet Blom tried to provoke people to live more sociably by providing them
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with only the framework to finish according to their own liking, or with a very exuber-
ant form such as the houses in the form of tilted cubes (kubuswoningen). Lesser talents
created mazes of small houses which all wanted to be original and became boring.
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Especially in Germany, but increasingly all over the world, this escape from boring
modernism (before postmodernism was even named) was much admired. This success
of the small scale maze of buildings in every reconstructed neighborhood or outskirt of
every city and in many new neighborhoods or new towns was so considerable that post-
modern architecture had hardly any influence in the beginning.
Neomodern and neotraditional critique came almost at the same time. Young
architects and students looked back at the heroic days in-between the two World Wars.
In many museums exhibitions opened about the architecture of this period. Rem
Koolhaas, who founded his O.M.A. in New York and showed his admiration for the
aspirations and congestions in Manhattan, returned home to the Netherlands to save
modernism and hoped in vain to play an important role in introducing Manhattanism
in Rotterdam11, The Hague, and Amsterdam. He chose a mix of international models
from the tradition of modernism to sketch the new neighborhood of the IJ-plein area
near Amsterdam. In Maastricht Jo Coenen made almost the same statement with his
plan for the former industrial area of the Sfinx-factories (1987-2004) but his inspira-
tion was more oriented at the boulevards and vistas of the European cities in general.
In the 1980s and 1990s “architecture as culture” became official government pol-
icy and the best expression of this is seen in the Dutch Architecture Institute, designed
by Jo Coenen (1988-1993).
In the meantime things were changing rapidly. Housing was now considered a
commercial product, just as everything else by nearly everybody. New neighborhoods
were built in direct connection to the old. New cities were created for a growing market
of young urban professionals, most of whom had loved to live in the old cities as stu-
dents. They did not want to part with the old city, but also wanted the neatness of al-
most gated communities. The best translation of this desire is Brandevoort near
Helmond (page 194), built under the supervision of Krier & Kohl. It poses as a histori-
cally grown town, but is in fact an almost cartoon-like collage of most beloved building
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types, varying from canal-houses to bourgeois-family row houses from the 1930s. The
development of Brandevoort is not yet finished, but the Netherlands is already flooded
with copied fragments of it.
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But the best example of the change between the 1970s and the present situation can be
seen in the history of Hertzberger’s Muziekcentrum (Music Center) in Utrecht. It was
built as a center hiding between everyday shops. It took the nineteenth-century “pas-
sages” as a model and presented a critique of the shopping mall Hoog Catharijne with
which it was connected. In 2007 a grand-scale reconstruction started, in which every-
thing except the concert-hall was demolished. Hertzberger himself supervised the
building of a new superstructure, a “Music Palace,” above his hall, incorporating differ-
ent architectures by different architects for different styles of music. The aim was to
make it the focal point for all possible lifestyles in the heart of the city, turning Utrecht
into a favorite for future investments, especially in what is called ‘Nieuw Hoog
Catharijne or ‘CU 2030’.12 Thus, within half a century, the Vredenburg square once
again was to change its appearance profoundly – although the new palace was based on
the remains of the old castle and the former canal would reappear.
The Royal Tropical Institute:

Architectural Symbol of Colonialism
The Royal Tropical Institute (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, KIT) was
founded in 1910 as a “Colonial Institute” to study the tropics and to promote
trade with and industry in the Dutch colonies. The collection of ethnological
artifacts from the colonies of the Colonial Museum, founded in 1864 in Haar-
lem, had proved increasingly useful in the training of civil servants and future
leaders of plantations and estates in the Dutch East Indies. In 1910 the geo-
grapher, entrepreneur and former Minister of the Colonies Henri Hubrecht,
honorary chair of the museum in Haarlem, decided to move the collection and
staff to a large new building on the Mauritskade in Amsterdam. Together with
a number of large companies and the government, he provided much of the
funding, making it an early example of public-private partnership.
The design of J.J. van Nieukerken looked more like a small town of the
Golden Age rather than one building, but the board loved the “plastic expres-
sion of the intentions of the Colonial Society.” The governmental architectural
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“esthetics committee” (schoonheidscommissie), however, fiercely opposed the

design as “a mixture of styles and a strange combination of different building
elements,” and instead favored a unity of expression in large buildings. This
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protest illustrated that the statement of the Stock Exchange of Berlage was
finally accepted in the world of architecture. The committee resigned in
protest upon learning that the local government followed the advice of Victor
de Stuers, former head of the Department of Arts and Sciences, who praised
the design of Van Nieukerken as “good and sensible.”
The “KIT” finally opened its doors in 1926, ten years after the first stone
was laid, and more than two years after the Rietveld-Schröder house was com-
pleted. Once they had climbed the large outside stairs, visitors were welcomed
by a monumental entrance, which gave access to an even larger hall with a
glazed ceiling upon aisles three stories high, which could be accessed by a
monumental staircase. The most expensive marbles from Europe and from the
colonies were used. Walls were decorated with majolica and paintings cele-
brating the exploits around the world and the many battles fought since the
start of the Dutch Revolt. Even in the capitals of the columns and pilasters
aspects of colonial life are illustrated.
Although at first glance old-fashioned, the building was in fact modern in
its construction, machinery and other technical aspects. It became a tool in
modernizing and intensifying colonialism and imperialism of the Dutch state
and private initiative. In 1950, a year after the independence of Indonesia, the
institute was renamed the Royal Tropical Institute. Reconstructions since then
have tried to hide or remove the most obvious signs and symbols of imperial-
ism, such as the monumental staircase, which was demolished because it was
considered undemocratic.
Although the KIT has been a center of knowledge and expertise in the
areas of international and intercultural cooperation, and contributed to
sustainable development, poverty alleviation and cultural preservation and
exchange, lack of government funding has forced a merger with the Ethno-
graphic Museum/Institution in Leiden, and the Africa Museum in Nijmegen.
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Further Reading
Dettingmeijer, Rob, Marie-Thérèse van Thoor, Ida van Zijl, eds. Rietveld’s Universe. Rotterdam:
NAi Publishers, 2010.
Dijk, Hans van. Architecture in the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century. Rotterdam: 010, 1999.
Groenendijk, Paul, and Piet Vollaard. Architectuurgids Nederland/Architectural Guide to the Netherlands,
1900-2000. Rotterdam: 010, 2006.
Ibelings, Hans, and Ton Verstegen. The Artificial Landscape: Contemporary Architecture, Urbanism and
Landscape Architecture in the Netherlands. Rotterdam: NAi, 2000.
Ibelings, Hans, Francis Strauven and Jozelf Deleu, eds. Contemporay Architects of the Low Countries.
Rekkem: Ons Erfdeel, 2000.
Longmead, Donald. Dutch Modernism: Architectural Resources in the English Language. London:
Greenwood, 1996.
Wagenaar, Cor, Town Planning in the Netherlands since 1800. Rotterdam: 010, 2011.
Woudsma, J. The Royal Tropical Institute: An Amsterdam Landmark. Amsterdam: KIT Press, 1990.
Zijl, Ida van, and Bertus Mulders. The Rietveld Schröder House. Utrecht: Matrijs, 2009.
The former Dutch Architectural Institute (NAi), nowadays called ‘the New Institute’, offers
the best library and the most extensive website for information on Dutch Architecture of the
nineteenth and twentieth century, http://en.nai.nl. Especially interesting is the link to BONAS,
a project about biographies and bibliographies of less famous Dutch architects of the nineteenth
and twentieth century.
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chapter 15
Literature, Authors,
and Public Debate

by frans ruiter and wilbert smulders
The famous Dutch historian Johan Huizinga once described the Netherlands as a tran-
sit port, both in a literal as well as in an intellectual sense. Neighboring cultures from
England, France and Germany met and were connected in the Netherlands. This has
led to a cosmopolitan and outward looking literary tradition, which produced great
writers such as the romantic Multatuli in the late nineteenth century, the naturalist
Louis Couperus at the fin de siècle, and, more recently, rather postmodern authors such
as Harry Mulisch and Cees Nooteboom, who also appeal to an international audience.
Somewhat lesser known abroad are Willem Frederik Hermans and Gerard Reve. Yet,
precisely these two writers are considered to be the most influential authors in modern
Dutch literature. This chapter takes their work as a starting point for reflecting on
some essential developments of Dutch culture.
Modernist Friends
Early in their careers, Willem Frederik Hermans (1921-1995) and Gerard Reve (1923-
2006) maintained a rather ambiguous friendship. In the 1950s, Hermans relentlessly
criticized his literary colleagues in merciless polemical writings; the only writer he
spared was Reve. “You are the only real literary talent I met in all these years among my
acquaintances, and that’s enough, whatever may be your faults and errors,” he wrote to
Reve. Conversely, when Hermans was prosecuted because of his controversial novel Ik
heb altijd gelijk (I Am Always Right, 1951), Reve was willing to hide the complete stock of
this novel in his attic (“under a tarpaulin”), although he was not even rewarded a free
copy for this noble deed. Their friendship was seriously compromised later on, when
Reve professed to the Catholic Church and Hermans – whose worldview was strongly
inspired by the natural sciences – could view Reve as nothing but a buffoon. Later still,
when Reve was himself indicted because of his theological idiosyncrasies, it would have
been unimaginable to Hermans to hide Reve’s writings in his attic. Yet, because of their
literary affinity and their continuous clashes with the Dutch establishment, both
authors represent an excellent point of departure to characterize Dutch literature in
the nineteenth and twentieth century in more general terms.
Hermans and Reve made their debut shortly after the Second World War, a war that
left the Netherlands ransacked, with a heavily damaged infrastructure and an economy
that had virtually come to a standstill. Thus it was in the wake of a long period of post-
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war reconstruction that Hermans and Reve started their impressive careers. This period
was characterized by a climate of “work not play,” leaving no room for frivolity or
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pursuing personal interests. A paternalistic morality, in which austerity and economy
were predominant, called for solidarity.
The literary power and significance of both writers in this period was to be found –
quite similar to that of the then emerging poetic movement of the Vijftigers – in what
had been the major thrust of the modernist literature after the First World War: moral
subversiveness. Hermans and Reve considered it a mission to antagonize the bour-
geoisie. As shortly after the exaltation of the liberation in 1945 the pressure of common
decency and morality increased, and everyone was again supposed to stay in line of
dulled ideals, Hermans’ and Reve’s provoking novels produced a wave of indignation.
Hermans’ work expresses a feeling which thus far had been unfamiliar in Dutch
culture. It evokes a mentality which intends to undermine every belief, and which
leaves no room for solidarity. The sources of his imagination are on the one hand the
gloomy world of De Sade and the irrationalism of surrealism, and on the other hand
the stern world of science and technology. His poetics is a harsh plea against a psycho-
logical version of modernist literature, which generated novels with infinitely subtle
reflections of particular sensitive minds, preferably that of the author him or herself. As
opposed to this, Hermans was strongly in favor of unadulterated fiction. He was con-
vinced that it was through the internal logic of literary fiction that literature allows us
to experience, however indirectly, something about reality. The profoundness of fiction
cannot be surpassed by confessional prose.
Similarly, Reve’s work in the 1940s and 1950s is characterized by an atmosphere of
melancholic nihilism, surrealistic dreamlike leanings and a subtle absurdist idiom.
Sobering as the work of both authors may be because of its bleak outlook, it emanates a
vital humor. Both men were Einzelgänger (“loners”), who, because of their common literary
destiny, became friends and brothers in arms.1 Their forceful expression of human
loneliness broke the taboos of an oppressive confessional-bourgeois cultural climate, in
which the fear of judgment passed by one’s neighbor in the church benches suffocated
all non-conformist inclinations. Both demanded “total authorship”: rather than a regu-
lar profession, writing is to be considered a calling. A calling, which very regularly con-
flicted with the narrow-minded social conventions of the time. As in the 1960s these
conventions loosened, the nature of their conflicts changed as well, and their friend-
ship would not last.
Summoned
The antagonistic character of their work brought both authors in trouble with the law.2
In the beginning of the 1950s, a prepublication of sections of Hermans’ novel Ik heb
altijd gelijk (I Am Always Right) stirred up serious commotion. The immediate cause was
a paragraph in which the main character of the novel, Lodewijk Stegman – a demoted
sergeant, just returned from the colonial war in the East Indies – had a go at the
Catholics:
The Catholics! That’s the most shabby, lousy, scabby, crummy part of our nation!
Screwing from one day to the next, that’s all they do! They do propagate! Like
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rabbits, rats, fleas, lice. They won’t emigrate! They sit on their asses in Brabant
and Limburg, with pimples on their cheeks and rotten molars from stuffing
wafers!
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The Catholic and the conservative press cried out for legal prosecution. According to
these critics, it was not just in this particular passage that Hermans overstepped the
mark. In the 1950s, the dead-end nihilism of his work was generally considered a
stumbling block. Legal proceedings were instituted, charging him with insult of a
community. It is significant that Hermans, in addressing the court during the trial,
chose not to base his defense on proving the superiority of his world-view over that of
his plaintiffs. On the contrary, he rather stressed the autonomous and fictional charac-
ter of literature. According to Hermans, one could not blame an author for a character
in his novel doing something illegal. To ignore this simple distinction would be tanta-
mount to “mistake a policeman who writes a report for the driver who committed an
offense.” The charge against Hermans itself shows that the concept of an autonomous
literature was still not completely accepted in the “pillarized” Netherlands, where
society was segregated along denominational lines, and literature supposed to support
the ethics of the respective denominations. Yet, ultimately, Hermans was cleared of the
charge.
Some fifteen years later, it was Reve’s turn to collide with the law, once again be-
cause of religious feelings being hurt. However, this time the social situation was rather
different, as was the strategy of defense Reve opted for. With his publicly avowed homo-
sexuality, Reve had already purposely antagonized the Christian community years ear-
lier. He completely succeeded in doing so by indulging in fantasies about having sexual
intercourse with God, who had returned to earth, not as a young man but as a donkey.
And God Himself would drop by disguised as a one year old, mouse-gray
donkey, and he would stand in front of my door, ring the bell and say:
“Gerard, that book of yours – do you know I cried reading some of the pas-
sages?” [I would] start kissing Him en pull Him inside and after a tremen-
dous climb up the stairs to the little bedroom, I would possess Him three
times prolongedly in His Secret Opening, where after I would offer him a
complimentary copy, not sewed, but hardcover – not that miserly and nar-
rowly – with the inscription: For the Infinite. Without Words.
In his court case, Reve – unlike Hermans – did not rely on using the fictional aspect of
literary communication as an argument. Incidentally, this would have been rather
difficult, since Reve had made autobiographical confession his literary trademark. Reve
mimicked pillarized discourse in basing his defense on a denominational argument by
stating that he too had every right to his own image of God.
Everybody has a right to his own conception of God, and everybody has the
right to testify to it, if he wants to. For example, I imagine our Savior just as I
see and experience Him, and not as the blasphemous images on mission calen-
dars. Many people wish to imagine Him with hair much too long, parted
down the middle, dressed in a white dress with embroidered little neck, and,
preferably, without genitals, or, at least, without sexual intercourse. That is
their image and they have a right to testify to this. To me, however, the Son of
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God had rather well-proportioned genitals, which he definitely did not allow
to get rusty. I imagine Him as a bisexual, albeit with a dominant homosexual
preference, slightly neurotic, but without hate towards any creature, because
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God is Love, incapable of excluding any creature from Him. That is my image
of the Son of God, which I will not impose on anybody, but neither am I pre-
pared to be robbed of it, by nobody whomever.
Ultimately, in appeal to a higher court, acquittal from blasphemy followed. A year later,
Reve acceded to the Roman Catholic Church, just at the time that large numbers of
people were leaving it and the Netherlands witnessed an irreversible process of secular-
ization, which marked a sudden end to the segregation of Dutch society along denomi-
national lines.
Multatuli: Anti-Colonial Literature

In 1860 Multatuli published the famous novel Max Havelaar which successfully
criticized the Dutch colonial exploitation of the Dutch East Indies.
Multatuli is regarded as the first exponent of romanticism in the Nether-
lands. When in the first half of the nineteenth century romanticism flourished
in England, France and Germany, Dutch culture was dominated by a calm, if
not indeed sluggish atmosphere, a mixture of liberalism and deism, keeping
every possible excess under control. This was reflected in literature until the
second half of the century.
Multatuli (“I have suffered greatly”) was the pen name of Eduard Douwes
Dekker. Born in Amsterdam in 1821 as a son of a ship’s captain who intended
him for trade, he went as an eighteen-year old to Java, the main island of the
Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. After being moved from one post to another
as a young colonial civil servant, he was appointed “assistant resident” in
Lebak (Java) in 1857. He started to openly criticize the abuses of the colonial
system and was forced to resign from office.
In a state of fierce indignation he returned to
the Netherlands, where he sought to disclose
the state of his affairs. Nobody listened. It was
from that moment on that he reluctantly de-
cided to become a writer, and within thirty
days he wrote Max Havelaar of de koffyvei-
lingen der Nederlandse Handelmaatschappij
(Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions of the
Dutch Trading Company) in a hotel room in
Brussels.
The novel has an imaginative compos-
ition. Effectively disguised as an innocent
humoristic story, it turns out to be a combi-
nation of bright satire and bitter social com-
plaint, ending in an appeal to King William III
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to do something about these colonial abuses.

Immediately upon publication the novel was
the talk of the day. It also became subject of
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fierce debates in parliament, but to the great disappointment of the author it
was primarily praised for its literary qualities. D.H. Lawrence judged: “As far as
composition goes, [Max Havelaar] is the greatest mess possible.” But he also
stated: “The book isn’t really a tract, it is a satire. Multatuli isn’t really a
preacher, he’s a satirical humorist. Straight on in the line of Jean Paul Richter
the same bitter almost mad-dog aversion of humanity.”
Was Multatuli a troublemaker, using the upheaval he caused as material
for his literary genius? Or was he a naive social idealist, far ahead of his fellow
citizens? Or was he, a true romantic, the intrinsic blend of those two? Critics,
writers and colonial specialists have argued about it from the start and con-
tinue to do so. From the date of publication onwards, and more particularly so
after his death in 1886, many literary authors, freemasons, anarchists, social-
ists and freethinkers found something to their liking in his overwhelming oeuvre
and in his unconventional behavior in public life. Willem Frederik Hermans
admired the temperament and the freshness of Multatuli’s writing, but still
entitled his biography of Multatuli “The enigmatic Multatuli.”
Artist and Community

In modern times, the relation between artist and bourgeois has changed radically from
– in the terminology of the French sociologist of art Nathalie Heinich – a régime de com-
munauté to a régime de singularité.3 That is a transition from a situation in which the
artist is embedded in the community to one in which he sees himself opposing the
community.
In the Netherlands, this development has taken a rather special course. The régime
de communauté coincided with the heydays of the liberal-bourgeois culture in the nine-
teenth century.4 At the time that the régime de singularité started to take shape in the
Netherlands, the liberal-bourgeois culture was being rapidly displaced by a “pillar-
ized” bourgeois culture, split up along denominational lines. This pillarized culture
represents the specific Dutch context to the modernist antagonism between bour-
geoisie and artist, characteristic of the régime de singularité.5 Hermans and Reve saw
themselves confronted with this pillarized culture too. We will briefly discuss this
curious history here.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the liberal bourgeois culture was pre-
sented as universal and virtuous, and therefore worth pursuing for all. This explains
the initiatives of the bourgeois elite to spread knowledge and the arts among all (read:
lower) groups of the population, in order to disseminate the same enlightened, modern
ideas they themselves cherished. The construction of a universal high culture hap-
pened to be a sheer necessity in an increasingly specializing, differentiating and indus-
trializing society, which created a need for a bond to keep the growing complexity
together. Literature, too, aimed at contributing to this consensus. The writer was given
the role of moderator, shepherd and educator. It was in this climate that ministers of
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the Protestant church presented themselves as poets, performing their edifying poems
at reading societies. This is the régime de communauté in its purest form. The entire con-
stellation was inspired by a utopian ideal: as critical and virtuous citizens, all people are
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equal. Yet, this fine ideal was thwarted in no less than three ways: by mass culture, by
social movements, and by the avant-garde.
Mass culture, emerging at the beginning of the twentieth century, presented a for-
midable competitor for bourgeois culture. It operated in the same public domain and
solicited the favors of the same public. In its own way, mass culture cherished a pre-
tense of universality too. Its cultural products were, just like those of the “official”
bourgeois culture, essentially intended for everyone, regardless of his or her social, reli-
gious or regional origin.
The hegemonic pretenses of the bourgeoisie were crippled in yet another way.
Despite its zeal to civilize fellowmen through education and reading societies, such
attempts were only marginally successful in filtering down enlightened ideas from the
upper to the lower classes in society. Moreover, their efforts were further frustrated by
the churches’ drive to impose more discipline on their followers. As a reaction to the
rather secular body of ideas generated by the French Revolution, the churches felt com-
pelled to increase their influence. A variety of revival and restoration movements
emerged. The threat of apostasy was the whiplash, which prompted more close-knit
organization of religious life. Thus the foundation of the so-called “pillars” was laid,
which would leave their mark on Dutch culture well into the twentieth century.
Attempts within the pillars to offer an alternative for enlightened bourgeois culture
had little success, largely because the pillars were essentially unattractive for the intel-
lectuals. The pillars were more successful in the domain of mass culture. The public
broadcasting system was established in the 1920s with separate broadcasting associa-
tions. It even gloriously managed to survive the great dismantlement of the pillars in
the 1960s. Only with the emergence of commercial networks, the denominational grip
on the mass media seems to have finally weakened.
At the end of the nineteenth century another mutiny occurred, in the very heart of
bourgeois liberal culture itself. Until the middle of that century artists and the civilized
bourgeois public more or less shared the same tastes and values (régime de communauté).
But at the end of the nineteenth century even here fissures started to show. The famous
German sociologist Max Weber saw a progressive disenchantment of the world as the
inevitable effect of the critical spirit of the Enlightenment and of the industrialization
and rationalization of modern society. This disenchantment challenged artists to
search for other means of transcendence than religion. In the Netherlands, it was not
until the 1880s that art as counterculture, a compensation for the modernization
process, developed in the first avant-garde movement in the Netherlands, the so-called
Tachtigers. With its subtle character and high vocation, art loosened itself from a general
audience and became something from the few for the few. While the bourgeoisie stuck
to a morally more optimistic mainstream culture, the artistic elite – in a restless succes-
sion of naturalistic, symbolist, decadent, Jugendstil, modernist and avant-garde art –
focused on a very select avant-garde audience. Thus the régime de singularité arrived in
the Netherlands.
The idea of l’art pour l’art (art for arts sake), introduced by the Tachtigers, was much
more than just an immanently artistic position. The very claim to have a right to realize
idiosyncrasies in total freedom represents a radical attempt to give meaning within the
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new context of modern culture. Ever since, poets have endlessly squabbled about the
question of literary autonomy, to the extent that a bystander might think a religious
war is being waged, a war in which minor dogmatic differences are completely blown
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out of proportion. The trials and tribulations of this poetical fight might appear to be
rather unsympathetic follies, unless one realizes that, in a way, they are a religious war
indeed. In a secularizing culture, art increasingly acquired the existential value that
religion had had in the past.

If we review these developments, the following picture arises. On the one side,
artists increasingly claim the role of spiritual leaders, thus alienating the liberal bour-
geoisie. On the other side, the bulk of the population (laborers, petty bourgeois,
Catholics) escaped the enlightened tutelage of the same bourgeoisie. At the very
moment the clarion blast of the Tachtigers resounded and the artistic elite presented
themselves – with a rather pre-modern, aristocratic air – as prophets of the modern
sense of life, the confessionals succeeded in organizing massive support for an ideology
which in essence was anti-modern. While the ties between writers and their “natural”
audience loosened, the ties between the political elite (confessional or socialist) and
their ranks strengthened. At the same time, more or less independent of all this,
modern mass culture began its triumphal march.
It was not until after the Second World War that this constellation gradually
started to change. Several indications showed that postwar artists and writers were
eager to break away from their “modernist” isolation. For Menno ter Braak – the most
discussed essayist of the period between the wars – the idea of an unbridgeable gap
between bourgeois and poet was still all-decisive and positively valued. Comparing the
ideas of Menno ter Braak with those of Willem Frederik Hermans, it is evident that
something had started to change. Hermans, be it cautiously, moved in the direction of
“pop culture.” In one of his most famous essays, he wrote: “The writer publicly ex-
presses what his audience has always known but kept silent about, what it has dreamed
but suppressed at the moment it awoke from its sleep.” Hermans adopted a moderately
elitist attitude. Certainly the writer has more nerve, but essentially he is not different
from the audience. Hermans readily admitted that this implies a conviction that “deep
down the audience is of the same constitution as the writer is.” Yet, an antagonistic
relation with the audience still existed, albeit that this was about to change rapidly.
Only ten years later, several writers published a manifesto in which they voiced that
they wanted to write “horny” stories for a “horny” audience. These writers seemed to
seek a melting together with their audience, figuratively and literally. This was only the
start of a new tradition, which has continued into the present boom in poetry slams and
performance poetry. Surely, this kind of poetry is different from the homely minister
poetry of the nineteenth century. But in an important way, the public-oriented poetics
of much contemporary literature more resembles this minister poetry than the avant-
garde poetry of the Tachtigers. Pop culture is a fact.
Modern Dutch literature in the 1960s found itself in a remarkable position. Until
the 1960s, autonomous writers had to defend themselves against the dominant power
of the pillars. With the dismantlement of the pillars in the 1960s this counter pressure
fell away. At last, literary autonomy had a free rein. At least so it could have been, had it
not been for the postmodern cultural leveling of pop culture. In pop culture, the antag-
onism between writer and bourgeois – the driving force of literary autonomy – loses
much of its sharpness. Or, to phrase it in terms of Nathalie Heinich, the modernist
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régime de singularité becomes inextricably entwined in a new, postmodern régime de com-

munauté.
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The Assault: Writing the Second World War
The German occupation of the Netherlands (1940-1945) is either the theme or

the setting of many works of Dutch literature. Literary authors – more than
professional historians – have been inclined to present the occupation as a cor-
rupting experience marked by moral dilemmas.
Willlem Frederik Hermans published several novels in which the division
between good and evil appeared to be highly problematic. His De donkere
kamer van Damokles (The Darkroom of Damocles, 1958) – one of the most
acclaimed novels in Dutch literature –
tells the story of Osewoudt, an utterly
insignificant and weak man, who gets
involved in the resistance movement.
Yet, after the war he is accused of hav-
ing worked for the Germans. Nothing
appears to have been as it seemed, but,
like the protagonist, the reader is left
with many questions. Is Osewoudt a
hero or a villain? The novel is loosely
based on a large-scale counter-intelli-
gence operation by the Germans, using
captured resistance fighters as double
agents against the Allies. The recent
translations in English, French and Ger-
man triggered great critical acclaim for
the novel, amongst others by Milan Kun-
dera, who praised the exploration of
the fatal moral ambiguity of wartime
presented in a thriller-like setting.
Harry Mulisch thoroughly exam-
ined the roots of evil in De zaak 40/61
(The Case 40/61, 1962), a report of the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961. He
sketched a disturbing image of Eichmann as a modern bureaucrat: “If during
the same years not Adolf Hitler but Albert Schweitzer had been Chancellor, and
if Eichmann had received an order to transport all sick negroes to modern hos-
pitals, he would have done so without failing – with the same pleasure in his
own fastidiousness as he had in the work that he has now left behind.”
Mulisch’s novel De Aanslag (The Assault, 1982) has appealed to many read-
ers. It tells the story of Anton Steenwijk who, after the war, tries to reconstruct
the sequence of events that led to the execution of his parents and brother by
the Germans during the war. The starting point of Anton’s quest is a rather
poignant event: in an assault by resistance fighters a collaborator is killed. The
incident occurs in the rather ordinary street where the Steenwijk family lives,
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in front of the house next door. The neighbors know that the Germans would
retaliate by burning their house and decide – in a moment of alertness or panic
– to drag the body in front of their neighbors’ home, that of the Steenwijk
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family. Their plan succeeds: the Germans arrest Anton and his parents and
burn their house. Only after the war Anton learns that his parents have been
executed.
The attraction of the novel lies in the extreme moral complexity hidden in
this rather straightforward opening scene. Who is morally responsible for the
death of Anton’s parents: the resistance fighters, the collaborator, the Ger-
mans, the neighbors? In a fascinating quest this tragic problem is unraveled.
In 1986 Dutch director Fons Rademakers successfully adapted the novel for a
movie, which in the following year won an Oscar and a Golden Globe.
Hermans and Reve in the Roaring Sixties

How did the two typically modernist authors fare under these circumstances? In the
1960s, fifteen years after their debut, both Hermans en Reve found themselves unwill-
ingly in this peculiar pop-cultural mix. The number of readers of their work increased
quickly and considerably, as a result of increased prosperity, broader education and a
growing cultural mobility. Inherently, the critical attention for their work also in-
creased substantially. Both authors grew into media personalities, becoming public
figures in a society adrift. Yet they reacted very differently to these changed condi-
tions.
It was not until 1958 that Hermans succeeded in reaching a larger audience, with
the novel De donkere kamer van Damocles (The Darkroom of Damocles). He gained strong
literary prestige with his ruthless polemical writings (Mandarijnen op zwavelzuur,
Mandarins on Vitriol, 1964), his brilliant poetical essays (Het sadistische universum, The
Sadist Universe, 1964), and, once more, a highly successful novel (Nooit meer slapen,
Beyond Sleep, 1966). Two decades later, the Dutch literary professional community had
picked up Hermans’ literary ideas. His passionate hammering away at fictional writing
as a craft and his ideas about the “classical novel” were planted in the minds of a whole
generation of literary critics and young writers. In short, he established a literary stand-
ard. However, his nihilistic, conservative worldview did not gain that much prestige.
Hermans remained the kind of contrary intellectual artist from the heyday of mod-
ernism and avant-garde. He did not see any dignity or happiness for mankind on the
horizon, and excluded the possibility that life makes any sense at all. Many could not
bear his gloomy skepticism. Hermans’ firmament lacks any opening to metaphysical
meaningfulness; it only knows the beauty of indifferent physical matter.
Reve too was a melancholic pessimist, but he looked for a kind of redemption, and
in his highly ironic play with religion he found some release. He adjusted himself to
the altered circumstances more smoothly. He turned out to be an artist who was per-
fectly able to play to a television audience. He made a few highly debated programs,
which culminated in The Great Gerard Reve Show (1974).6 This hilarious television pro-
gram, containing for example a dialogue in heaven between Reve and God, illustrates
the change mentioned above: some branches of literature developed into a kind of per-
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formance art, that is to say a kind of literature that is primarily an opportunity for suc-
cessful television broadcasting. As a result, people could be captivated by an author,
even if they had never read a word of his work nor would ever do so.
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In his many novels – for instance De Avonden (The Evenings, 1947) and Bezorgde ouders
(Parents Worry, 1988) – and in his extensive confessional correspondence – for instance
Op weg naar het einde (Set Off to the End, 1963) and Nader tot U (Closer to Thee, 1966) –
Reve played a literary game with the discourses that had been common in the pillars of
yesteryears. Raised in the communist pillar, he made a jump to the catholic pillar. It was
an imaginary changeover however, because the catholic pillar had in the meantime
broken down. Reve produced “camp,” using the abundant tradition of the Catholic
religious imagination as material. Fighting for his own interpretation of religion in the
“Donkey Case,” yet very ironically subjecting himself to the Catholic rituals, Reve
created extravagant cross-bonds in the Dutch culture. In doing so he translated the
great themes of modernism and decadence in terms of the petty bourgeois small-
mindedness that the Dutch just had overcome, but still vividly remembered.
An important factor in Reve’s success was his position in the debate on the social
position of writers, a major issue in the 1960s. As a symptom of the complete change of
style in this era, writers demanded better payment and established a trade union. They
did not even attempt to deny that, in doing so, they turned into petty bourgeois. Reve’s
position was ambiguous. Of course, he embraced the idea of the writer turning bour-
geois, but he did this very ironically. He labeled himself not as a worker or employee,
but as a grocer (“I have a shop”), and adopted the attitude of a small businessman who,
by working hard, wanted to become big. While the Dutch were just trying hard to break
away from their petty bourgeois image, Reve presented a picture of the author as a pre-
cautious grocer, a Catholic to boot. This telltale posture was not only part of Reve’s
“camp,” it also was fully exploited as a commercially successful attitude, that is to say:
Reve did very well out of it.
Back to the Courtroom

In retrospect, the legal proceedings against Hermans and Reve turn out to be rearguard
actions in the cultural system of pillarization. But they also illustrate that the religious
frame of reference was still present. In defending his case, Hermans withdrew to the
nucleus of the modernist poetics: the autonomous and fictional character of literature.
He hung on to the régime de singularité. Reve handled it differently. He chose to take full
responsibility for his text, independent of all literary aspects. Obviously, he sought
public recognition for his singular worldview. But the clowning and irony with which
he mixed it, smuggled in an elusive kind of fiction: the fiction of authenticity. This atti-
tude of Reve was perfectly compatible with the playful, sometimes even carnivalesque
atmosphere of the roaring 1960s. With an attitude that was always controversial and
consequently ambiguous, Reve may be called a true exponent of that era.
Not surprisingly, the bond of friendship between Hermans and Reve was broken
off in the 1960s.
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Further Reading
Beekman, E.M. Troubled Pleasures: Dutch Colonial Literature from the East Indies, 1600-1950. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1996.

Galen Last, Dick van, and Rolf Wolfswinkel. Anne Frank and After: Dutch Holocaust Literature in
Historical Perspective. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996.
Goedegebuure, Jaap, and Anne Marie Musschoot. A Companion to Dutch Literature. Second revised
edition. Rekkem: Stichting Ons Erfdeel, 1995.
See also the internet site of the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch
Literature, http://www.nlpvf.nl/essays
Some translations of writers mentioned:

Couperus, Louis. The Hidden Force. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1985.
Hermans, Willem Frederik. The Darkroom of Damocles. New York: Overlook Press, 2008.
Hermans, Willem Frederik. Beyond Sleep. New York: Overlook Press, 2007.
Mulisch, Harry. The Assault. Harmondsworth etc.: Penguin, 1987.
Multatuli. Max Havelaar or The Coffee Auction of a Dutch Trading Company. Harmondsworth etc.:
Penguin, 1987.
Nooteboom, Cees. Rituals. Harmondsworth etc.: Penguin, 1985.
Reve, Gerard. Parents Worry. London: Minerva, 1991.
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chapter 16
Three Feminist Waves

by rosemarie buikema and iris van der tuin
During the past century, Dutch culture and society were shaped in important ways by
the three feminist waves which thoroughly transformed the position of women in the
West. This chapter cannot offer a comprehensive overview of these changes nor does it
address the sheer facts and figures. Discussions about the effects of the feminist waves
invariably involve key indicators and focus on questions such as: what is the proportion
of women in full-time employment; what are their career opportunities for leading
positions; what is the glass ceiling in Dutch society; what childcare facilities are avail-
able; what is the male participation rate in care and domestic work; what are the pay
differences between men and women, and so on. A presentation of facts and figures can
at least partly answer such questions. However, in order to understand the differences
in gender relations expressed by those figures, it is essential to be informed about the
history of feminist thought in the Netherlands and to be aware of the gender-specific
structures of Dutch society in a transnational context.
Our purpose, therefore, is to highlight the ways in which feminism evolved in the
Netherlands as an intellectual, cultural, and political movement. What have been the
specific themes of first, second and third wave feminism in the Netherlands, and how
can those themes be understood from a contemporary feminist perspective? In other
words, what kind of continuities can we discern in feminist thought in the Netherlands
during the past century, and what are its historical and geopolitical features? In this
approach to feminist thought – which is characteristic of the third-wave feminist
method – feminism is perceived as a form of cultural legacy, while historical knowledge
is reconsidered from a contemporary perspective.
This chapter will discuss three Dutch feminist cultural artifacts – two novels and
one documentary – which exemplify the story of Dutch feminism in academia, art and
activism. Analyzing these three waves in a chronological order will show how third-
wave feminism envelops the discourses of the second and the first. The chapter will
conclude with a discussion of the way that insight can enrich our scholarly understand-
ing of first and second wave’s artifacts.
Hilda van Suylenburg:

First-Wave Feminism
Hilda van Suylenburg is a work of political fiction written by aristocratic feminist writer
Cecile Goekoop-de Jong van Beek en Donk (1866-1944), which appeared in 1897 and is
still considered to be the impassioned manifesto of first-wave feminism in the
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Netherlands. Reading this novel is the best introduction to the history of first wave
feminist thought in the Netherlands. A large number of characters cross the path of
Hilda van Suylenburg, the novel’s socially engaged heroine, and this ploy serves to
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address nearly all the crucial issues of first-wave feminism. Her encounters with men
and women from all layers of nineteenth-century society are staged against the back-
drop of the basic feminist question of how women can be liberated from their second-
rate position. That position still is, at the time of the novel’s publication, explicitly
lodged in various laws intent on depriving women from a range of civil rights that
today have become universally acknowledged, such as having authority over one’s own
body, one’s children, and one’s possessions; and the right to education, employment,
and the vote. Even so, the novel also testifies already, in 1897, to the insight that –
although legal equality is the indispensible condition for gender equality and emanci-
pation – the feminist practice of fighting for equal rights represents in fact only a first
and very rudimentary step in the right direction. It becomes clear that, apart from
access to higher education, legislation on employment for women and equal pay,
women have other barriers to breach, notably that of identifying with the image of
womanhood that is enforced on them. Attaining first-class citizenship therefore is not
just obstructed by legislation, and much work remains to be done in the domain of
internalized images of womanhood and the female body. In nineteenth-century Nether-
lands, those images are mainly class specific.
Hilda van Suylenburg moves in the middle classes, where the obstacle to be cleared
concerns the image of woman as ornament. In these circles, a young woman chiefly
spends her time by entertaining herself and others with the business of laying the table
decorously and getting dressed in fetching gowns – functioning above all as a prop, a
spectacle. Her time-consuming efforts bring her the shallow praise of her environment,
but her freedom to act is marshaled by strict codes and laws. By identifying with such a
position, as Hilda van Suylenburg argues in the novel, women are kept from greater
and more challenging efforts. Both in the domain of the arts and in that of serving
society, the identification with an existence as ornament hampers the possibility of
taking seriously women’s professional capacities and freedom to act. Women therefore
tend to take their tendency to care and being subservient as natural givens, instead of
qualities that might earn them a salary; they consider their artistic aptitude in the light
of women’s existence as ornament, rather than fully develop their talents. In order to
break free from the internalized repression that condemns women to social invisibility
and mediocrity, women need to come to a shared and self-developed analysis of their
own situation. Interestingly, this strategy of consciousness raising is usually seen as
specific for second-wave feminism, but as the novel Hilda van Suylenburg shows, it could
also be found in the first wave. Third wave documentary maker Sunny Bergman, too,
deploys that strategy of sisterhood in her documentary Over the Hill, as will be pointed
out later.
Hilda van Suylenburg sets about this task by going over the many facets of the
woman question with a range of right-minded and socially engaged women. Her most
enthusiastic ally is Corona van Oven, a female doctor. In the nineteenth-century fin the
siècle, female doctors were seen as the picture of emancipation. They typified the new
and just society that was to come because they embodied the two dimensions of the
first-wave ideal: subservience in freedom. This particular female doctor is having an
affair with an unhappily married artist who now has discovered his true love in Corona.
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Many have suggested that this liaison in the novel symbolizes the reforming powers
of art and science combined. Still, the protagonist Hilda van Suylenburg is a well-read
and a socially aware woman who meets men and women from a range of social layers.
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She also propagates the perception that there is no such thing as the woman and that
each and every woman’s life is embedded in a network of social and geopolitical struc-
tures.
In fact, the novel Hilda van Suylenburg shows that first-wave feminism contains the
germ of all ensuing feminist debates: the tension between equality and difference,
the ties – as well as internal pressures – between the law and ethics, the inseparability
of the private and the public, the personal and the political. that is to say the force of
structures and their effects on the individual. All these tensions can be recognized in
the story of Hilda van Suylenburg. Hilda van Suylenburg is an example of political fiction,
a genre that is usually seen to have little literary merit, because the driving force of the
narrative consists predominantly of the political program, rather than literary values.
Yet this novel’s form is neither standard nor dull. On the contrary, it offers an under-
standing of the inescapable pressures of the established structures on the fight for
change. Goekoop, the author who in such explicit terms addresses the stifling aspects
of these structures, is also affected by these pressures. At a manifest level, Hilda van
Suylenburg emanates the message that the hallmark of beauty is simplicity and that
all outward apparel is no more than a cloak masking vacuity. Nonetheless, extensive
descriptions of external features and characteristics are offered for each new character
Hilda van Suylenburg meets, with the interesting detail – entirely in line with the nine-
teenth-century discourse of natural history – that “good” characters are assigned noble
features and that the others have to do with descriptions such as “his dark little eyes,
thick, lank black hair and, right above his eyes, the highly protruding forehead of
fanatics, gave him a somewhat repellant aspect.” 1 As will be discussed at the end of this
chapter, the body-political dimension in Goekoop’s novel, although a canonical mani-
festo of Dutch first-wave equality feminism, is best understood from the perspective of
third-wave feminism, with its affirmative views on both second-wave body politics and
the bodily dimension of the law and social ethics.
Joke Smit: Mobilizing Female Discontent

Anyone interested in the Dutch feminist revival during the 1970s is automati-
cally led to the seminal article “Discontent of Women” (Het Onbehagen bij de
Vrouw) in the November 1967 issue of the leading literary magazine De Gids.
This article by Joke Smit (1933-1981) is generally taken to signal the start of the
second wave in the Netherlands. Joke Smit, a journalist and associate profes-
sor of translation studies at the University of Amsterdam, still called herself
Joke Kool-Smit, having not yet broken with the matrimonial convention by
which women adorned themselves with their husband’s names, even as she
was investigating the kind of changes she believed were necessary in order to
dismantle the social inequality between the sexes. Just as the American author
Betty Friedan had done previously in The Feminine Mystique, Smit related a
number of academic studies to her own personal experiences.
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“Discontent of Women” raises almost all issues of the feminist cause in

the 1970s. From legalizing abortion and free contraception to creating part-
time employment and child care centers, challenging role-patterns, and
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improving education opportunities for women and girls. Above all, its driving
force is the spitting anger that leaps off the pages.
Especially high-educated women sent Smit their adherence after reading
the essay, asking her who they could join in order to “do something,” Smit, too,
thought she could not just leave it at that. Considering that socialism was a
potential ally of feminism, she joined the Dutch social democratic labor party
PvdA. Together with party-member Hedy d’Ancona she formed Man-Woman-
Society (Man-Vrouw-Maatschappij, MVM), the first Dutch feminist action group
of the second feminist wave.
In the mind of the more radical “Dolle Mina” action group and other, often
younger feminists, MVM was a very moderate affair. Joke Smit and her allies did
not call for sabotaging men, marriage, the family, and capitalism, but instead
argued for a long march through the institutions. MVM attempted to influence
political parties, trade unions, and the bodies of government. About 15 percent
of its members were male, and most members were also affiliated to either the
PvdA or to the new liberal democratic party, D’66. They occasionally joined a
protest march, but the core business of MVM members consisted of drafting
policy papers based on the informed analyses of the employment situation,
education, child care, matrimonial laws, and income tax legislation. Apart from
exerting influence on the existent institutions, MVM also effectuated a few
feminist institutions. In 1973, their pleas led to the formation of the Emancipa-
tion Committee that advised the government on a new phenomenon: eman-
cipation policy. Some years later, Joke Smit and her allies were involved in cre-
ating a new ministerial position: the State Secretary for Emancipation.
MVM was dissolved in 1988, seven years after the death of Joke Smit.
By then, the feminist movement consisted of a number of mostly one-issue
groups and associations. MVM had been a decisive factor in the second femi-
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nist wave, but had to make way for new forms of feminism and activism. 11
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The Shame is Over:
Second-Wave Feminism
Anja Meulenbelt’s feminist confessional novel The Shame is Over: A Political Life Story (De
Schaamte Voorbij, 1976) has a trans-Atlantic connection. The title of this confessional
novel is in direct reference to an article by the American second-wave feminist Kate
Millett, author of the confessional Flying (1974), who in her article “The Shame is Over,”
which appeared in an issue of the feminist Ms magazine, discussed the criticism her
confessional novel had received. Meulenbelt’s reference to one of her American sisters
shows that, as of the second wave, Dutch feminists were transcending the national
level; they consumed American (and British) feminist texts. The Shame is Over is the
Dutch second-wave feminist manifesto. It has raised the feminist consciousness of
thousands of women, and is nowadays considered to be a feminist classic, that is, a
must-read. Meulenbelt herself became the feminist model for thousands of Dutch
women at the end of the 1970s.
The novel The Shame is Over addresses both the problem of becoming an independ-
ent woman in the Netherlands after the Second World War and the problem of finding
the words for expressing and narrating women’s particular embodied experiences. The
novel portrays a woman who strives for independence within a context that is short
of role models for independent womanhood, but also explicitly addresses the issue of
language. Language politics is traditionally connected to the deconstructive strand
of academic feminism. Nonetheless, The Shame is Over makes clear how body and lan-
guage politics are intrinsically connected. Meulenbelt’s independence struggle could
not be narrated by using the words available to her, because the cultural imaginary
hardly contained any points of reference and identification. In writing, she had to in-
vent her own terms. Several chapters in the novel are dedicated to the material and
physical process of writing it – with Meulenbelt describing how, when and where she is
writing and how hard it is for her to go through her diaries, letters, or scribbles on
seemingly irrelevant bits of paper. The distinctive experiences of women are not merely
exemplified; the construction and deconstruction of these experiences are also on the
menu. It has been argued that writing The Shame is Over taught Meulenbelt to live as
well as to write in an independent way other women could identify with. “Feminism,”
Maaike Meijer writes, “is the art of discovering-oneself, in life as well as writing. A lan-
guage for the new take on reality has not yet come to exist.” 2 She argues that the
famous opening passage of the book addresses precisely this point:
Language, my problem is language, this is not my language. I could write

in colours or in wordless sounds. The scraps I find among shopping lists
and notes are remote from me, or so close that I am embarrassed. Emotions
that appear too sentimental or too dramatic if they are spelled out on
paper. Love. Pain. Words that become shallow, or businesslike, or hard.
Cunt. Vagina. Orgasm. Not my language, but as yet I have no other. 3
Irene Costera Meijer claims that the book could only be effective in the second feminist
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wave of feminism because it offered words to its readers.4 These words allowed
Meulenbelt and her female readership to turn vague emotions and feelings into
concrete life events, which provided them with what women had been lacking for
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centuries: subjectivity. Maaike Meijer argues that in deploying the language game,
Meulenbelt wrote the exemplary life story of a woman in the 1970s: “She embodies the
possibility of change. She represents on her own a wide range of consecutive choices
modern women can make.” 5

Although both scholars touch upon the issue of language, Meijer’s analysis is
slightly problematic from a third-wave feminist point of view because the issue of rep-
resentation is addressed as a straightforward notion. Both feminist scholars argue that
Meulenbelt’s novel succeeded in bridging the “I” (Meulenbelt herself; the particular
life of a particular woman) and the “we” (Meulenbelt and her readers; the life women in
general could identify with).6 This connection, however, is not a clear-cut identifica-
tion. Meulenbelt turns the creative use of language (deconstructive feminism) into a
necessity (for difference feminism). By showing how hard it is for her to fit all those
contradictory experiences into a coherent life story, Meulenbelt not only deconstructs
the idea of a single model for a feminist way of life, but also shows to what extent femi-
nism is invested in the idea of producing a coherent account of the life of a woman.
There is a tension within The Shame is Over between difference (the personal of the ex-
emplary life of a woman is political) and deconstruction (the exemplary life of a woman
is a linguistic construct), while it simultaneously makes clear that the methodologies of
difference and deconstruction are reciprocal in feminism.
Dolle Mina: Second-Wave Feminism

and the Media
Dolle Mina had its coming out at the end of January 1970 and became the most
well-known and well-liked feminist action group of the Dutch second feminist
wave. Inspired both by American women’s liberation groups and the Dutch
lighthearted countercultural movement Provo, Dolle Mina was especially popu-
lar for its playful pranks. Its feminist actions were funny and managed to shift
the image of feminists as frustrated bluestockings, which had become stuck in
the Dutch imaginary ever since the first feminist wave.
Dolle Mina was named after Wilhelmina Drucker (1847-1925), a famous
feminist and suffragette from the first wave. One of Dolle Mina’s early actions
consisted of burning bras in front of the statue of Drucker in Amsterdam, pay-
ing homage to the burning of corsets by first-generation feminists. Dolle Mina
would burst into silly critical songs at weddings, pinch men’s bottoms in public,
close down Amsterdam public toilets for men only – claiming the right to pee –
and occupied newsrooms and educational institutions.
Because of this playfulness and the crafty manipulation of her image – for
instance by employing good-looking young students – Dolle Mina was em-
braced by the Dutch media. Dolle Mina was great public relations for feminism
and many women decided to join the group. But as revolutions go, the develop-
ment of Dolle Mina can hardly be characterized as well-structured, especially
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when satellite groups were set up in all parts of the country. Initially Dolle
Mina allowed men to be part of the group. The moment that Dolle Mina
decided to bar men from joining, however, marked a prominent difference
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with the other well-known Dutch second-wave feminist group Man-Woman-

Society (Man-Vrouw-Maatschappij, MVM).
MVM not only continued to allow men to be part of the group, but also
used a more formal, less confrontational strategy. MVM focused on talking
reasonably and trying to establish agreements, often with the same officials
who were made fools of by Dolle Mina. Another difference between the two
organizations was that Dolle Mina focused on axes of social inequality other
than gender. Its attention to class illustrates to what extent Dutch second-
wave “difference feminism” allowed the differences between women to be
part of its philosophy. Apart from its core business of smashing patriarchy
Dolle Mina also invested a great deal in the sexual liberation of women. The
women who took part in Dolle Mina were generally somewhat younger than
MVM members and less likely to have permanent jobs with the civil service or
universities. Note, however, the radical element in the latter observation: it
was not that usual, during the early 1970s, for married women (with children)
in the Netherlands to be employed at all.
Dolle Mina silently faded away in 1977 when its initiatives and member-
ship were absorbed by many other groups that sprung up, representing the
entire spectrum of feminist philosophies in the Dutch 1970s, such as the femi-
nist publishing house De Bonte Was (representing radical feminism), Paarse
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September (lesbian feminism) and Sister Outsider (black lesbian feminism).
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Over the Hill:
Third-Wave Feminism
The work of third-wave feminists such as the Dutch documentary maker Sunny Berg-
man allows us to show once more how contemporary feminism has a different take on
the foundational debates of feminism. Both in the Netherlands and abroad, Bergman
caused quite a stir with her 2007 documentary Over the Hill (Beperkt Houdbaar). Bergman
is the daughter of a second-wave feminist mother whose ideas she initially opposed by
becoming a model and soap star, spending a lot of time on her looks. In Over the Hill she
analyzes the influence of the beauty industry on individual women experiencing their
body. The globally disseminated images of photo-shopped women’s bodies make it
almost impossible for women to be content with their looks. The documentary zooms
in on the well-known facts of twenty-first century body politics: Brazilian women hav-
ing their breasts enlarged; American women having their labia reduced; Asian women
having their eyes straightened – surgeries performed mostly by male plastic surgeons,
to outrageous profits, not to mention the fortunes spent by women on anti-age creams
and botox treatments. By focusing on the central conflict between interests of capital
and free will Bergman addresses a central concern of the transnational post-second-
wave feminist debate. The critique on sexism voiced by the first and second wave is
joined by the third-wave analysis of global capitalism. Although the same beauty ideal
is being propagated all over the world, the perennial question about the relation
between political structures and the individual remains: did ideas on the notion of a
“makeable society” (a term that originates in 1970s Dutch socialism) and in particular
the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s lead to a new type of repression (the pres-
sure to meet the ideal of the makeable body), or is the subjection to ideal types of the
female body merely an individual decision?
The most spectacular scene in the documentary depicts Bergman visiting the
Californian plastic surgeon David Matlock, who first submits her body to a thorough
inspection and then tells her “you need the full works, my dear”: upper arms, belly,
labia, double chin. It is a devastating diagnosis that crushes even Bergman a little,
despite her strong opposition to such practices. Towards the end of Over the Hill, Berg-
man announces her wish to prepare a lawsuit against the cosmetic industry for dam-
ages caused to the female psyche, launching a website to support this case.7 The ensu-
ing discussions are an illustration of the continuous legacy of first and second-wave
feminism in present-day feminist discussions.
Feminist criticism argues that although radical political action against the beauty
industry undoubtedly has its uses, it is more effective to understand why Bergman feels
crushed, despite herself, by Matlock’s judgment and by the fact that road workers have
stopped whistling at her since she has turned thirty. Such self-scrutiny checks the
legacy of the second wave (stop stereotypical images of women, embrace difference)
against practical experience. It also explores the limitations of free will (you are free to
ignore the prevalent beauty ideal, to accept the wrinkles and refrain from shaving your
legs). Who has the strength to resist established norms, and to what social costs?
Feminist research shows, for example, that Chinese women say they have their eyes
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straightened not because it raises their chances of finding a marriage partner, but
because it gives them a better position on the labor market, which in turn means that
they can afford to spend more on the consecutive education tracks of their child.
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From a third-wave perspective, therefore, it is much more effective to analyze the cause
and nature of identification processes and the way one is being robbed of one’s own
body in global capitalism, than to simply enforce a unilateral ban on the cosmetics
industry. The fact of women allowing themselves to be misled by the beauty industry
can best be countered by proposing new images and offering an analysis of the interests
of patriarchy and capital in promoting an inter-female competition on the most attract-
ive body – a strategy that will be much more effective than simple prohibition.
The single most devastating achievement of patriarchy is perhaps the incapacity
of women to properly support and sustain each other against patriarchal structures of
interest and desire. In trying to analyze this paradoxical position for women, third-
wave feminists are better equipped than their predecessors to affirm the multifarious
forms of feminism and acknowledge women’s difference in a geopolitical context, in
the knowledge that suitable words and images for all those different situations and
identifications are still wanting. As Bergman’s documentary makes clear, third-wave
feminists still have quite a way to go. Uniting the three main strands of feminism,
she deploys “thinking equality” in protesting against sexist and maiming images of
women, and “thinking difference” in advocating the rejection of prevalent images and
the development of new ones. She also attempts to deconstruct the force of trans-
national phenomena such as capitalism and ethnocentrism, as well as of personal and
subconscious identification processes.
The first-wave equality politics of Cecile Goekoop possess a “body political”
dimension that was expressed by the range of female and male characters with a distri-
bution of different attributes. Anja Meulenbelt raises a large number of feminist issues
of the second wave in a complex narrative about a single, allegedly exemplary charac-
ter. Sunny Bergman, finally, represents the third wave by underlining that change can
only be accomplished if women try to achieve equality, difference, and deconstruction
simultaneously. By doing so, they can develop a new language of images for women and
a new solidarity with women’s experiences all over the world.
Positioning Dutch
Third-Wave Feminism
At the beginning of the twenty-first century the Netherlands appear to be of particular
significance for feminism in both its geographical and historical position. The Nether-
lands is unique in its “glocal” position as a kind of “borderland” which enabled the
Dutch feminist tradition to become increasingly transnational. Moreover, the develop-
ment of third-wave feminism arguably also has a special prominence in this country.8
Both in academia, art and activism, the Netherlands is located at the crossroads of
Anglo-American, dominant feminist discourses and European, minor feminist tradi-
tions. From its ability to bridge these different discourses, the Netherlands takes the
lead when it comes to developing innovative ones. The Netherlands, that is, does not
fall into the stifling trap of the so-called “Trans-Atlantic Dis-Connection,” according to
which Anglo-American and French/European feminisms are incommensurable, but
addresses the importance and eventual disadvantage of the Dis-Connection for the
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feminist cause, allowing it to develop into the direction of transnationalism.9

In addition, the Netherlands has a special relation to the historical development of
feminist thought. The products of contemporary Dutch feminism are characterized by
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a focus on cultural memory, which argues that the perspective on the history of Dutch
feminism and on the manner of telling it determine the strategies of the third feminist
wave.10 That is to say that third-wave feminism in the Netherlands does not present an
argument against the first or second feminist wave, but rather promotes a careful read-
ing and re-reading of the feminist artifacts of the past, be it novels or pamphlets or
scholarly productions. This affirmative generational approach explores a feminist
future in which sexual difference is no longer strictly hierarchical, that is, privileging
men at the expense of women.
The three Dutch feminist cultural artifacts that were discussed in this chapter,
then, illustrate the spatiotemporal position of third-wave feminism in the Nether-
lands. Third-wave feminism is affirmative about feminisms of the past, especially in its
orientation on the present and towards the future. The third does not offer an entirely
new agenda, but relates strongly to the action plans of the first and second feminist
waves. What contemporary Dutch feminists address has stayed the same, whereas the
way in which they voice their claims has changed under changing political, socio-
cultural, and academic processes.
When the women’s movement in the West went academic in the 1980s, it was
argued that feminism entails a negotiation of thinking equality, thinking difference,
and deconstruction. Equality feminism was ascribed to the first wave, difference femi-
nism to the second, and deconstructive feminism to academic feminists. Third-wave
feminism shows us that the contents of the feminist discussion cannot be classified as
clearly. First-wave feminists did indeed work for equal rights for women, but they also
addressed the ways in which women differ from men. Alternatively, the 1970s women’s
movement focused on what was distinctive about women, whereas their debates testify
to differences between women: a supposedly inherent femininity was simultaneously
deconstructed and positioned.
Third-wave feminism is distinctive in that it envelops equality, difference, and
deconstruction. In other words, the starting point of third-wave feminism is that every
feminist standpoint is always present in the content of each feminist claim. Precisely
this assumption allows for an affirmative generational politics: it is no longer necessary
to abandon a previous feminism for the construction of a new feminist wave; third-wave
feminism interrogates the analyses of its predecessors and shifts the canonical percep-
tions of feminism. This shifting also applies to the spatial dimensions of equality,
difference, and diversity. A transnational approach to feminism also demonstrates that
the three main theoretical strands are intertwined, which renders the discussion about
spatial distribution irrelevant. It is no longer interesting to try to prove to what extent,
say, European difference feminism is commensurable with an Anglo-American perspec-
tive on equality or diversity. The Netherlands has been able to bridge these geograph-
ical and historical differences.
copyright law.
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Further Reading
Buikema, Rosemarie, and Anneke Smelik, eds. Women’s Studies and Culture: A Feminist Introduction.
London: Zed books, 1995.

Buikema, Rosemarie, and Iris van der Tuin. Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture. Routledge:
London, 2009.
Hermsen, Joke J., and Alkeline van Lenning, eds. Sharing the Difference: Feminist Debates in Holland.
London: Routledge, 1991.
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chapter 17
The Double Bind

of Television
by sonja de leeuw
Dutch television formats have traveled around the world since about the late 1990s.
At the time Dutch broadcasting had changed from an exclusively public broadcasting
system to a dual broadcasting system, which included both public and commercial
channels. Whereas the export of television formats reflects the international position of
the Netherlands as a trading nation, in the domestic context television offered viewers
experiences of cultural identities, reflecting Dutch culture and society in changing
times.
This speaks to the notion of television as primarily a national institution, despite
its sensitivity to global trends and industrial and economic developments. Television
has the ability to homogenize cultural experiences and strengthen differences among
people at the same time, both within and outside national borders; examples are
national and international sporting events, the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997 and
charity concerts such as Live Aid in 1985. Television programs offer stories, images,
ideas, and histories that help us make sense of the world and of ourselves. This is par-
ticularly true for drama. Television drama plays a major role in all television systems
because it aspires to address the cultural identity of its audience. Traveling (trans-
national) television formats form an excellent illustration of the way television became
a site of negotiation of both global and national cultural practices and values.
This chapter addresses this double bind of television and discusses particular
examples of television drama and (transnational) television formats, against the back-
ground of the organization of the Dutch broadcasting system, which deeply reflects the
organization of Dutch society.
A Unique Broadcasting System

The Dutch broadcasting system is hard to explain to outsiders. At first sight it may be
perceived as a fragmented radio and television landscape, yet once understood it reveals
essential characteristics of Dutch culture and society. What makes the Dutch television
exceptional is the fact that its broadcasting system is funded on the concept of pillar-
ization, which allows for a diversity of broadcasting company profiles, each represen-
ting a section or “pillar” in Dutch society. Pluriformity (in the sense of diversity of
opinions and beliefs) has always been one of the most important and well-protected
characteristics of Dutch broadcasting. In this respect the Dutch media landscape funda-
mentally differs from that in other parts of Europe, such as in the United Kingdom,
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Scandinavia, or Germany.
The origin of public broadcasting in the Netherlands goes back to the 1920s, when
Dutch society was marked by the concept of pillarization, a way of realizing pluriformity.
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Important religious and social groups (the Protestant, Catholic, socialist and neutral/
liberal “pillars”) took the initiative of founding broadcasting companies as associations
(at the time for radio only): the KRO (Roman-Catholic), the NCRV (orthodox Protestant),
the VARA (social democrat), the VPRO (liberal Protestant), and the AVRO. The AVRO
was propagated as a general broadcasting company, but in practice resembled the
moderate conservative liberals belonging to the neutral/liberal pillar.
Having originated within the social concept of pillarization, Dutch broadcasting
aimed in the first place at reproducing cultural identities for different cultural groups.
In the Netherlands, the function of radio and television (which was introduced in 1951)
was thus primarily considered as cultural, offering people feelings of belonging framed
by the pillars within which social and cultural life was organized. At the same time,
radio and television were seen – like everywhere else – as an instrument for promoting
the notion of national citizenship, creating informed citizens, sharing a common his-
tory, as the example of drama (below) will illustrate.
All of the broadcasting companies that were founded in the 1920s still exist.
However, they are no longer exclusively tied to specific pillars in society. The concept of
pillarization has made way for a more life-style-oriented segmentation of the public
television space, according to cultural orientations among the audiences that tend to
organize themselves into different social and cultural (less religious) groups. Broad-
casting companies thus adapted to social and cultural changes that took place in the
course of years. They were further challenged to reinvent themselves when new public
companies arrived that catered to young and elderly viewers (such as BNN and MAX,
respectively).
In order to understand the legitimacy of the broadcasting system it is relevant to
know that broadcasting companies, being associations, involve membership and that
their position within the system depends on the number of members. Broadcasting
companies attract members by publishing their own weekly radio and television maga-
zines. By law they are obliged to provide a full range of programs containing cultural,
educational, informative, and entertainment programs in reasonable proportions.
Moreover, it is still a statutory requirement for broadcasting companies to represent
certain religious, cultural, spiritual, and social groups in their programs. Here the
legacy of pillarization is still visible, albeit somewhat blurred. Since 1995 companies
operating on the three public channels (NPO 1, NPO 2, NPO 3) are forced to cooperate.
As a consequence, more so than in the past, the audience is challenged to identify with
an entire channel instead of with one of the companies.
Broadcasting Guides: Mediating Identities

In the Netherlands subscribing to a radio and television weekly is a statement,
an act of cultural commitment. The radio and television weekly, or rather, the
broadcasting guide, reflects one’s adherence to one of the social, religious,
cultural, or spiritual currents in Dutch society that are represented by the
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broadcasting companies. As these companies have the legal construction of

associations, membership is crucial to their existence. One instrument to com-
mit listeners and viewers to the broadcasting company was and is the guide.
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Subscription to the guide automatically involves membership of the associa-

tion and accordingly a support of the broadcasting company. Until recently,
broadcasting companies had the exclusive rights to publish programming data.
Nowadays they might sell these data to commercial partners such as news-
papers that publish radio and television programming on a daily basis. Notwith-
standing the free availability of the programming data, more than three million
people in the Netherlands are subscribed to one of the many broadcasting
guides.
In the early days of broadcasting, right after the founding of the broad-
casting companies and the start of radio broadcasting in the 1920s, broadcast-
ing guides had names reflecting their pillarized base. Examples are Christian
Magazine for Radio (the weekly of the NCRV, the orthodox Protestant broad-
casting company), and Free Sounds (the weekly of the VPRO, the liberal Protest-
ant broadcasting company). In the guides, representatives of the broadcasting
company articulated its ideology and its aims, especially regarding its mission
concerning the new communication media of radio (and later, television), and
further provided some background information about their own programming.
There was also a special page for children. Most importantly, the guide medi-
ated the notion of a common ground, confirming the subscribers of the guide
as an in-group, sharing a common belief in the ideals of the pillar. The guide
thus mediated the feeling of belonging to a special “club,” which was sup-
ported by announcements of club activities organized by broadcasting com-
panies, such as biking tours, special yearly events, excursions, and 1st of May
celebrations (for the VARA, the social-democratic broadcasting company).
The notion of the common ground is still one of the most clearly articu-
lated discourses of the broadcasting guides. Nowadays they are named after
the respective companies, and they have developed into lifestyle magazines
according to the more lifestyle-oriented segmentation of the broadcasting
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landscape that the existing broadcasting companies represent. One may find
information on new feature films to be released and on cultural events,
columns by Dutch writers, interviews, and a lot of background information on
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the programs. There is still a special section for children, and there is room for
readers to comment (letters sent and published). The broadcasting guide
addresses the legitimacy of the broadcasting company’s existence in changing
times; at the same time it caters to the needs of modern guide readers to
become more interactively involved in the club (for instance, through the use
of new media). The guide thus remains a powerful instrument in the construc-
tion of club identities.
In the 1980s commercial channels broke the monopoly of the public system, similar to
almost everywhere else in Europe. The Netherlands faced organizations that had no
ideological base and were primarily aimed at maximizing profit. With the arrival of
RTL4 in 1989, which offered general and relatively complete programming, a so-called
dual broadcasting system emerged that involved external competition. RTL4 is part of
the Holland Media Group, which incorporates other commercial channels as well, to
guarantee a spread of risks and a diversification of audiences. In 1996, new commercial
channels (SBS Broadcasting) were added to the Dutch television landscape. It may be
clear that the Dutch television landscape has in a few years only changed into a multi-
tude of competing channels in Dutch. It may be even clearer how this multiplicity has
divided the available amount of viewing time into ever smaller bits and pieces, which
each of the channels is trying to control.
In just a few years’ time, RTL4 managed to build up the biggest market share, but
the success of RTL4 as a commercial channel in terms of ratings and market shares is
the exception rather than the rule. Thanks to the fact that most of the commercial
channels are part of big, international conglomerates even the less successful among
them can survive. Trading in formats is one way forward – as we will discuss below.
Television Drama as a Platform for Identities

When discussing pluriformity, television drama turns out to be a very important cate-
gory. It has the potential of transmitting values and standards in a rather subtle way
and it provides viewers with fictional stories about their reality, their history and the
history of everyone who came to live next door. Audiences strongly prefer Dutch-
language drama to drama in a foreign language and request programs that enable them
to connect to their own cultural experiences and social realities. It is interesting to see
to what extent historical drama has aimed to evoke shared notions of national identity,
focusing on traditions and continuity, or to produce counter-narratives to existing
notions of “home.” Considering domestically produced fiction in the Netherlands, we
may ask ourselves how the concept of pluriformity is reflected in the historical fiction
production. Or to put it differently, whether the production of historical fiction has
tried to strengthen the identities of the respective pillarized broadcasting companies.
As a rule, historical television drama equals public service broadcasting, as it is the
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most expensive category and revenues from advertising (also on public channels in the
Netherlands) do not cover the high costs of historical drama. Public broadcasting com-
panies invest for cultural reasons.
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In the 1970s broadcasting companies started developing classical series, set in the past
– in the city and countryside alike – projecting present-day values and standards onto
an historical mirror. These epic series were very popular among audiences, not only
from a nostalgic point of view, but also because they emphasized aspects of Dutch his-
tory and culture as collective experience, focusing on individual struggles against the
rules of a time. At the same time these prestigious series appealed to supposed experi-
ences, values and standards of the specific target group of the pillarized company
involved.
A good illustration of this identity-formation function of television is the histor-
ical drama series produced by the Catholic broadcasting company KRO, entitled Diary of
a Sheepdog (which ran for two seasons in 1978 and 1979-1980). It focuses on religious
authority and is set in a Catholic community, which is held together by the main char-
acter, a pastor or “shepherd.” The shepherd represents warmth and humanity and looks
after the well-being of his parishioners. In his function as mediator between God and
humans he also intervenes in private conflicts disturbing the unity of the Catholic com-
munity. The series is set in the Catholic south of the Netherlands in the 1910s and
1920s and dramatizes the challenges to Catholic identity in changing times. The histor-
ical transition is triggered by new industrial developments, in the mining industry in
particular, which puts pressure on existing standard and values, not least due to the
fact that the mining industry attracts people from outside the community. The series
depicts the community as a surviving entity regardless of inevitable social changes. The
point of departure are the standards and values of the 1970s that are represented by
the Catholic broadcasting company which seemingly advocated a moderate progres-
sive view on Catholicism. The combination of Catholic actuality, the display of emo-
tions, and the nostalgic representation of the first decades of the twentieth century,
accounted for the enormous success among the audiences; the first season even headed
the list of the most popular programs in terms of numbers of viewers and received high
ratings, too. This case illustrates how much historical fiction aimed at negotiating cul-
tural identities of Catholic viewers while at the same time appealing to the general
audience in its presentation of universal (dramatic) conflicts.
We will now change perspective and discuss historical fiction that addresses themes
that by definition have a strong national connotation, such as the monarchy and the
Second World War. In 2001 the most popular fiction program was the four-part series
Wilhelmina, which depicted one of the former Dutch queens. It was produced by the
Protestant broadcasting company NCRV, whose loyalty to the Orange family dates back
to the early days of Dutch Protestantism. The series narrates Queen Wilhelmina’s life
until her abdication in 1948 and focuses especially on her role during the Second World
War, reflecting the ongoing public debate on the question of whether her leaving the
country was a wise decision. The success of the series can be explained by the way it
unites two main points of reference in Dutch national history: the relationship between
the public and the monarchy, and the Second World War. In the series, Wilhelmina
intended to stay in the country to help her people, but due to circumstances could not.
The series further showed her difficult struggle against the male politicians around her
and shows to what lengths she had to push herself to become the mother symbol of her
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country.
The popularity of the series can also be attributed to the way it celebrates the
nation’s unity in postmodern times. It stresses the importance of historical drama in
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telling and retelling the stories of the recent past, from different points of view, includ-
ing its controversies and changes. Rather than presenting nostalgic views the series
strengthened the national discourse, but without abandoning its critical edge. In a
similar vein in another popular television series the evangelical broadcasting company
EO presented former Queen Juliana in the years before, during, and shortly after the
Second World War (2006 and 2009), reproducing the existing discourse about her posi-
tion in Dutch society. Prince Bernhard, Juliana’s frivolous husband, has been critically
(yet entertainingly) represented in a four-part series (2010) by the progressive broad-
casting company VPRO. That broadcasting company also dramatized the life of former
Queen Beatrix in 2012, portraying her as a lonesome fighter who established a rigid
regime for herself and for her eldest son, Willem-Alexander. These productions do not
offer nostalgic representations, but rather reflect an active engagement with the past
and how the past is perceived and experienced in the present. But how does this work
out with a much more sensitive theme, such as the Second World War? Considering the
experiences of the Dutch people during the years of occupation, and the large percent-
age of Dutch Jews killed in German concentration camps, the question is to what extent
historical war drama can stretch the limits of existing narratives.
Until the end of the 1980s, historical drama dealing with the Second World War
seems to reflect a moral discussion in terms of right and wrong. Nearly all of such pro-
grams were broadcasted in the first week of May, when the Second World War is com-
memorated. Evidently, dramatized commemoration was considered a means of consoli-
dating the concept of nationality, of the nation as one. Since the mid-1990s, however,
some changes occurred, as several so far unnoticed aspects of wartime (children’s expe-
riences, the myth of resistance) appeared on the screen. Most strikingly, television
drama productions of the 1990s represented the Second World War indirectly. This indi-
cates a new tendency, to chronicle history as décor and a process of change alike. It is
even more striking that the stories in these series all are situated after the war (In
Retrospect by the progressive VPRO in 1991; The Summer of 1945 by the Protestant NCRV
in 1991; The Partisans in 1995 and Time to Live in 1996, both by the Catholic KRO). All of
these series dramatize the impact of the war on the personal lives of the main char-
acters, and in doing so also address the notion of history as constructed memory. In
In Retrospect – jumping back and forth between past (immediately after the war) and
present (the 1990s) – the characters need to relate their individual memories of the past
to their shared history. The Summer of 1945 presents the struggle for identity of Dutch
children of Canadian liberators (and Dutch mothers), looking for the past and their
paternal origin. The Partisans represents the role of memory in keeping up with one’s
own history (focusing on an act of resistance that turned out to be a true failure). Time to
Live resembles the German series Heimat, in that it is set after the war and explores the
question of how events (the experience of wartime, in particular) have affected us, even
as time has passed us by. These series present a noninstitutionalized view of the Second
World War, opening up historical memory to new narratives.
Exporting Television Culture

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Did the national orientation of Dutch television dramatically change with the arrival of
commercial broadcasting? Not necessarily. When in 1990 producer Joop van den Ende
launched the first European daily soap, Good Times, Bad Times (RTL 4), based on the
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Australian soap The Restless Years, the episodes were adapted to the Dutch situation by a
team of Dutch writers. Subsequently, Dutch original scripts were developed. It did not
take long for the series to become highly successful, with an average market share of 35
percent. More generic drama followed on commercial broadcasting, cheaply produced,

appealing to younger audiences.
Van den Ende started in the early seventies, producing popular drama series and
serials for public broadcasters. The introduction of commercial television in 1989 led to
a production deal with RTL 4, covering all sorts of programs. In 1994, Van den Ende
joined forces with media producer John de Mol in the new company Endemol, which
struck an overall output deal with the Holland Media Group (to which RTL4 belongs).
Today, Endemol is the largest television production company in the world.
Endemol sees itself as a company that primarily creates premium entertainment
ideas to be offered to the world’s leading broadcasters. These ideas are used to produce
shows, often aiming to create hits with a strong brand value. Subsequently, the value of
their brands is exploited across other media and communication channels, including,
for example, mobile telephones and broadband Internet. The reality show Big Brother
(1999) was the first show to feature a television program as a multimedia concept. After
it successfully aired in the Netherlands, the concept traveled to many other countries in
the world. Indeed from the mid-1990s, Endemol aimed to break national Dutch tele-
vision culture open. Although most formats Endemol produces do not travel abroad,
Endemol acknowledges the potential of television as a transnational medium par excel-
lence. Television is primarily considered as a cultural industry that offers both enter-
tainment and stories that speak to global audiences. The extensive list of programs
Endemol exports illustrates the extent to which television is able to travel – and the
adjustments to local cultures that are needed to be successful. The list includes a diver-
sity of television genres such as fiction (drama, soap, and sitcom), reality television (such
as Big Brother), variety shows, and, notably, game shows. The game show is the most
exported format, followed by the so-called “people show” centering around guests
(either planned or not planned). To illustrate the relationship between national and
global cultural practices, we will discuss an example of each of these formats.
Big Brother was sold to over 58 countries. It set a new standard for reality television,
pushing the borders and conventions of genres into a new format. The idea was to lock
up ordinary people in a house and to constantly watch them with cameras in order to
make a television show. These two starting points, isolation and the absence of privacy,
became the most important characteristics of the program. According to the producers
though, the truly innovative aspect of Big Brother was its interactivity, the blurring of
boundaries between viewers and makers – in other words, its form rather than its con-
tent. Being the first daily broadcasted semi-live multimedia concept, Big Brother devel-
oped into a hybrid form, in which reality television and soap met and competitive
elements derived from the game show were implied. The images were only roughly
edited, more like the national news, suggesting to the viewers that they were watching
real people. Apparently, the producers wanted the program to be primarily perceived
within the discourse of reality television. The cultural specificity of the exported for-
mat was reflected in the “casting” of people, who needed to represent the local social
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and cultural relations. The format has led to controversies everywhere, in particular
regarding the implications of watching people round-the-clock and the impact of them
being exposed to a large audience.
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The most profitable program for Endemol was the game show Deal or No Deal (2001,
still continuing worldwide) which has been sold to over 130 countries. Deal or No Deal
involves a contestant, a host, a banker, a group of female models (in the American,
Australian, Malaysian, and New Zealand version), or other contestants (in the original
version), and a number of briefcases (or boxes), each containing a different (and initially
unknown) amount of money. At the outset, the contestant is offered a box with un-
known value and the assignment to sell it for the highest possible value. During the
rest of the game, the contestant selects the rest of the cases (one at a time) for rejection,
the value of each case being revealed after it is selected. Each time after a specified
number of cases have been opened, the banker offers the contestant a certain amount of
money. If the contestant accepts one of these offers, the game ends and the player wins
the offered amount; if the contestant refuses all offers made, he or she eventually ends
up with the money from the first case. The game deals with the nerve-racking character
of making choices: either to accept the offer (Deal) or to continue (No Deal). On its web-
site, Endemol advertises it as the most flexible game show ever invented: “Part game
show, part psychological thriller, Deal or No Deal is the ultimate stomach-knotting test
of nerves.” As game shows are less culture-specific, adjustments only address the sym-
bolic level (dress codes, use of language). Yet with formats concentrating on cultural
values affecting people personally, adaptations to the local culture are common. A case
in point is the dating show All You Need Is Love, another Endemol production.
All You Need Is Love (1992) is a variety show (or “people show”) that has spread to
more than fifteen other countries (including Argentina, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Mexico,
Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the
United States). The show gives participants an opportunity to send messages of love to
spouses, lovers, long-lost friends, relatives, or exes. Messages are recorded in the “Love
Ximovana,” a fully mobile studio traveling all over the country, delivering the messages
of love to shocked, surprised, delighted or otherwise affected recipients. The Dutch
presenter, Robert ten Brink, alias Dr. Love, sits with the candidates when they receive
the message, comments on it and discusses the response with the candidate. Toward
the end there is a “look back” segment that is recorded in the studio or on location,
where the candidates meet and tell what happened afterwards.
All You Need Is Love addresses human emotions and thus touches upon values related
to dating, love, and parental control, public behavior, introversion and extroversion,
control over emotions, and the relationship between the rational and the irrational.
These are primarily values rooted in local cultures and consequently the show is ad-
justed to the local culture of the broadcasting nation. We can tell by watching the one
and only All You Need Is Love International (SBS, 1998) presenting clips from adaptations
of the show in other countries. In the Italian show, for example, the love is articulated
in phrases shaped with burning candles all around the Colosseum, which was rented
for the occasion to impress the beloved. The Spanish and the Italian show take at least
twice as long as the Dutch one; where love is concerned, so the message reads, take your
time! In the Finnish show both of the beloveds remain sitting on the couch, closely
together, yet at a distance, not used to the experience of articulating their emotions in
public.
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All You Need Is Love is typical of the television format of the 1990s as it mixes genres
such as play and therapy, entertainment and documentary into a new hybrid genre in
which ordinary people play a central role. It also illustrates a television trend that was
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initiated in the 1990s as well, usually known as “emotion television.” Mythical powers
are assigned to television, as a healer of relations, as an instrument to restore communi-
cation, and as a therapist specializing in sexual and pedagogical issues. To that end
problems of “ordinary” people are put in the center and emotions are highlighted.
Emotion television seems a bridge to the development of new forms of entertainment,
such as dating shows, and “reality television.”
All You Need Is Love also illustrates how at a deeper level cultural values need adjust-
ments to the local culture, while at the same time the identity of the format is being
kept. Whereas game shows are less culture specific, people shows definitively are.
By moving across geographical spaces, formats help us to understand to what extent
television culture has a specific cultural identity of its own.
Utopia: Selling a Window on the Future

With the launch of Big Brother Endemol showed its innovative strategy in pro-
ducing new television formats. The concept of Big Brother was developed by
John de Mol and executive producer Paul Römer. Since then, John de Mol has
continuously been searching for other innovative television formats that push
the boundaries of existing concepts or turn these upside down. One such new
concept is The Voice of Holland (RTL4, since 2010 in the Netherlands and sold to
many countries around the world), developed by John de Mol and musician
Roel van Velzen. The Voice is a music talent scout program, where professional
musicians coach music talents who have to prove their progress and potential
each week. The innovative concept introduced the sequel of production audi-
tions (not held in public), blind auditions (held in public, where jury members
listen to the contestant’s voice, without being distracted or influenced by the
candidate’s appearance), the “battles,” and the live shows. The concept fits
well within today’s celebrity culture, in which there is nothing worse than
being “ordinary,” and it appeals to the dream of many to become famous. In
The Voice, however, one needs to really have talent to succeed.
Utopia is a concept for a reality format that builds on Big Brother, again
developed by John de Mol. It started in January 2014 (on commercial channel
SBS) with a daily broadcast lasting an entire year. In Utopia fifteen participants
start living together on bare land, in an empty shed, without laws, rules, or
power relations. The shed and the land is all they have, except for a few ani-
mals, a connection to water and electricity, one phone, and a little cash. The
assignment is to build a community and to survive. Utopia is a show, however,
so every four weeks a candidate is voted off the show, to be replaced by someone
new. John de Mol has stated that over 4,500 applications have been received,
among them idealists, environmentalists, and adventurers, all people daring
to take up the challenge. He has also said that the group to be featured on the
show needs to be made up of people possessing a diversity of technical and so-
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cial skills, such as entrepreneurs, builders, and idealists – indeed, the kinds of
people who have the skills that are needed to build a mini society. As expected,
the Utopia residents in the current show feature just such a diversity of skills.
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The show deliberately calls to mind Utopia by Thomas More, referring to a

place where everyone is happy, where there is equality, abundance, and satis-
faction. Past attempts to realize a utopia, especially in times of crisis, have
failed. The challenge is now taken up by television, in response to the present
economic crisis. The question is how television will perform this new role of
supporting those who long for a new and better life; will the eye of the camera
trigger the candidates to offer the viewers a utopian perspective? So far the
show focuses on the developing social and emotional relationships as well as
on the actual construction of a living (building a kitchen and a green house,
milking cows, facing the cold). Television will continue to add new perspectives
to its own history and enlarge its cultural and social function in offering view-
ers not only a window onto an outside world, not even onto the living room,
but rather onto the future.
Yet, in spite of traveling formats and growing media powers, a persistent preference for
national programming can be observed, especially in Europe, both among audiences
and broadcasters. The historical development of television culture in the Netherlands
and across Europe has been a dynamic process. It presents television as a national cul-
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tural practice in constant negotiation with global tendencies. But first and foremost
television is a storyteller, providing us with various forms of representation of past and
present, and with meanings and pleasures.
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Further Reading
Bardoel, J. “Dutch Television: Between Communities and Commodity.” Television and Public Policy.
Edited by D. Ward, 212-235. New York: Routledge, 2008.

Hill, A. and G. Palmer, eds. Television and New Media 3, no. 3 (August 2002). (A special issue on
Big Brother)
Leeuw, S. de, “Television Fiction: A Domain of Memory; Retelling the Past on Dutch Television.”
Televising History: Mediating the Past in Postwar Europe, edited by E. Bell and A. Gray, 139-151.
Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010.
Zoonen, L. van. “Desire and Resistance: Big Brother and the Recognition of Everyday Life.” Media,
Culture & Society 23, no. 5 (2001): 669-677.
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chapter 18
Global Dutch
by marjo van koppen
With approximately 23 million speakers today, Dutch ranks among the forty most fre-
quently spoken languages in the word; within the European Union it ranks number
eight by numbers of native speakers. It is the official language of the Netherlands, and
one of the official languages of Belgium. Outside of Europe, Dutch is an official lan-
guage in Suriname and on six Caribbean islands, which still form part of the Kingdom
of the Netherlands. As such, Dutch is a global language that has found its way to remote
parts of the globe.
This chapter discusses how the Dutch language developed throughout history, and
was shaped by interaction with other languages and cultures. It will specifically address
the relation with German and English, the languages in between which Dutch is geo-
graphically located. But let us start by introducing the language itself.1
Some General Properties of Dutch

Firstly, two of the most important phonological properties of Dutch are worth dis-
cussing. Dutch, in contrast to English, devoices word final consonants: the word final
voiced d-sound in hond (dog), audible in honden (dogs), is pronounced as its voiceless
counterpart t, and the word is uttered as hont. When people speak a foreign language,
their native language is usually detectable in the pronunciation of the foreign lan-
guage: most Dutch speakers will transfer this phonological rule of devoicing final con-
sonants to their English pronunciation and hence may not utter the word hound as
hound, but as hount.
Some sounds in Dutch are particularly hard for nonnative speakers. A native
speaker of German, for instance, would have great difficulty in correctly pronouncing
the Dutch consonant cluster sch, as it involves a rasping g-sound – more or less the
sound you make when clearing your throat – that German lacks. During the German
occupation in the Second World War, the Dutch allegedly made use of a so-called shibbo-
leth – a sound or a group of sounds to distinguish native speakers of a language from
nonnative speakers – to identify German spies: they asked people to pronounce the
name of the famous seaside resort Scheveningen.
The diphthongs are also quite a challenge for some nonnative speakers, so, for
instance, the au-sound (also written as ou) in blauw (blue), vrouw (woman), lauw (luke-
warm), etc. This sound resembles the English ou-sound in house or mouse.
Morphologically the most striking features are presumably the gender system,
compound formation, and diminutive formation. Dutch has two genders, neuter and
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common gender. This is most clearly reflected in the determiner system. Neuter gender,
singular nouns select the determiners het (the) and dat (that), common gender singular
nouns and plural nouns select de (the) en die (that). This leads to the following paradigm:
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(1) a. de/die man (the/that man)
b. de/die vrouw (the/that woman)
c. het/dat kind (the/that child)
d. de/die kinderen (the/those children)
There are no systematics in which nouns are common gender and which are neuter
gender. This has to be learned for each word individually and is hence quite a burden
for second language learners of Dutch.
The second property Dutch morphology is famous for is the highly productive sys-
tem of compound formation. Dutch has the ability to form endlessly long compounds
of the type:
(2) a. koffie-broodje (coffee roll)

b. koffie-broodjes-verkoper (coffee roll salesperson)
c. koffie-broodjes-verkopers-bijeenkomst (coffee roll salespeople gathering)
Finally, Dutch can very easily make diminutives from nouns by adding -tje after the
stem of the noun. The tje-ending is sometimes modified somewhat under influence of
the final sounds of the word it is attached to:
(3) a. ei (egg) - ei-tje (little egg)

b aap (monkey) - aap-je (little monkey)
b. boom (tree) - boom-pje (little tree)
c. man (man) - mann-etje (little man)
Note that all nouns (independent of gender) become neuter gender if they are used in
the diminutive, so although it is de boom (the tree) it is het boompje (the little tree).
Diminutives in Dutch are not only used to literally identify small things. It is some-
times used to change a mass noun (an uncountable noun describing an item that
cannot be divided into separate units), like water or chocolate, into a countable unit:
chocolaatje (a chocolate), watertje (a glass/bottle of water). It can also give something an
affective meaning: a wife can, for instance, call her tall husband mannetje (little man).
Or it can be used to reduce the importance of something: when you made quite a big
mistake, you could say: Ik heb een foutje gemaakt (I have made a tiny mistake).
Syntactically, Dutch is also very interesting. Dutch is a partial verb second language.
This means that in normal declarative main sentences the verb is always in the second
position. Only one phrase can precede the finite verb. In embedded sentences (clauses
that are dependent on another sentence), the finite verb is always in sentence final posi-
tion. Consider the following sentences:
(4) a. De jongen eet een appel. (The boy eats an apple.)

b. Een appel eet de jongen. (An apple the boy eats.)
c. Ik denk dat de jongen een appel eet. (I think that the boy eats an apple.)
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The verb eet (eats) in example (4a) is in the second position, following the subject phrase
de jongen (the boy) that occupies the first position of the sentences. In (4b) it is in second
position, following the direct object phrase een appel (an apple). It is in final position in
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the embedded clause dat de jongen een appel eet (that the boy an apple eats) in (4c). Note
that in this respect Dutch is quite different from English, as is clear from the transla-
tions of the sentences in (4). The verb in English is not in final position in embedded
sentences (see the translation of (4c)). In main clauses it can be second position (as in
(4a)), but it can also be in the third position (see the translation of (4b)).
Another distinguishing property of Dutch is its ability to form verbal clusters.
Consider the following sentence:
(5) Ik denk dat de jongen een appel heeft moeten kunnen eten.
(I think that the boy must have been able to eat an apple.)
In this sentence there is a cluster of four verbs at the end: heeft (has), moeten (must),
kunnen (can) and eten (eat). The direct object een appel (an apple) belongs to eten, but is not
adjacent to it.
The characteristics we have just discussed hold for the variety of Standard Dutch
spoken in the Netherlands. The variety of Standard Dutch spoken in Belgium, usually
called Flemish, is quite different in some respects.
Dutch in Belgium
Belgium has three official languages: Dutch, French, and German. Dutch is the official
language of the Flemish community, which amounts to around six million speakers,
approximately 60 percent of the Belgian population. The country is divided in four dis-
tinct linguistic regions: Dutch is spoken in Flanders in the north, French in Wallonia in
linguistic division in belgium
Breda THE NETHERLANDS
Antwerp
Bruges
Ghent
BELGIUM
Maas-
Brussels tricht
Liège
FRENCH Namur
GERMANY
dutch-speaking / flanders
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french-speaking / wallonia LUXEMBOURG
german-speaking / wallonia
dutch- and french-speaking / brussels
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the south, and German is spoken in the small districts Eupen/St. Vith in the east.
Brussels, the capital, is officially recognized as a bilingual region, where both Dutch
and French are spoken.
Whereas in the Netherlands Dutch was standardized during the sixteenth and
seventeenth century and was used in official meetings and in the church (as will be dis-
cussed below), in Belgium Dutch remained a vernacular language for a long time. The
language of the higher classes was French and the language of the church was Latin.
Consequently, the Belgian, or Flemish variant of Dutch differs in various respects from
the Dutch variant. It has to be noted in passing that the Dutch spoken in the southern
provinces of the Netherlands (North Brabant and Limburg) has a lot in common with
the Belgian variant, maybe more than with the northern variant.
One characteristic phonological difference between the two variants is that the
rasping g-sound, typical of the northern variant (as mentioned before), is lacking in
Flemish variant. The Flemish sentence intonation is also quite different from northern
Dutch. There are lexical differences as well, for example Flemish appelsien versus north-
ern Dutch sinaasappel (orange), Flemish ajuin versus northern Dutch ui (onion), Flemish
lopen versus northern Dutch rennen (run), and many more. Another clear difference is in
addressing people: in northern Dutch, one addresses one another informally by using
the pronoun jij/je (you); the Flemish counterpart of this is gij/ge (you), which speakers of
northern Dutch associate with archaic formal language (thou). Morphological differ-
ences exist as well: where Dutch only has two genders (common and neuter), Flemish
has three (masculine, feminine and neuter). And there are syntactical differences:
Flemish, for instance, allows the verbal clusters (as discussed above) to be interrupted.
(6) a. Ik zeg dat ze zullen betaald worden.

b. Ik zeg dat ze betaald zullen worden. (I say that they will be paid.)
The verbal cluster zullen worden (will be) can be interrupted by betaald (paid) in the
Flemish example in (6a), but not in Dutch (6b).
Although the northern and the southern variant of Dutch differ somewhat now-
adays, they share a history.
Old and Middle Dutch

The history of Dutch starts around 500 CE, when the Germanic languages started to
diverge, for instance, into Old Dutch and Old High German. The consonant cluster -ft
became -cht in Old Dutch, for example. This is still detectable in the difference between
Modern Dutch stichten (establish) and Modern German stiften (establish). Another
example is the consonant cluster old that in Old Dutch became oud. This change did not
occur in German and English, and hence the contemporary German and English gold
and old versus the Dutch goud and oud.
The current Dutch speaking area consisted of three major linguistic areas during
the first part of the Middle Ages: Frisian in the North and in the coastal areas, Lower
Saxonian in the East and Lower Franconian in the largest area, i.e. the West and the
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South. Interestingly, the influence of these languages can still be detected in the mod-
ern day dialects.
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The oldest sentence of Dutch dates from around 800 CE and is found in the so-called
Lex Salica. One version of this law book of the Merovingian king Clovis, written in Latin,
contains several Old Dutch words, and one intriguing sentence: Maltho thi afrio lito
which means: I tell you: I set you free, half-free (the text that had to be uttered to free a
serf ).
The most famous, but not the oldest, Old Dutch sentence is written around 1100
by a Flemish monk who was trying out his pen in a monastery in Rochemont: hebban
olla vogala nestas haggunan, / hinase hic anda thu / Wat unbindan we nu (All birds have started
making nests, except me and you. What are we waiting for?). There are several other
fragments of Old Dutch, but nothing compared to the numerous texts – fiction, poems,
religious literature, biographies, scholarly texts, and official documents – in Middle
Dutch, the variant of Dutch spoken from 1150-1500.
Old Dutch and Middle Dutch differ from each other in several respects. While the
Old Dutch fragments are very hard to read for an untrained speaker of Modern Dutch,
Middle Dutch is somewhat more accessible. The most discussed difference between
these two periods is presumably in the use of vowels: whereas Old Dutch could still
have strong vowels in syllables without stress, Middle Dutch no longer has that ability.
So, the word vogala (bird) which we have seen above has the strong vowels in the syl-
lables ga and la, whereas the Middle Dutch variant of this word has schwas in this posi-
tion: vogele.
During the largest part of the Middle Ages (500-1500), so both in the Old Dutch
(800-1100) and the Middle Dutch era (1100-1500), the Netherlands did not form one
political unit. The areal division during this era was reflected in the language: there
was not one variant of Dutch spoken in all regions. Old Dutch and Middle Dutch are
hence a compilation of dialects rather than one language with one linguistic system.
These dialects do share a lot of similarities, however, so some general statements can be
made about the dialects spoken in this period and compared to Modern Dutch. Most
obvious is that the older variants of Dutch have an elaborate case system, comparable to
that of Latin. The nominal categories (nouns, adjectives, and pronouns) decline and
have different forms for nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative case. Modern
Dutch has lost most of this case system. This is illustrated in the Table below.
old dutch middle dutch modern dutch
nominative Got God God

(God) (God) (God)
genitive Godis Godes van God

(of God) (of God) (of God)
dative Gode Gode aan God

(to God) (to God) (to God)
accusative Got God/Gode God

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(God) (God) (God)
table 1 – case system in dutch through the ages
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This table clearly shows that although Old Dutch and Middle Dutch decline the word
God, depending on the case the word gets in a certain sentence or phrase, whereas
Modern Dutch does not have special forms for this. To express genitive or dative case,
Modern Dutch uses the preposition van (of ) and aan (to) respectively. Modern Dutch did
retain some incidental case forms in idiomatic expressions, like ‘s morgens (in the morn-
ing) and ‘s avonds (in the evening), which reflect an old genitive, te allen tijde (at all times),
op den duur (in time), ter plekke (on site), and more systematically in the pronominal sys-
tem, as is illustrated in the Table below.
nominative ik jij hij wij jullie zij

(I) (you) (he) (we) (you) (they)
genitive mijn jouw zijn ons jullie hun

(my) (your) (his) (our) (your) (their)
dative mij jou hem ons jullie hun

(me) (you) (him) (us) (you) (them)
accusative mij jou hem ons jullie hen

(me) (you) (him) (us) (you) (them)
table 2 – pronominal system of modern dutch
The loss of the case system has led to several other changes in the language as well:
Modern Dutch uses much more prepositional phrases and the word order has become
more fixed.
Another intriguing change that took place in the history of the Dutch language
concerns negation. From the work of the famous Danish scholar Otto Jespersen it is
well known that the expression of negation can go through roughly three different
stages: (i) negation is a weak element attached to the finite verb, (ii) negation consists of
the weak preverbal negator of the first stage and a negative reinforcer appearing later
in the sentence and (iii) the weak preverbal negator is lost and the reinforcer is the only
element used to negate a proposition. Dutch is particularly intriguing in this respect
because it has undergone a complete “Jespersen Cycle”: the first stage is found in Old
Dutch, the second in Middle Dutch, and the third in Modern Dutch. Old Dutch has a
preverbal weak negator ne, see (7).
(7) Inde in uuege sundigero ne stûnt (and did not stand in the way of sinners)
Negation in Middle Dutch is expressed by this same weak element ne and a reinforcer
niet (not), see (8).
(8) Si ne ware niet genedert heden. (She was not humiliated today.)
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Modern Dutch just retained the reinforcer element niet:
(9) Ze werd niet vernederd vandaag. (She was not humiliated today.)
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Standardizing Dutch
It was only in the last part of the Middle Ages, when the Low Countries were brought
together under the rule of the Dukes of Burgundy and became known as the “Burgun-
dian Netherlands,” that a uniform language started to develop.
The Netherlands first emerged as an independent nation in the sixteenth century.
Following the Dutch Revolt of 1568 and the subsequent eighty years’ war against the
Spanish Habsburg monarchy, the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands was estab-
lished in the north, while the southern Low Countries (today’s Belgium) were to remain
under Spanish rule. Three factors would prove to be of crucial importance in the devel-
opment of a standard Dutch language around that time. In the young Republic, the
Dutch vernacular became increasingly important, as it could unite people and give the
Republic its own identity. Scholars started to describe the language by writing gram-
mars and dictionaries. The use of the language in other domains than everyday conver-
sation was promoted as well: Dutch should be used in court, in official meetings, in
newspapers, literature, on stage, etc. A second factor of importance in the standard-
ization of the Dutch language was the reformation. Contrary to Catholic practice,
reformed ideas proclaimed that people should be able to understand the services in
church and to read the Bible themselves. To that end, the Bible had to be translated into
the Dutch vernacular. This Dutch translation of the Bible, the so-called Statenbijbel
(States’ Bible), proved highly instrumental in the development of the standard language.
A third important influence in this period was the Renaissance. The renewed interest in
the classic literature called for translations of many classical texts into the vernacular,
hence aiding to formation of a standard language.
Dutch Overseas
The Republic developed into one of the most important trading nations of the world in
the seventeenth century and the Dutch sailed both to Southeast Asia and to South
America and the Caribbean. Amsterdam became an international commercial center,
with the guilder as worldwide standard currency. This of course had a major effect on
the dissemination of Dutch in the world. During the heydays of the Dutch Golden Age,
Dutch was spoken in many places around the world. Only few of these places retained
Dutch as a native or official language. Today, Dutch is only spoken on the Caribbean is-
lands Aruba, Curaçao, and St. Eustacius (autonomous countries within the Kingdom of
the Netherlands), and on Bonaire, Saba, and St. Maarten (special Dutch municipalities).
Yet, Dutch lost its position as the official language in Indonesia upon its independence
in 1949, as well as in Papua New Guinea in 1963; Suriname was the only former colony
to keep Dutch as the official language after its independence in 1975. However, in con-
temporary Suriname, Sranantongo is widely spoken as well. Sranantongo is a so-called
creole language, a mixture of Dutch and several African languages, which developed
out of the communication between speakers of different mother tongues in the former
Dutch colonies. Elsewhere, pidgins and creoles based on Dutch developed as well, such
as “Negerhollands,” which was spoken on the Virgin Islands, and “Berbice Dutch,” spo-
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ken on the plantations in Guyana. These languages are unfortunately extinct today.
The interaction with different languages influenced the Dutch lexicon and vice versa.
Several languages have been borrowing words from the Dutch language, especially in
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the sailing vocabulary, for instance, Dutch afmeren (to berth), which is amarrer in French,
ammarare in Italian and amarrar in Spanish. By the same token, Dutch borrowed many
words from other languages, for instance, the word piekeren (to puzzle over something)
and the word branie (bravado), which were both borrowed from Malay.
Afrikaans: Creolized Heritage

Afrikaans, one of the eleven official languages of South Africa, and Dutch
resemble each other considerably. Dutch speakers can read and understand
Afrikaans quite well, and vice versa. The reason presumably is that Afrikaans is
based on a seventeenth-century dialect of Dutch, probably the dialect from
the province of South Holland.
In the seventeenth century, on their voyages to the East Indies and back,
the Dutch needed a station in South Africa, to forage the ships with fresh water
and food. To that end, in 1652 Jan van Riebeeck established a foraging station,
“Cape the Good Hope,” at the bay
that today belongs to Cape Town.
The station attracted Dutch, as well
as Flemish, German, and French set-
tlers who built up a new life there.
In the course of the years, most
likely a sort of “Cape-Dutch” started
to develop, in the absence of regu-
lar contact with the Netherlands.
In their interaction with the native
inhabitants, the Hottentots and the
Bushmen, and with slaves imported
from the Indonesian archipelago
and former Ceylon (today called Sri Lanka), the colonists used a creole lan-
guage, a new language which developed out of a simplified pidgin used for
basic communication. Modern Afrikaans is probably the product of these two
languages: the “Cape-Dutch,” which departed from the South Hollandic dialect
spoken by the Dutch settlers and the creole language they used for interaction
with the other inhabitants of South Africa. Notwithstanding the many similar-
ities between Afrikaans and Dutch, there are also some marked differences be-
tween the two. Let us illustrate two obvious differences between the language
comparing the Afrikaans sentence Hy woon nie meer in Kaapstad nie, and the
Dutch sentence Hij woont niet meer in Kaapstad. They both mean “He does not
live in Cape Town anymore.” These sentences show similarities as well as differ-
ences. Firstly, Afrikaans does not have verbal endings. Independent on the per-
son and number of the subject of sentence, hy (he) in this case, the finite verb is
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woon (live) and not woont (lives) or wonen (live), as it is in Dutch. The second
difference immediately visible from these two sentences is that Dutch only
uses one negative item niet (not), whereas Afrikaans expresses negation with
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two negative items nie...nie (not...not), the second one usually positioned at the
end of the sentence.
Today, Afrikaans is still mainly spoken by the white population of South
Africa. Yet, as individual multilingualism is rather common in South Africa and

many inhabitants speak more than just one of the many languages available, also
a considerable number of colored people nowadays speak the language natively.
Standard, Variants, and Dialects

The Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal (WNT, Dictionary of the Dutch Language) is consid-
ered to be one of the largest dictionaries in het world, containing some 400,000 words.
This dictionary is made by the institute of Dutch lexicology between 1864 and 1998
and can nowadays also be accessed online, together with the dictionaries of Old Dutch,
Early Middle Dutch, Middle Dutch, and Frisian.
The Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst (ANS, General Dutch Grammar) describes
most of the grammatical rules and constructions for Dutch in quite some detail. The
Woordenlijst Nederlandse Taal (Lexicon of the Dutch Language), informally known as
Het Groene Boekje (The Green Booklet), contains the orthographic rules of Dutch and an
extensive list of words. It was initiated by the Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch Language
Union), an intergovernmental organization of the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname
that supports learners, users, and speakers of Dutch. As they could not agree to the
rules as presented in Het Groene Boekje, the society Onze Taal (Our Language) published
Het Witte Boekje (The White Booklet), presenting alternative guidelines to the ortho-
graphy of Dutch. One of the primary disputes is the question of whether in a com-
pound of the type pannenkoek (pancake) a n should be following pannen or not.
Apart from the standard variant of Dutch, there are several other languages and
dialects spoken in the Netherlands. There are roughly five dialect regions, or so-called
“regiolects.” However, as dialects may differ between neighboring towns and even
within one city, the exact number of dialects spoken in the Netherlands is unclear, but
certainly many more than five. Although the number of dialect speakers is slowly de-
creasing, there is an increasing interest in dialects, not only from its speakers, but also
from governmental organizations. Yet, they do not have the same status everywhere. In
some regions they are considered to be inferior to the standard language, or associated
with low-skilled segments of the population, whereas elsewhere they enjoy more pres-
tige, and serve as a locus of identification, with pop bands singing in dialect, and come-
dians using their local dialect on stage.
Another form of nonstandard languages spoken in the Netherlands is presented
by so-called “sociolects”: languages that belong to a certain social group as a way to
express and reinforce the specific identity of its speakers. One example is “street lan-
guage”: a language spoken in informal circumstances by young people, in particular in
multiethnic groups. Street language in the Netherlands is often pronounced with a
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Moroccan-Dutch accent, and includes words from English or from the mother tongue
languages of the different speakers, such as Turkish, Arabic, Sranan, or Berber: for
example, chillen from the English verb to chill and Sranan doekoe (money).2
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Frisian: Acknowledging Linguistic Pluralism
In the northern province of Friesland, about half of the population (approxi-

mately 450,000 speakers) speaks Frisian as their mother tongue. In this prov-
ince, Frisian has the status of official language, which means that Frisians can
choose to communicate with the authorities either in Frisian or in Dutch, that
Frisian can be used in the court of law, and that Frisian is also used in the public
domain: Frisian broadcasting on Dutch radio and television, Frisian in literature
and theater, and Frisian as a compulsory subject in the curriculum in primary
schools. The bilingual character of Fryslân (“Friesland” in Frisian) is also reflected
in other aspects of daily life, for instance, in (some of ) the place-name signs.
As a West-Germanic Indo-Euro-
pean language, Frisian is closely re-
lated to Dutch, and both languages
share many linguistic features. How-
ever, in some regards Frisian is also
quite close to English. One example
of this is that in Frisian, just like in
English, the g-sound changed into
a j-sound. So whereas German and
Dutch respectively have Gestern and
gisteren, Frisian and English have
the words juster and yesterday. Some-
thing similar holds for the k-sound
that is pronounced as tsj in English and Frisian: compare Dutch kerk, kaas and
German Kirche, Käse with English church, cheese and Frisian tsjerke, tsiis.
In the Netherlands, two other regional languages have a special status as
well, namely Lower Saxonian, spoken in the northeast of the Netherlands, and
Limburgian, spoken in the province of Limburg. However, they are not recog-
nized as official languages, like Frisian, but only as official “regiolects.” This
means that, unlike Frisian, they cannot be used in official documents or in a
court of law. However, it does give the relevant provinces the opportunity to
promote their regiolect by funding activities such as broadcasting in the
regiolect.
The special status of Frisian, Lower Saxonian, and Limburgian raises the
question of what properties make a regional language or dialect deserving of
official status. This question has seen several answers, but none of them are
decisive. One could, for instance, argue that a certain variant is a language if it
is linguistically distant enough from other variants. This immediately raises
the question of how to define distance between two variants. Is Frisian, for
instance, more distant from Dutch than Saxonian, and how can this be meas-
ured? Another potential criterion could be that if variants are not mutually in-
telligible, they should be separate languages. If this criterion would be applied
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to the dialects of Dutch, then all of a sudden there would appear to be many
more languages in the Netherlands, as most dialects are not mutually intelli-
gible. Another criterion could be to consider the speakers of the language: do
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they feel they speak a separate language? There are many more criteria one
could think of, but the answer simply is that the question of whether some-
thing is an official language, an official “regiolect,” or just a dialect without any
official status in the end is first and foremost a political question.
The Global Scale

The Dutch seem to share an understanding that their native language today has a rela-
tively small status on a global scale. Traditionally, the Dutch have acknowledged that as
speakers of a relatively small language, they are required to learn foreign languages,
which enjoy a strong position in school curricula, with English already included in the
last two years of primary school (that is, from the age of 10).
Notwithstanding this rather pragmatic and probably realistic perspective on their
native language, it is generally understood that Dutch is a necessary instrument for
people to integrate into Dutch society, and immigrants who intend to reside in the
country for a longer period of time are therefore encouraged to learn the language,
in order to be able to fully participate and contribute. Also, in a wider global context,
the Dutch language seems to be of increasing importance in the cultural awareness of
the Dutch.
Further Reading
Donaldson, Bruce. “Afrikaans.” The Germanic Languages. Edited by Ekkehard König and Johan van
der Auwera, 478-504. London/New York: Routledge, 1994.
Hinskens, Frans, and Johan Taeldeman, eds. Language and Space: Dutch: An International Handbook of
Linguistic Variation. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2013.
Hoekstra, Jarich, and Peter Meijes Tiersma. “Frisian.” The Germanic Languages, edited by Ekkehard
König and Johan van der Auwera, 505-531. London/New York: Routledge, 1994.
Horst, Joop van der. “A Brief History of the Dutch Language.” The Low Countries: Arts and Societies in
Flanders and the Netherlands: A Yearbook. 163-172. Flanders, Belgium: Stichting Ons Erfdeel, 1996.
Kooij, J.G. “Dutch.” The World’s Major Languages. Edited by Bernard Comrie, 129-146. London:
Croom Helm, 1987.
Schuter, Georges de. “Dutch.” The Germanic Languages, edited by Ekkehard König and Johan van
der Auwera, 439-477. London/New York: Routledge, 1994.
Wal, Marijke J. van der, and Aad Quak. “Old and Middle Continental West Germanic.”
The Germanic Languages. Edited by Ekkehard König and Johan van der Auwera, 72-109.
London/New York: Routledge, 1994.
Willemyns, Roland. Dutch: Biography of a Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
A rendering of the text of Hebban Olla Vogala can be found at https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/-

vogala/id788511078. Other fragments of Middle Dutch and Old Frisian texts can be heard using
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the same app.
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Issues
Contemporary
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chapter 19
Living with Water

by rob van der vaart
In 2013 it was commemorated that sixty years earlier, in 1953, a major flooding disas-
ter took place in the southwestern part of the Netherlands (see vignette about the Great
Flood in this chapter). After the shock of that event, enormous investments were made
to make the country more waterproof. The infrastructural improvements were so suc-
cessful that no further flooding has occurred since the disastrous event of 1953. The
younger generations of the Dutch are hardly aware of the inherent risks of living in a
country that is partly below sea level. Although the Dutch river district almost experi-
enced flooding in 1993 and 1995, with dangerously high water levels in the big rivers,
water consciousness is generally very low in the country: people generally do not think
a lot about flooding risks. During one of the memorial events in 2013, the national
Minister for Infrastructure warned that the country and its people are insufficiently
prepared for new flooding disasters. According to her, flooding risk is a badly under-
valued political issue. Awareness of these risks is required at all levels: in government,
among social actors, and among the population.
What an individual Dutch citizen can do to keep the country safe and dry is far
from obvious. Most of them hardly have a choice, as most large cities and economic
activities are concentrated in the low part of the country. Protecting the west of the
country against risks of flooding is a matter of consistent and long-term government
planning and of structural investment in security given the potential hazards of the
current era of climate change.
This chapter will focus on water consciousness in Dutch society and the policy al-
ternatives for a sustainable future. The stakes are high. It is expected that during the
twenty-first century the sea level will rise by at least sixty centimeters. In northwestern
Europe, climate change will result in a higher frequency of extreme weather condi-
tions, with strong storms and heavy rains. Intensive rainfall will result in higher peaks
in the discharge of the big rivers, especially the Rhine and the Maas. This excess river
water will flow into the North Sea, but less easily than today, because of the rising sea
level. On top of all this, the Dutch subsoil, already partially below sea level, is slowly
sinking. Ground water seepage is an increasing problem.
The combination of a low-lying country and climate change creates risk. Risk is
chance – of the occurrence of flooding – multiplied by costs in terms of casualties and
destroyed infrastructure. The flooding risks under changing climate conditions are
particularly high in the west of the Netherlands: it is a low part of the country (chance)
that is densely populated (costs). Water consciousness in all layers of Dutch society –
politicians, public and private sector, civil society – and water policy are therefore very
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important issues. Before moving to these issues, the chapter will first address major
issues in Dutch water history.
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The Beemster Polder:
Masterpiece of Designed Reclamation
In 1607 a group of Amsterdam merchants and administrators decided to start a

major infrastructural project, the reclamation of the Beemster, a large lake
north of Amsterdam with a perimeter of almost forty kilometers. The group
saw this project as a good investment opportunity. The flourishing and grow-
ing city of Amsterdam and other cities of Holland needed increasing amounts
of farming products, and the reclamation of the lake would create new land for
farming. It would also put an end to the regular flooding during storms of land
around the big lake.
Engineer Jan Adriaenszoon Leeghwater coordinated the actual reclama-
tion process. A high and strong dike was constructed around the lake, and a
ring canal was dug outside this circular dike. With the help of forty-three
windmills, the lake water was pumped into the ring canal. Leeghwater used an
ingenious system of placing the windmills in rows, pumping lake water out
step by step, up to the level of the ring canal. Already in 1612 the lake was dry
and the actual arrangement of the polder could start.
The chessboard layout of roads, ditches, and parcels in the polder is typi-
cal of Renaissance geometrical landscaping design. The Beemster polder is
internationally famous for its parcellation pattern and design principles. This
is one of the reasons why the polder was included in the UNESCO World Heritage
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Register. The struggle against water, the reclamation of land since the Middle
Ages and developing into ever bigger water management and reclamation
projects: it is all condensed in the example of the Beemster polder.
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For a long time, windmills were used to keep the water in the Beemster polder
at an acceptable level for farming. Obviously, the polder would have filled up
with water again if it had been left to itself. Land below sea level requires con-
stant pumping. During the nineteenth century steam-driven pumping installa-

tions were introduced, replaced later on by diesel and electric pumps. Because
of these innovations, many of the windmills have disappeared. Today, the
Beemster polder has a sophisticated system of water level control, with five
sections of the polder each with different water levels. Arable farmers need
other water tables than cattle farmers, and village residents need very high
groundwater levels since the pile foundations under their houses would rot
when low groundwater would expose them to oxygen.
Beemster is just one out of dozens of lakes that were reclaimed since the
sixteenth century. Over time, technological innovation allowed for bigger or
deeper lakes to be reclaimed. Reclamation of the Haarlemmermeer, where
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is located, only became an option in the nine-
teenth century thanks to steam power. The largest-scale projects were real-
ized during the twentieth century, with the reclamation of three huge sections
of the IJsselmeer, the freshwater lake that originated out of a corner of the sea
after the completion of the Afsluitdijk. Together they now form the new prov-
ince of Flevoland, a new space for farming, recreation, urbanization, and nature.
Water Management in the Past

“God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland,” according to a popular expres-
sion. The people who over the centuries inhabited the territory now known as the
Netherlands have indeed changed the physical appearance of the country dramatically.
It is true, to some extent, that the country was “conquered from the water.”
The Dutch coastline looked radically different two thousand years ago. The south-
west of the country was mostly sea with some small islands. The dunes of the west coast
were already in place, but behind the dunes was an unstable region in which the big
rivers were free to change their course from time to time and where major sea floods some-
times created new lakes. The north was an indented coast with the current islands (Wad-
deneilanden) still more or less connected to the mainland by a stretch of salt marshes.
The Zuiderzee in the center of the country was smaller and its connection to the North
Sea was no more than a narrow bottleneck cutting through the indented north coast.
The Roman Empire extended as far to the north as the river Rhine. During the rise
of the sea level in the third and fourth centuries CE people living in the north (particu-
larly in what is now the province of Friesland) started to create artificial molds (terpen),
made of clay, manure and waste materials, for protection against sea floods. Over the
centuries, these molds could reach a level of about seven meters above the sea and
became big enough for permanent settlement.
During medieval times, inhabitants of the north and southwest of the country
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gradually started to construct dikes between their settlements and the sea to protect
themselves from very regular flooding. This resulted in more sedimentation that
enlarged useable land. Over time the new sediments could be incorporated as new
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farmland by constructing new dikes facing the sea. Over the centuries, this process
resulted in the formation of the northern coastline and the northern and southwestern
islands as we know them today.
People living in the central river district, on the sandy and slightly higher levees
alongside the rivers, also responded to flooding risks by constructing low dikes: at a
right angle to the river just upstream from the settlement and parallel to the river
behind their settlements, causing flooding waters to find a course behind their settle-
ments and back into the river further downstream. These early forms of flood-protec-
tion were very local: continuous and integrated larger-scale dikes were only constructed
from the late medieval times onward, when more centralized and stronger governance
structures were put into place.
A major transition in settlement took place around 1000, when inhabitants of the
northern and western parts of what is now the Netherlands started to move into the
vast expanses of bogs and moors. These relatively inaccessible peat bogs were drained
and cultivated by groups of new settlers. The long-term effects were immense: it cre-
ated the rural landscape with narrow parcels, many ditches, and windmills that one
now considers “typically Dutch”: it gradually lowered the land surface because of
drainage (shrinking of the dehydrated peat layers), and it resulted in the habitation of
the western part of the country, which became a core region during the Golden Age.
The peat bogs were not only turned into farmland. Peat stabbing was an additional
source of income: peat could be dried and then sold as source of energy for cooking and
heating. With the growth of the cities, the market for turf also expanded. Easily accessi-
ble peat packages, those above the groundwater level, were first exploited. The demand
was such, however, that later on peat was even extracted from below the water level.
Holes in the landscape were the result: new and often large lakes, created by the work of
thousands of turf cutters.
The presence of all the lakes, particularly in Holland, not only limited the agri-
cultural surface and therefore farm production, but also created a new danger for local
inhabitants. When storms would sweep up the water surfaces, flooding was always a
risk. People spoke of the almost permanent threat of the “water wolf.”
Therefore, from the sixteenth century onwards, the reclamation of these lakes
started, a process that over the centuries would incorporate ever bigger former lakes
into the land surface, as a result of improving technology.1 Until the nineteenth cen-
tury, flooding remained a fact of life for inhabitants of the river district and some of the
coastal regions. Between 1750 and 1800 alone 152 floods occurred in the central part of
the country. The situation started to improve with the creation of a national agency for
water management in 1798, now known as Rijkswaterstaat, the Directorate-General for
Public Works and Water Management. With the gradual improvement of dike systems
and water management, the frequency of floods decreased. But sometimes people were
reminded of the “water wolf ”: a major storm flood swept over Zeeland and parts of
Flanders in 1808, resulting in a major sea dikes improvement program; another devas-
tating storm flood hit the Zuiderzee in 1916. And in the river district the floods of
1855, 1861, and 1926 proved that the river dikes could not offer complete safety. Major
infrastructural improvements took place during the twentieth century. In 1932 the
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Zuiderzee, in the heart of the country, became the IJsselmeer when the closing dam
(Afsluitdijk) was completed. And in the southwest of the country an enormous coastal
flood protection project was started after the Great Flood of 1953: the Delta Works.
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The Great Flood:
Inducement for the Delta Works
What happened during the cold winter night preceding February 1, 1953, is col-
lectively remembered by the Dutch as a national disaster. An enormous storm
raised the tide and the power of waves hammering the coast. As a result many
dikes in the southwest of the country gave way. 1,836 people died, 200,000
hectares of land were flooded, and 72,000 people became homeless. Surviving
victims from Zeeland, the west of Brabant and the islands of South Holland
were evacuated to other parts of the country. Money and clothing were col-
lected all over the country and international emergency aid arrived. Yet, it could
have been much worse. If the river dikes of South Holland had also given way,
some of the deepest parts of the country would have flooded, with water levels
locally rising to seven meters. More than 30,000 people would have perished.
Ironically, major plans for flooding protection in the country’s southwest
had already been on the table for decades. But during the crisis of the 1930s,
the Second World War and the post-war reconstruction years, dike improve-
ment was not a priority. But in 1953 Dutch politics and society had to learn by
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shock. Shortly after the disaster, an ambitious plan for storm surge protection
in the Southwest was accepted by Dutch parliament: the so-called “Delta
Plan.”
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The most visible result of the Delta Plan is the string of dams that connect the
islands and close off the estuaries from the North Sea. The roads on top
improve the accessibility of Zeeland enormously. The inner waters are now
compartmentalized by additional dams more inland, which serve water man-

agement functions and add to the accessibility of the area from the southern
Randstad region.
The storm surge barriers in the Oosterschelde are exceptional. The envi-
ronmental awareness of the 1970s made it unacceptable that the highly valu-
able brackish and tidal ecosystem of the Oosterschelde would be destroyed by
closing it off completely from the sea. The compromise was a masterpiece of
engineering: a barrier with compartments that are open during normal weather
conditions, but that can be closed by huge steel panels in case of storm.
The southernmost estuary, Westerschelde, was not sealed off at all by a
barrier, since the Westerschelde is the access route for the harbors of Antwerp
and Ghent, in Belgium. Instead, the sea dikes around it were fortified. The ab-
sence of a dam here implies that the most southwestern part of the Nether-
lands, Zeeland Flanders, did not benefit from improved accessibility like the
other parts of Zeeland province. In the 1990s it was therefore decided to create
a road tunnel of 6.6 kilometers, with its deepest section sixty meters under sea
level, connecting Zeeland Flanders with the rest of Zeeland.
The Delta Plan not only raised the safety level of the country’s southwest,
but also boosted economic development, particularly in Zeeland. The area is
now more accessible for tourists, commuters to the Rotterdam urban area and
industrial and other companies.
New Water Policy

The fear of flooding gradually disappeared into the background of the Dutch collective
memory after the Great Flood of 1953. In the absence of further flood disasters, water
consciousness waned during the second half of the century. People in the rapidly
urbanizing low-lying parts of the country generally assumed that flooding risks were
now under control thanks to solid dikes and to the vigilance and expertise of the engi-
neers of Rijkswaterstaat.
It came as a complete surprise to many people, therefore, that about two hundred
thousand people had to be evacuated from the river area in 1993. The level of the river
water had risen to the very top of the dikes and dike sections. Saturated with water and
under enormous pressure, they might just have given way and collapsed. In the end,
none of this happened, not in 1993, nor when similar circumstances occurred in 1995,
but the almost-disaster of 1993 proved that complete safety is an illusion, particularly
in conditions of climate change. Periodically raising the dikes is not a sustainable solu-
tion because the volume of water that may be contained in the riverbed will rise with
the height of the dikes, and increase the disastrous effects if a dike would collapse.
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The 1993 and 1995 events, combined with a generally broader awareness of the
potential effects of climate change for the Netherlands, resulted in a major shift in
water policy. The government report on water policy for the twenty-first century, issued
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in the year 2000, was entitled “A Different Approach to Water.” 2 The first chapter,
“Rising Sea Level and Subsiding Land,” sets the context of climate change and Dutch
physical-geographical conditions. The key question of the report is how to increase the
amount of space for water. Urban as well as rural areas should make an end to the estab-
lished practice of getting rid of excess water (after heavy rains, for example) as soon as
possible. This practice of “efficient” water management bestows an extra burden on the
main arteries of the water system: the rivers. It should become common practice to
enlarge the capacity for local water storage and groundwater infiltration. Rivers should
have more space for their water, too, and not just high dikes to contain the water. This
policy was further elaborated in the so-called Spatial Planning Key Decision “Room for
the River” (2006).3 It entails a smart mix of various measures, adapted to local circum-
stances and possibilities, creating more room for the rivers Maas, Rhine, and IJssel, such
as removing obstacles in the river beds, broadening or deepening the river bed and cre-
ating bypasses. Approximately €2.5 billion will be spent on this program until 2015.
This shift in water policy implies a fundamentally new attitude towards water: it is
no longer the enemy to be contained, but rather the co-inhabitant of the country that
demands its own room and space. “Living with Water” is the slogan of the national
campaign for water consciousness. In the new rhetoric water may be seen as an oppor-
tunity or as a friend, be it a very expensive friend. The Delta Commission, installed for
exploring needs for flood protection until 2100, concluded in 2008 that more than
€100 billion will be needed during this century to ensure a climate-proof future of the
country.4 Most of the recommendations of the Delta Commission were put to practice,
as will be shown later in the chapter.
Water-Conscious Citizens?
Water consciousness is one of the key words in recent Dutch water policy.5 It is consid-
ered to be essential for popular support for an expensive water policy and for respons-
ible action by all relevant actors – municipalities, investors, and society at large – with
regard to water issues. But what exactly is “water consciousness” (waterbewustzijn)?
Some Dutch scholars have suggested the following definition: water consciousness is
the awareness and understanding that the consequences of any decision related to
water (issues) should weigh heavily in the actual decision.6 In this definition knowl-
edge and understanding are linked to decisions and action. Furthermore, its neutral
phrasing is remarkable: the definition does not refer to dangers or threats. Experts tend
to agree that the promotion of water consciousness should not entirely focus on the
negative (water as a threat), but equally on the positive (water as an opportunity). In the
case of the Netherlands, potential water opportunities are manifold: the water-rich
country as a location factor for companies and as an asset for attracting tourists; water
management expertise as an export product; or water as an experience factor in neigh-
borhoods or recreational areas. Yet, in the international use of the concept “water con-
sciousness” some experts tend to focus on the problematic side of water, such as increas-
ing global scarcity of drinking water and effects of climate change for coastal cities.7
Water consciousness is not automatically present in a country such as the Nether-
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lands. Modernization and technological progress have resulted in a general feeling that
safety from floods is self-evident. Clean water and a safe environment are perceived as
“products,” automatically delivered at certain costs.
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Do the Dutch know and care about water issues? A 2005 survey showed that water is
clearly a low interest issue.8 In answer to the question “What do you seriously worry
about?” respondents – predictably – mentioned increasing violence, erosion of norms
and values, terrorism and extremism, and cuts in social security. The issue “rising water
levels (sea, rivers, groundwater)” ranked twelfth: only 9 percent of the respondents
were worried about it. The survey also showed that the Dutch are not really interested
in water management. The majority is satisfied when water management is well organ-
ized at the lowest possible costs. Any sense of involvement or urgency is missing from
the survey results; a representative sample of the national population expresses a
relaxed, uninvolved and consumerist attitude towards water issues.
An interesting aspect of water consciousness is the personal responsibility of citi-
zens. Some people buy a house with a beautiful view alongside a lake or river. Millions
of Dutch citizens buy or rent houses in parts of the country that may be meters below
sea level. Who is to be held accountable for the damage in case of a flood? The legal con-
text of the issue nicely demonstrates the dilemmas: in case of calamities no one can be
held personally accountable, although personal legal accountability does apply in case
of negligence. But where is the line between calamity and negligence to be drawn in
case of flooding? Floods in the densely populated western part of the Netherlands may
result in astronomical damage. It is understandable that the government is looking for
legal openings towards “shared responsibility and accountability.” Nevertheless, water
insurance is a legal minefield. One interesting example concerns a major residential
area to be developed in the Zuidplaspolder, adjacent to the city of Gouda, a location
approximately six meters below sea level. In case of a flood, the area would be very
badly hit: it is one of the lowest points in the Netherlands. Who would have to pay the
costs for casualties and material damage? Are the inhabitants to some extent account-
able, because they have knowingly and willingly bought houses there? Are the project
developers and the municipality legally responsible because of their decision to develop
the area? Or should the government have been stricter in its spatial planning regula-
tions and never have allowed development here in the first place? Or could the water
boards, responsible for dike maintenance, be accused of negligence because they had
been able to foresee the risks? Accountability in a case like this is clearly a Gordian knot.
The example shows that water consciousness – seriously weighing the water factor in
decisions – not only applies to citizens, but probably even more to all actors involved in
urban and regional planning and development such as politicians, planning experts,
civil servants, and project developers.
Water-Conscious Professionals?
Professionals in the water sector, such as the civil engineers working for the Directorate-
General of Public Works and Water Management (Rijkswaterstaat) or for the water
boards, are certainly aware of short-term risks and long-term challenges of flooding. In
their professional life, they are “living with water” on a day-to-day basis. They know
that it is essential to set land aside for future infrastructural needs and that a consistent
national water management policy requires planning over several government terms.
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They also know that market pressure for urban development can jeopardize long-term
water management priorities and should therefore be controlled rather strictly. But
they are also aware that the success of water management since the 1950s has decreased
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water consciousness in Dutch society. An urban legend has it that a text posted on a wall
of the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management reads: “Lord, give
us our daily bread, and now and then a minor flood,” since a near-disaster would en-
hance public awareness of the need for consistent water policy and water management.
But it is not for professionals in the water sector to decide about spatial develop-
ment and the dynamics of land use. The practice of spatial development is a domain in
which many actors have a role to play: local, regional, and national politicians and civil
servants, real estate developers, land speculators, farmers, environmental pressure
groups, and many more. Urban and regional planning is a complex process that by
nature requires the weighing of all kinds of interests. The interest of the water sector
– climate-proof solutions that diminish rather than enlarge future flood risks – is just
one interest out of many. The key issue is to what extent all other interest groups and
actors take water seriously in their approaches, actions, and decisions. What about the
water consciousness of all actors involved in local and regional planning?
A hypothetical case may illustrate what is at stake here. Imagine a medium-sized
city along one of the Dutch big rivers. The local administration knows exactly which
areas within its borders have been reserved for implementing the “Room for the
Rivers” project until 2015. These areas, for instance little stretches of land next to the
river dikes, will remain untouched for other forms of development. But the local
authorities are thinking ahead and are planning a new residential area and business
park to be realized from 2013 onwards. One potential location – location A – is on farm-
land quite close to the river. The farmers are willing to sell, the site looks promising to
attract new inhabitants, and environmental groups have few objections. Location A,
however, is adjacent to the land reserved for the “Room for the River” water manage-
ment project. Location B is farther away from the river, on the other side of town. It has
an attractive landscape of dispersed villas, some farmland, a horse riding center, and
some forest. The rich villa dwellers fiercely oppose the idea that their neighborhood
would become more urbanized. Environmental groups are equally against it, because
of the interesting flora of this mixed landscape. Local farmers are less willing to sell
their land than farmers at location A; they prefer the more profitable piecemeal sales to
individual newcomers who want to construct new villas in the area. Representatives of
the water sector, however, advise against location A since the site might be needed in
the decades after 2030 for further dike improvement works in order to avoid future
floods. Local authorities, developers, farmers, and environmentalists in turn argue that
2030 is far away and that future technologies may very well solve the problem in other
ways that make other places along the river more suited for extra water management
projects. And in the end, against the advice of the water sector, location A is chosen and
formally approved by the province.
Territorial development and national land-use dynamics are the result of thou-
sands of decisions like this one, some local, others regional or national, sometimes in
line with the water sector advice, other times against such advice. Bringing all micro-
decisions in line with long-term water interests would require eco-dictatorship, which
of course is equally inconceivable and undesirable. In our democratic market economy,
all will depend on the level of water consciousness of all parties involved. The national
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government has taken measures for stimulating the inclusion of water issues in daily
planning practice at all levels, by introducing the so-called Water Impact Assessment
(watertoets), that became mandatory in November 2003. For every new spatial plan, such
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as a local plan or a regional plan, the water board of the region will give a written
advice. Local planners have to explicitly present in their final plan how and to what ex-
tent they have taken this advice into account. Water issues can no longer be by-passed
or neglected in territorial planning. But final decisions in planning can still go against
the advice of the water sector. WIA was evaluated nationally in 2006, showing that this
young planning instrument will need further fine-tuning.9 Often WIA had only mar-
ginal effects because the location of the development was already beyond discussion,
financial instruments for including water interests in local and regional planning were
lacking and the parties involved spoke different “languages.”
A more drastic action of the government, in line with the recommendations of the
Delta Commission, is the Delta Act that became operational in 2012. This Act makes it
possible to carry out a new Delta Program: an integral nationwide program to protect
the Netherlands from flooding and to ensure adequate long-term freshwater supplies,
involving joint effort of the national government, provinces, municipalities and water
boards, with input from the private sector and many social organizations. Investment
in this program is guaranteed until 2028, at a level of approximately one billion euro
per year. It is estimated though that this level of annual investment will be needed until
the year 2100 at least, based on what we know today about climate change and its
effects for sea level rise, river discharges, and the occurrence of more extreme weather
conditions. The Delta Act also formalized the role and position of the Delta Commis-
sioner: an independent coordinator of the Delta Program, who is above parties and
political and sectorial interests, and responsible for the implementation of the Delta
Program.
Towards a Sustainable Future

In the face of climate change and a subsiding underground, large parts of the Nether-
lands are confronted with major challenges in preventing floods in the near and more
remote future. In its approach to tackling the issue, the country is going through a tran-
sition in governance style: from a technocratic and scientific style, dominated by the
rather closed “state in the state” Rijkswaterstaat, towards an integral and participatory
style, that requires efforts not only from the government but equally from civil society
and the private sector. Safeguarding a political basis for the costly Delta Program will re-
quire water consciousness among citizens, planning professionals, and other groups.10
The transition is still in its take-off phase and the gap between national strategic vision
and practical implementation at the local level is still considerable. The Netherlands
seems to be going through a learning process, in which many groups of actors still have
to get used to taking water issues seriously in their thinking and in their actions.
A sustainable future for the country, with its concentration of population and its
main economic infrastructure exactly in low-lying areas, depends very much on im-
proved water consciousness, to prevent irreversible planning decisions that go against
the interest of water management. And it will also create a basis of public support for
consistent long-term policy for preventing future floods. There are no guarantees: nor
for mentality change, nor for flood prevention. The transition might become a success
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and result in a broadly shared sense of urgency and direction, but it is just as well pos-
sible that the state will have to take very strict control over market pressures and
decisions of individual in order to avoid unacceptable risks for the future.
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Further reading
Delta Programme in the Netherlands. The Hague: Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment;
Ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, 2011.

A Different Approach to Water: Water Management Policy in the 21st Century. The Hague: Ministry of
Transport, Public Works and Water Management, 2000. http://www.waterland.net.
Hoeksema, Robert J. Designed for Dry Feet: Flood Protection and Land Reclamation in the Netherlands.
Reston: ASCE Press, 2006.
Spatial Planning Key Decision “Room for the River”: Investing in the Safety and Vitality of the Dutch River
Basin Region. The Hague: Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, 2006.
http:// www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl.
Ven, Gerard van de, ed., Man-Made Lowlands: History of Water Management and Land Reclamation in the
Netherlands. Utrecht: Matrijs, 1993.
Water Vision: Safeguarding our Future: The Government’s Vision of National Water Policy.
The Hague: Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, 2007.
http://www.verkeerenwaterstaat.nl.
Working on the Delta. Delta Programme 2014. The Hague: Ministry of Infrastructure and the
Environment; Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2013.
Working Together with Water. A Living Land Builds for its Future; Findings of the Deltacommissie 2008.
Deltacommissie, 2008. http:// www.deltacommissie.nl.
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chapter 20
Excellence and Egalitarianism

in Higher Education
by jeroen torenbeek and jan veldhuis
As a relatively wealthy nation with intensive international trade connections and an

enthusiasm for innovation and exploration, the Netherlands has developed into a gate-
way of ideas and an ambitious hub of education and research. The nation’s inter-
national reputation is reflected by such indicators as the number of Nobel Prize winners,
the research output in academic journals, and the global rankings of its institutions of
higher education. With nearly all of its rated universities belonging to the world top
two hundred according to the Chinese Shanghai, the German CHE and the English
THE rankings, the Netherlands, as one leading British newspaper found, is emerging
as “continental Europe’s principal power in higher education.” 1
In the so-called Bologna Process, the European Union explicitly aimed at homo-
genizing European higher education. The Netherlands was an eager participant in this
process. Yet, diversity has remained a feature of higher education in Europe, and the
specific characteristics of Dutch higher education are still visible. The structure of edu-
cation is after all a reflection of specific traditions and culture.
One central issue was and still is how to strike a just balance between creating and
protecting equal opportunities for all on the one hand, and aiming for quality and ex-
cellence through selection and competition on the other – an issue which in the United
States is labeled the “quality-equality issue.” This chapter presents an overview of the
gradual development from elite education toward greater equality, particularly between
1950 and 1980, and the shifting emphasis back to quality from the 1980s onwards. But
let us first outline a few characteristics of the Dutch higher education system.
Characterizing Dutch Higher Education

A first fundamental trait of Dutch higher education – as well as of primary and second-
ary education – is that it is primarily a public responsibility. This is the case in most
continental European countries. In the Netherlands it means that the national govern-
ment by law is responsible for the funding of higher education (in 2014 it covered
about 80 percent of the cost) and – in connection to that – for monitoring its general
quality.
This leads directly to a second characteristic, which is more specific for the Nether-
lands: the essential equality between all institutions of education, including those of
higher education. Public funding follows the principle of equal distribution. Conse-
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quently, institutions of higher education are largely comparable in quality. Rather in-
significant differences may be attributed to historically and geographically determined
social stratification. The social elite still prefers the established universities in the
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urban agglomeration in the northwest and the center of the country over the often-
times younger universities in the other regions. Qualitative differences, however,
mainly exist in the field of research and mostly result from the selective distribution of
research funding by national and international science organizations.

A third characteristic is the fact that admission into higher education is granted on
secondary school certificates, based on national exams, and not on entrance exams.
Only a limited number of study programs – predominantly in the arts and the medical
sciences – adopt additional entrance procedures, mainly as a consequence of a govern-
ment-imposed limit on the number of places (numerus fixus).
diagram of the dutch education system
research universities universities of applied

(in dutch: sciences (in dutch:
universiteiten) hogescholen)
A solid arrow indicates

Doctor’s degree a right to access
(PhD)
A dotted arrow indicates
4 years that some form of
selection or bridging
post- requirement may
graduate be applied
MA / MSc / LLM
Master’s
degree
degree
1-2-3 years
1-2 years
(60-180 credits)
(60-120 credits)
BA / BSc / LLB
under- degree Bachelor’s
graduate 3 years degree
(180 credits) 4 years Senior Secondary
(240 credits) Vocational
Education and
Training (MBO)
1-4 years
University
Preparatory
Senior General
secondary Education Preparatory
Secondary Education
(VWO) Vocational
(HAVO)
6 years Secondary Education
5 years (VMBO) (III)
4 years
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Primary Education
primary
8 years
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The main reason for the absence of entrance exams is the highly selective and profiled
structure of secondary education. After a primary school curriculum of eight years,
when the student is about 12 years old, he or she has to choose between the three major
school types in secondary education, each designed to prepare students for a specific
form of further education. Preparatory vocational secondary education (VMBO) – a
four-year curriculum – offers access to secondary vocational education and training
(MBO) for at least four years (plus one or two additional years to fulfill the legal require-
ment of education until the age of eighteen). Higher general secondary education
(HAVO) – a five-year curriculum – prepares for higher professional education (Hoger
Beroepsonderwijs, HBO). The six-year curriculum of preuniversity secondary education
(VWO) prepares students for further education at a research university (Wetenschappelijk
Onderwijs, WO). Moreover, pupils in HAVO and VWO schools have to choose one of four
different “profiles”: Sciences; Life Sciences; Economics and Society; or Culture and
Society. Each of these profiles may contain subjects required for the admission to
matching study programs. In 2013, VMBO covered approximately 44 percent, HAVO
30 percent, and VWO 18 percent of the age cohorts.2
This selective structure in secondary education – with differences in duration, con-
tent, and quality between the HAVO and the VWO certificate – is the main reason for a
fourth characteristic: the persistence of the binary system in Dutch higher education.
As do many European countries, the Netherlands still has such a binary system, distin-
guishing between academic education at research-oriented universities and vocational
education at institutions of higher professional education. The division seems clear:
universities prepare students for academic professions or for a life in science and acade-
mia, whereas the hogescholen prepare students for professional practice. In other words,
an academic way of thinking versus practical competencies: history of art and music-
ology versus art school and conservatorium, computer science versus computer pro-
gramming, economics versus business school. In 2013, about 420,000 students were
enrolled in over forty HBO institutions, and about 240,000 students in the thirteen
research-oriented universities (including the eight academic medical centers). Although
the institutions of higher professional education have been renamed “universities of
professional education” and are given limited opportunities to develop and carry out
applied research projects, only the research-based universities offer PhD programs.
This points to a fifth characteristic in Dutch higher education, namely the princi-
pled combination of teaching and research in Dutch universities. The vast majority of
scientific research in the Netherlands is conducted by and in the universities, and not in
separate institutes, as, for instance, the Max Planck Institutes in Germany or the CNRS
institutes in France. A few separate research institutes do exist, but they always have
strong ties to one or more universities. The quality of the research carried out in Dutch
universities is world class. In the most important non-Western ranking, the ARWU or
Shanghai ranking, no Dutch university is in the top 50, and only three3 belong to the
top 100, but all Dutch universities are in the top 200, which no other country can claim.
A sixth characteristic is the government-funded system of grants and loans (studie-
financiering), available to all students during their study. This grant system was based on
the idea that higher education should be available and affordable to all, regardless of
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background or financial means. All Dutch students under thirty years of age are eligible
for a modest grant: in 2013 it was about €270 (for students living independently) and
free public transport. Depending on their parents’ income, some students are eligible
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for a supplementary grant to a maximum of about €250. These grants are “performance-
related,” which means they have to be paid back if a student, for instance, fails to gradu-
ate within ten years. In addition to these performance-related grants, students can bor-
row money to help cover the tuition fees and additional costs. In 2013, the maximum
support package of grant and loans amounted to about €770 for students living with
their parents, and about €965 for students living independently. However, many stu-
dents prefer to take on jobs to supplement the grant, in order to avoid accumulating
substantial loans or to enjoy a pleasant student life.
This brings us to a final characteristic: the comparatively attractive and enjoyable
Dutch student life. Most students, particularly university students, leave the parental
home and rent rooms in privately owned student houses. The organization of the student
life is symptomatic of major changes within the universities (as will be discussed below).
First, the elite organizations gave way to democratic protest and equality, but later they
saw a revival of traditional customs, including horizontal year clubs, vertical “disputes,”
cultural and sport societies, student houses, gala parties, formal dinners, and yearbooks.
The reasonable tuition and the system of grants and loans have offered affordable
education and created equal opportunities for students from underprivileged social
backgrounds. Nevertheless, the government regularly discusses plans to replace the
current system of grants and loans with a “social loan system,” which would require all
students to take out loans. Not surprisingly, these plans are subject of heated political
debates, as they challenge the principle of “equal opportunities.”
The Road to More Equality

The characteristics of Dutch higher education are a reflection of the historical develop-
ments in the Netherlands. Intellectual cosmopolitanism and academic inquiry were
greatly stimulated by the high level of urbanization in the seven northern provinces of
the Low Countries as early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the “Republic
of the Seven United Netherlands,” social care and education, as provided by, for exam-
ple, the guilds and the churches, led to relatively high levels of literacy in these urban
centers. The high quality of education, in turn, greatly stimulated economic prosperity.
In this period, the first universities or academic schools were founded in a prosperous
city of nearly each province, such as Leiden (1575), Franeker (1585), Groningen (1614),
Utrecht (1636), and Harderwijk (1648).
During the French occupation (1795-1813), the seven provinces were united into
one nation state, which continued as the Kingdom of the United Netherlands after the
Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). The national government became a major influence in
the further development of academic education and the only three universities remain-
ing at the time – those in Leiden, Utrecht, and Groningen – became national universities.
The new Constitution of 1848 gave great impetus to the further development of the
educational system. During the following three decades, new laws dealing with primary,
secondary, and higher education were passed, creating educational opportunities for seg-
ments of society previously excluded from higher education. For the upper-middle clas-
ses, a new type of secondary education was introduced in 1863, the Higher Civil School
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(HBS), to prepare young people for positions in trade, merchant shipping, banking, indus-
try, and agriculture. A “Middle School for Girls” (MMS) was also founded to educate future
spouses of the exclusively male officials and professionals in the higher segments of society.
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Aletta Jacobs:
Emancipation through Education
Aletta Jacobs challenged male-dominated academic education by becoming

the first female medical doctor. As a leading suffragette, reformer and propo-
nent of birth control, she went on to become an enduring inspiration for the
feminist movement.
Born in 1854 into the large family of a Jewish doctor in a poor peat-
harvesting district in the northeast, Aletta Henriëtte Jacobs set her mind on
becoming a medical doctor at an early age. After completing her education as
pharmacist’s assistant at age 16, she became the first woman to enter second-
ary education (HBS), if only as an auditor. She subsequently received permis-
sion to attend medical classes at Groningen University and, after personal
authorization from Prime Minister Thorbecke, was allowed to take her doctor’s
exam and to defend her dissertation in 1879, becoming the first woman in the
Netherlands to do so.
Influenced by the liberal reform movement in England and unionism in
the Netherlands, Dr. Jacobs opened a medical practice in the working-class
neighborhoods of Amsterdam. As a progressive reformer she offered practical
advice in child care and hygiene, denounced the living conditions of the urban
poor, advocated better working conditions
for salesgirls, and started promoting birth
control to alleviate the plight of working-
class women. In spite of widespread re-
sistance she became an active member of
the Dutch Neo-Malthusian Society and in-
troduced the diaphragm as a contracep-
tive device in the Netherlands.
Convinced that full constitutional
equality of men and women was essential
for further reform, Jacobs started a tena-
cious struggle for women’s right to vote.
Litigation to be put her on the ballot failed
when the highest court argued that she
was ineligible for election, simply because
women never had that right. After con-
tinuing to promote women’s suffrage in a
series of lectures and articles, she became
president of the Dutch Women’s Suffrage
movement and editor of its journal in 1903.
She held this position until 1919, success-
fully raising money to organize conferences and staging protest marches in
The Hague. Jacobs also actively promoted international solidarity by traveling
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the world and seeking cooperation with like-minded activists such as Carry
Chapman Catt, the powerful president of the National American Woman Suf-
frage Association (NAWSA). After the outbreak of the First World War her inter-
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national network became a vehicle for pacifist and humanitarian initiatives, in
1915 leading to the founding of the Women’s International League of Peace and
Freedom in The Hague, the oldest women’s peace organization in the world.
In 1917 the Dutch government, fearing widespread revolt, conceded to

the growing pressure by allowing women on the ballot and at the same time
introducing universal suffrage for men. Two years later a bill was passed which
replaced the word “men” in the Constitution by “persons,” as Jacobs had
argued for years. The “Jacobs Bill” eliminated constitutional gender differentia-
tion and introduced women’s suffrage in the Netherlands with the general
elections of 1922.
Aletta Jacobs died in 1929. In 1935 her personal archive became the core of
the International Information Center and Archives of the Women’s Movement
(IIAV) in Amsterdam, now a worldwide collection on the heritage of the women’s
movement.
The Constitution of 1848 also paved the way for the emancipation of Roman Catholics
and orthodox Protestants, groups that had been held back in society and education.
Both religious denominations demanded access to free and government-funded educa-
tion. This fundamental struggle over the schools was finally resolved in the Pacification
of 1917. In this groundbreaking agreement, the national government agreed to pro-
vide equal funding for both nondenominational (public) and denominational (“pri-
vate”) schools alike. It should be noted here that “private” schools and institutions in
the Netherlands, therefore, are schools which are privately governed, yet financed with
public funds.
Many new Catholic and Protestant schools were founded, first at primary level and
later at secondary level. In higher education, the process of religious emancipation led to
the Protestant Free University of Amsterdam (VU) in 1879, the Roman Catholic Univer-
sity at Nijmegen (1923), and the Roman Catholic Higher Trade School at Tilburg (1927).4
In 1991, humanists made use of the same laws to found their own Humanistic Univer-
sity, and more recently, Muslims started to make a strong case for an Islamic university.
Another stimulus for extension of higher education resulted from developments
in the natural sciences and their applications in agriculture, trade, industry, and health
care. The polytechnic school at Delft was upgraded to a hogeschool, a “College of Higher
Technical Education” (1904), and the Colleges of Higher Trade Education at Rotterdam
(1913), of Higher Agricultural Education at Wageningen (1917) and of Higher Veter-
inary Education at Utrecht (1917) were founded. In 1986 the three technical colleges,
the Agricultural College in Wageningen and the Trade College in Tilburg were re-
named “universities.” 5 The Rotterdam Faculty of Medicine (1966) merged in 1973 with
the College of Higher Trade into the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
These developments also changed the structure of the student life. After 1815
nearly all students, mostly upper class, joined one of the male “corpora” (fraternities).
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Around 1900 at each university new organizations came into existence: female,
Catholic, Protestant, and social democratic in character. Recognized by the university,
the leadership of these organizations formally represented all students.
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After the Second World War a third external factor that greatly impacted Dutch higher
education was the rebuilding and modernization of society, combined with the further
socioeconomic development of the northeastern, eastern, and southern part of the
country. This led to the foundation of Technical Colleges of Higher Education in Eind-
hoven (1956) and in Enschede (1961), of a university in Maastricht (1976) and the Open
University in Heerlen (1984).
A significant increase in participation in higher education was facilitated by the
reorganization of secondary education, implemented by the Education Law of 1963
(Mammoetwet). This state-supported, “external” democratization enabled more stu-
dents from middle- and lower-income groups to enroll in universities. Combined with
the rapid emancipation of women from the 1960s onwards, the universities saw a spec-
tacular increase in enrollment numbers altogether.
The student protests of the early 1960s gained new support among this growing
student population in their call for the democratization of university governance. The
vehement student revolts of 1968-1969 in many Western European countries and in
the United States ultimately resulted in the Netherlands in the “internal” democrati-
zation of universities. The traditional student organizations also came under fire: as
membership was not fashionable anymore, they lost the right to represent all students.
This led to a deep crisis for about fifteen years.
The government responded to the student protests in 1969 by proposing a new
law (Wet Universitaire Bestuurshervorming, WUB), which was accepted in 1971,
formalizing cogovernance (medebestuur) of faculty, administrative and technical
employees, and students at all three levels of the university.
University governance was finally put on a stable footing in 1997 by the law on
Modernization of University Governance (Wet Modernisering Universitaire Bestuurs-
organisatie, MUB), which provides faculty, employees, and students with a substantial
advisory voice (adviesrecht) in curriculum, examinations regulations, management, and
governance in their departments. In all major policy matters, the (Executive) Board of
the university (College van Bestuur) – consisting mostly of a President, a Rector Magnifi-
cus, and a third member – needs the positive advice of the University Council (Universi-
teitsraad) – consisting of faculty members, employees, and students.6 This system of
governance has contributed greatly to a climate of openness between faculty and stu-
dents. Also, professors and other teachers have become more accessible for students,
especially compared to most other countries. The Organization for Economic Coopera-
tion and Development (OECD) sees many advantages in this distinctive Dutch system
of governance, and suggests it should be considered by other nations as well.
Renewed Emphasis on Quality and Excellence

Longstanding policies of equal chances have resulted in considerable growth in the
number of pupils enjoying secondary and higher education. The PISA reports, which
are published every three years by the OECD, show that this growth did not negatively
affect the quality of education in general – as is sometimes suggested in conservative
circles. Over the past years, Dutch fifteen-year-old pupils score consistently well, both
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in language proficiency and in mathematics, ranking tenth in the reports, on average.

Among the Western countries, the Netherlands has for many years been number two or
three.7
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Yet, from the 1980s, critical voices were increasingly questioning the quality of educa-
tion. They doubted the effectiveness of the dominant pedagogic-didactical approach to
teaching, which negatively affected the transfer of factual knowledge in most subjects,
notably in the mother tongue and foreign languages, and in mathematics.

In primary education, this supposed loss of quality was in part attributed to the
lower quality of teachers. Since the 1960s, the teaching profession suffered from decreas-
ing popularity. Predominantly those with weaker HAVO results chose primary school
teacher training courses. In secondary education, the differentiation in curricula consti-
tuted an additional factor. The freedom of choice given to pupils paved the way for about
250 final exam packages. Among those were too many so-called “light packages,” in
which, for instance, art subjects replaced mathematics and sciences. Such final exam
packages proved an obstacle when enrolling in most fields of study in higher education.
Notwithstanding such concerns, Dutch performance in the PISA scores showed little
change. Apparently, similar trends occurred elsewhere. However, it must be noted that
the high Dutch scores are predominantly to be ascribed to the good results of pupils in
middle and lower sectors of the educational system. In other words: Dutch pupils
proved less weak by comparison to other countries. In the top, however, the Dutch
scores started to lag behind.
The quality of universities was not only challenged by an increasing number of
freshmen with insufficient language and mathematical skills, but also by financial cut-
backs of the government since the 1980s. A further factor was the rather noncommittal
attitude of professors and students alike, a persistent remnant of the old elite education.
The percentage of students who actually complete their studies, in the humanities as well
as in social sciences and sciences, remained steady around 50 percent. Only in the medical
sciences were output percentages at an acceptable level (85 percent). The rather weak
commitment of the staff was caused by a tradition of giving research priority over teaching.
Because of these trends and developments, the emphasis shifted back toward qual-
ity and excellence in the 1980s. This had to be done very carefully, as equality was still
generally favored. The National Inspection for Education (Onderwijsinspectie) increas-
ingly focused on furthering quality. In primary education, reading and calculus were
gradually given more attention and the standards in these subjects were raised. Further,
it was gradually acknowledged that pupils with exceptional talents should be given
more attention, something that had not really been accepted under the egalitarian
principles of the past. In secondary education, the free choice of pupils to select their
own final exam package was replaced by the four profiles mentioned above. Dutch,
English, and mathematics were labeled core subjects; they were incorporated in all four
profiles and the bar for the final (national) exam in these subjects was set higher.
Measures to increase quality were not limited to primary and secondary schools
only. For the universities a form of national inspection was established in 1986. The
role of this inspection remained rather modest though, as the universities themselves
committed to an external quality evaluation of the various curricula every six years. In
2003, the responsibility for carrying out this evaluation was transferred to the Dutch-
Flemish Accreditation Organization (NVAO).8
A second measure in higher education was to address the low graduation and high
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drop-out rates. In the 1990s, Utrecht University was the first to introduce a didactical
model which aimed at ending the culture of noncommitment. This model was further
fine-tuned in the implementation of the BA/MA structure after the Bologna Agreement
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in 1999. Graduation rates rapidly rose to about 15 to 20 percent above the national
average. Most other universities have since followed suit.
Yet, drop-out rates still give reason for concern. New measures were implemented,
especially for first-year students. These measures involve a study choice check by
matching interviews and trial courses (including examinations) before admission, and
after admission tutorships, interim tests, and – at the end of the first year – the so called
Binding Study Advice (BSA).
All this did not negatively influence student life. On the contrary, a remarkable
renaissance occurred. The traditional student organizations became popular again,
growing to a membership of about 20 percent of all students. New organizations came
into existence, adopting many of the customs of the traditional ones.
A third development was the founding of so-called “university colleges.” In 1998,
the first to open its gates was University College Utrecht (UCU), a highly selective
school offering an English-language, multidisciplinary, international three-year BA
program. Experiences at UCU were in turn used at Utrecht University, in setting up
honors programs and excellence classes, especially in departments with large student
numbers. The growing attention to quality in education in the past few decades will,
given the increasing international competition, most likely continue in the near future.
University College Utrecht:

Challenging Academic Traditions
In August 1998 Utrecht University opened its University College for the first 180
students, arriving from twenty-eight nations all over the world from a univer-
sity education which was to challenge Dutch academic traditions in numerous
ways. As the founding father of the college, Professor Hans Adriaansens,
phrased it, University College Utrecht (UCU) intended its students “to cross the
largest possible river.”
Adriaansens’ initiative in 1994 was strongly supported by the board of the
university, which was successful in convincing reluctant deans of departments,
and in getting the approval of the University Council to spend a substantial
amount of money for housing and personnel. The experiment, which included a
preentry selection procedure, was also approved by the Ministry of Education
and Science. The Ministry of Defense and the city of Utrecht facilitated the acqui-
sition of a major part of the Kromhout military barracks for the college.
The three-year, English-language undergraduate curriculum covered a
broad range of courses in humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Whereas
the Dutch universities traditionally require a choice for a particular field of
study right from the start, University College followed English and American
examples in encouraging students to first explore and develop their talents
and ambitions before making a choice.
University College was set up as the “International Masterclass” of
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Utrecht University. Students were carefully selected in an extensive process,

including letters of application and personal interviews. Such competition for
admission to third-level education was relatively new to the Dutch educa-
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tional landscape. Since selection “at the gate” was impossible, UCU invited
students “behind the gate,” once they were registered at Utrecht University, a
typically Dutch way of experimenting first before adjusting rules and regulations.
Small classes stimulated active participation of students and allowed for
individual attention, in contrast to the sometimes rather massive lectures in
departments with large numbers of students. The competitiveness was further
enhanced by the rather confined community “on campus,” another novelty.
The campus provided not only classrooms and ample study places, but also liv-
ing accommodations and three daily meals in the “Dining Hall” as well. These
arrangements aimed at facilitating students in completing a calculated work-
load of fifty-six hours per week, as the regular annual workload for students
was condensed in two relatively brief semesters of sixteen weeks, instead of
the customary Dutch academic year of forty-two weeks.
Since UCU opened, the first generation of students has spread their wings
to pursue further education at renowned institutions around the world, estab-
lishing the college’s name in the international academic world. In 2014 some
250 freshman students are enrolled. Meanwhile, more universities have opened
similar colleges: Maastricht (2002), Middelburg (Roosevelt), a branch of Utrecht
University (2004), Amsterdam (University of Amsterdam and the Free Univer-
sity, 2009), Leiden (in The Hague, 2010), Enschede (2013), and Rotterdam (2013).
In September 2014 Groningen will open its university college.
Meanwhile in Europe
The European Union has steadily affected Dutch higher education and research, among
others, by introducing a range of “framework programs” for the funding of research
and development, and by supporting student-exchange programs such as Erasmus and
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Socrates, in which hundreds of thousands of students participate each year. This sug-
gests that the future intellectual elite will be more mobile and more Europe-minded
than earlier generations.
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The research universities have traditionally been characterized by a strong interna-
tional orientation, both in their curricula and in exchange programs. An increasing
number of courses are offered in English, as are the curricula of the university colleges.
The influx of international students in regular study programs and in Summer Schools
– with more than 3,000 international students, the Utrecht Summer School is the
largest academic Summer School in Europe – demonstrates the attractiveness of Dutch
education abroad. Yet, notwithstanding the international orientation of Dutch higher
education, relatively few Dutch students spend part of their studies at a university
abroad. The high quality of Dutch higher education itself may help to explain this, as
may the above-mentioned attractive character of Dutch student life.
After the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, Europe really did get involved
in higher education. At first, the European Commission claimed it would never strive
for the harmonization of higher education, whose diversity was praised extensively.
Ironically, the universities themselves had different ideas. In 1998, during the festivi-
ties for the 750th anniversary of the Sorbonne in Paris, the first plans were made to har-
monize higher education in Europe. In 1999, the oldest university in the world, the
University of Bologna (Italy), gave its name to a major structural change in higher edu-
cation, when twenty-nine ministers of education signed an agreement to make aca-
demic degrees and quality assurance between their nations more compatible in order to
create greater uniformity in the maze of European curricula and diplomas.
It has been more than fifteen years since the Bologna Agreement was signed. Dutch
universities were among the first to adopt the proposed Anglo-American system of
three separate cycles for bachelor, master, and doctorate (PhD) students. However, the
expected results remain forthcoming. Upon completing their BA, most students still
continue in an MA at the same university. Furthermore, students predominantly
choose an MA in the same field as their BA. The universities themselves create barriers,
because many departments do not feel capable of assessing the quality of a candidate
with previous training outside their own discipline. Even graduates of the university
colleges, with broad and interdisciplinary programs, were in the initial phase often re-
jected by Dutch MA programs, whereas they were warmly welcomed in Anglo-Saxon
universities. It must be noted in passing that this phenomenon is not particularly
Dutch, but widespread in continental Europe, hampering the so-called “degree mobil-
ity” which formed part of the aims laid down in the Bologna Agreement.
Balancing Quality and Equality

The Dutch educational landscape is changing – this much is clear. It is very likely that
the future will see further differentiation and more challenging honors programs in
higher education, as the cherished equality between universities needs to be balanced
against increasing demands for more quality in the form of top institutes and centers of
excellence. Increasing numbers of ranking lists already provide proof of this growing
focus on quality and quality assessment. The taboo around differentiation and selectiv-
ity has been broken, not only by Europe, but also from within. However, the social sup-
port and, consequently, the legal commitment to equal opportunities in education will
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remain a crucial foundation of the Dutch policy, at home as well in the European con-
text. To find a new balance between quality and equality is the great challenge.
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Further reading
Akkerman, Ype, Overcoming School Failure, Policies That Work. Background Report for the Netherlands.
Den Haag: Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, 2011.

Boer, Harry de, Renze Kolster and Hans Vossensteyn, “Motives Underlying Bachelors-Masters
Transitions: The Case of Dutch Degree Stackers.” Higher Education Policy 23 (2010), 381-396.
Jacobs, Aletta. Memories: My Life as an International Leader in Health, Suffrage, and Peace, edited by
Harriet Feinberg; translated by Annie Wright. New York: The Feminist Press, 1996.
Marginson, Simon, Thomas Weko, Nicola Channon, Terttu Luukkonen, and Jon Oberg. OECD
Reviews of Tertiary Education: Netherlands. Paris: OECD Publishing, 2008.
Nusche, Deborah, Henry Braun, Gábor Halász, and Paulo Santiago, OECD Reviews of Evaluation and
Assessment in Education: Netherlands. Paris: OECD Publishing, 2014.
Weert, Egbert de, and Petra Boezerooy. Higher Education in the Netherlands. Country Report.
Enschede: Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, 2008.
Further information: the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher

Education (NUFFIC), http://www.nuffic.nl
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chapter 21
Immigration
and Diversity
by han entzinger
The prevailing self-image of the Dutch has always been one of a strong international
orientation and an open mind towards influences from abroad: an open society with
open borders. The Dutch prided themselves on their tolerance for other cultures and
religions, and they were believed to welcome immigrants and refugees from all over the
world. In the late twentieth century the Netherlands had become one of the countries
in Europe with the largest share of foreign-born. Its generous and respectful policies of
multiculturalism served as a shining example for other immigration societies. Since
the turn of the millennium, however, the Dutch mind appears to have been closing at
an unprecedented speed. Immigration is now seen as a major problem, as a threat to
social stability and to Dutch culture. The murders of politician Pim Fortuyn (2002) and
film director Theo van Gogh (2004), both of them outspoken antagonists of immi-
gration, in particular from Muslim countries, shocked the nation. In the past years,
Geert Wilders’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV) has become a
powerful force in Dutch politics.
Why this sudden change? Is immigration really undermining the country’s stabil-
ity and culture, as certain antagonists claim? Is it really challenging the country’s iden-
tity, or would that identity have changed anyway, even without migration? What are
the main arguments used in the current debate on immigration and how valid are they?
These are some of the questions to be dealt with in this chapter. Before analyzing the
current debate, however, an overview of the highlights of Dutch immigration history,
with an emphasis on the past half a century will be presented.
A Brief History of Immigration

Already in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Republic was a safe haven for
Protestants and Jews persecuted elsewhere in Europe.1 Particularly welcome were those
who brought along entrepreneurial skills and money. Without immigration, the Dutch
“Golden Age” would have been much less prosperous. Over many years, tens of thou-
sands of migrant workers from neighboring countries came to work in agriculture,
industry or shipping. Many of them settled for good. Numerous family names that now
seem utterly Dutch, in fact have French or German roots. In the year 1700, for example,
40 percent of the population of Amsterdam were foreign-born. The role of the Dutch in
international trade and in colonizing other parts of the world could never have been a
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success without an ability to adapt to highly different conditions and cultures. Even the
tulip, the ultimate national symbol, was, in fact, imported from Turkey in the fifteenth
century.
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Much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were characterized by an
emigration surplus. Many Dutch left the country for one of the colonies – above all for
the Dutch East Indies – or they emigrated to the “New World.” After the Second World
War this pattern reversed once more. Since then, immigrants have been arriving from
former colonies, from labor recruitment countries around the Mediterranean Sea, from
other countries in Europe, and, increasingly, from all over the world. The recent history
of immigration to the Netherlands and the immigrant presence in the country are not
drastically different from those in nearby West European countries. Currently, about 11
percent of the Dutch population of 16.8 million people are foreign-born and for that
reason can be qualified as immigrants. If one includes the so-called second generation
(that is to say their Dutch-born children), the percentage goes up to twenty-one.
Thus, more than one in five persons living in the Netherlands is either an immi-
grant or a child of an immigrant. These figures include people with a background in
other EU-countries, in Western countries outside the European Union as well as in pre-
independent Indonesia. The number of residents with “non-Western origins,” as offi-
cial Dutch statistics call them, stands at almost two million, just over one-ninth of the
population. Among these “visible minorities” three communities stand out in size:
Turks, Surinamese and Moroccans, each numbering close to four hundred thousand.
The Turkish and the Moroccan communities are legacies of the so-called “guest
worker” policies in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which were followed by a rather gen-
erous program of settlement and family reunion. Most migrants from Surinam arrived
in the 1970s, when this former Dutch colony acquired political independence. Since the
late 1980s the origins of immigration have become much more diverse. The end of the
Cold War led to a significant growth of East European migrants and of asylum seekers,
some of whom later acquired refugee status. Besides, growing numbers of Dutch and
foreign residents find their spouses in other countries. In recent years, the number of
highly skilled migrant workers has also increased, although many of them do not settle
permanently. Meanwhile, follow-up migration among the three largest “non-Western”
communities, the Turks, the Surinamese and the Moroccans, is continuing, albeit at a
much slower pace than before. More recently, the numbers of migrant workers from
other EU-countries has gone up significantly, particularly from Poland, Romania and
Bulgaria. It remains to be seen, however, how many of these will actually settle.
Foreign citizens constitute only a minority of all people of immigrant descent. In
fact, only 4.7 percent of the population of the Netherlands do not hold a Dutch pass-
port, less than in most nearby countries. This is largely an effect of a generous natural-
ization policy in the past and of the fact that nearly all (post-)colonial migrants hold
Dutch passports anyway. Yet, unlike many other immigration countries in Europe,
citizenship is not generally considered as the primary distinguishing factor between
migrants and the native population. Rather, ethnic origin tends to be more relevant in
the public perception as a means of differentiating between them and us. The Dutch have
even coined a term for this: the Greek-based word allochtoon (non-indigenous) refers to
someone whose ethnic roots lie outside the Netherlands and who, for that reason, can
be differentiated from autochtoon (indigenous), the native Dutch. An interesting, but
unresolved question, of course, is whether an allochtoon can ever become autochtoon and,
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if so, at what stage in the integration process or even after how many generations.
Settlement patterns of people with an immigrant background, irrespective of
where one places the defining boundary between allochtoon and autochtoon, are quite
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unbalanced. As in most other countries in Europe, migrants tend to be overrepresented
in the larger cities and underrepresented in the countryside. Initially, most migrants
came to the cities, where employment and educational opportunities were best. Once
migrant communities had settled there, follow-up migrants tended to join them, taking
advantage of the increasing social and geographic mobility of the original population,
who had left the least attractive housing to the new arrivals. The largest four cities in
the country (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht) house only 13 percent of
the total population of the Netherlands, but they accommodate 30 percent of all immi-
grants. In Amsterdam Rotterdam and The Hague about half the population has an
immigrant background (first and second generation), as do two-thirds of the school-
aged children and youth in these cities. In certain neighborhoods only a small autoch-
tone population of students and pensioners has stayed behind.
Indonesian Rijsttafel: Sharing the Table

Classical integration theory argues that immigrants preserve their food habits
long after they have become assimilated into their new surroundings. Many
tend to abandon their language, culture and music more readily than their
food. It may take up to several generations before the immigrant offspring
have taken on the same diet as their native peers. This is certainly true for
many newcomers in the Netherlands. Admittedly, the relatively unsophisti-
cated traditional Dutch cuisine may not have been too appetizing to them any-
way.
What is often overlooked, however, is that newcomers may also influence
local cuisine. This is how Americans – and the world – got their pizzas, how
chicken tikka masala became a standard dish in the United Kingdom, and why
the French have taken on couscous. The Dutch have their own version of this
culinary creolization: Indonesian rijsttafel (or “rice table”). Rijsttafel, now a fa-
vorite in numerous Indonesian restaurants around the country, was unknown
until after the Second World War. In fact, it is an invention of the Dutch colo-
nial elite in the Netherlands East Indies, who were the only ones able to afford
serving up to some fifteen or even twenty local dishes all at the same time in
one meal – each of them in a little bowl, along with some rice. The Indonesians
themselves were far more modest, limiting themselves to one or two of these
dishes only, or even just a bowl of fried rice.
After Indonesia’s independence, over three hundred thousand “repatri-
ates” – made up of the Dutch colonial elite as well as Indonesian Dutch of
mixed origin (Indische Nederlanders) – came to the Netherlands. They brought
rijsttafel with them, and introduced it into Dutch cuisine. Surprisingly, given
the fact that most dishes are very spicy, rijsttafel quickly became rooted in its
new surroundings. Some Dutch restaurants abroad even feature Indonesian
rijsttafel as their most typical Dutch dish. Since people have begun to travel
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the world more, cooking in the Netherlands has become more international, as
in many other countries. However, good old rijsttafel remains an interesting
example of how migration may affect eating habits in two directions.
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Over half a century has passed since the large scale immigration from Indo-
nesia. A third generation has come of age and, sadly, the typical colonial Indi-
sche culture in the Netherlands has almost disappeared. “Indisch” has become
a remnant of the past – or tempo doeloe, Malay for “the old times.” The fact
that about three out of four people with a background in Indonesia have mar-
ried a native Dutch person may have contributed to this. However, every Dutch-
man knows what nasi goreng, babi panggang, gado gado, sambal goreng boon-
tjes and saté means and many do like it a lot. Who would have predicted that
three hundred and fifty years of colonial heritage once would pass through the
stomach?
First Steps Towards Integration

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the beginning of large-scale immigration
and the emergence of the welfare state more or less coincided in time.2 No wonder that,
in the 1950s, it was mainly through a number of well-chosen social policy measures
that some 300,000 so-called “repatriates” from Indonesia were encouraged to assimi-
late into Dutch society, with which most already had a certain familiarity. Later, in the
1960s and 1970s, social policy again played a crucial role in the reception and guidance
of newly arriving immigrants, low skilled “guest workers” from Southern Europe,
Turkey and Morocco as well as people from Surinam. A major difference, however, was
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that these migrants’ residence was seen as temporary, both by the Dutch authorities
and by most migrants themselves. As a consequence, no efforts were made this time
to promote integration. On the contrary, migrants were encouraged to retain their
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cultural identity. The official justification was that this would help them reintegrate
upon their return to their countries of origin. One of the most outspoken expressions
of this approach was the introduction of mother tongue teaching for migrant children
in Dutch primary schools as early as 1974. The authorities also facilitated migrants in
setting up their own associations and consultative bodies.
This approach of creating separate facilities based on community identities was
not new to the Dutch. Under the segregated system known as pillarization (verzuiling)
various religious and ideological communities had long had their own institutional
arrangements, such as schools, hospitals, social assistance agencies, newspapers, trade
unions, political parties and even broadcasting corporations. Within the limits of the
law, each community was free to create its own arrangements. This enabled them to
preserve their specific identity and to “emancipate” their members in their own way.3
Since the late 1960s, however, pillarization has lost ground. Yet, it was generally be-
lieved that what did not work anymore for the population as a whole might be good for
the migrants who, after all, were perceived as fundamentally different from the Dutch
and as people in need of emancipation. Until about 1980 the promotion of institu-
tional separation could easily be justified with an appeal to the migrants’ presumed
temporary residence. However, this institutional separation persisted even after the
Dutch government finally acknowledged that most migrants would stay and should be
encouraged to integrate.
The path that was envisaged for integration was remarkably similar to the one that
had worked in the past for the religious and ideological “pillars.” It was a combination
of combating social deprivation through selected support measures provided by the
then still generous welfare state, promoting equal treatment, and encouraging “eman-
cipation,” while aiming at the preservation of the communities’ cultural identity.
To this end the migrants were labeled ethnic minorities, and the policy on their behalf
became known as Minorities’ Policy. Interestingly, a country with remarkable ethnic
homogeneity now introduced the notion of ethnicity as a basis for differential policy-
making. The authorities and a vast majority of the population were convinced that this
was the best way to promote the “emancipation” of migrants. It was this policy of delib-
erate separation that drew worldwide attention from protagonists of multiculturalist
policies.
However, doubts were voiced about the effectiveness of this minority policy.4 Some
critics claimed that stressing ethnic differences would risk perpetuating them and
would therefore become an obstacle to the migrants’ fuller social participation, a phe-
nomenon known as ethnicization or minorization. This was all the more worrying, since
the economic downturn in the early 1980s had left large numbers of low skilled work-
ers – often of immigrant origin – without a job. By 1990, more than one third of all
Turkish and Moroccan men in the Netherlands were unemployed; unemployment
rates for women were still much higher. Most of the Dutch considered it inappropriate
to encourage these immigrants to return, since the Dutch economy owed so much to
them. Consequently, however, immigration became a growing burden for welfare and
social policy regimes. Yet it was widely considered to be politically incorrect, if not
racist, to discuss this in public.
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Nevertheless, dissatisfaction grew under the surface. In 1991, the leader of the con-
servative Liberal Party (VVD), Frits Bolkestein, triggered a first public debate about
immigration, which focused on the presumed incompatibility of Islam and “Western
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values.” His remarks were influenced by the Rushdie affair in the United Kingdom and
by recurrent disputes in France about the wearing of headscarves in public schools.
Concerns grew in the Netherlands that the strong cultural relativism which had in-
spired the Minorities’ Policy tended to perpetuate the immigrants’ marginal situation
rather than foster integration.
After the 1994 parliamentary elections the Christian Democrats (CDA) remained
outside the government for the first time in almost a century. Traditionally, they had
been the heralds of pillarization. This explains why the new coalition of three non-reli-
gious parties, headed by Labor Party (PvdA) leader Wim Kok, was now able to shift the
policy focus from respecting cultural diversity to promoting the immigrants’ social and
economic participation. Significantly, the Minorities’ Policy was renamed Integration
Policy. From that moment on, culture was largely seen as a private affair; providing jobs
to immigrants had become the main policy objective. Mother tongue teaching was
removed from the core curriculum and later disappeared from the schools altogether.
Besides, it was recognized that the migrants’ lack of integration was also due to their
insufficient familiarity with the Dutch language and society. A program of mandatory
Dutch language and inburgering (“civic integration”) courses was launched, which every
newly arriving migrant from outside the European Union would be obliged to attend.
The ambition to improve the migrants’ position in employment, education, hous-
ing and other significant spheres of society proved to be quite successful. Registered
unemployment among allochtonen dropped dramatically, though it still remained sub-
stantially above the national average. It was generally assumed, however, that it was
the prospering economy rather than targeted government policies that had led to this
improvement. Also in education the position of allochtonen, particularly of the second
generation, improved significantly during the later 1990s. Although they were still
overrepresented in lower forms of secondary education, their participation in higher
education went up rapidly and their school dropout rate declined. The housing situa-
tion of immigrants no longer differed significantly from that of the native population
of similar income levels. In other words, immigrant integration, measured by the tradi-
tional standards, advanced. The Dutch believed they were on the right track.
Problematizing the Issue

Nevertheless, certain problems related to immigration proved to be more persistent.
The still rather amateurish integration courses failed to meet the rising expectations
about the Dutch language proficiency of immigrants. Growing segregation led to a de-
crease in inter-ethnic contacts both at schools and in immigrant concentration districts.
The still pillarized school system reinforced existing patterns of segregation and fa-
cilitated Muslims in establishing Islamic primary and even several secondary schools,
some of which failed to meet Dutch standard quality norms. Even more worrying were
the high delinquency rates among certain immigrant communities, which, at first,
were mainly seen as a result of lacking opportunities and discriminatory practices.
Later, the inability of immigrant parents to raise their children in a Western environ-
ment and, increasingly, their unfamiliarity, if not disagreement with Western values
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such as equality and tolerance were held accountable for faltering integration and high
crime rates. Finally, concerns were growing, though seldom expressed, about the rela-
tively strong reliance on various social policy provisions among ethnic minorities.
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At the start of the new millennium, two contradictory narratives began to emerge in
the Dutch public debate on integration. The “official” one expressed that considerable
progress had been achieved in all major indicators, such as participation in employ-
ment, in education and housing. Overall, the second generation was doing significantly
better than their parents, particularly among the Surinamese. The continuing identifi-
cation among Turks and Moroccans with their countries of origin and with Islam was
taken as a sign of a successful multiculturalism: institutional integration could indeed
go hand in hand with preservation of the original cultural identity. The sharp rise in
naturalizations during the 1990s was yet another sign that growing numbers of immi-
grants saw a future for themselves in the Netherlands.
The competing view was much less optimistic. Paul Scheffer, a publicist and a
prominent member of the Labor Party, was among the first to voice this view openly.
In a much-debated article called The Multicultural Tragedy he stated that Dutch multi-
culturalism had failed.5 Instead, he argued, a new ethnic underclass was emerging of
immigrants who did not identify sufficiently with Dutch culture and society, and who
were unwilling and unable to integrate. Scheffer voiced the concern that many Dutch
people felt – but did not express – about continuing immigration, stagnant integra-
tion, increased segregation and a rapidly growing Muslim population. Scheffer argued
that this would eventually undermine social cohesion and the functioning of the liberal
democratic state, particularly because of the supposedly illiberal ideas of the Muslims.
He accused the Dutch elite of having remained largely indifferent to these develop-
ments. Their cultural relativism had allegedly prevented them from demanding the
newcomers to adapt. Respect for cultural difference had prevailed over understanding
the needs of the less privileged members of the native population.
In this climate of increased sensitivity regarding immigration in general and Islam
in particular, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States rein-
forced the impression that a “clash of civilizations” was imminent.6 Around that same
time the star of Pim Fortuyn suddenly began to rise on the Dutch political stage.
Fortuyn was not really against immigrants as such, but his primary concern was the
assault on democratic liberties that might result from the presence of so many people
unfamiliar with Western values, particularly Muslims. Further immigration, he argued,
would only exacerbate these problems. Fortuyn was killed by an animal rights activist
nine days before the parliamentary elections of May 2002. His newly established party,
however, ended second in these elections and became a partner in the new government
coalition. This coalition proved to be very unstable, and was soon replaced by a more
stable one that embarked on a tough anti-immigration agenda, which included the cur-
tailing of family migration and the promotion of returns. Soon thereafter, immigration
to the Netherlands dropped significantly. Between 2004 and 2007 the country’s migra-
tion balance was negative, for the first time in four decades. In that period, Poland and
Lithuania were the only two other EU-countries where emigrants outnumbered immi-
grants.
Integration policy also took a more assimilative direction. The dominant view
became that migrants were to blame for their slow integration and should take the
initiative to step up this process. Some lip service was paid to the idea that integration
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should be two-sided and that the established population should also leave some space
to the newcomers, but only a few concrete policy measures pointed in that direction.
Acquiring Dutch citizenship, for example, was made much more difficult and expensive,
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which provoked a plunge in naturalizations. At the request of the city of Rotterdam,
the stronghold of Pim Fortuyn, a new law was passed which enabled local authorities to
prevent people with low incomes (meant to be a non-discriminatory proxy for ‘immi-
grants’) from settling in certain neighborhoods. Enrollment in mandatory integration

courses was enforced, even for allochtonen who had already been living in the country for
decades. Passing the integration exam became compulsory, and failing to do so now led
to a fine and to denial of permanent settlement rights. Most of the new measures left
little or no room for a public recognition of the migrants’ cultural identity. This led to
the paradox that the same migrants who had been encouraged to preserve their own
identity in the days of multiculturalism, were now blamed for their lack of identifica-
tion with Dutch culture.
The emphasis in the integration debate has shifted quite clearly from promoting a
fuller social participation for immigrants towards requesting newcomers to assimilate
to Dutch culture and to assume a “Dutch identity.” 7 Understandably, this has provoked
fierce discussions on the nature and contents of that identity. The most outspoken fea-
ture of this “culturalization” of the immigration debate has been the growing emphasis
on Islam as a major cause of many integration problems. Although less than half of all
non-Western allochtonen in the Netherlands are Muslims, many autochtonen now con-
sider Islam and its perceived expansiveness and oppressiveness as the root of all evil.
They see the growing presence of Islam as a threat to the Dutch liberal and permissive
attitudes on issues such as sexuality, equal rights, freedom of religion, and freedom of
expression. In fact, film director Theo van Gogh was murdered in 2004 by a Dutch-born
Muslim fundamentalist of Moroccan background who felt he had insulted Islam. This
murder provoked strong reactions among large segments of the native population,
who tended to be blind to the fact that the vast majority of Muslims in the Netherlands
also strongly disagreed with the killing.
Since then, immigration and integration have risen to the top of the political
agenda. Attitudes towards these issues have become much tougher, not only in politics,
but also in society at large. Undoubtedly, the frequent linking of Islam, immigration
and security has had a negative impact on public opinion among both autochtonen and
allochtonen. Surveys indicate a decline in acceptance of cultural diversity, once consid-
ered a trademark of the Netherlands.8 Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom (PVV), which
has a strong anti-Islam and anti-immigrant agenda, has become a major force in Dutch
politics. According to opinion polls it was favored by more than one-fifth of the elec-
torate in 2013. The Party for Freedom supported the Rutte I cabinet (2010-2012), de-
manding an even tougher anti-immigration agenda than the one of previous cabinets.
However, plans to limit immigration soon proved to clash with EU-directives and other
international obligations, while the increasing diversity in the major cities is obliging
local authorities to account for specific needs of certain immigrant communities. The
Rutte II cabinet, which took office in 2012, no longer needs Wilders’s support, but its
immigration and integration agenda is only slightly milder than that of its predecessor.
In an effort to gain back part of their electorates some of the traditional parties have
also adopted a tougher stance on immigration and diversity issues. At present, the gen-
eral idea is that migrants are responsible for their own integration, while policies that
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cater specifically for immigrants are taboo. The days of multiculturalism have long
gone.
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Ahmed Aboutaleb:
Mayor of a Diverse City
Just days before the United States elected Barack Obama as its first non-white
president in November 2008, a similar milestone was reached in the Nether-
lands. For the first time in history, a Dutch Moroccan became mayor – not just
of a small village, but of the second largest city in the country: Rotterdam, with
six hundred thousand inhabitants.
That new mayor was Ahmed Aboutaleb, born in 1961 in Morocco. At the
age of 15, he migrated to the Netherlands, where his father had arrived as a
“guest worker” some years before. He received his training as an engineer and
held several positions in journalism and in Dutch public administration before
becoming the founding director of Forum, a publicly financed information and
advocacy agency for diversity. After he acquired a feel for politics in that posi-
tion, Aboutaleb was elected an alderman to the Amsterdam local government
in 2004. Only months later, film director Theo van Gogh was murdered by a
radical Muslim of Dutch-Moroccan descent. In the grim aftermath Ahmed
Aboutaleb, together with Amsterdam’s mayor Job Cohen, was able to defuse
tensions, both at the Moroccan and at the Dutch side. He proved to be a real
bridge-builder, not by talking softly about the need for mutual understanding,
but by demanding that the Moroccans step up their integration efforts and
consider the Netherlands unequivocally as their first home.
After it had supported multiculturalism for many years, the Dutch Labor
Party (PvdA), of which Aboutaleb meanwhile had become a prominent mem-
ber, was eager to hear this message
from someone who had been an immi-
grant. When Labor joined the natio-
nal government after the November
2006 elections, Aboutaleb became the
Deputy Minister for Social Affairs and
Employment. His nomination did not
pass without political turmoil, as sev-
eral parties on the right saw his dual
citizenship as a sign of disloyalty to
the Netherlands. Aboutaleb survived
a vote of no confidence in Parliament
and he was confirmed in office. In fact,
the Moroccan law would have made
it impossible for him to relinquish his
Moroccan citizenship, even if he had
wished to do so.
Two years later he became mayor
of Rotterdam, by appointment of the
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national government upon nomina-

tion of the city council, as is custom-
ary in the Netherlands. Local politics
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in Rotterdam had been sharply divided since Pim Fortuyn’s party Leefbaar
Rotterdam (“Liveable Rotterdam”) won the local elections of 2002, ending
ahead of Labor, which had governed the city since times immemorial. In 2006,
Labor had taken the lead again, mainly as a result of a huge turnout among
the Rotterdam immigrant communities. Understandably, “the Liveables”
were seeking revenge. At first, they strongly objected to Aboutaleb’s nomina-
tion, again because of his two passports, but they soon realized that the new
mayor’s rather hard line on integration came close to theirs. Nevertheless,
Aboutaleb does not face an easy task. A Dutch mayor is supposed to stand
above all parties, which means that he often has to maneuver very skillfully.
In a socially, ethnically and politically polarized city like Rotterdam this cer-
tainly is a challenge, even for an immigrant as successful as Ahmed Aboutaleb.
In his first five years in office he has shown to be able to cope with this chal-
lenge.
Open Borders, Closing Minds?

Why has this dramatic turnaround occurred? Anti-immigration sentiments have also
been growing elsewhere in Europe, but nowhere has the swing been as huge as in the
country once reputed for its tolerance. Of course, the economic crisis and the rise of
Islam as a political force may serve as explanations. These, however, are worldwide phe-
nomena and there are no reasons to believe that these have hit the Netherlands harder
than other European countries. It is more likely, therefore, that the explanation should
be found domestically. In mainstream politics – not just the Party for Freedom – the
belief is widespread now that earlier policies of multiculturalism must be held account-
able for the immigrants’ lack of integration. Recognizing and facilitating their cultural
identity has kept immigrants in the margins of Dutch society. In hindsight, what had
worked in the days of “pillarization” for the emancipation of native religious and ideo-
logical minorities should not have been copied for immigrant ethnic minorities with
strong attachments to other countries and to Islam, a world religion not rooted in the
European traditions. In this view, multiculturalism has perpetuated the immigrants’
marginality and explains their perceived lack of loyalty as well as the emergence of
social tensions and delinquency.
To what extent do such views reflect reality? There is ample research evidence that
most people of immigrant background living in the Netherlands are faring quite well.9
In 2004, an all-party Parliamentary Committee concluded that “in most cases immi-
grants have integrated remarkably well and that this has occurred in spite of public
policies rather than as an effect of these.”10 Research among Rotterdam youngsters of
Turkish and Moroccan descent also indicates that their integration, as measured by all
traditional standards, has progressed substantially in the past decade.11 Their social
situation has become more similar to that of their autochtone peers, and so have their
ideas, views and expectations on almost everything, except religion and issues related
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to it. At the same time, however, both allochtonen and autochtonen mutually perceive a
widening of the cultural distance between them and an increased discrimination.
Turkish and Moroccan youngsters, especially the more highly educated, are less opti-
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mistic about their own future than Dutch youngsters and also less optimistic than they
were ten years before.
Such findings, confirmed by numerous other research outcomes, may lead to the
conclusion that, in fact, immigrant integration has been quite successful in most cases,
but that the dominant definition of “successful integration” has changed meanwhile.
Undoubtedly, Dutch society has changed profoundly in the last few decades. Immi-
gration has contributed significantly to these changes. Large segments of the native
Dutch population perceive this as a threat, and see immigration and Islam as a major
scapegoat for changes that may have gone too fast. Some recent dramatic events have
reinforced thinking in terms of us and them or, for that matter, in terms of autochtonen
versus allochtonen. One should wonder, however, whether the initial multiculturalist
approach must not also be seen in this perspective. Was it really as genuine and hos-
pitable as most people believed in the earlier days of large-scale immigration? After all,
facilitating immigrants to retain their own cultural identity may also have served as a
ready excuse for not letting them become part of mainstream society. To the first gener-
ation such a marginal situation may still have been acceptable, but the second gener-
ation that has since come of age tend to claim a fair piece of the pie in an increasingly
diverse society. It seems time for the Dutch mind to open up, even more so since closing
the borders to new immigration has proved to be impossible.
Further reading
Bijl, Rob, and Arjen Verweij, eds. Measuring and Monitoring Immigrant Integration in Europe.
The Hague: Netherlands Institute for Social/Research (SCP), 2012.
Dagevos, Jacco, and Mérove Gijsberts. Integration in Ten Trends. The Hague: Netherlands Institute
for Social Research (SCP), 2010.
Ederveen, Sjef, et al. Destination Europe: Immigration and Integration in the European Union. The Hague:
CPB/SCP/CBS, 2004.
FORUM Institute for Multicultural Affairs publishes regular fact sheets in English on immigration
and diversity in the Netherlands: http://www.forum.nl/international/Publications/Fact–Sheets
Lucassen, Leo, and Rinus Penninx. Newcomers: Immigrants and Their Descendants in the Netherlands,
1550-1995. Amsterdam: Aksant, 2002.
Sniderman, Paul M., and Louk Hagendoorn. When Ways of Life Collide: Multiculturalism and its
Discontents in the Netherlands. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
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chapter 22
Legal Culture
by wibo van rossum
The Dutch expression “soft whenever possible, tough when necessary” seems to in-
dicate the balancing act of Dutch legal and policy professionals when they manage
society.1 Balancing is needed because “possible” and “necessary” are unsettled criteria.
The “soft” approach is also visible in Dutch legal culture and is indicated by terms such
as pragmatism, tolerance, and tact.
This chapter will argue that the “soft whenever possible” approach is characteristic
for Dutch legal culture. After presenting the characteristics of this policy tradition
three case studies will be discussed: the approach toward illegal drugs that is strongly
influenced by a concern over health, the development of euthanasia that is guided by
the willingness to put ourselves in the shoes of those who suffer, and the stubborn
paternalism toward divorced parents to take responsibility for their children. The last
example is the exception that proves the rule, since it is at odds with the basics of Dutch
legal culture.
The Paradoxes of Beleid

Dutch legal culture is fundamentally paradoxical. On the one hand it needs rules,
because rules give clarity and legal certainty. At the same time, however, Dutch legal
culture tends to be nonlegalistic and pragmatic. Rules should only be applied if they
serve a goal, and not for their own sake. The dominant train of thought is that rules
cannot cover everything, and compliance needs agreement with the people who are
addressed by those rules. The Dutch word beleid covers this characteristic. It is a cultural
marker that is difficult to translate. The English term “policy” only partially covers
its meaning. The Dutch language dictionary offers contradictory definitions of beleid.
On the one hand, it lists that beleid means to manage and administer (besturen) on the
basis of facts and expertise, which implies top-down planning (this is the “policy”
part). On the other hand, however, it defines the term as a considerate approach
(bedachtzaamheid), preferably by hearing all those concerned and giving them a say.
These meanings are contradictory: one can either make decisions against the wishes of
at least some of those concerned, or one can come to an agreement with mutual consent
– which implies nondecisions in the case of a veto or resistance – as if leader and led are
on an equal footing. In theory and in practice, beleid is a mixture of both.
Beleid is the art of rule-making and rule-implementation in context. The more com-
plicated and sensitive the context is, the softer and more consensus seeking needs to be
the approach in formulating the eventual rules. It uses bottom-up and top-down strate-
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gies at the same time. When rule-making is not yet possible at a certain moment, the
issue is postponed, a commission is installed to investigate and write up a report – until
time dictates that the issue finally needs to be resolved, or is not relevant anymore.
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The egalitarian aspect of developing beleid should not divert our attention from the fact
that the Dutch also have a solid tradition of trust in authority. Up to the 1960s this
could easily be recognized in the societal structure of “pillarization” (verzuiling). Each
pillar – be it Protestant, Catholic, liberal, or socialist – had its own elites who main-
tained moral and social control within their own sphere. In general these elites at the
top were trusted authorities who negotiated on behalf of their pillars. Although this
system of segregation imploded in the 1960s, Dutch people still have a rather high level
of trust in their elites. That might be an explanation why initiatives such as the referen-
dum, elected mayors, or lay representation in the professional judiciary never enjoyed
widespread support. The preference is for a combination of elitist rule and popular in-
fluence that is reflected in the complicated notion of beleid.
Pragmatism – in the sense of realistically looking for solutions to problems with-
out referring too much to high ideals and basic principles – is conditioned culturally as
well as structurally. According to the sociologists Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov, the
Netherlands share an extremely “feminine” culture with the Scandinavian countries,
stressing values such as equality, solidarity, sympathy for the weak, and the preference
to resolve conflicts by negotiation and compromise.2 A need to negotiate and to com-
promise is structurally embedded in politics, since no political party is likely to achieve
an absolute majority. As a consequence, Dutch politicians are used to wheeling and
dealing in seeking consensus. This means that moral values are rarely translated into
paternalistic legislation. These values are always counterbalanced by economic consid-
erations, the need for rules to actually work, and values from other domains, such as
social solidarity and health care. An interesting example of this mechanism is offered
by an interlude between 1994 and 2002, when the Christian Democrats were not in-
cluded in the government coalition. A coalition of social democrats and liberals used
this rare opportunity to regulate brothels (2000), allow euthanasia under a strict proto-
col (2001), and legalize same-sex marriages (2001).
The third characteristic of the soft side of Dutch legal culture can be found in the
poldermodel. The term polder (reclaimed land) refers to the collective Dutch struggle
against the water. Metaphorically, however, it stands for decision-making among
supposed equals on the basis of mutual trust and consensus building. The idea is that
public goods cannot be possessed and defended by individuals; people need to work
together for the common good. The support of public goods requires a specific cultural
mix of consensus, egalitarianism, and what Francis Fukuyama called “trust.” 3 In low-
trust societies, such as the United States, law is a substitute for trust. In high-trust
societies, such as the Netherlands, law in action can be nonlegalistic and consensual.
The strong version of the poldermodel denotes corporatist self-government: the pro-
grams of the welfare state such as health and social insurance, unemployment, and
workers’ compensation schemes were administered by tripartite bodies consisting of
representatives of employers and employees – the two groups the Dutch call the “social
partners” – as well as independent experts appointed by the government. The roots of
the poldermodel can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when maintenance of the dikes
became the responsibility of all the farmers in an area, but it assumed its modern form
during the reconstruction after the Second World War.
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The poldermodel received a boost when it was valued internationally as a “possible

third way” between capitalism and socialism in the 1990s.4 But it fell out of favor as the
view emerged in the 1970s that the Dutch welfare state might be out of control: the
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deficits in the public budget increased and loopholes undermined the fairness of the
welfare policies. In the self-regulating administration of the social security system, for
example, nobody had sufficient incentive not to grant disability pensions or early
retirement plans. Employers who wanted to get rid of elderly workers, because they
were often sick or simply undesirable, could remove them from the payroll by offering
long sick-leave or early retirement. Both could easily agree to a benefit scheme, as the
costs were to be paid by the collective insurance scheme. Doctors were inclined to help,
and the social insurance administration found it all but impossible to resist the con-
sensual determination of the employers, employees, and medical officers to spend the
collective funds.
In order to avert the threat of direct government intervention, employers and
unions concluded the Wassenaar Agreement of 1982. Measures against the self-service
arrangements of the welfare state were adopted that effectively lowered spending out
of the public budget. When both employers and employees gave up control over the
implementation of social security at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a weaker
version of the poldermodel supplanted the strong version of corporatist self-government.
The weak version of the poldermodel can also be recognized in diverse forms of institu-
tionalized consultation. In those cases the government is the only player with the
powers to end the discussion and – in theory – can make decisions against the wishes of
the other participants. In practice, however, this hardly ever happens. One of the prime
examples of institutionalized consultation is the Social and Economic Council (Sociaal-
Economische Raad, SER). In theory, SER functions as an advisory body for parliament
and the government. It is very influential, however, when the composite parts – em-
ployers, employees, and independent experts – agree on the socio-economic beleid for
the years to come.
Coping with Illegal Drugs

Drug crimes – similar to abortion, euthanasia, alcoholism, gambling, and much more –
can be labeled as “crimes without victims.” 5 Such crimes refer to strongly demanded
goods or services, where the only victims are the people who are freely and willingly in-
volved, while the lack of a complainant makes criminal law difficult to enforce. Since
there are no sound practical reasons to outlaw crimes without victims, Dutch law in ac-
tion calls for a policy (beleid) of nonenforcement. For decades the law in the books con-
cerning drugs symbolically reflected moral condemnation, while the practice was per-
missive (gedogen). Pragmatism uses the tool of a sliding scale: at the one end a blind eye
is turned to vices with minor ramifications, such as drug abuse in private, and at the
other end strict law enforcement is called for when the stakes are high, as in the case of
the production and trade in hard drugs. In the absence of a yardstick, the in-between
cases are of course the difficult ones: what is the approach to hard-drug addicts, and to
the suppliers of soft drugs? In a pragmatic approach these questions are tackled one by
one and by trial and error, trying to strike a balance between a counterproductive zero
tolerance and an unproductive wait-and-see attitude. The facts of a situation are quite
often decisive, resulting in an unfounded and half-hearted “yes” sometimes and “no” at
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other times. Dutch pragmatism prefers these inconsistencies over blind rule enforcement.
In the 1970s a committee of experts, chaired by a neurologist, formulated the
Dutch policy of tolerance toward soft drugs. The committee refuted the stepping-stone
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hypothesis which held that a cannabis user runs a high risk of becoming a heroin user,
and recommended different approaches to soft drugs and to hard drugs. The idea was
to keep the markets separated. Since the criminal law allows, but does not compel, the
prosecution services to bring a crime to court, nonprosecution can be a matter of policy

(beleid). Guidelines that set explicit standards for prosecution and nonprosecution were
adopted in 1976 by the most left-wing government in Dutch history, the Den Uyl coali-
tion government (1973-1977).6 These prosecution guidelines enhanced the distinction
“soft” and “hard” drugs, by adding a distinction between consumption and produc-
tion. Possession of soft drugs was considered negligible up to thirty grams, small
amounts of hard drugs could be ignored except in case of prior convictions; occasional
dealing within a pattern of addiction would be penalized with fines, yet systematic and
quasi-professional dealing, especially importing and exporting, was penalized with
stiff prison sentences.
This was only half of the story, that of law according to the books. The other half,
law in action, was that the police anticipated the beleid of the prosecutors and took it as
a starting point for setting their own priorities at grassroots level. They tried to get pro-
fessional dealers in hard drugs convicted, but they would not take any action if they
came across small-scale dealing in hard drugs. It was difficult to say when and where,
and as a consequence also why and why not, the law would be enforced.
The borderlines between permitting the small-scale use of soft drugs and prosecut-
ing large-scale dealing in hard drugs are continuously challenged. What should be
done with hard drug addicts whose welfare benefits are not sufficient to cover the daily
costs of their addiction and who therefore turn to crime? A fine makes less sense than a
free and state-controlled distribution of the heroin substitute methadone.7 The quality
checks on ecstasy pills at house parties in the 1990s up to today are rationalized by the
idea that if one cannot eradicate illegal practices, it is better to monitor them in the
interests of public health. The same argument was used in 2013 to legalize growing
Dutch hemp: health concerns over the quality of illegal weed that is supplied to the
back doors of coffeeshops.
The heyday of the drugs beleid ended in 1996. New guidelines for (non)prosecution
were published. While the distinction between soft and hard drugs was preserved, the
permissible amount of soft drugs for personal use was significantly reduced from thirty
to five grams. Later, a minimum distance between coffeeshops and primary schools was
required, which forced many coffeeshops to close. A major concern at the border regions
with Germany and Belgium are the “drug tourists,” not because they buy drugs, but
because they are a nuisance for the cities’ inhabitants. Dutch government therefore
decided to forbid coffeeshops to sell to nonmembers. But, like with all crimes without
victims, this measure also seems to push the drug trade back into the black market,
which ultimately creates more problems on the streets.
Coffeeshops: Controlled Permissiveness

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In the Dutch context, a “coffeeshop” (spelled as one word) is a bar that serves
soft drugs rather than coffee. This very Dutch institution resulted from the
prosecution guidelines of 1996 that tried to regulate drug use and separate
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soft drugs from hard drugs. A coffeeshop had to meet specified requirements
to be tolerated: no sale of hard drugs and alcoholic drinks, no sale to minors, a
maximum of five grams for each transaction, no more than 500 grams of soft
drugs in stock, no advertising, no nuisance to the neighbors, and (in some
municipalities) no sale to noninhabitants of the Netherlands.
Only 103 of the 403 municipalities have one or more coffeeshops. Most of
them are in the larger cities, mainly in Amsterdam. Fully aware of the weak
public support for the coffeeshops, local authorities have reduced their number
by stricter implementation of the rules from 1,004 in 1995 to 617 in 2012. Amster-
dam in particular witnessed a dramatic decline: from 450 in 1995 to 208 in 2012.
The rules that account for this reduction are that coffeeshops should not be
tolerated within 250 meters of a school, should not open in residential areas,
and should not be too close together.
The coffeeshop has lost much of its innocence as a symbol of the under-
ground youth culture of the 1970s and 1980s. About 80 percent of the license
holders in Amsterdam and Venlo (a provincial town in the south of the Nether-
lands, near the border with Germany) was discovered to have an average crim-
inal record of six offenses. Also, drug tourism could not be avoided in a Europe
without borders. Almost all customers of the coffeeshops near the borders
came from Belgium, France, and Germany, until municipalities were able to
restrict sale to inhabitants of the Netherlands. The biggest coffeeshop with a
license for a bar and a restaurant, Checkpoint in Terneuzen (photo) (near the
border with Belgium), attracted more than 900,000 tourists a year who spent
an estimated seven million euro until it was forced to close in 2008. Moreover,
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with so much local experience in vegetable gardening, it did not take long to
produce nederwiet, marijuana of potent quality, thus blurring the distinction
between soft and hard drugs. After the ban on tobacco smoking in pubs in 2008,
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coffeeshops had to find other ways for consumption on the spot than smoking
the usual blend of nederwiet and tobacco.
Apart from coffeeshops there are “grow shops” that legally sell seeds and
equipment for growing marihuana and “smart shops” that used to sell hallucin-
ogenic mushrooms. The suicide of a seventeen-year-old French girl in Amster-
dam in 2007 provided the minister of Public Health with sufficient support to
place 126 varieties of hallucinogenic mushrooms on the list of proscribed drugs
the following year, depriving smart shops of their main source of income.
Regulating Euthanasia
While the Dutch drugs beleid constantly runs the risks of losing control over the drug
market, the legalization of euthanasia is much more balanced. This example involves a
more respectable group, namely doctors who assist in terminating a patient’s life.
Terminal care is part of every medical practice of the general practitioners who provide
the primary health care in the Netherlands. Most requests for euthanasia are dealt with
in this context.
A new Euthanasia Bill was put into effect in 2002. Under the first section of Article
293 of the Criminal Code, someone who takes the life of another at the explicit and
earnest request of the latter is still threatened with a maximum sentence of twelve
years’ imprisonment. But a new second section exempts a doctor from criminal liability
if (s)he has met criteria which have been developed in the case law and informs the
municipal coroner immediately after the lethal act.
The nonprosecution beleid concerning euthanasia emerged from an interaction
between the Supreme Court of the Netherlands (Hoge Raad), the public prosecutors,
and the Royal Dutch Medical Association KNMG. The government wanted to know
more about the practice of euthanasia before embarking on new legislative attempts,
and needed the cooperation of doctors.8 KNMG was willing to cooperate in return for
clear prosecution guidelines, so that doctors who assisted terminally ill patients to end
their life did not have to fear prosecution. This was (and is) not equivalent to a right to
nonprosecution, because the public prosecutor decides on the merits of each case. The
most important condition for nonprosecution is a procedurally controlled ascertain-
ment of the patient’s death wish, which must be verified by a second practitioner. These
and other requirements have been developed in the case law of the Supreme Court.
Five regional advisory bodies, consisting of three experts (in law, medicine, and
ethics), were established in 1998 to evaluate medical euthanasia decisions. They con-
cluded that in only three of the 2,123 euthanasia cases that were filed in 2000 a wrong
decision was made, but none of these cases were pursued. The purpose of the advisory
bodies is to persuade doctors to report their cases with more candor, in order to bring
euthanasia out into the open. This institutional strategy seems to be effective; the num-
ber of reported cases of euthanasia rose from 2.5 percent in 2001 to 2.8 percent in 2012.
A 2013 survey of 866 doctors, however, showed that in cases of terminally ill patients
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10 percent admit that they sometimes give a higher dose of medication than is strictly
required, while 7 percent said they started medication before taking action was strictly
necessary.
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Paternalism Toward
Parenting
Dutch family law, and especially the regulation of parenting after divorce, was charac-
terized for a long time by a pragmatic approach that followed the routine of conven-
tional marriage life. Until 1998 the law granted only one parent custody after divorce,
which was usually the mother. Only in 1995 was the other parent granted a right to see
his children; before that – and only since 1971 – the judge was allowed to grant contact
rights. Most of the time that law remained a dead letter; the general outcome after a
divorce was that mothers took care of the children and maybe worked part-time, while
fathers had a full-time job, paid alimony, and saw their children once every two week-
ends. Dominant ideology held that shared parental rights after a divorce could only
lead to quarrels, which was not in the interest of the children. Arguments tended to be
based on a concern for the stable development of children, and the nonenforceability of
social relationships.
Somewhere halfway in the 1990s this picture started to change. Fathers increas-
ingly stood up for their rights and referred to the right to family life granted by the
European Convention of Human Rights (Article 8). Over time the law changed and con-
tinued custody of both parents after divorce became the rule in 1998, and contact rights
were better secured. However, this situation of “legally continued parenthood” appeared
not to be the end station. The Dutch state became increasingly paternalistic in the sense
that divorced parents, even if they had not been formally married and even when they
held conflicting views, should strive toward a situation of “continued coparenthood,”
in which both parents have an equal say and actually contribute equally to raising their
children. The paternalistic norm of continued coparenthood is valued, despite a lack of
empirical evidence that children are better off, and despite protests from legal practi-
tioners and academics that the norm in many cases actually deviates from the practice
that existed during the marriage.
Another ideologically infused recent norm is the obligation for divorced parents to
draw up a parenting plan that describes how they will divide up the care of their chil-
dren. Since 2009, the parenting plan is legally required to be in place before divorce
proceedings can be started. Unfortunately, the requirement to draw up a parenting
plan can lead to increased conflict between the divorcing parties, who are already fight-
ing over their relationship, and can also be used to create new conflicts. Fathers, who
traditionally worked while their wife took care of the children, now go to court to de-
mand an equal share in raising their kids. The plans are also hard to enforce. The initial
empirical evaluation of the parenting plan requirement concludes that there is no evi-
dence that children are experiencing improved contact with both parents, perceive a
reduction in parental conflict, or are emotionally more stable than in divorce cases
without the plans (those before 2009).9 In this area of family law the Dutch government
seems to have drifted – maybe because of a felt need to be firm and set rules – from the
characteristic Dutch legal cultural approach of pragmatically working toward a beleid
and law that works in practical terms.
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Smoking Ban:
Between Health and Liberty
The ban on smoking in cafés and restaurants in the Netherlands has a short
history of being turned “on” and “off” and “on” again. This was caused by com-
plicated and unclear regulations, by a government switching back and forth
between health care, personal responsibility, and the vulnerable positions of
small cafés, and by groups in society that hold opposing views on health and
liberty and are willing to go to court over them.
Since in the 1970s the adverse health effects of smoking have become
better known. In the Netherlands medical lobby groups (of which STIVORO was
largest) have campaigned against smoking, notably seeking a smoke-free
workplace. In the 1990s their argument was adopted by the Labor Foundation
(Stichting van de Arbeid). Negotiations with employer organizations led to the
conclusion that the issue should be left to the field itself, or, in other words, to
self-regulation. This worked well in about half of all workplaces, as research
showed in 2000. But according to the government the pace of change was not
fast enough.
Regulations that required employers to act came into force in 2004. Right
from the start this was largely effective and most employees did gain a smoke-
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free environment at work. Bars, cafés, and restaurants were exempted from
these regulations, because their clients would still want to smoke, or so people
thought. It was also assumed that self-regulation would eventually ban smoking
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from all bars and restaurants. However, this did not happen – although popular
support for a ban was rising – and the government therefore ended the exemp-
tion in 2008.
In 94 to 99 percent of all restaurants (depending on the type of restau-

rant) the ban was an instant success. But in bars and cafés the ban was
enforced only in about 80 percent of all cases. This sector protested loudly,
especially the single owners of small establishments, since, as they argued,
“We don’t have any employees to protect, so why should the ban apply to us,
too?” They claimed the ban would lead to many a bankruptcy. Several propri-
etors went to court or provoked a fine. In 2010 some courts said their argu-
ments were sound and as a result the ban was in many cases no longer
enforced. Ultimately in 2011 the ban was lifted for bars and cafés without em-
ployees. Another argument in that decision was that people are individually
responsible for their own health, and therefore should be free to visit a bar
where smoking is allowed. Public opinion polls also showed that the wind had
changed: many people thought that the state should back off and deregulate
because “there are too many rules already.”
An organization called the Club of Active Nonsmokers, however, filed
a lawsuit against the Dutch state and argued that the exemption was not in
accordance with the obligations as laid down in the Framework Convention on
Tobacco Control of the World Health Organization. A court of appeal agreed, as
did parliament and the government. By the end of 2013 new regulations were
in the making again to ban smoking from all public spaces.
Debating
the Soft Approach
The contrast between the approach of command and control on the one hand and beleid
on the other is strongest in the practice of the “administrative policy of tolerance”
(gedoogbeleid). It means that administrators publicly accept deviations from the letter of
the law. This policy of tolerance is adopted as a fallback in cases where beleid does not
work. Too much gedoogbeleid results in a shadow administration which becomes an in-
formal legal order of its own. It consists of written administrative decisions that allow
individuals and corporations to transgress the law, judges to uphold these decisions,
and academics to study and comment on the gray administrative policy as if it consti-
tuted the official legal order.
One particular event brought two leading cases before the Dutch Supreme Court.
Contrary to the rules, a local official had allowed polluted dredgings to be dumped in a
nature reserve. The Supreme Court ruled in the ensuing lawsuits that (i) civil servants
are not liable to punishment if the wrongdoing fits within the pattern of the munici-
pality’s gedogen, and (ii) municipalities are not liable to punishment if the offence has
taken place in the context of a public task (the local council is supposed to exercise con-
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trol). 10
The dire consequences of this case law for third parties were brought to light by
two disasters. A firework factory exploded in the middle of the city of Enschede on 13
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May 2000. In total, twenty-three people died in the ensuing inferno, and part of the
town was reduced to a ruin. Two nagging questions can be asked. Why was there such
a factory in a city? The answer: it had been there for a long time and acquired some
leverage on the municipality because of its importance for the local economy and the
labor market. What about the official licenses required? The answer: the factory had
licenses for only three storage containers, but another four were tolerated, of which one
officially. Only the managers of the fireworks factory were convicted.
In a second disaster fourteen youngsters lost their lives and more than three hun-
dred were seriously burned on New Year’s Eve of 2001, when a fire broke out in an over-
crowded bar in Volendam that lacked the proper emergency exits. It turned out that the
manager did not possess the required permits, but was allowed to continue his busi-
ness, because in the small and close-knit fishing village of Volendam enforcement of
rules is more difficult than in a more anonymous city. In both disasters the prosecution
refused to instigate proceedings against state actors because of the case law, in the ab-
sence of which other authorities were asked to investigate the disasters in a noncom-
mittal and therapeutic way.11 Perhaps applying the poldermodel in order to develop rules
and informal practices for complex situations is the best way forward for Dutch legal
culture. The cases of Enschede and Volendam make it clear that when things go wrong,
all of the actors involved share responsibility, but state actors escape liability. This sug-
gests that the concept of beleid (along with gedogen and polderen) is not only hard to un-
derstand, but even harder to defend. Since culture tends to reproduce itself, however,
this characteristic of Dutch legal culture will remain for some time to come.12
Further Reading
Boekhout van Solinge, Tim. Dealing with Drugs in Europe: An Investigation of European Drug Control
Experiences; France, the Netherlands and Sweden. The Hague: BJu Legal Publishers, 2004.
Boele-Woelki, Katharina, B. Braat, and Ian Sumner. European Family Law in Action: Parental
Responsibilities. Antwerp: Intersentia, 2005.
Bruinsma, Fred J. Dutch Law in Action. 2nd ed. Nijmegen: Ars Aequi Libri, 2003.
Griffiths, John, Heleen Weyers, and Maurice Adams. Euthanasia and Law in Europe. Oxford:
Hart Publishing, 2008.
Hofstede, Geert, Gert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov. Cultures and Organizations: Software of
the Mind. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
Hondius, Ewoud, M. J. Chorus, and Piet-Hein Gerver, eds. Introduction to Dutch Law for Foreign
Lawyers. 4th ed. Deventer: Wolters Kluwer, 2004.
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chapter 23
Idealism and Self-Interest

in the World
by duco hellema
Although the glorious days of the Republic of the United Seven Provinces and the
Dutch colonial empire are long gone, the Netherlands is still a power of some signifi-
cance. After a painful process of decolonization and adaptation to the post-war reali-
ties, the Netherlands has become a prosperous Northwest-European country that is an
active member of the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO). In the 1960s and 1970s, it even gained a reputation as a liberal, progressive,
and tolerant society, an idealist supporter of the United Nations and a generous donor
of development aid. In recent years, however, a certain unease and insecurity over the
position and identity of the Netherlands has crept into the minds of the Dutch political
elites which also affects decision making in the field of foreign relations.
The Atlantic Alliance

Before the Second World War the Netherlands was a conservative colonial power, a
small country with huge colonial possessions that had tried – against all odds – to pur-
sue an independent policy of neutrality and free trade. Nevertheless, in May 1940 the
Netherlands had been overrun by German troops. Almost two years later Japan occu-
pied the Dutch East Indies, which meant the end of three hundred years of Dutch colo-
nial rule. Directly after the war the colony proclaimed its independence as Indonesia.
In spite of a considerable military effort, the Dutch were unable to turn the tide. In
1949 the Netherlands had to accept the independence of Indonesia and the fact that it
was now merely a smaller Northwest-European state.
Although many Dutch politicians resented the fact that the United States had
opposed them during the conflicts over Indonesia, the Netherlands enthusiastically
joined the Americans in the NATO alliance in 1949. The Netherlands soon built up a
reputation as a loyal ally of the United States and a trustworthy member of the Treaty
Organization. This reputation was in many ways well deserved. Successive Dutch gov-
ernments assumed that Dutch interests were best served by a solid military alliance
that linked the United States to Western Europe. They considered the Atlantic alliance
as vitally important, not only as a counterweight against Soviet expansionism but also
against possible hegemonial aspirations of the European great powers. Moreover, the
Americans had taken the lead in liberalizing Western Europe’s economies and trading
relations, and had been prepared to support West Europe’s recovery with economic and
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military means. The Hague therefore welcomed and appreciated American leadership
and Atlantic unity.
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This is not to say that there were no differences of opinion and conflicts between
Washington and The Hague. On the contrary, for a country that was supposed to play
the role of an exemplary loyal ally of the United States, a remarkable number of politi-
cal confrontations took place during the 1950s. Most of these conflicts had to do with
the former colonies and the relationship between the West and the non-Western world.
In 1949, the decolonization of Indonesia had not included West New Guinea. The
Netherlands stubbornly tried to defend this last bulwark of Dutch sovereignty in the
Far East, which led to a serious and embittered conflict with Indonesia. In spite of all
Dutch efforts, the United States forced the Netherlands to accept that West New Guinea
became a part of Indonesia in 1963. The Netherlands, and especially its long-time min-
ister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Luns, was highly critical about the American refusal to
support the West-European states in their post-colonial conflicts with some of their
former colonies. This resentment sometimes undermined Atlantic loyalty. When The
Hague learned in May 1958 that the United States was supplying arms to Indonesia, it
was even suggested that the Netherlands should leave NATO.
Regarding conflicts about the future of NATO, or about the position of the West-
European member states, the Netherlands continued to advocate a solid and American-
led Atlantic alliance. During the years of the Vietnam War, minister of Foreign Affairs
Luns refused to openly criticize the American war effort. Atlantic unity remained the
cornerstone of Dutch foreign policy during “radical years” of student protest and anti-
American demonstrations and during the social-democratic oriented government of
Joop den Uyl in the mid-1970s. This Atlantic loyalty seemed to weaken towards the end
of the 1970s as a result of the massive opposition to the NATO decision to deploy new
middle range cruise missiles in Western Europe, forty-eight of them in the Nether-
lands. It brought the center-right Van Agt government and its successors in the early
1980s in great difficulties, not in the least because the Christian Democratic Party
(CDA), the major coalition partner, was divided on this issue. The successive Dutch gov-
ernments in these years were caught between pressure of the NATO allies on the one
hand and the strong public and parliamentary opposition on the other. In 1984, the
center-right government led by the pragmatic Christian-Democratic politician Ruud
Lubbers decided to pursue deployment of the cruise missiles in spite of massive opposi-
tion. The coalition of the conservative-liberal VVD and the Christian-Democratic CDA
now managed to close the ranks and supported its government, which meant the end of
a delicate phase in the history of post-war American-Dutch relations.
Throughout the Cold War the Netherlands tried to behave as a loyal, Atlantic ally
of the United States, in spite of all the colonial conflicts and misunderstandings.
Nonetheless, Robert Kagan’s reproachful observation that life was easy for the West-
European countries, as they were being protected by American military power and
firmness, is also valid for the Netherlands. Although the Netherlands duly contributed
to the allied defense effort and the Dutch armed forces did not come off badly com-
pared to other member states, the Dutch were, in fact, sheltered from the major con-
flicts in world politics. The Netherlands played its part within the allied military struc-
ture in Northwest-Europe, but its military capacities were never really tried. And as
East-West relations became more stable during the 1960s, the chances that the Dutch
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army would be put up to the test, decreased even more. These circumstances meant that
the pre-war Dutch policy of aloofness and neutrality was continued in certain respects,
be it under completely different circumstances.
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This passivity changed after the end of the Cold War. More so than during most of the
Cold War period, the Netherlands not only supported the United States politically but
became militarily active too. This is remarkable, because the Soviet threat – the widely
accepted explanation for Dutch Atlantic loyalty – has lost most of its relevance.
Nonetheless, the Dutch government put aside its traditional military reluctance. At the
beginning of the twenty-first century, Dutch governments and defense ministers, sup-
ported the American “War on Terror,” that was unleashed after the terrorist attacks of
September 2001, and they were prepared to fight, shoulder to shoulder with the
American and NATO allies, although it was not always obvious which Dutch interests
or humanitarian ideals were at stake.
Hollanditis: The Politics of Pacifism

In December 1979 NATO decided to introduce new Pershing- and cruise mis-
siles in Western Europe to counter the ongoing deployment of the Soviet SS-
20 intermediate-range missiles. NATO’s decision marked the beginning of the
so-called Second Cold War. In the Netherlands, the issue became particularly
volatile politically because the center-right coalition government of Christian-
Democrat Dries van Agt had granted NATO to deploy forty-eight cruise mis-
siles on Dutch soil, but lacked the parliamentary majority to enforce it, as
members of his own party (CDA) leaned towards the opposing social-demo-
crats’ position.
The deployment of the cruise missiles was to become the most contested
security issue in Dutch history. Stimulated by the impotence of the Van Agt
government, a broad opposition movement was able to put great pressure
upon parliament and government. In
November 1981 some four hundred
thousand people demonstrated in
Amsterdam against the new nuclear
weapons; in October 1983 probably
more than half a million – according
to some sources even almost a million
– demonstrators took to the streets of
The Hague, turning it into the largest
demonstration in Dutch history. In
addition, in 1985 almost four million
people signed a national protest
petition against deployment. Given
the fifteen million inhabitants of the
Netherlands, these were impressive
numbers. The political problems in
the Netherlands, and the possible
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consequences of a Dutch refusal, at-

tracted attention from all over the
world. According to the American
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historian Walter Laqueur, a renewed Dutch neutralism – a “disease” he labeled
“Hollanditis” – was spreading over Western Europe.
The successive Dutch governments between 1979 and 1985 postponed the
final decision-making regarding the new missiles again and again. In June 1984
the center-right government of pragmatic Ruud Lubbers (CDA) finally forced a
decision: the Netherlands would start deploying if the Soviet Union continued
to deploy SS-20 missiles after November 1985. In the meantime, the influence
of the leftist faction within the CDA had been reduced, and the Christian de-
mocrats were able to close the ranks and support their prime minister. The
Dutch had finally been driven back to the NATO herd.
Emotions ran high between 1979 and 1985. The actions and demonstra-
tions against the cruise missiles had been, above all, a moral outcry against the
new American-Soviet nuclear arms race. Specific political circumstances, such
as the divisions within the CDA, played an important role as well. But Laqueur’s
hypothesis of a renewed Dutch, or even European, neutralism, is highly ques-
tionable. According to opinion polls, most demonstrators continued to support
Dutch NATO membership. The two parties in the Lubbers government that had
pushed the cruise missiles ahead, the Christian-democratic CDA and conserva-
tive-liberal VVD, were not punished for their behavior by the Dutch electorate,
but even increased their parliamentary majority in the 1986 elections and
therefore had no problem to form a second center-right Lubbers government.
In the end, the cruise missiles never arrived in the Netherlands. They
were made redundant by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty that
Michael Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan signed in December 1987.
The Netherlands and Europe

As a crucial trading center with limited military resources, the Netherlands has – at
least in principle – always favored free trade. In the 1920s and 1930s the Netherlands
had pursued the cause of trade liberalization to no avail. During the Second World War,
however, the governments-in-exile of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg had
signed the Benelux treaty. After the war the Netherlands – together with the other
Benelux countries, West Germany, France and Italy – became one of the founding
members of the European communities. They were one of the original member states
that founded the European Community for Coal and Steel (ECSC) in 1951, the ill-fated
European Defense Community, and, of course, the European Economic Community
(EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) in 1957. The European
Communities (ECCS, EEC and Euratom) merged in 1967 to become the European Com-
munity, which later in 1992 evolved into the European Union (EU).
As a trading nation and modern export-oriented economy the Netherlands had its
own specific perspective on the process of European integration. To support its trading
and exporting interests, the Dutch insisted that the EEC (and later the EC) should first
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of all realize a common market and abolish all trading barriers between the member
states. Since the original number of six member states was considered to be too small,
they also argued that the EEC should try to attract new members (not in the least the
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United Kingdom) in order to extend the scope of the common market. The realization
of the common market, with all its implications, should be led by the “supranational”
and technocratic institution of the EEC/EC, that is to say the European Commission,
and controlled by a democratically elected European Parliament. There should be no

room for power politics within the European communities, the Dutch propagated,
which was a logical standpoint for one of the smaller EC member states. The Dutch,
therefore, for a long time opposed the creation of a council of heads of governments,
fearing that the heads of government of the European great powers would dominate
such a council.
For the same reasons, the Dutch did not want the EEC to evolve into a political and
military union. A European political and military union, led by the West-European
great powers (France and West Germany) could only threaten the position and interests
of the Netherlands. It would split NATO, reduce the influence of the smaller West-
European states and could jeopardize the results that had been realized in the field of
trade liberalization within the EEC. In the early 1960s, these standpoints led to a series
of serious conflicts between the Netherlands and the French president Charles de
Gaulle, who not only tried to turn the EEC into a political union, led by a council of
heads of government, but also aimed to make Western Europe more independent of the
United States.
The Dutch advocated a supranational, democratic, and non-military European
community. This idealist and federalist view on European integration was, in fact, in
some cases put forward in order to defend Dutch sovereignty. The Dutch especially
balked when other EC member states moved to extend the scope of integration, start-
ing with provisional, inter-governmental decision-making procedures. The Dutch re-
acted to such proposals by stating that it should be all (a supranational and democratic
arrangement) or nothing (which the Dutch sometimes secretly preferred). Although
this view was not without an element of hypocrisy, it also reflected a certain idealism
and deliberate aversion to power politics on the Dutch side.
From the 1970s on, however, the Netherlands had to accept changes within the
European Community that it had resisted before. The Dutch endorsed European Polit-
ical Cooperation (EPC) in the field of foreign policy and the creation of the European
Council (of heads of government). Step by step the EC developed in a direction the
Dutch essentially rejected. In 1991 the Dutch, chairing the EC that year, for the last
time tried to impose their supranational and Atlanticist views on the negotiations
about the construction of the European Union. The majority did not agree with the
Dutch proposals and decided that cooperation in the field of Foreign and Security
Affairs (the “second pillar”) and Justice and Internal Affairs (the “third pillar”) would
not be based upon supranational, but on majority-decision-making. In the 1990s the
Dutch even went along with decisions to strengthen EU military cooperation (although
most of these plans would not, or only partly, be realized). In the meantime, the EU had
started to extend: in 1995 the number of member states reached fifteen, in 2004
twenty-three, and in 2013 even twenty-eight. This meant, among other things, that the
position and influence of the Netherlands, once one of the proud founding members of
the EEC, was in decline.
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In the early years of the twenty-first century, the Dutch views on European integra-
tion seem to have become more cynical. Most of the original idealism, even if some-
times tainted by hypocrisy, seems to have vanished. The Dutch became more assertive
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in using their voting leverage within the European Union. They started to complain
about the level of Dutch financial obligations and to criticize members of the Euro-
group (the states that had introduced the euro) for their undisciplined budgetary
behavior and their disrespect of the provisions of the financial Stability Pact. The Dutch
government even publicly doubted the wisdom of accepting the Central and East-
European new member states. Just like the French, in 2005 the Dutch electorate
rejected the so-called “European Constitution,” although it is not impossible that other
considerations than the specific content of this “constitution” played a role in its
decision.
Development Cooperation
The first Dutch activities in the field of development aid still had a strong colonialist
background. In 1950 a committee within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concluded, for
instance, that Dutch aid activities had to fulfill several objectives: furthering Dutch
economic interests and Dutch prestige, regaining influence in Indonesia, and employ-
ment for former colonial officials. In the same year Indonesia, in fact, received a loan of
280 million guilders, which was a considerable amount of money for the Netherlands,
five years after the end of the devastating German occupation. Apart from the loan to
Indonesia, the Netherlands would spend hundreds of millions on development pro-
jects in West New Guinea. For the time being, development aid to other non-Western
countries remained limited, and consisted mostly of the deployment of experts, ini-
tially mostly former colonial civil servants.
In the1950s, development aid was justified in the context of the Cold War as an
important means to counter communist influences in the developing countries.
However, at the same time, the issue of development and the necessity to end poverty
were increasingly seen as important goals, even a moral duty in itself. From the early
1960s on, and especially after the end of Dutch sovereignty over West New Guinea, the
budget for development aid began to rise. In 1965, for the first time, a minister for
development cooperation was appointed, and a special Directorate-General for Inter-
national Cooperation within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was created, responsible
for the spending of a growing amount of money. Throughout the 1960s, the Dutch
activities in the field of development aid, now called “development cooperation,”
intensified and diversified. Since the end of the 1960s, the Netherlands, together with
the Scandinavian countries, belonged to the four or five most generous worldwide aid
donators.
During the Den Uyl government (1973-1977) the radical social-democrat Jan
Pronk was minister for development cooperation. He advocated a new policy in devel-
opment cooperation, directed at contributing to structural changes in the world econ-
omy (to a “New International Economic Order”). The developing countries should
become more independent from the West and should enhance their “self-reliance.”
Pronk wanted to reduce the influence of Dutch economic interests on development aid.
He preferred to provide aid to countries that had introduced socio-economic reforms,
including communist states such as Cuba, the reunited Vietnam, and Mozambique.
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Pronk’s approach aroused much controversy in The Hague, but had, in retrospect, only
very limited results. Nonetheless, during Pronk’s first tenure as minister the budget for
development cooperation continued to increase considerably.
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Although some of Pronk’s decisions, such as aid to Cuba and Vietnam, were soon
revoked by his successors, the level of Dutch aid in relation to the Dutch GDP remained
high. During the 1980s and 1990s, Dutch development policy was more and more
based upon liberal ideas. The days of a new international order and self-reliance were
long gone. Doubts about the efficiency of development aid became stronger during the
1990s and at the start of the twenty-first century. The conservative parties began to
plead for a drastic reduction of the budget for development cooperation. Although this
budget is still high when compared to that of other Western countries and most Dutch
citizens (according to opinion polls) still support development cooperation, the idealist
zeal seems to be fading.
Idealism and Self-Interest

The constitution of the Netherlands stipulates that Dutch foreign and defense policy
should be aimed at strengthening the international legal order. Is this an empty phrase
or is Dutch foreign policy indeed driven by idealism and internationalism? One could
argue that the Netherlands is indeed an idealist nation. The history of Dutch foreign re-
lations seems to support that. For centuries, the Netherlands was a neutral and liberal
power. After the Second World War, the Dutch have tried to further a supranational and
democratic European Community and to counter power politics. They are a generous
development aid donor and the Netherlands pursues, at least claims to pursue, an ac-
tive human rights policy. Moreover, The Hague is an important center for international
law, host town of, among others, the International Criminal Court and the Yugoslavia
Tribunal.
In recent years, the Netherlands is often – more than other small Western countries
– willing to contribute to international peace missions. The Dutch governments of the
1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century have deployed troops all over the
world. In the 1990s, the Netherlands contributed to UN peace missions in Cambodia,
in Bosnia, and in Kosovo. After the United States started a “War on Terror” as a response
to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Dutch troops also participated in the sta-
bilization missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although the Srebrenica tragedy of 1995
(see vignette in this chapter) had a huge political and emotional impact in the Nether-
lands, the Dutch government continued its humanitarian activism in the following
years, be it that the Dutch from then on preferred to participate in missions that were
led by the United States or NATO instead of the United Nations.
On the other hand, the Dutch often did not hesitate to defend their own interests,
even if this implied disregarding the above mentioned internationalist ideals. Human
rights are an interesting example. If the Dutch government had to choose between
human rights and economic interests, it often decided in favor of the latter. Within the
European Union the Netherlands sometimes vigorously defended specific national or
economic positions. Even the recent Dutch humanitarian activism can be explained in
terms of opportunism, for instance as a means to please the United States or to
strengthen the Dutch position within international organizations such as the UN or
NATO. More in general, one could argue that the Netherlands has always been a rich
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country, home of several huge corporations such as Royal Dutch/Shell, Unilever and
Philips, and that it was inevitable that Dutch governments take these vital economic in-
terests into account. Even more social-democratic oriented governments had to live
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with these realities, as the actions of the Den Uyl government show, when faced with
the oil crisis of 1973-1974: in spite of all the rhetoric about reforming the world econ-
omy, the Den Uyl government defended the status of the Dutch oil industry.
Dutch foreign policy is probably a mix of self-interest and idealism. As a tradi-

tional trading center with huge economic interests, but without a military tradition,
the Dutch internationalist and idealist inclination are understandable. It must be
added, however, that these idealist tendencies have been weakening at the start of the
twenty-first century. The social and cultural climate in the Netherlands has become
harsher at the turn of the century. The rise of Pim Fortuyn and, subsequently, Geert
Wilders’ right-wing populist, anti-immigration and Euro-skeptical Freedom Party
changed the Dutch political atmosphere. The successive coalitions led by Christian-
democrat Balkenende (2002-2010) have shelved many of the old idealist standpoints,
and several politicians concluded that the Netherlands should – more than in the past –
defend its own interests, not in the least within the European Union.
Srebrenica:
A Catastrophic Peace Mission
All over the world, the massacre of some seven thousand Bosnian-Muslim men
by Serb militias in July 1995 at the UN safe area of Srebrenica led to indigna-
tion. This widespread anger also affected the Netherlands. Dutch troops had
been supposed to defend the safe area, yet had proved unable to prevent the
atrocity. In fact, they had even decided not to confront the Serb invaders of the
safe area at all. Some critics blamed the Dutch for their passivity. But a thor-
ough and time-consuming historical investigation, conducted by the Dutch
Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), concluded in 2002 that defense of the
safe area had indeed been impossible. The Dutch troops were not to blame: they
had been dispatched on an impossible, ill-conceived and ill-prepared mission.
At first, the Dutch
approach of the Yugo-
slavian crisis had been
even-handed. The Dutch
government, and espe-
cially foreign minister
Van den Broek, believed
that the unity of Yugo-
slavia had to be pre-
served. When Serbian-
led Yugoslavia went to
war against the province
of Croatia in June 1991
after it had declared in-
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dependence, this standpoint proved unrealistic. Under German pressure, the

Netherlands recognized the independence of Slovenia and Croatia in January
1992. When the UN Security Council established the United Nations Mission
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Protection Force (UNPROFOR), first to be deployed in Croatia and later also in
Bosnia – where a bitter civil war had broken out after it, too, declared inde-
pendence – the Dutch were prepared to send a liaison battalion. In spite of
UNPROFOR’s efforts, the humanitarian situation in Bosnia became worse. In

the meantime, the Dutch impartial approach of the Yugoslavian crisis had
been replaced by a more morally inspired and explicit anti-Serbian point of
view. So, when the Security Council decided to install six safe areas in Bosnia to
protect Bosnian-Muslim refugees, the Dutch government agreed to contribute
an infantry battalion, which became known as Dutchbat-II. It soon turned out
that the Dutch troops were to be deployed in and around Srebrenica.
The Ministry of Defense and the military commanders had been reluctant
to accept this assignment. Both the notion of a “safe area” and the role of UN-
PROFOR seemed complicated and contradictory. UNPROFOR was still a peace-
keeping mission and the troops it deployed to protect the safe areas were
lightly armed. It was, as the NIOD report concluded, a peace-keeping mission
in an area without peace. Dutchbat-II left in February 1994 for Yugoslavia,
driven by mixed motives, armed with insufficient weapons, and operating
under an unclear mandate and insufficient rules of engagement. The situation
in the safe area of Srebrenica, the “biggest open air prison in the world” as one
commentator wrote, soon turned out to be unmanageable. Some forty thou-
sand Muslims were living there under humiliating circumstances, completely
surrounded by hostile Serbian troops. Both sides constantly violated the safe
area rules.
When the Serbs attacked, Dutchbat, whose size had been reduced to
some four hundred men due to Serbian restrictions, was in no position to effec-
tively defend the compound. What followed has been characterized by the
Yugoslavia Tribunal as genocide. It is a matter of controversy how far the Dutch
were responsible for this horrible outcome of what had intended to be a
humanitarian action. The NIOD commission in fact rehabilitated the men of
Dutchbat, who at first were blamed for negligence and even cowardice. The
memory of Srebrenica was to linger on for a long time. When the NIOD report
was published in April 2002, the government, led by social-democrat Wim Kok,
resigned as a whole. It was an unprecedented, but also unsatisfactory decision.
Although the Netherlands was not guilty of the Srebrenica drama, someone
had to take responsibility for it, Prime Minister Kok argued. The Dutch govern-
ment nevertheless firmly rejected the obligation to compensate the Bosnian
victims.1
Growing Insecurity
At the start of the twenty-first century, the arguments and ideals that have determined
Dutch foreign policy-making for decades increasingly lost their validity. In the field of
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European integration the pursuit of a supranational, democratic Europe was in fact

dropped. As a consequence, the Netherlands to some extent lost its reputation as an
idealistic, founding member of the EEC. In the policy field of security too, the certainties
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of the previous decades increasingly fell by the wayside. While it is true that the
Netherlands often behaved in these years as a loyal lapdog of the United States, and
accordingly sometimes voiced the usual Atlantic standpoints, the standpoints taken no
longer seemed to reflect any consistent long-term vision of West-European or Dutch

security. In the field of development cooperation, human rights and international law
too, doubts seemed to sow themselves and grow. Increasingly, Dutch engagements
abroad were justified by a pragmatic appeal to national self-interest; yet for the most
part that appeared to be an expression of uncertainty about the long-term objectives of
Dutch policy.
Moreover, it was not always clear what that self-interest exactly implied. In the case
of the net contributions to the European Union it was, at least at first sight, still a clear
directive for political action: the less the Netherlands paid, the better. But when one
looked a little closer it was not that simple. After all, the Dutch interest lay above all in
the development of a stable and decisive European Union and in good relations with
the major European powers, a goal that perhaps justified a degree of financial sacrifice.
In other areas too, the “national interest” seemed to be too vague a principle to be easily
operationalized. Thus it was unclear precisely what the Netherlands had to gain by its
frequently outspoken pro-American stance. And why did the Dutch armed forces have
to be deployed in carrying out tasks everywhere in the world? Which interests were
actually at stake?
Precisely because of major international changes occurring, it seemed necessary
and unavoidable that the basic principles and objectives of Dutch policy should be
subjected to a fundamental discussion. It was therefore all the more remarkable that
the public political debate over international issues largely fell silent in the first decade
of the twenty-first century. International political issues played only a marginal role
during the elections of 2002 and 2003. It was significant that the “Strategic Accord,”
which laid the foundation for the successive Balkenende governments, hardly paid any
attention to Europe or to international politics. In all this, one should not exclude the
possibility that politicians in The Hague simply lost their bearings with the blurring of
a clear and inspiring image of the Dutch position in the world. Within a few years, from
being a progressive country that was respected for its pragmatic ability to achieve con-
sensus despite differences, its tolerant and internationalist socio-cultural atmosphere,
and its often idealistic and professedly humanitarian foreign policy, the Netherlands
seemed to have lost most of this reputation.
Further reading
Baehr, Peter, Monique Castermans-Holleman and Fred Grünfeld. Human Rights in the Foreign Policy
of the Netherlands. Oxford: Intersentia, 2002.
Hellema, Duco. Foreign Policy of the Netherlands: The Dutch Role in World Politics. Dordrecht: Republic
of Letters, 2009.
Krabbendam, Hans, Cornelis A. van Minnen and Giles Scott-Smith, eds. Four Centuries of Dutch-
American Relations. Albany: State University of New York, 2009.
Nekkers, Jan, and Peter Malcontent, eds. Fifty Years of Dutch Development Cooperation, 1949-1999.
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The Hague: Sdu Publishers, 2000.
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chapter 24
In Foreign Eyes
by jaap verheul
The Netherlands has evoked divergent images in the eyes of foreigners. Although one
of the most densely populated countries in the world, it is cheerfully associated with
windmills, tulips, wooden shoes, and green polders where black-and-white cows peace-
fully graze. In its picturesque inner cities people joyfully ride their bicycles along the
canals. People speak their minds freely, are averse of authority and dogma, and tolerate
different opinions and religions. This image of free expression, independence and
open-mindedness, however, is easily turned into the dystopian picture of permissive-
ness and moral bankruptcy. In recent years foreign media have routinely associated the
Netherlands with drugs, prostitution, child pornography, abortion, euthanasia and
other controversial “ethical issues.” The term “Dutch disease” has been coined to criti-
cize an over-generous welfare state doling out earnings from natural resources to
voluntarily unemployed citizens and recent immigrants instead of investing them in
industry. Yet the same nation was hailed to offer a “polder model” of consensus-based
cooperation between employers, workers and the government to overcome economic
crises. The only way to understand these paradoxes is to explore the history and func-
tion of these conflicting images of Dutchness, which often tell us more about the writers
who produced them than about their topic.1
Envy, Fear, and Wonder

The Dutch began to appear on the mental horizon of other nations after they became a
geopolitical and cultural power to be reckoned with at the beginning of the sixteenth
century. True, the inhabitants of the swampy river delta near the North Sea had been
noticed and described by some travelers and writers in earlier centuries. The Roman
historian Tacitus in his Germania offered an ethnography of the Germanic tribes that
formed a looming threat at the periphery of the Roman empire in the first century CE.
He described the red-haired Batavians that lived in the area that later became part of
the Netherlands as especially given to drinking, fighting and gambling. In later cen-
turies some travelers encountered these ominous territories for missionary work, trade
or political negotiations. But for the most part the inhabitants of the delta remained
hidden at the periphery of the shifting empires.
The dwellers of the river delta suddenly abandoned this obscurity to enter the
world stage when Northern provinces rebelled against the powerful Habsburg Empire
of King Philip II and declared independence in 1581. The new political entity was for-
mally recognized in 1648 as the Dutch Republic of the United Provinces, but had
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already become a source of amazement during the audacious war against its former
ruler. Many diplomats, soldiers, traders, scholars and other travelers who found their
way to this new center of power and culture, reported back about this marvel of
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Calvinism, republicanism and prosperity, for the first time creating an image of the
Netherlands as a unique political and cultural entity in Europe.
One of the first influential observers of the new republic was the Italian trader
Lodovico Guicciardini, the nephew of the famous historian, who had settled in Ant-
werp as a commercial agent. The young Guicciardini published a lively history of the
Low Countries in 1567, one year before the Dutch Revolt broke out. His Descrittione di
Tutti I Paesi-Bassi meticulously described each region and city in great detail, but also
provided information about folklore, language and the prosperous economy of the
rebellious region. Guicciardini attempted to describe the Dutch national character; he
praised the common sense and diligence of the merchants, the ability of the craftsmen
and the reading and writing skills of the farmers and peasants, but also found the
Dutch stingy, greedy, and prone to drinking. His well-timed book was reprinted over
thirty times in the following century and was translated into many languages, intro-
ducing the identity and culture of the newly created nation to a European public.
The European neighbors soon found reason to envy and fear the new republic
when it became a prosperous trading nation that sailed the seas in search of new mar-
kets and customers, and also proved a formidable naval power. England in particular
fought a series of costly maritime wars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
over control of the seas and trading routes. The English developed an elaborate anti-
Dutch narrative of morality and national folklore that would be disseminated into
Western culture. Playwrights in Shakespeare’s days, for instance, wrote farces that
poked fun at Dutch sexual morals by displaying Dutch women invariably as plump and
men as inebriated. Similarly, English publications attacked their Dutch opponents by
arguing that they “are more famous for their Industry and Application, than for Wit
and Humour.”
Not surprisingly, most English invectives were directed against the maritime pres-
ence of the Netherlands. At the beginning of the first Anglo-Dutch naval war, states-
man and poet Andrew Marvell effectively expressed the irritation of his countrymen in
his satirical poem “Character of Holland.” Although written in 1653 it would remain a
staple of anti-Dutch expressions in the English language well into the nineteenth
century. That Marvell ran the full gamut of maritime stereotypes is already clear from
his oft-quoted first stanza:
Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,

As but th’ off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots when they heav’d the lead;
Or what by th’ ocean’s slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrack’d cockle and the mussel-shell;
This indigested vomit of the sea
Fell to the Dutch by just propriety.
Similar images of sea, rivers and mud, and, of course, the windmills, clogs and the dikes
that the Dutch developed to cope with their aquatic enemy, would remain associated
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with the image of Dutch society for many centuries. The Netherlands, rhymed poet
Samuel Butler, was not a normal country, but: “A land that rides at anchor, and is
moor’d, / In which they do not live, but go a-board.” 2 Literary representations of this
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naval competition survived well into the eighteenth century as images of evil captains
and untrustworthy merchants found their way into Daniel Defoe’s famous adventure
novel The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoë (1719) and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s
Travels (1726).
But the educated English reading public also learned about the origins of the
wealth and power of its perpetual maritime enemy from a number of travel journals
that appeared during the seventeenth century. The most influential and enduring
analysis, however, was offered by diplomat and statesman William Temple who had
been ambassador to the Netherlands and befriended the Dutch ruling elite and nobil-
ity. He published his Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands in 1673, one
year after the Republic suffered a disastrous defeat against its English, French and
German enemies. Nonetheless, Temple continued to believe in their mutual interest
and impressed upon his readers the many reasons why the Dutch had become “the
Envy of some, the Fear of others, and the Wonder of all their Neighbours.” He gave a de-
tailed and informed overview of the history, institutions, geography, religion, trade and
economy of the Netherlands and warned his readers that the power of the Netherlands
was much greater than the number of its inhabitants suggested. “Holland is a Coun-
trey,” he insisted, “where the Earth is better than the Air, and Profit more in request
than Honour; Where there is more Sense than Wit; More good nature than good Hu-
mour; And more Wealth than Pleasure.” Temple’s work was immediately translated
into Dutch, French, German, and Italian, and it became a bestseller that influenced the
image of the Netherlands until well into the eighteenth century. Temple later became
instrumental in the marriage between stadtholder William III and Mary, the daughter
of the English king James II, which led to William’s accession to the throne during the
Glorious Revolution of 1688, an event that can be described as a true invasion of Dutch
power and culture into the court and culture of England. 3
Cradle of Freedom and Tolerance

While the English view of the Netherlands was characterized by jealousy and competi-
tion, French and German intellectuals during the Age of Reason discovered it as beacon
of freedom and tolerance in a world that remained obscured by monarchical abso-
lutism. After all, the Dutch Republic had offered asylum to many refugees who had
been persecuted for their religious or political views, and had provided an intellectual
haven for those who sought scholarly innovation and publishing houses for controver-
sial ideas. The seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes, for instance,
studied and taught in the Netherlands for most of his life and especially treasured the
freedom and safety from oppression in his host nation. “Which other country,” he in-
sisted, “where one can enjoy full freedom, where one sleeps with less concern, where
there are always foot soldiers at large to protect you, where poisoning, betrayal and con-
spiracies are hardly known, and where so much is left of the innocence of our fore-
fathers?” 4
The philosophers of the French Enlightenment warmly embraced the Dutch
Republic in their battle for tolerance, religious freedom and progress. Voltaire, the
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most influential of these philosophes, traveled to the Netherlands frequently, visiting his
publishers, studying with the famous scholars at the University of Leiden, or pursuing
love interests. In his many letters and books Voltaire sang the praises of the freedom,
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tolerance and egalitarianism of Holland which he found sadly missing in France, where
he had been incarcerated and expelled for his political views. He jealously reported how
he encountered the stadtholder strolling without lackeys in the middle of the crowd as
an example of Dutch modesty. In his famous historical overview of human progress,

the Essai sur les Moeurs (1756), Voltaire as sympathetically described how the Dutch
republic had rebelled against the cruel despotism and religious persecution of Philip II
and had subsequently defended its liberty by labor and sobriety.
Like many foreign travelers, Voltaire was sometimes frustrated by Dutch daily life
when he encountered obstacles of bureaucratic lethargy, bourgeois complacency, or sly
greediness. He once decried Holland as a phlegmatic hell, and after one particularly
aggravating encounter with his publisher was rumored to have left the country with
the angry alliteration “Adieu, canaux, canards, canaille” (Goodbye, canals, ducks and
thugs). More importantly, Voltaire repeated many popular stereotypes concerning
Dutch greediness and hypocrisy in his fictional works, most notably in Candide (1759).
Yet, in spite of their disappointment in contemporary Holland, Voltaire and other
advocates of rational science and tolerance such as Denis Diderot and Montesquieu
continued to underscore the importance of Dutch history in the cause of human
progress and civil freedom.5
In contrast to the feverish optimism of the Enlightenment and the nationalist am-
bitions of the early nineteenth century the Netherlands suggested an image of decline
to its European neighbors. They derided the complacent and pipe-smoking Dutch who
traveled in slow tow barges as the “Chinese of Europe.” Yet at the same time the heroic
history of the Dutch Revolt and the Golden Age became a popular theme, as it con-
veniently served as an example for political theories about popular sovereignty and
emerging ideas about national identity. It was no coincidence that Robert Watson, a his-
torian from Scotland – a hotbed of nationalist resentment and political theory – pub-
lished an influential History of the Reign of Philips II about the Dutch Revolt in 1777,
which was reprinted six times in the following decades. This work, in turn, proved an
inspiration for German writers and scholars who struggled with the problem of Ger-
man national unity. Johann Wolfgang Goethe worked no less than fifteen years on his
successful play Egmont (1788) about one of the influential supporters of William of
Orange, because he saw this episode as a “turning point in the history of states” that
illuminated the essential problems of his day. Also taking his cue from Watson, his
close friend Schiller wrote a play about Don Karlos (1787), the troubled son of Philip II
who sympathized with the people who revolted against his father. He subsequently
published a historical overview of the first years of the Dutch revolt, which he planned
as first installment of an ambitious series about revolutions and conspiracies. He, too,
saw the establishment of Dutch freedom as one of the most important achievements in
world history.
This idealistic and romantic perspective also radically changed the American per-
ception of the Netherlands. In the first years of independence the young American
Republic looked with mixed feelings to its fellow republic across the Atlantic. Ameri-
cans had inherited much of the popular anti-Dutch folklore from England and its
founding fathers were largely disappointed in their dealings with the Dutch Republic.
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Instead of the expected model of republicanism, the Netherlands became a byword for
all shortcomings of federalism that the American Constitution was intended to avoid.
Immigrants of Dutch stock, too, were often displayed as representatives of outmoded
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traditions that conflicted with modern citizenship. The Dutch families that dominated
upstate New York were easy targets for literary wits such as Washington Irving who
poked fun at the Dutch heritage in his stories “Rip van Winkle” and “Sleepy Hollow,”
and the History of New York (1809) that was written under the pseudonym of the Dutch
historian “Diedrich Knickerbocker.”
But when educated Americans on the East Coast began to explore the languages
and cultures of continental Europe in the early nineteenth century as an alternative to
their former mother country, they, too, discovered the attractive richness of Dutch his-
tory. It was the Bostonian historian John Lothrop Motley who successfully presented
the Dutch Revolt as a precursor to the American Revolution in his highly popular The
Rise of the Dutch Republic, which was published in 1856. He not only compared Dutch
founding father William of Orange to George Washington, and his Catholic enemy
Philip II to King George III, but convincingly argued that the Dutch had effectively
started an Atlantic revolution that, by way of England, had brought democracy and
freedom to America. With this bestseller and its two sequels Motley laid the basis for an
enduring pro-Dutch sentiment in American popular culture.
This new-found ideological affinity developed into a true Holland Mania at the turn
of the century. American painters flocked to picturesque fishing villages in the Dutch
bible-belt, Dutch architecture with stepped gables and verandas was imitated in the
American Midwest, Dutch traditional costumes and furniture became collector’s items,
and intellectuals replaced the Pilgrim Fathers with Peter Stuyvesant as the true founder
of their nation. This naive, utopian and decisively pastoral construction of a pre-indus-
trial “Holland” – as the nation affectionately was called after its largest province – char-
acterized by sailing ships, quaint cobbled alleys and cohesive coziness was extremely
appealing to an American nation undergoing a rapid and sometimes painful process of
industrialization and urbanization. A romantic, historicized and somewhat stagnant
Holland became a blissful counterpoint to the grim realities of modernity.6
Hans Brinker: Morality Behind the Dikes

The book that most successfully embedded the pastoral image of the Nether-
lands in American popular culture is the popular children’s novel Hans Brinker:
or, The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge. Published in 1865 in the wake of a
brutal Civil War, it offered American readers a welcome image of a quaint and
sturdy world unspoiled by strife and moral failure. The book was filled with
stories of civil courage, perseverance, industry and Christian charity, placed in
an idyllic landscape of frozen canals and small cities that showed “a bewildering
jungle of houses, bridges, churches, and ships, sprouting into masts, steeples,
and trees.” As she explained in her book, Dodge considered Holland as “Odd-
land or Contrary-land; for in nearly everything it is different from other parts
of the world.” Hans Brinker was primarily written as a morality tale about an
alternative world to instruct young American readers.
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Mary Mapes Dodge (1831-1905) was a well-educated, young widow from

New York who started to work as a writer and editor in order to support herself
and her two sons. After she had successfully published a number of children’s
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stories she was inspired to write about the Netherlands by reading John Lothrop
Motley’s works of the Dutch Revolt. She diligently collected information on
Dutch history, literature and art, and learned many stories from a befriended
Dutch immigrant family. Dodge craftily assembled all these assorted details
and anecdotes in her story about the fifteen-year-old boy Hans Brinker and his
little sister Gretel who participate in a skating match to earn the coveted Silver
Skates and pay for medical treatment for their ill father. Their friends mean-
while embark on a skating tour through
the country, and through the eyes of
these small children the reader in pass-
ing learns about the Dutch landscape,
museums, architecture and traditions.
The most famous story inside the
novel relates the heroic feat of “The
Hero of Haarlem,” the small boy who
saves the country from flooding. Return-
ing in the evening from an altruistic
errand to bring cakes to a blind man, he
notices a tiny stream of water seeping
through a small hole in the dike. Acutely
aware of the impending danger that the
dike might collapse, the boy decides to
stop the leak by thrusting his chubby
little finger in the hole. In spite of dark-
ness, cold and fear the little hero perse-
veres until he is discovered the next
morning and villagers come to the rescue.
A stunning three hundred thousand copies of Hans Brinker were sold in
the first year, and the subsequent 180 American editions and translations
brought the total to seven million. The story was adapted into plays, movies
and musicals, and became an enduring global icon of Dutch perseverance and
courage. Although a few Dutch translations appeared, and the Dutch tourist
industry felt forced to provide some statues and a museum, the story never
resonated in the Netherlands. Hans Brinker above all remains a product of the
American imagination.
As tourism developed during the nineteenth century out of a romantic quest for
authenticity and exoticism, this picturesque image of the Netherlands found its way to
travel guides. It is no coincidence that the first tourist guidebook ever to be printed,
John Murray’s famous Red Book of 1834, led its readers first to Holland, followed by
Belgium and the Rhineland. “Upon the whole,” the English publisher claimed, “Hol-
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land may be considered as the most wonderful country, perhaps, under the sun: it is
certainly unlike every other.” Murray extensively discussed the complicated system
of dikes, canals, polders, sluices, and windmills that kept the country dry. But he was
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especially amazed by the Dutch cities: “They are so thoroughly intersected by canals,
that most of the streets might more properly be termed quays, lined with houses and
bordered with rows of tall trees. The canals swarm with the picturesque craft, whose
gilt prows, round sterns, and painted sides are rendered so familiar beforehand to all
who know the paintings of Cuyp, Van der Velde, and other Dutch artists.” 7 As his ex-
ample was followed by Kurt Baedeker, Eugene Fodor and the many other guidebook
authors, this seductive vernacular of Dutchness entered the global language of mass
tourism, country promotion, world fairs, and theme parks.
Dutch Dystopia:
Permissiveness and Ethical Issues
Although this picturesque image of Holland never disappeared from international
mass culture, it was supplemented by a dystopian perspective on Dutch society during
the 1960s. In the culture wars that raged over morality and diversity in the United
States and Western Europe, conservative commentators and intellectuals used the
Netherlands as a convenient symbol for all the developments in modern society that
they decried. Whether they were debating greater sexual freedom, or civil liberties,
drugs, and the mounting ambitions of national governments in providing social
welfare through taxation, the Netherlands could be relied upon to provide anecdotal
evidence. Although the Netherlands dealt not much differently with these issues than,
say, Belgium, Germany or Scandinavian countries, the frankness and public character
of the political discussions about ethical issues and welfare reform made it into an espe-
cially accessible case study.
International newspapers and magazines began to turn out gloomy articles about
permissiveness and moral decay in the Netherlands. The conservative magazine Time
characteristically voiced American disapproval in a 1978 issue with the rhetorical ques-
tion “Drawing The Line: Has Permissiveness Gone Too Far?” Its cover cartoon showed a
Dutchman in business suit with wooden shoes who uses a big fountain pen to draw
a big line across the page, separating the idyllic picture of Holland with tulips and a
windmills from a huddled mass of squatters, intellectuals, unwed mothers, drug
addicts and other outcasts who were casting murky glances at the Holland that was
suddenly denied to them. Readers were treated to a picture of a welfare state gone awry:
street violence, vandalism, uncontrollable “squatters” who took over the inner cities,
drug abuse, drug tourism, and, of course, wayward sexuality. The red light districts,
free distribution of pornography, availability of abortion, and “lesbian couples who
have children by artificial insemination paid for by the national health plan,” were
presented with hardly concealed amazement.8
American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino opened his neo-noir movie Pulp Fiction
(1994) with an effective play on this dystopian perspective on Dutch society by letting
two gangsters (played by Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta) discuss a trip to Amster-
dam as they drive to a hit job. When his colleague incredulously asks whether smoking
hashish is really legal in Amsterdam, John Travolta’s character eagerly explains the
Dutch policy towards soft drugs: “Yeah, it breaks down like this: it’s legal to buy it, it’s
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legal to own it and, if you’re the proprietor of a hash bar, it’s legal to sell it. It’s legal
to carry it, which doesn’t really matter ’cause – get a load of this – if the cops stop you,
it’s illegal for them to search you. Searching you is a right that the cops in Amsterdam
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don’t have.” They immediately decide to retire to the Netherlands after their criminal
career. In Tarantino’s highly ironic narrative the Dutch dystopian reputation is craftily
inverted into a criminal utopia. Although Dutch policy towards soft drugs is not that
different from other European nations and even many American states, the “coffee-
shops” where the sale of small quantities of cannabis or “soft drugs” is condoned made
drug use seem pervasive to uninformed outsiders and attracted “drug tourists” from
other countries. Accordingly, the Netherlands has faced mounting pressure to change
its policy from other EU partners, most notably the French who condemned it as a
“narco state.”
Frau Antje: Ambassador of Dutchness

Perhaps the most recognizable symbol of the Netherlands in neighboring Ger-
many is Frau Antje. The wholesome young girl in traditional costume who
cheerfully advertises cheese and other dairy products represents “typical”
Dutch culture, although both her role and appearance have reflected the
changes in Dutch-German relations.
“Frau Antje” was invented by the national dairy organization in 1961 to
promote Dutch cheese on German television. Evoking upright modesty and
cleanliness, she brought the pastoral images of the Netherlands to life. Her
folkloristic fantasy dress was based on traditional costumes worn in Volen-
dam, the small fishing village on the IJsselmeer well known to tourists, but
adapted to represent the red, white and blue of the national flag. The smiling
Dutch cheese girl was preferably
displayed against the background
of green pastures, tulips, windmills,
and, of course, the black-and-white
cows that produced milk for “real
cheese from Holland.”
In her friendly, Dutch-accented
German, Frau Antje shared cheese
recipes with German housewives
and made countless appearances
at fairs, sports events, television
shows, and political campaigns.
Although she remained totally un-
known in her country of origin, the
jovial cheese girl soon became a
celebrity in her own right who was
well-known to over 90 percent of
the Germans. Accordingly, the export
of Dutch cheese to Germany grew
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from twenty-eight thousand tons

in 1954 to over two hundred thou-
sand tons at the end of the century.
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Although Frau Antje was born in the pre-modern world of folklore and idyllic
tradition, even she fell victim to the forces of modernity. Just when Dutch ex-
port managers began to worry that the stereotype of the cheese girl was so old-
fashioned that it would hinder the promotion of high-tech products, in 1984

one of the models who often played Frau Antje posed for the German edition of
Playboy – without her traditional costume. Ten years later conservative German
magazine Der Spiegel canonized the dystopian image of Holland in an article
aptly titled “Frau Antje’s Change of Life.”
Its argument that the Dutch period of tolerance was coming to an end was
effectively illustrated by a Sebastian Krüger cartoon that displayed a defiantly
looking Frau Antje who smoked a hash cigarette, showed marks of drug needles,
and carried a crumpled Heineken beer can with discarded wooden shoes and
tulips. The backdrop of smoke-erupting green houses played on the negative
German stereotype of Dutch agricultural industry which produced tomatoes
that were so tasteless that they were nicknamed “water bombs.”
Krüger’s iconic cartoon, which evoked a wave of anger and shock in the
Netherlands, but was followed by many similar images in European maga-
zines, symbolized the soured image of the Netherlands in foreign eyes. Yet,
after relations between Germany and the Netherlands improved at the end of
the century, Frau Antje sprang back to life as a modern, efficient and environ-
mentally friendly ambassador of Dutch culture and, of course, cheese.12
The main example of Dutch moral decay, however, was found in its attitude towards
euthanasia. “Among its other singular attributes,” Time found, “the Netherlands is the
only European country considering the legalization of euthanasia – or mercy killing, as
the Dutch prefer to call it.” By using the term “mercy killing,” which was never used in
the Netherlands, the article suggested a similarity with Nazi extermination programs
during the Second World War which other foreign commentators also found com-
pelling. The Vatican for instance routinely argued that the line between Dutch and
Nazi euthanasia was blurring because both were “authorizing the state to put an end to
lives of people no longer economically useful to it.” 9 Ironically exploiting that asser-
tion, British novelist Ian McEwan turned the Dutch euthanasia practice into the lethal
weapon of choice in the duel which ends the life of two protagonists in the novel
Amsterdam (1998).
In the early 1980s, this moral criticism was also applied to Dutch foreign relations
when conservative historian and commentator Walter Laqueur coined the term “Hol-
landitis” to describe the pacifist neutralism that swept over Western Europe like a con-
tagious disease. A highly influential voice in the US foreign policy community, Laqueur
published his article with the ominous title “Hollanditis: A New Stage in European
Neutralism” in Commentary, the leading opinion magazine of the neoconservative
movement in the United States. He warned his readers that the cultural revolution of
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the 1960s now threatened to turn the Netherlands into “one of the weakest links in the
Western alliance.”
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American neoconservatives added a new chapter to this dystopian narrative in the wake
of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 when they cited the Netherlands as an
example of failed multiculturalism and European elitism. Conservative journalists
described the political murders of populist party leader Pim Fortuyn in 2002, and film-
maker Theo van Gogh two years later, as a “Dutch 9/11.” They argued that the resulting
political turmoil showed that even the Dutch had accepted the limits of tolerance and
recognized the threat posed by its Muslim immigrants. Conservative media warmly
embraced Somalian-born member of parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who had become one
of the most vocal critics of Islam in the Netherlands. She was listed as one of the hun-
dred most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2005 and moved to the
United States to join the American Enterprise Institute, a neoconservative think tank,
after she decided to give up her parliament seat when her citizenship was put into
doubt. In many books in which American conservative journalists attacked the Euro-
pean tolerance towards Islamic extremism, the Netherlands is described as a particu-
larly disappointing example.10
Usable Dutchness
Dutch culture and society evidently mean many things to many people. Although some
of these utopian and dystopian images may be based on travel experiences, inter-
national exchanges, journalistic inquiries, or even scholarly research, they derive their
appeal and significance from forces and needs originating beyond the Dutch borders.
Essentially, foreigners embrace or reject aspects of Dutch society to define or reinforce
their own national identity. Opposition to other cultures and societies is an indispens-
able ingredient in each national identity. Consequently, the Dutch “other” has been
used to legitimize geopolitical ambitions or facilitate domestic debates about the rela-
tionship between government and citizen, the moral and ethical fabric of society, and
integration and diversity. In that sense “Dutchism” could be added to infamous essen-
tialist concepts such as Orientalism and Occidentalism.
Yet constructions of Dutch identity have also fostered international dialogue and
friendly rebuke. When citizens of Western European countries are asked to define the
national character of their Dutch neighbors they describe them as exceptionally ambi-
tious and emotional, but also kindly think of them as helpful, rational, efficient, inde-
pendent, and far more honest than the Dutch consider themselves. The Dutch, as a
trading nation with many international connections, have always been fascinated by
their foreign reputation and immediately translated descriptions of observers such as
Lodovico Guicciardini and William Temple into their own language. They were also
keen to learn about their own past from historians such as John Lothrop Motley, Simon
Schama, and Jonathan Israel. American historian and journalist Russell Shorto returned
the favor when he described the Dutch seventeenth-century colony New Netherlands as
a precursor to modern multiculturalism in the United States in his 2004 history The
Island at the Center of the World and in a later work recommended Amsterdam to an inter-
national audience as “The World’s Most Liberal City.” Foreign perceptions of the
Netherlands, then, have served as a convenient mirror to the spectator and as a carnival
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mirror for the Dutch.11
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Further Reading
Buruma, Ian. Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance. London:
Atlantic Books, 2006.

Goodfriend, Joyce D., Benjamin Schmidt and Annette Stott, eds. Going Dutch: The Dutch Presence in
America, 1609-2009. Leiden: Brill, 2008.
Krabbendam, Hans, Cornelis A. van Minnen and Giles Scott-Smith, eds. Four Centuries of Dutch-
American Relations, 1609-2009. Albany: State University of New York, 2009.
Stott, Annette, ed. Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture. Woodstock:
Overlook Press, 1998.
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Notes
Chapter 1
1 Coos Huijsen, De Oranjemythe: Een postmodern fenomeen (Zaltbommel: Europese Bibliotheek,
2001).
2 Three more islands in the Caribbean, Bonaire, Saba and St. Eustacius, are as special munici-
palities part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
3 B.P. Vermeulen, A.P. Krijnen and D.A. Roos, De Koning in het Nederlandse staatsrecht (Nijmegen:
Ars Aequi Libri, 2005), 25.
4 Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867).
5 J. J. Vis, “De staatsrechtelijk ruimte van koningin Beatrix,” in De stijl van Beatrix: De vrouw en
het ambt, ed. C.A. Tamse (Amersfoort: Balans, 2005), 27-53.
6 Jan W. Van Deth and Jan C.P.M. Vis, Regeren in Nederland: Het politieke en bestuurlijke bestel in
vergelijkend perspectief (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2006), 94-95.
7 Mark Bovens and Anchrit Wille, “Falling or Fluctuating Trust Levels? The Case of the
Netherlands,” in Political Trust: Why Context Matters, ed. Marc Hooghe and Sonja Zmerli
(Colchester: ECPR Press, 2011), 62-63.
Chapter 2
1 For a more general discussion of the “frozen” nature of the Dutch political system in a com-
parative perspective, see Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair, Identity, Competition, and Electoral
Availability: The Stabilisation of European Electorates, 1885-1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
2 See Kees Schuyt and Ed Taverne, 1950: Prosperity and Welfare: Dutch Culture in a European
Perspective, vol. 4 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
3 See, for instance, R. Inglehart and W. Baker, “Modernization, Cultural Change and the
Persistence of Traditional Values,” American Sociological Review 65 (2000): 19-51; C.S. van Praag
and W. Uitterhoeve, 25 Years of Social Change in the Netherlands: Key Data from the Social and
Cultural Report (The Hague: SCP, 1999).
4 Jan Lucassen and Rinus Penninx, Newcomers: Immigrants and Their Descendants in the Netherlands,
1550-1995 (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1997); Peter Geschiere, The Perils of Belonging:
Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press
2009); Jan Willem Duyendak, The Politics of Home: Belonging and Nostalgia in Europe and the
United States (Basingstoke and New York: MacMillan Palgrave, 2011).
5 Mark Bovens and Anchrit Wille, Diploma Democracy. On the Tensions between Meritocracy and
Democracy (Den Haag: NOW 2009).
6 For a discussion of the developments leading to the events of 2002, see H. Pellikaan, T. van
der Meer and S.L. de Lange, “The Road from a Depoliticized Democracy to a Centrifugal
Democracy,” Acta Politica 38 (2003): 23-49.
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7 James Kennedy, Nieuw Babylon in aanbouw: Nederland in de jaren zestig (Amsterdam: Boom, 1995).
8 Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).
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Chapter 4
1 Russell Shorto, “Going Dutch” New York Times, 3 May 2009, New York edition, p. MM42,
http://www.nytimes.com. Actually, not all Shorto’s income was taxed at 52 percent.

This figure only applies to his income over €54,776 (2008).
2 Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995).
3 Robert E. Goodin, Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels and Henk-Jan Dirven, The Real Worlds of
Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
4 OECD, Pensions at a Glance 2013 (OECD 2013), 195.
Chapter 5
1 Statistical data about Randstad tend to vary across sources. The reason is that the outer limits
of the Randstad area are not fixed. There is not one clearly defined and unambiguously
demarcated Randstad region.
2 Paul M. Hohenberg and Lynn H. Lees, The Making of Urban Europe, 1000-1950 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1985), 227.
3 Henk Engel, “Randstad Holland in Kaart/Mapping Randstad Holland,” OverHolland 2 (2005):
3-10, 23-44.
4 The province of Flevoland should in fact be included in these data, which is not the case here.
This province was created in 1986 and consists of the so-called IJsselmeer polders (in trans-
lation: North-East Polder, East Flevoland, South-Flevoland, subsequently reclaimed since
the 1940s). The new town of Almere, in South Flevoland, is part of the Amsterdam urban
agglomeration and therefore also part of Randstad.
5 VINEX stands for “Vierde Nota Ruimtelijke Ordening Extra,” a 1995 planning memorandum
of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment.
6 The data used here are from the Central Bureau of Statistics (http://www.statline.nl).
The number of so-called “Western” immigrants has also risen sharply: to approximately 1.5
million people (nine per cent of the population). They are mainly concentrated in border
regions (marriage partners) and in the big cities (expats working for international companies
and institutions).
7 See for example Sako Musterd, “Segregation and Integration: A Contested Relationship,”
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 29, no.4 (2003): 624-641.
8 Patricia van Ulzen, “Beelden van Steden,” City Journal 9 (October 2007): 9-13; Patricia van
Ulzen, Imagine a Metropolis: Rotterdam’s Creative Class, 1970-2000 (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers,
2007).
Chapter 8
1 Jan Luiten van Zanden and Bas van Leeuwen, “Persistent but not consistent: The growth of
national income in Holland 1347-1807”, Explorations in Economic History 49 (2012): 119-30.
2 Jaap Jacobs, New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America, The Atlantic World
vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
3 Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007).
4 Jan de Vries, European Urbanization, 1500-1800 (London: Methuen, 1984), 39 (table 3.7).
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5 Herbert H. Rowen, The Princes of Orange: The Stadholders of the Dutch Republic (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988).
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6 Wantje Fritschy, “A ‘Financial Revolution’ Reconsidered: Public Finance in Holland During
the Dutch Revolt, 1568-1648,” Economic History Review 56 (2003): 57-89; Marjolein ’t Hart,
“The Merits of a Financial Revolution: Public Finance, 1550-1700,” in A Financial History of
the Netherlands, eds. Marjolein ‘t Hart, Joost Jonker and Jan Luiten van Zanden (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 11-36.
7 Jan Luiten van Zanden and Maarten Prak, “Towards an Economic Interpretation of
Citizenship: The Dutch Republic Between Medieval Communes and Modern Nation-States,”
European Review of Economic History 10 (2006): 111-45.
8 R. Po-chia Hsia and H.F.K. van Nierop, eds., Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch
Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
9 Charles H. Parker, Faith on the margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age
(Cambridge Ma.: Harvard University Press, 2008).
10 Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge Ma.: Harvard University Press, 2007).
11 Klaas van Berkel, Albert van Helden, and Lodewijk Palm, eds., A History of Science in the
Netherlands: Survey, Themes, and Reference (Leiden: Brill, 1999), chapters 1 and 2; C.D. Andriesse,
Titan: A Biography of Christiaan Huygens (Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht, 2003), 19; Steven
Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), chapters 1-2.
Chapter 9
1 James R. Kennedy, Nieuw Babylon in aanbouw: Nederland in de jaren zestig (Amsterdam: Boom,
1995); James R. Kennedy, Een weloverwogen dood: euthanasie in Nederland (Amsterdam: Bert
Bakker, 2002).
2 Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); John Marshall, John Locke,
Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
3 Ad van der Woude and Jan de Vries, The First Modern Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997).
4 Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen, eds., A Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Republic in European Perspective
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
5 Herman Obdeijn and Marlou Schrover, Komen en gaan: Immigratie en emigratie in Nederland vanaf
1550 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2008).
6 Jonathan Israel, The Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
7 Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
8 Wijnand W. Mijnhardt, “The Construction of Silence: Religious and Political Radicalism in
Dutch History” in The Early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic, ed. Wiep van Bunge, 231-262
(Leiden: Brill, 2002).
9 Joost Kloek and Wijnand Mijnhardt, 1800: Blueprints for a Society (London:
Palgrave/MacMillan, 2004).
10 Peter van Rooden, Religieuze regimes: Over godsdienst en maatschappij in Nederland 1570-1970
(Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1995).
11 Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth
Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); C.G. Brown, The Death of Christian
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Britain: Understanding Secularization, 1880-2000 (London: Routledge, 2001); Peter van Rooden,
“Oral history en het vreemde sterven van het Nederlandse Christendom,” Bijdragen en
Mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 119 (2004): 524-551.
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Chapter 10
1 This chapter is based, at times verbatim, on my books Dutch Colonialism, Migration and Cultural
Heritage (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2008) and Postcolonial Netherlands: Sixty-Five Years of Forgetting,
Commemorating, Silencing (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011).
2 Atlas of Mutual Heritage, http://www.atlasofmutualheritage.nl.
3 Oostindie, Postcolonial Netherlands.
Chapter 11
1 Peter Romijn, Burgemeesters in Oorlogstijd: Besturen tijdens de Duitse Bezetting (Amsterdam:
Balans, 2006).
2 J.C.H. Blom, “De vervolging van de joden in internationaal vergelijkend perspectief,” in
Crisis, bezetting en herstel: Tien studies over Nederland, 1930-1950 (The Hague: Nijgh & Van Ditmar,
1989). Historian Nanda van der Zee in her book Om erger te voorkomen: De voorbereiding en
uitvoering van de vernietiging van het Nederlandse jodendom (Amsterdam: Balans, 1997) for
instance, questioned to what extent Wilhelmina actually spoke out against the persecution of
the Jewish citizens. For an overview of recent research on the Holocaust in the Netherlands
see Ido de Haan, “Breuklijnen in de geschiedschrijving van de jodenvervolging: Een over-
zicht van het recente Nederlandse debat,” Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der
Nederlanden 123, no. 1 (2008): 31-70.
3 Gerard Trienekens in his Voedsel en honger in oorlogstijd 1940-1945. Misleiding, mythe en werke-
lijkheid (Utrecht, Kosmos, 1995) argued that the myth of the hunger winter was largely
exaggerated since the majority of the Dutch population was not undernourished. And
Herman Klemann concluded in Nederland, 1938-1948: Economie en samenleving in jaren van
oorlog en bezetting (Amsterdam: Boom, 2002) that the Dutch economy was not systematically
destroyed during the war, but on the contrary was doing quite well.
4 L. J. de Jong, The Netherlands and Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).
The other two authoritative historians of the first generation were Abel Herzberg, who
published Kroniek van de jodenvervolging, 1940-45 in 1950, and Jacques Presser, whose impres-
sive 1965 study Ondergang was translated as Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry
(London: Souvenir, 1968).
5 In his controversial study Grijs verleden: Nederland en de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Amsterdam:
Contact, 2001) Chris van der Heijden questioned whether the general population was as
“black and white” as they had been portrayed in earlier studies. He suggests most people
were simply trying to survive. Ad van Liempt showed how easily some Dutch citizens had
been willing to betray Jews for money (7.50 guilders per person) in his book Kopgeld:
Nederlandse premiejagers op zoek naar joden, 1943 (Amsterdam: Balans, 2002). Historian Bart
Boom arrived at the much-debated conclusion that ordinary Dutch simply could not have
known about the “industrialized genocide” committed by the Germans: ‘Wij weten niets van
hun lot’: Gewone Nederlanders en de Holocaust (Amsterdam: Boom, 2012).
Chapter 12
1 Martinus (316-397) was a Roman soldier, named after Mars, who converted to Christianity
and became bishop of Tours (France). The coat of arms of the city of Utrecht refers to the
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legend that once, when he met a naked beggar, he tore his cloak in two and gave away one
half.
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2 These and other ritual practices are mentioned in an eight-century “Short index of super-
stitions and paganisms.” See Joris van Eijnatten and Fred van Lieburg, Nederlandse religie-
geschiedenis (Hilversum: Verloren, 2005), 57.
3 Llewellyn Bogaers, Aards, betrokken en zelfbewust: De verwevenheid van cultuur en religie in katholiek
Utrecht, 1300-1600 (Amsterdam: Vrije Universiteit, 2008).
4 “Praten als Brugman” is a Dutch expression, commemorating the rhetorical skills of a fifteenth-
century Franciscan itinerant preacher. Even before the Reformation, sermons in the Low
Countries often took a full hour.
5 Deventer, a city on the river IJssel, was part of the Hanseatic League: an international trade
network. See W.P. Blockmans, “The Formation of a Political Union, 1300-1600” in History of
the Low Countries, eds. J.C.H. Blom and E. Lamberts (New York: Berghahn, 1999), 76-78.
Deventer had a famous school, where Erasmus of Rotterdam received a large part of his
education. As a boy, Desiderius Erasmus attended the then famous school at Deventer.
See Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (1924; London: Phoenix, 2002).
6 See James C. Bratt, Dutch Calvinism in Modern America: A History of a Conservative Subculture
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984).
7 The Old Catholic Church, which resulted from the 1723 “Utrecht Schism” was already
allowed to have its own bishops. See Gian Ackermans, Herders en huurlingen: Bisschoppen en
priesters in de Republiek, 1663-1705 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2003).
8 See my Servants of the Kingdom: Professionalization among Ministers of the Nineteenth-Century
Netherlands Reformed Church. Translated by David McKay (Boston: Brill, 2010).
9 See Peter van Rooden, “Long-term Religious Developments in the Netherlands, ca 1750-
2000” in The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000, eds. Hugh McLeod and
W. Ustorf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 113-129. This, and many other
relevant English articles are available on the author’s web page:
http://www.xs4all.nl/ pvrooden/Peter/english.htm.
10 Gereformeerden, too, had suffered from secularization and secessions. In the mid-1920s, for
example, discord broke out over the question if in Paradise, the snake had audibly spoken.
A much bigger schism took place in 1944, after the Gereformeerde Synod had imposed
Kuyper’s doctrine of baptism.
11 Marcel Maussen, Constructing mosques: The Governance of Islam in France and the Netherlands.
PhD diss., Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (ASSR).
12 Also the percentage of Moroccan-Dutch who report praying five times per day – 76 percent
over against 27 percent of the Turkish Dutch – is incredibly high. Mieke Maliepaard and
Mérove Gijsberts, Moslim in Nederland 2012 (The Hague: SCP, 2012).
Chapter 13
1 Museums all over the world have Dutch seventeenth century art included in their collection.
In the Netherlands the collection of every museum – be it a national, provincial or municipal
museum – includes seventeenth-century art. Of course the primary museum is the national
museum: the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Smaller but absolutely marvelous is the
Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague.
2 Evert van Uitert, Louis van Tilborgh and Sjraar van Heugten, Vincent van Gogh: Schilderijen
Catalogue (Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh/Rijksmuseum Kröller Müller, 1990).
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3 Vincent van Gogh, letter to Emile Bernard, Arles, c. July 25, 1888. For the letters Van Gogh
wrote, see: http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/
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4 The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has the largest collection of works by Van Gogh in the
world. The second largest collection is in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, a wonderful
museum in one of the most beautiful locations. All these museums have very good websites,
in Dutch as well as in English.
Chapter 14
1 Ben van Berkel, quoted in the leaflet on the occasion of the publication of Ben van Berkel,
Caroline Bos, Move. 3 vols. (Amsterdam: UN-studio/Goose Press, 1999). This development is
even accelerating as is illustrated in the merger between the NAi (Netherlands Architecture
Institute), the Premsela Institute for design and even blurring the boundaries between
worlds, an institute for ‘new media’, into what is called ‘Het Nieuwe Instituut, The New
Institute, but occupying the Old NAi designed by Jo Coenen.
2 The paradox is that most of these churches were built in areas where the Catholics formed a
minority, because in the other areas the Protestants were allowed to keep the old churches
they occupied since the reformation.
3 Hetty Berens, ed., P. J.H. Cuijpers (1827-1921): The Complete Works (Rotterdam: NAi, 2007).
4 Sergio Polano, ed., Hendrik Petrus Berlage: The Complete Works (1987; Milano: Electa, 2002).
For translations of the most influential theory: Ian Boyd White and Wim de Wit, eds.,
Hendrik Petrus Berlage: Thoughts on Style, 1886-1909 (Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History
of Art and the Humanities, 1996). Still the best sourcebook for direct inspirations: Pieter
Singelenberg, Berlage: Idea and Style; The Quest for Modern Architecture (Utrecht: Haentjes, Dekker
en Gumbert, 1972).
5 Wim de Wit, ed., The Amsterdam School: Dutch Expressionist Architecture, 1915-1930 (Cambridge:
MIT, 1983); Maristella Casciato, The Amsterdam School (Rotterdam: 010, 1996). Also much
context in: Manfred Bock, Sigrid Johannisse and Vladimir Stissi, Michel de Klerk: Architect and
Artist of the Amsterdam School, 1884-1923. (Rotterdam: NAi, 1997).
6 Shortest introduction in: Noud de Vreeze, Woningbouw, Inspiratie & Ambities: Kwalitatieve
Grondslagen van de Sociale Woningbouw in Nederland (Almere: Nationale Woningraad, 1993).
The book contains a lot of photographs and plans of the period 1901-1989. In favor of
modern architecture but still very readable: Donald I. Grinberg, Housing in the Netherlands
(Delft: Delft University Press, 1977).
7 Ed Taverne, Cor Wagenaar and Martien de Vletter, eds., J. J.P. Oud, 1890-1963: Poetical
Functionalist; The Complete Works (Rotterdam: NAi, 2001).
8 Herman van Bergeijk, “Willem Marinus Dudok: An Architect and a Municipal Official”
Rassegna, 75 (1998): 52-69. For a different opinion: Donald Langmead, Willem Marinus Dudok:
A Dutch Modernist (Westport: Greenwood, 1996).
9 Joris Molenaar and Anne Mieke Backer, et al., eds., Van Nelle: Monument in Progress (Rotterdam:
De Hef, 2005), not only tells the history of the firm and the building but also shows the
restoration and alternation from offices and production lines into a “Design Factory.”
10 Aaron Betsky, et al., Living in the Lowlands: The Dutch Domestic Scene, 1850-2004 (Rotterdam: NAi,
2004), catalogue to the former semi-permanent exhibition in the NAi. Among the contribu-
tions are: Marinke Steenhuis, “Middelburg 1940: A New Historic City Centre” which focuses
on the plan by P. Verhagen; Jean-Paul Baeten, “Model for a New Society” discusses the
changing concepts and forms in Pendrecht and Alexanderpolder Rotterdam 1947-1965;
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Ellen Smit, “Nagele: A Modern Village for Farm Workers” talks about the exceptional village
of Nagele, compared to the more traditional villages in the new Polders (1947-1956).
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An international perspective: Jörg Düwel, Niels Gütschow, eds., A Blessing in Disguise.
War and Town Planning in Europe. 1940-1945 (Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2013).
11 At the time of revising this chapter (October 2013) three very large buildings designed by
OMA were in different phases of realization not withstanding the deep crisis in the building
industry: the mixed use building, the New Rotterdam; the new Office of the Municipality
and a large building housing dwellings and a new concept of the Shopping Mall.
12 For actual information with animations of the future: www.nieuwhoogcatharijne.nl and more
critical about all building in Utrecht: http://gpm.ruhosting.nl/avh/Europe%20as%20Border-
land.pdf.
Chapter 15
1 See their correspondence: Willem Frederik Hermans and Gerard Reve, Verscheur deze brief!
Ik vertel veel te veel; Een briefwisseling (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2008).
2 See about these cases: Jan Fekkes, De God van je tante: Ofwel het ezel-proces van Gerard Kornelis van
het Reve (Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 1968); Klaus Beekman and Ralf Grüttemeier, De wet van de
letter: Literatuur en rechtspraak (Amsterdam: Polak & Van Gennep, 2005) and Frans A. Jansen’s
chapter on Hermans and Frans de Rover’s on Reve in M.A. Schenkeveld-Van der Dussen, ed.,
Nederlandse literatuur: Een geschiedenis (Groningen: Martinus Nijhoff, 1993). Citations are from
these publications; our translation.
3 Nathalie Heinich, Être artiste: Les transformations du statut des peintres et des sculpteurs (Paris:
Klincksieck, 2005).
4 Joost Kloek and Wijnand Mijnhardt, 1800: Blueprints for a Society (London: Palgrave, 2004).
5 See also Frans Ruiter and Wilbert Smulders, Literatuur en moderniteit in Nederland, 1840-1990
(Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 1996).
6 See website “Geschiedenis 24”, http://www.geschiedenis24.nl/speler.program.7079222.html.
Chapter 16
1 Cecile Goekoop-de Jong van Beek en Donk, Hilda van Suylenburg (Amsterdam: Scheltema &
Holkema, 1897) [our translation].
2 Maaike Meijer, “15 oktober 1976: Anja Meulenbelt Publiceert ‘De Schaamte Voorbij’: De
Tweede Feministische Golf en de Literatuur,” in: Nederlandse Literatuur: Een Geschiedenis, ed.
M.A. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen (Groningen: Martinus Nijhoff, 1993), 820 [our translation].
3 Anja Meulenbelt, The Shame is Over: A Political Life Story. Translation Ann Oosthuizen (1976;
London: The Women’s Press, 1980), 3.
4 Irene Costera Meijer, Het Persoonlijke Wordt Politiek: Feministische Bewustwording in Nederland
1965-1980 (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1996), 224, 228.
5 Maaike Meijer, “De Schaamte Voorbij,” 822 [our translation].
6 Idem., 819-25; Costera Meijer, Het Persoonlijke Wordt Politiek, 215, 234 ff.
7 Http://www.beperkthoudbaar.info.
8 Étienne Balibar, “Europe as Borderland” (The Alexander von Humboldt Lectures in Human
Geography, Radboud University Nijmegen, 2004), http://www.ru.nl/socgeo/colloquium/
Europe%20as%20Borderland.pdf.
9 Domna C. Stanton, “Language and Revolution: The Franco-American Dis-Connection,” in
The Future of Difference, ed. Hester Eisenstein and Alice Jardine (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980), 75-87.
copyright law.
10 Rosemarie Buikema, “Literature and the Production of Ambiguous Memory,” European

Journal of English Studies 10, no. 2 (2006): 187-99.
11 See also Marja Vuijsje, Joke Smit: Biografie van een feministe (Amsterdam: Atlas, 2008).
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Chapter 18
1 Studies in Dutch about the history and properties of the Dutch language include Nicoline
van der Sijs and Roland Willemijns, Het verhaal van het Nederlands (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker,
2009); Jan W. de Vries, Roland Willemijns and Peter Burger, Het verhaal van een taal. Negen
eeuwen Nederlands (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2003); and Marijke van der Wal and Cor van
Bree, Geschiedenis van het Nederlands (Houten: Spectrum, 2012).
2 J. Nortier, Nederland, meertalenland. Feiten, perspectieven en meningen over meertaligheid
(Amsterdam: Aksant, 2009).
Chapter 19
1 See: G.P. van de Ven, ed., Man-made Lowlands: History of Water Management and Land Reclamation
in the Netherlands (Utrecht: Matrijs, 2004). This book was written from the perspective of
historical geography. Another recent book, from a civil engineering perspective: Robert J.
Hoeksema, Designed for Dry Feet: Flood Protection and Land Reclamation in the Netherlands (Reston:
ASCE Press, 2006).
2 A Different Approach to Water: Water Management Policy in the 21st Century (The Hague: Ministry of
Transport, Public Works and Water Management, 2000), http://www.waterland.net.
3 Spatial Planning Key Decision “Room for the River”: Investing in the Safety and Vitality of the Dutch
River Basin Region (The Hague: Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management,
2006), www.ruimtevoorderivier.nl.
4 Deltacommissie, Working Together with Water: A Living Land Builds for its Future; Findings of the
Deltacommissie 2008 (Deltacommissie, 2008), http://www.deltacommissie.nl.
5 The so-called “Water Vision” of the Dutch government has a separate chapter about water
consciousness. The report suggests a policy mix of communication, participation, and educa-
tion in order to raise awareness of water issues among the Dutch population. Water Vision:
Safeguarding our Future: The Government’s Vision of National Water Policy (The Hague: Ministry of
Transport, Public Works and Water Management, 2007), www.verkeerenwaterstaat.nl.
6 J. de Boer, H. Goossen and D. Huitema, Bewust Werken aan Waterbewustzijn: Studie naar de Rol en
Relevantie van het Begrip Waterbewustzijn voor het Waterbeleid (Amsterdam: Instituut voor
Milieuvraagstukken, 2003).
7 T. Lohan, ed., Water Consciousness: How We All Have to Change to Protect our Most Critical Resource
(San Francisco: AlterNet Books, 2008).
8 TNS-NIPO, Nederlanders Zijn Niet Goed op de Hoogte van Waterproblematiek (Amsterdam: TNS-
NIPO, 2005), http://www.waterland.net.
9 Landelijke Werkgroep Evaluatie Watertoets, Watertoetsproces op Weg Naar Bestemming. Landelijke
Evaluatie Watertoets 2006 (The Hague: Ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat, 2006).
10 Transition in Dutch water management is the central theme in R. van der Brugge, J. Rotmans
and D. Loorbach, “The Transition in Dutch Water Management,” Regional Environmental
Change 5, No. 1 (May 2005): 164-176.
Chapter 20
1 “US and UK Fill Top 10 Places,” Times Higher Education, 9 November 2007,
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/us-and-uk-fill-top-10-places/311028.article.
copyright law.
2 Approximately 8 percent of all pupils, those with a physical and/or mental disability, partici-
pate in one of the various forms of “special education.”
3 Utrecht 52, Leiden 67, Groningen 92.
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4 Initially, the money for the foundation of these institutions was raised by the religious
communities themselves, but after a gradual increase of governmental support, they were
granted complete public financial funding in 1968.
5 The Veterinary School in Utrecht had already been incorporated into Utrecht University in
1925.
6 The three members of the board are appointed and overseen by the Supervisory Board
(Raad van Toezicht), consisting of five persons with professional, governmental, corporate or
academic expertise.
7 Finland is ranked number 1.
8 In general, the NVAO uses the independent Quality Assurance Netherlands Universities
(QANU) as the evaluation agency.
Chapter 21
1 The most comprehensive overview in English of Dutch immigration history is to be found
in: Leo Lucassen and Rinus Penninx, Newcomers: Immigrants and Their Descendants in the
Netherlands, 1550-1995 (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2002).
2 I have analyzed Dutch immigration and integration in the past fifty years in more detail in:
Entzinger, Han, “Changing the Rules While the Game Is On: From Multiculturalism to
Assimilation in the Netherlands,” in Migration, Citizenship, Ethnos, eds. Y. Michal Bodemann
and Gökçe Yurdakul (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), 121-144, and in: Entzinger, Han
(2014) ‘The growing gap between facts and discourse on immigrant integration in the
Netherlands,’ Identities 21 (published online August 2013).
3 The most authoritative analysis of Dutch pillarization has been offered by Arend Lijphart,
The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1975).
4 A major eye opener for many was the report Allochtonenbeleid, written in 1989 by the Scientific
Council for Government Policy (WRR), a think tank close to the prime minister’s office.
A political breakthrough only came several years later. An English summary of the report,
entitled Immigrant Policy, was published by the Council in 1990.
5 Paul Scheffer, “Het Multiculturele Drama,” [“The Multicultural Tragedy”] NRC Handelsblad,
27 January 2000. An English translation of this article has been published as Paul Scheffer,
“The Land of Arrival,” in The Challenge of Diversity: European Social Democracy Facing Migration,
Integration and Multiculturalism, ed. René Cuperus, Karl A. Duffek and Johannes Kandel
(Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2003), 23-30.
6 As first predicted by Samuel Huntington in 1993. See also: Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash
of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (London: Touchstone, 1998).
7 In 2007, the Scientific Council for Government Policy (see note 4) published a report on
Dutch identity: Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, Identificatie met Nederland
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2007). At the presentation ceremony of the report
Princess Máxima remarked that “The Dutch identity does not exist.” This comment, which
was meant to be self-evident, provoked fierce political debates in the weeks thereafter and
thus illustrated how sensitive these matters have become. See also chapter 1.
8 See for example: Mérove Gijsberts, Ethnic minorities and Integration: Outlook for the Future
(The Hague: Social and Cultural Planning Office, 2005); Paul M. Sniderman and Louk
copyright law.
Hagendoorn, When Ways of Life Collide: Multiculturalism and its Discontents in the Netherlands
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
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9 This is reflected – among others – by regular publications of the Netherlands Institute for
Social Research (formerly Social and Cultural Planning Office, SCP) and by Statistics
Netherlands (CBS) on the development of integration, such as Mérove Gijsberts, Wim Huijnk
and Jaco Dagevos eds., Jaarrapport Integratie 2011 (Den Haag: SCP, 2012); Jaarrapport Integratie
2012 (Den Haag/Heerlen: CBS, 2012)
10 This was what Stef Blok, MP and chair of the Commission, stated upon presentation of its
final report: Tijdelijke Commissie Onderzoek Integratiebeleid (Commissie Blok), Bruggen
bouwen. Deel 1: Eindrapport. Tweede Kamer, vergaderjaar 2003-2004, 28 689, no. 9 (2004).
Interestingly, the leaders of most major parties in parliament had already distanced them-
selves from this conclusion before the report had even been released. Apparently, certain
messages are more welcome than others.
11 Han Entzinger and Edith Dourleijn, De lat steeds hoger: De leefwereld van jongeren in een multi-
etnische stad (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2008).
Chapter 22
1 Zacht waar het kan, hard waar het moet.
2 Geert Hofstede, Gert-Jan Hofstede and Michael Minkov, Cultures and Organizations: Software of
the Mind (London: McGraw-Hill, 2010).
3 Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press,
1995). A down-to-earth explanation for the extraordinary economic revival is the increasing
supply of female labor force and the economic expansion in labor-intensive commercial
consultancy Sociaal en Cultureel Rapport 2000: Nederland in Europa (Den Haag: Sociaal en
Cultureel Planbureau, 2000).
4 In 1996 and 1997 the poldermodel was a worldwide hype: the press reported favorably about
the economic successes and the reduction of the welfare state, the social partners (employers
and employees) received a German price, and Prime Minister Wim Kok was given the oppor-
tunity to address the G-7 in Denver.
5 Edwin M. Schur, Crimes without Victims: Deviant Behavior and Public Policy (Englewood Cliffs,
N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965); Edwin M. Schur and Hugo Bedau, Victimless Crimes: Two Sides of a
Controversy (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974).
6 At a crucial moment a Christian Democrat changed the discourse style from criminal justice to
public health when she declared that it was more Christian to help addicts than to punish them.
7 Or even the free distribution of heroin. A real-life experiment among 430 addicts between
1998 and 2000 revealed that free distribution of heroin compared to the substitute
methadone resulted in significantly less criminal behavior (M.G.W. Dijkgraaf et al., “Cost
Utility Analysis of Co-Prescribed Heroin Compared with Methadonotesne Maintenance
Treatment in Heroine Addicts in Two Randomised Trials,” British Medical Journal 330, no.
7503 (June 2005): 1297-1300).
8 Asked for advice on two proposed acts (one from the government and one parliamentary
initiative), the Raad van State (Council of State) found it almost impossible to formulate
substantive grounds for euthanasia; it advised that more case law was required.
9 M. J. Ter Voert and T. Geurts, Evaluatie ouderschapsplan: Een eerste verkenning (Den Haag: WODC,
2013).
10 Pikmeer I, 23/04/1996, and Pikmeer II, 06/01/1998.
copyright law.
11 A committee chaired by the former national ombudsman, M. Oosting, looked into the
Enschede disaster, while a committee chaired by Queen’s Commissioner J.G.M. Alders
investigated the Volendam disaster.
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12 This chapter is a revision of the chapter “Law in Action” by Freek Bruinsma, which he wrote
for the first edition of this book. I wish to thank Freek for allowing me to use his chapter for
this revision. Responsibility for this chapter lies entirely with the current author.
Chapter 23
1 After legal proceedings by relatives of the victims in 2014, a Dutch court held the Dutch State
liable for the killings of more than 300 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, because Dutchbat
had not done enough to protect them.
Chapter 24
1 For foreign descriptions of the Netherlands see Robert Fruin, “De Nederlanders der zeven-
tiende eeuw door Engelschen geschetst [1861]” in Robert Fruin’s Verspreide Geschriften, ed. P. J.
Blok and P.L. Muller (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1901); J.S. Bartstra, “Onze voorouders
door vreemden beoordeeld (Voornl. 18e Eeuw),” Onze eeuw: maandschrift voor staatkunde,
letteren, wetenschap en kunst 12, no. 2 (1912); Johan Huizinga, “Engelschen en Nederlanders in
Shakespeare’s tijd,” De Gids 88 (1924); G. Brugmans, Onder de loupe van het buitenland (Baarn:
Hollandia, 1929); Pieter Jan van Winter, De Chinezen van Europa (Groningen: J. B. Wolters,
1965); J.M. Fuchs and W. J. Simons, Het zal je maar gezegd wezen: Buitenlanders over Nederland
(Den Haag: Kruseman, 1977); Frans Naeff, “58 Miljoen Nederlanders in andermans ogen,”
in 58 Miljoen Nederlanders, ed. A.F. Manning and M. de Vroede (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Boek,
1977); Margarete van Ackeren, Das Niederlandebild im Strudel der deutschen romantischen Literatur:
Das Eigene und die Eigenheiten der Fremde (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992); Rob van Ginkel, Notities
over Nederlanders: Antropologische reflecties (Amsterdam: Boom, 1997).
2 Samuel Butler, The Poetical Works of Samuel Butler, 2 vols. (London: William Pickering, 1835), II,
290-91.
3 Lisa Jardine, Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland’s Glory (London: HarperPress, 2008).
4 René Descartes, letter to Guez de Balzac, 5 May 1631, in René Descartes, Oeuvres de Descartes
(Paris: F.G. Levrault, 1824), XVI, 200-01. My translation.
5 See Chapter 74, “Fondation de la République des Provinces-Unies” and Chapter 187 “De la
Holland au XVIIe Siècle” in Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs et l’espris des nations et sur les principaux
faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemegne jusqu’à Louis XIII [Essay on General History and on the
Customs and the Character of Nations] Vol. 2 (1756).
6 John Lothrop Motley, The Rise of the Dutch Republic. A History, 3 vols. (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1856); Mary Mapes Dodge, Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland
(New York: Scribners, 1865); Annette Stott, Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in
American Art and Culture (Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1998).
7 James Murray, A Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent: Being a Guide through Holland, Belgium,
Prussia and Northern Germany and Along the Rhine, from Holland to Switzerland (London: John
Murray & Son, 1836).
8 Frederick Painton, “Holland: Drawing the Line; Has Permissiveness Gone Too Far?” Time,
10 August 1987.
9 Sarah Lambert, “Dutch Protest to Vatican Envoy Over ‘Nazi’ Charge,” The Independent, 24 Feb
1993.
10 Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within (New York:
copyright law.
Doubleday, 2006); Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam. The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits
of Tolerance (London: Atlantic Books, 2006); Jaap Verheul, “The Dutch 9/11: A Transatlantic
Debate About Diversity and National Identity,” in Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations,
333
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1609-2009, eds. Hans Krabbendam, Kees van Minnen and Giles Scott Smith (Albany: State
University of New York, 2009), 1106-1116; Scheffer, Paul. Land of Arrival: Immigrant Nations.
Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity, 2011.
11 See for other outside perspectives on Dutch society J. Rentes de Carvalho, Waar die andere God
woont (Amsterdam: Meulenhof, 1972); Derek Phillips, De naakte Nederlander (Amsterdam:
Bert Bakker, 1985); M. Nasr, Minder over meer: De Nederlandse samenleving door een Marokkaanse
loep (Hilversum: Nasr Mohammed, 1986); Christian Chartier, Het verdriet van Nederland:
Een Fransman stoeit met de Hollandse ziel (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1992); Sylvain Ephimenco,
Het land van Theo van Gogh (Antwerpen: Houtekiet, 2004).
12 Erich Wiedemann, “Frau Antje in den Wechseljahren,” Der Spiegel, 28 February 1994; Sophie
Elpers, Hollandser dan kaas: De geschiedenis van Frau Antje (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University
Press, 2009).
copyright law.
334
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About the Authors
Wiljan van den Akker

is Distinguished Professor of Modern Poetry, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, and Vice-Rector
for Research at Utrecht University. Previously, he served as Director of Institutes at the Royal
Netherlands Academy for Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and Chair of the Board of Humanities at the
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). He wrote a PhD thesis on the Dutch poet
Martinus Nijhoff and was a visiting scholar and lecturer in Berlin, Paris, and Berkeley. His special
field of interest is modernist poetry in an international context. His first volume of poetry, De
Afstand (De Arbeiderspers, 2008), was awarded the C. Buddingh’ Prize for new Dutch poetry.
Emmeline Besamusca
is Assistant Professor of Dutch Culture and Society at Utrecht University and Lecturer in History
and Culture of the Low Countries at the University of Vienna. She teaches at the Utrecht University
Summer School and is a regular guest lecturer at numerous universities around Europe on issues
related to Dutch cultural studies. Among her recent publications are (edited with Christine
Hermann and Ulrike Vogl) Out of the Box: Über den Wert des Grenswertigen (Praesens, 2013) and Foreign
Eyes: International Students Reflect on Utrecht (Pallas/AUP, 2011).
David J. Bos
is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Amsterdam’s College of Social Sciences, and post-doc
researcher at the Amsterdam Center for the Study of Lived Religion (Free University of Amsterdam).
Previously, he worked as the editor of the Netherlands’ leading mental health monthly, and as
Assistant Professor at Utrecht University’s Department of Religious Studies. Among his publica-
tions in English are Out in the Netherlands: Acceptance of Homosexuality in the Netherlands (SCP, 2007),
and Servants of the Kingdom: Professionalization among Ministers of the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands
Reformed Church (Brill, 2010).
Rosemarie L. Buikema
is Professor of Art, Culture, and Diversity at Utrecht University. She is the Academic Director of the
Netherlands Research School of Gender Studies and chairs the Utrecht University Graduate Gender
Program as well as the Research Institute for Citizenship and Human Rights. She has published
widely in the field of feminist theory, post-colonial theory, memory studies, and transitional justice
in journals such as Journal of European Studies, Memory Studies, Women’s Studies International Forum,
European Journal of Women’s Studies, Journal of English Studies, Memory Studies, Journal of Culture and
Sexuality. Her latest books include Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture (Routledge, 2009) (co-edited
with Iris van der Tuin) and Theories and Methodologies of Post-Graduate Feminist Research (Routledge
2011). See also http://www.genderstudies.nl.
copyright law.
Rob Dettingmeijer
worked as Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture and Urban Planning at Wage-
ningen University and at Utrecht University. Currently, he is an independent scholar, author, and
335
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(guest) curator, and he contributes regularly to (among others) Archined and Archis/Volume. His
PhD thesis is entitled Open City, City Planning, Housing and Architecture between the Two World Wars in
Rotterdam (1988). His last major project was to participate in the book and exhibition entitled
Rietveld’s Univers (Central Museum, Utrecht 2010-’11; MAXXI, Rome 2011; Vitra, Weill a/Rhein
2012).
Han B. Entzinger
is Professor of Migration and Integration Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is the chair
of the Board of Directors of the European network of research institutes on migration (IMISCOE).
He is also the deputy chair of the Scientific Committee of the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency in
Vienna. His research interests include international migration, diversity, multiculturalism, and
public policy and the welfare state. Among his recent publications are ‘The Dynamics of Migration
and Social Transformations’; in: Arnaud Sales, ed., Sociology Today; London: SAGE (2012), and:
‘Models of immigrant integration? Between national and local integration policies’; in: M. Martin-
iello and J. Rath eds., An Introduction to Immigrant Incorporation Studies: European Perspectives (Amster-
dam University Press, 2014; with P. Scholten).
Ido de Haan
is Professor of Political History at Utrecht University. His fields of interest are the political history
of Western Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth century, the history of the Holocaust and other
genocides, as well as regime changes and political transition since the early modern period. Among
his recent publications in English are “Imperialism, Colonialism, Genocide. The Dutch Case for an
International History of the Holocaust,” in The International Relevance of Dutch History (edited by
Klaas van Berkel and Leonie de Goei, KNHG, 2010), “Failures and Mistakes: Images of Collabor-
ation in Postwar Dutch Society,” in Collaboration with the Nazis. Public Discourse after the Holocaust
(edited by Roni Stauber, Routledge, 2010), and “The Western European Welfare State beyond
Christian and Social Democratic Ideology,” in Oxford Handbook of Postwar History (edited by D. Stone,
Oxford University Press, 2012).
Lex Heerma van Voss

is Director of the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands. He studied history in
Utrecht and Paris and wrote a PhD thesis on the introduction of the eight-hour work day in the
Netherlands. He has published on the comparative history of dockers, textile workers, and prosti-
tutes, on the history of capitalism around the North Sea in the Dutch Golden Age, and on the long
term history of social security.
Duco A. Hellema
is Professor of History of International Relations at Utrecht University. He studied political science
at Leiden University and wrote a PhD thesis on the position adopted by the Netherlands at the time
of the Hungarian Revolution and the Suez Crisis in 1956. He has published widely on Dutch for-
eign relations, the Cold War, and the history of international relations in general. Among his recent
publications are Foreign Policy of the Netherlands: The Dutch Role in World Politics (Republic of Letters,
2009), and Nederland en de jaren zeventig (Boom, 2012).
copyright law.
Ghislain J.P. Kieft

is Assistant Professor of Art History and Iconology at Utrecht University. His research interests in-
volve paintings and artists of the Northern Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth century,
336
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the production of art, and the use of perspective. He co-authored De Schilderkunst der Lage Landen, a
comprehensive three-volume overview of painting in the Low Countries throughout the ages up to
the present day (Amsterdam University Press, 2007).
Christ P. M. Klep
is a freelance military and contemporary historian, specializing in the Second World War and
modern peace-keeping operations. He is currently also working as an Assistant Professor of History
at Amsterdam University. He co-authored De Bevrijding van Nederland 1944-1945 (The Liberation of the
Netherlands, 1944-1945; Sdu, 1995) and (with Richard van Gils) Van Korea tot Kosovo, a history of Dutch
peace-keeping operations since the Second World War (now in its completely revised third edition).
Marjo van Koppen

is Associate Professor of Dutch linguistics at Utrecht University. She lectures in the Dutch Depart-
ment on Dutch linguistics and the history of Dutch. Her main research interests are the syntactic
variation between individual speakers, dialects, and languages. The aim of her research is to un-
cover the locus of variation in human language. She also works on the related question of how and
why language changes. She has published in the leading national and international linguistics
journals and has been awarded a VIDI-project by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific
Research (NWO) on the uniformity of linguistic variation.
Sonja de Leeuw
is Professor of Dutch Television Culture in an International Context at Utrecht University. Her
fields of interest are the history and culture of European television and media, television heritage,
digital humanities, and television satire. She co-founded the European Television History Network
(www.televisionhistory.eu) and coordinated the EU funded research project EUscreen, Exploring
Europe’s Television Heritage in Changing Contexts (www.euscreen.eu). She was co-leader of a re-
search project on “The Power of Satire: Cultural Boundaries Contested” (www.powerofsatire.org).
She is co-founder and co-editor in chief of the e-journal VIEW. Journal of European Television History
and Culture. She wrote books on Dutch television drama, on television pioneer Erik de Vries, and on
the cultural history of television in the Netherlands. She has widely published on European televi-
sion culture, television drama, and on media and identity.
Wijnand W. Mijnhardt
is Professor of Comparative History of the Sciences and the Humanities, and former Director and
founder of the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences at Utrecht
University. From 2001-2004 he was a visiting professor for Dutch History and Culture at UCLA. He
has been affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton and the Getty Research
Institute in Los Angeles. He has published widely on Dutch intellectual history, on the Dutch
Republic in the eighteenth century, and on the Enlightenment. He co-authored (with Joost Kloek)
1800: Blueprints for a National Community (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), (with Lynn Hunt and Margaret
Jacob) The Book that Enlightened Europe: Picart and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of the World (Harvard
University Press, 2010), and (with Paul Brusse) Towards a new template for Dutch history: De-urbaniza-
tion and the balance between city and countryside (Wbooks, 2011).
copyright law.
Marco Mostert
is Professor of Medieval Written Culture at Utrecht University. Apart from many publications on
the social history of literacy and communication, he has also written on the (early) medieval history
337
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of the Low Countries. Both interests are evident in “The Early History of Written Culture in the
Northern Netherlands,” in Along the Oral-Written Continuum: Types of Text, Relations and Their Implica-
tions (Brepols Publishers, 2010). An English edition of his recent survey of “Dutch” history in the
first millennium, In de Marge van de Beschaving (Bert Bakker, 2009) is in preparation.
Gert Oostindie
is Director of the Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), and Professor
of Caribbean History at Leiden University. His principal areas of research have been the Caribbean
and Dutch (post)colonial history in a comparative perspective. His books include Dutch Atlantic
Connections, 1680-1800: Linking Empires, Bridging Borders (edited with Jessica Vance Roitman, Brill
2014), Postcolonial Netherlands: Sixty-five years of forgetting, commemorating, silencing (Amsterdam
University Press, 2011), Dutch Colonialism, Migration and Cultural Heritage (KITLV Press, 2008),
Paradise Overseas: The Dutch Caribbean: Colonialism and its Transatlantic Legacies (Macmillan, 2005), and
Decolonising the Caribbean: Dutch Policies in a Comparative Perspective (with Inge Klinkers, Amsterdam
University Press, 2003). He served on many editorial, scholarly, and governmental committees
both in the Netherlands and abroad, and frequently contributes in Dutch mass media on his areas
of expertise.
Ben C. de Pater
is Associate Professor of Human Geography and Urban and Regional Planning at Utrecht Univer-
sity. He is Senior Lecturer in the Theory and History of Human Geography. He was editor-in-chief
of the journals Geografie and Geografie-Educatief, published by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society
(KNAG). Recently he edited West-Europa: Hoofdlijnen van geografie en ruimtelijke planning (Van Gorcum,
2009; now Perspectief Uitgevers), Midden- en Oost-Europa; geografie van een transitiezone (2010, with
Leo Paul), Koninginnen aan de Noordzee; Scheveningen, Oostende en de opkomst van de badcultuur rond 1900
(Verloren, 2013), and authored De Ontdekking van de geografie: Sociale geografie als wetenschap (Perspectief
Uitgevers, 2014).
Maarten R. Prak
is Professor of Economic and Social History at Utrecht University. He is currently working on pro-
jects concerning citizenship in Europe before the French Revolution, and cultural industries.
Among his publications are The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: The Golden Age (Cambridge
University Press, 2005), which was also translated into Hungarian and Chinese, and published in an
updated edition in Dutch (Boom, 2012). With Jan Luiten van Zanden he recently published Neder-
land en het poldermodel: Sociaal-economische geschiedenis van Nederland, 1000-2000 (Bert Bakker, 2013).
Wibo M. van Rossum

is Assistant Professor in Socio-Legal Studies at Utrecht University School of Law. His main interest
is in the field of multiculturalism and the law, especially focusing on how the legal profession
adapts to changes in the ethnic and religious make-up of society, and whether their adaptation is in
line with opinions and practices within minority groups. He is member of the board of the
Association of Dutch and Flemish Socio-Legal Studies. He published on ritual behavior of Turkish
defendants in Dutch criminal courts, and on the functioning of community courts among the Alevi
religious minority. Recent publications address the changing perceptions of human rights viola-
copyright law.
tions in the Netherlands, legal pluralism, family law “bottom-up,” and the recusal procedure in the
Netherlands. His most recent publication is De Atlantische Pelgrim: John Lothrop Motley en de Ameri-
kaanse Ontdekking van Nederland (Boom, forthcoming).
338
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Frans Ruiter
is Managing Director of the Research Institute for Cultural Inquiry of Utrecht University. He wrote
about the reception of North-American Postmodernism in Germany and the Netherlands in Inter-
national Postmodernism: Theory and Literary Practice (edited by H. Bertens and D. Fokkema; John
Benjamins, 1997), and about Dutch literary life in Dutch Culture in a European Perspective, volume 4.
1950: Prosperity and Welfare (edited by K. Schuyt and E. Taverne; Van Gorcum, 2004). He co-authored
(with Wilbert Smulders) Literatuur en Moderniteit in Nederland, 1840-1990 (De Arbeiderspers, 1996), a
context-oriented literary history of modern Dutch literature. He is the co-director (with Wilbert
Smulders) of an NWO post-graduate research program which focuses on the moral dimension of
autonomous literature.
Paul Schnabel
is Distinguished Professor at Utrecht University. Besides, he is (among others) crown member of
the Social-Economic Council (SER), non-executive member of the board of ING-Bank Netherlands,
Treasurer of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and member of the board of Museum Boijmans
van Beuningen. Earlier functions include General Director of the Netherlands Institute for Social
Research (Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau), Dean of the Netherlands School of Public Health, profes-
sor of clinical psychology at Utrecht University, and research director of the Netherlands Institute
of Mental Health and Addiction (Trimbos Instituut). The major Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant
counted him among the ten most influential personalities in Dutch society. He received the medal
of honor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, is honorary member of the Netherlands
Sociological Association, and Knight in the Royal Order of the Dutch Lion.
Wilbert Smulders
is Assistant Professor of Modern Dutch Literature at Utrecht University. He wrote a PhD thesis on
the narrative technique in The Dark Room of Damokles by Willem Frederik Hermans and has (co-)
edited four volumes about the work and authorship of this Dutch writer. He co-authored (with
Frans Ruiter) Literatuur en Moderniteit in Nederland, 1840-1990 (De Arbeiderspers, 1996), a context-
oriented literary history of modern Dutch literature. He is the co-director (again with Frans Ruiter)
of an NWO post-graduate research program which focuses on the moral dimension of autonomous
literature.
Quirine L. van der Steen

is Curriculum Coordinator of the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University.
She worked at Christie’s in London and graduated in Art History from Utrecht University with a
thesis on Iconology. Previously she was Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, offering courses
in Dutch History of Culture for international students, and lecturing on a broad range of themes
related to Dutch art and artists. She regularly taught at the Utrecht University Summer School.
Jeroen L. Torenbeek
is Director of the Utrecht University Summer School, a collaboration between Utrecht University,
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences and Utrecht School of the Arts (HKU). Previously, he served
as Director of the James Boswell Institute at Utrecht University, an institute providing language
training and other courses to university staff and students. He also served as Director of Inter-
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national Relations at Utrecht University, and initiated the European Utrecht Network, which facil-
itates student mobility between the participating institutions. Between 2002 and 2004 he was
president of the European Association for International Education (EAIE).
339
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Iris van der Tuin
is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Philosophy of Science at Utrecht University. She pub-
lishes on feminist generations and “new materialism” in journals such as Australian Feminist Studies,
the European Journal of Women’s Studies, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, and Women’s Studies
International Forum. She has edited (with Rosemarie Buikema) Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture
(Routledge, 2009), and authored (with Rick Dolphijn) New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies
(Open Humanities Press, 2012). She is currently working on the NWO-VENI project “The Material
Turn in the Humanities” (2011-2014).
Rob van der Vaart

is Professor of Human Geography and Dean of University College Utrecht and Honorary Dean of
Utrecht University. He represents Utrecht University in the international Oxford Network, in
which leading universities work together to strengthen learning and teaching in a research-inten-
sive setting. He served on the Committee for the Development of the Dutch Historical Canon. His
academic expertise is mainly in the domain of cultural geography and globalization studies.
Jan G.F. Veldhuis

served as President of Utrecht University between 1986 and 2003, during which period he chaired
the Board of the Fulbright Center. In 1995, he was awarded an honorary doctorate of the Univer-
sity of Florida. He studied history, economics, and law at Utrecht University and was a Fulbright
scholar at the University of Minnesota. He worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at Leiden
University. From 1974 he was successively Deputy Permanent Secretary and Director- and Inspector-
General at the Ministry of Education and Science. After his retirement he was member of the
Supervisory Boards of TNO and the Roosevelt Study Center, chaired the Board of Quality Assurance
Netherlands Universities, QANU, and the Supervisory Boards of NUFFIC and the Diakonessen
Hospital Utrecht/Zeist. He also chaired two national committees on secondary education and par-
ticipated internationally in evaluation committees of institutions of higher education and research.
He published numerous articles related to issues in education (mostly in Dutch).
Jaap Verheul
is Associate Professor of Cultural History at Utrecht University. He was a Fulbright scholar at the
University of Pennsylvania, and has taught at UCLA and other American universities. His current
research interest is in transnational reference cultures, transatlantic cultural relations, and
American perceptions of Europe. He has published on Dutch and American cultural history, digital
humanities, and on business history. He edited Dreams of Paradise, Visions of Apocalypse: Utopia and
Dystopia in American Culture (VU University Press, 2004) and co-edited American Multiculturalism after
9/11: Transatlantic Perspectives (Amsterdam University Press, 2009). His most recent publication is De
Atlantische pelgrim: John Lothrop Motley en de Amerikaanse ontdekking van Nederland (Boom, forthcoming).
Jan Luiten van Zanden

is Professor of Economic History at Utrecht University and President of the International Economic
History Association. He has published widely on the economic history of the Low Countries and
Indonesia, and is now working in the field of global economic history. His recent publications in-
clude (edited with Maarten Prak) Technology, skills and the pre-modern economy in the East and the West
copyright law.
(Brill, 2013), (with R. J. van der Spek and B. van Leeuwen) A History of Market performance: From Ancient
Babylonia to the Modern World. (Routledge, 2013), and The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution: The
European Economy in Global Perspective, 1000-1800 (Brill, 2009).
340
AN: 1281176 ; .;
Illustrations
cover Aerial view of Amsterdam, corner of Bloemgracht and Prinsengracht: Victor Torres
2 Satellite photo of the Netherlands
9 Map of the Netherlands: GeoMedia, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University
10 Aerial view of Amsterdam by night, corner of Bloemgracht and Prinsengracht
12 Aerial view of Utrecht from the Dom tower: Laurent Dambies
17 Train during thundershower: NS Beeldbank
20 Dutch soccer fans during game between the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, 2000:
Pim Ras, Hollandse Hoogte
23 Queen Máxima: Erwin Olaf, Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst
27 Dutch Parliament, on the left Het Torentje, the office of the prime minister
32 Trèveszaal, meeting hall of the Dutch Cabinet, 2012: Robin Utrecht, ANP Photo
35 School met den Bijbel, Brouwershaven, 1921: Gemeentearchief Schouwen-Duiveland
40 Pim Fortuyn accepts election as party leader of Leefbaar Nederland, November 25, 2001:
Robin Utrecht, ANP Photo
44 Greenhouse: Lidian Neeleman
46 Madeleen Driessen poses as Frau Antje: Nederlandse Zuivelbureau
50 Shell gas station near Amstelveen: Marco Hillen, Hollandse Hoogte
56 Father and his children on a carrier-cycle (bakfiets): Kim Kaminski, Nationale Beeldbank
59 Dutch holiday mobile home (caravan): Netfalls
63 Pastime fishing
68 Aerial view of new urban development near Amsterdam (Zuidas): Mirande Phernambucq,
Hollandse Hoogte
71 Amsterdam, Reguliersgracht on the corner of Keizersgracht: Massimo Catarinella
74 Map of the Randstad in 2000: GeoMedia, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University
76 Port of Rotterdam: Teun van den Dries
82 Typical Vinex area in the Netherlands: R.A.R. de Bruijn
87 Map of the Elfstedentocht, January 4, 1997: H.S. Hellingswerf, Fries Scheepvaart Museum
92 Sinterklaas arrives in Holland by boat: Jan Kranendonk
96 Interior of a 16th century printing shop, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris
100 Remains of a Roman ship uncovered at Nieuwe Markt in Woerden, 2003: Jean-Pierre Jans
105 Manuscript with the first sentence in the Dutch language, from the abbey of Rochester:
Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS
108 Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem from the northwest, with the bleaching fields in the foreground
(ca. 1670): Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
111 Anonymous 17th-century watercolor of the Semper Augustus, famous for being the most
expensive tulip sold during tulip mania
113 Adriaen Thomasz. Key, Portrait of William of Orange, ca. 1579: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
120 First marriage of a gay couple in Amsterdam, April 1, 2001: Maurice Boyer, Hollandse Hoogte
124 Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt, Portrait of Hugo Grotius (1631): Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
127 Frédéric Hexamer, Statue of Baruch de Spinoza (1880) at Paviljoensgracht, The Hague:
Roel Wijnants
132 The capture of Cochin and victory of the Dutch V.O.C. over the Portuguese in 1656, on the coast
of Mallabar, 1682: Atlas van der Hagen
135 Erwin de Vries, The National Slavery Monument (2002) at Oosterpark, Amsterdam:
Kok Korpershoek
copyright law.
139 Celebrating the 4th anniversary of Indonesian independence, Djakarta,1949: National Archives
144 National Monument on Dam Square in Amsterdam on Commemoration Day, May 4 2008:
Koen van Weel, ANP Photo
148 Identity Card (Ausweis) of Antonius Johannes Klep: Collection Christ Klep
341
AN: 1281176 ; .;
152 Anne Frank, May 1942: AFF Basel/AFS Amsterdam
156 New Church, Amsterdam: Lisa Dröes
163 Interior of Portuguese Synagogue, Amsterdam: Massimo Catarinella
166 Mobarak Mosque, The Hague: Radio Nederland Wereldomroep
170 The painting of reproductions of Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh in Japan

172 Gerrit Dou, The Dropsical Woman (1663): Musée du Louvre, Paris
173 Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait (1640): National Gallery, London
174 Rembrandt van Rijn, The Blinding of Samson (1636): Städelsches Museum, Frankfurt
175 Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (ca. 1665-1667): Mauritshuis, The Hague
176 Anton Mauve, Sheperdess with sheep (1885-1886): Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
177 Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889): Courtauld Institute Galleries, London
180 Piet Mondriaan, Composition A: Composition with Black, Red, Grey, Yellow and Blue (1920):
Collection Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome
182 Model of Rotterdam, view from Hofplein along the Coolsingel to the River New Meuse.
Brown: existing buildings; purple: under construction; white: planned volumes (the first two
buildings in planning with Rem Koolhaas, O.M.A.). Rob Dettingmeijer, 11 January 2010
184 The Academiegebouw, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Utrecht: Rutger Hermsen
185 The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Postcard ca. 1895
186a The Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam
186b Spaarndammerbuurt, Amsterdam: Rob Dettingmeijer
187 Rietveld-Schröder House, Utrecht: Centraal Museum, Utrecht
189 Spangen, Rottterdam: Rob Dettingmeijer
190 Van Nelle factory, Rottterdam: Van Nelle Ontwerpfabriek
193 Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam: Cor Mulder, ANP photo
194 Brandevoort, near Helmond
195 Main Hall of the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam: Tilo Driessen
198 Willem Frederik Hermans and Gerard Reve, 1954: Cas Oorthuys, Nederlands Fotomuseum
202 Cover of Max Havelaar by Multatuli: Pandora Publishers
206 Cover of The Assault (English Translation of De Aanslag) by Harry Mulisch: Pantheon Publishers
210 Glamour Stiletto Run, March 6, 2008, P.C.Hooftstraat, Amsterdam: Pim Ras, Hollandse Hoogte
214 Joke Smit-Kool, 1972: ANP Photo
217 Dolle Mina protest Baas in Eigen Buik, Utrecht, 1970: Spaarnestad Photo, Hollandse Hoogte
222 Family in front of a television set, 1950’s
225 Dutch broadcasting guides: Kok Korpershoek
232 Utopia: Dirk Kikstra, SBS6
234 Taal, Van Dale Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal: Kok Korpershoek
242 A forbidding sign written in English and Afrikaans
244 A road sign with Leeuwarden (the capital of Friesland) written in Dutch and Frysian
248 Dike houses at Rozewerf, a small community in the town of Marken: Klaas Lingbeek-van Kranen
250 Aerial view of Beemster polder: Peter Bolhuis, Pandion
253 Dreischor, Zeeland, February 1953
260 Senate Hall, Academiegebouw, Utrecht University, December 7, 2007: Ivar Pel, Utrecht University
265 Aletta Jacobs as a new graduate of medicine: University Library, University of Groningen
270 Entrance gate, University College Utrecht: Michael Kooren, Utrecht University
274 Women with headscarves, Amsterdam, 2009: Evert Elzinga, ANP Photo
278 Indonesian rice table (rijsttafel): Gary Lim
283 Ahmed Aboutaleb, mayor of Rotterdam, 2011: Marc Nolte, Gemeente Rotterdam
286 Police officers on mountain bikes, Dam Square, Amsterdam: John Schaffer, Hollandse Hoogte
291 Coffeeshop Checkpoint, Terneuzen: Marcel van den Bergh
294 Café Papeneiland at the corner of Prinsengracht and Brouwersgracht, Amsterdam: Paul2
298 Peace Palace, The Hague: Jan Kranendonk
301 Poster by cartoonist Opland (alias Rob Wout) for peace demonstration in Amsterdam, 1981
306 Dutch United Nations battalion Dutchbat II, Srebrenica, Bosnia: Nederlands Instituut voor
Militaire Historie
copyright law.
310 Madurodam miniature city, The Hague: Madurodam

316 Cover of Mary Mapes Dodge, Hans Brinker and The Silver Skates
318 Sebastian Rügen, Frau Antje. Erich Wiedemann, “Frau Antje in Den Wecheljahren”,
Der Spiegel, 28 February 1994
342
AN: 1281176 ; .;
Index
9/11 40, 130, 320, 33, Amsterdam Stock Exchange Bekker, Balthasar 125
see also terrorist attacks 185-186, 195 beleid (policy) 11, 15, 25, 30,
Anabaptism 160 38-40, 46, 52-53, 77-79, 123,
Aalsmeer 85 Anglo-Dutch War 312 140, 146, 153, 179, 193, 214,
ABN-AMRO (bank) 53, 84 Anglo-Saxon 51, 53, 90, 97, 249, 254-258, 267, 271, 276,
abortion 15, 31, 93, 121, 213, 101, 158, 271 278-281, 287-290, 292-293,
289, 311 Anti Revolutionaire Partij 295-296, 299-300, 304-308,
Aboutaleb, Ahmed 283, 284 (Anti-Revolutionary Party, 317-319, 330-332, 336
accommodation 33-43, 149, ARP) 34 Belgium 37, 41, 54, 88, 90,
270 anti-immigration 31, 275, 281, 150-151, 153, 230, 235,
Afghanistan 305 282, 284, 306 237-238, 241, 243, 254,
Afrikaans 242-243 Antilles 133, 134, 137, 138, 290-291, 302, 316-317
Afsluitdijk (closing dam) 251, 140-143. Benelux 302
252 anti-Semitism 151, 162 Berber (language) 243
agriculture 23, 37, 45-48, 85, AOW, see Algemene Ouderdomswet Bergman, Sunny 212, 218-219
103, 109-112, 147, 264, 266, Arabic (language) 243 Berkel, Ben van 183, 328
275, 319 Arbeitseinsatz (forced labor) 150 Berlage, H.P. 185-186, 189, 195
Agt, Dries van 300, 301 architecture 14, 70, 183-195, Bernhard, Prince 228
Ahold 84 315, 316 Betuweroute (railway line) 76
AkzoNobel 84 Arets, Wiel 183 Bevrijdingsdag, see Liberation Day
Alba, Duke of 114 Arminians, see Remonstrants bible-belt 161, 315
Alexanderpolder 191, 328 Arminius, Jacobus 161 Big Brother (TV show) 229, 231
Algemene Bijstandswet (General Arnhem 70, 73, 103, 117, 153 Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam 192
Relief Act) 61 ARP, see Anti Revolutionaire Partij bijstand (welfare) 61
Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst Aruba 24, 138, 241 Binnenhof, The Hague 26
(General Dutch Grammar, Ashkenazim 117 Blom, Piet 192
ANS) 243 Asia 17, 49, 110, 133, 134, BNN (broadcasting company)
Algemene Ouderdomswet (General 136-138, 140, 218, 241 224
Pensions Act, AOW) 63-64 ASML 84 Boeyinga, B.T. 187
All You Need Is Love (TV show) assimilation 275-276, 279-280 Bolkestein, Frits 279
230-231 atheism 126 Bologna Agreement 261, 268,
allochtoon (non-indigenous) autochtoon (indigenous) 276, 271
37, 276, 280, 284-285, 331 282, 284-285 Bonaire 138, 241
Almere 37, 78, 80, 324 avant-garde 190, 192, 204, 207 Bonaparte, Louis 21
Amsterdam 26, 39, 57, 69-80, AVRO (general broadcasting Bonaparte, Napoleon 21, 153,
85, 88, 93, 104, 110, 112, company) 224 163, 179
115-117, 125-127, 135, 145, Boniface (Bonifatius) 101, 158
149-152, 157, 159-162, 164, Bakema, Jaap 191-192 Bosnia 145, 305-307, 333
166, 171, 173-174, 176, 179, Balkenende, Jan Peter 26, 42, Bot, Ben 140
185-186, 188-189, 191-194, 304, 306 bourgeoisie 51, 113, 200, 203-
202, 213, 216, 241, 250-251, Batavia 110 205
265-266, 270, 275, 277, 283, Batavian Republic 21 Boymans Van Beuningen
291, 317, 319-320, 324, Batavians 97-98, 311 Museum, Rotterdam 190
327-328 Beatrix, Queen 22, 228 Braak, Menno ter 205
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol bedrijfsvereniging (industrial Brabant 73, 79, 91, 102, 113,
copyright law.
76-78, 85, 251 insurance board) 64 200, 238, 253, see also North
Amsterdam Canal Ring, Beeldenstorm (iconoclastic fury) Brabant
see grachtengordel 160 Brandevoort 193
Beemster polder 250-251 Breda 73, 113
343
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Brink, Robert ten 230 Checkpoint (coffeeshop) 291 consensus 37, 39, 43, 51, 53, 62,
Brinkman, Michiel 189 Chevalier, Tracy 175 126, 203, 287-288, 308, 311
broadcasting 15, 39, 204, 207, child benefit, see kinderbijslag conservatism 33-34, 36, 57-58,
223–232, 244-245 Christelijk Historische Unie 93-94, 165, 189-190, 201,
broadcasting associations, (Christian Historical Union, 207, 224, 267, 279, 299-300,
see broadcasting companies CHU) 34 302, 305, 317, 319-320
broadcasting companies 33, 39, Christen Democratisch Appèl Constitution 11, 14, 21-25,
91, 204, 223-228, 279 (Christian Democratic Party, 28, 30, 35, 88, 115-116, 121,
broadcasting corporations, Christian Democratic 138, 164, 167, 205, 264-266,
see broadcasting companies Alliance, CDA) 29, 33, 36, 304-305, 314
broadcasting organizations, 42, 157, 280, 300-302 Costera Meijer, Irene 215
see broadcasting companies Christenunie (Christian Union, Council of Ministers 25, 27,
Bruin, Pi de 27 CU) 29 146, 282, see also coalition,
Brussels 42, 77, 113, 202, 238 Christian-democracy 28-29, 33, government
Burgund 114, 241 36, 41-42, 280, 288, 300, 302, Council of State, see Raad van
Busken Huet, Conrad 129, 164 332 State
Butler, Samuel 312 Christianity 97, 104, 106-107, Couperus, Louis 199
126, 129, 137, 157-158, 162, CPB, see Centraal Planbureau
Cabinet (of Ministers), 164-165 creole language 137, 241-242
see Council of Ministers CHU, see Christelijk Historische Criminal Code 292
Caesar, Julius 98-99 Unie Crown, the 21, 24-25, 163
Caland, Pieter 76 churches, hidden 116, 161 cruise missiles 300-302
Calvin, John 160-161 civic integration, see inburgering CU, see Christenunie
Calvinism 14, 90, 116, 122, Cleveringa, Rudolph 150 Curaçao 24, 134, 137-138, 141,
125-126, 157, 160-161, climate change 249, 254-255, 241
164-165, 312 258 Cuypers, Eduard 186
canal 69-71, 76, 86, 99, 103, Clovis, King 101, 239 Cuypers, Pierre 174, 185
111-113, 123, 189, 193-194, Clusius, Carolus 111
250, 311, 314-317 coalition 21, 25-26, 29, 36, D66, see Democraten 66
Canal Ring, see grachtengordel 38, 41-42, 53, 80, 126, 157, Dagobert I, King 100-101, 158
cannabis 93, 290, 318, 280-281, 288, 290, 300-301, Dahl, Robert 35
see also nederwiet, soft drugs 306, see also government, Damrak, Amsterdam 185
Cape Colony 133-134 Council of Ministers d’Ancona, Hedy 214
Cape Town 110, 242 Coenen, Jo 193, 328 De Bonte Was (feminist publishing
Caravaggists, see Utrecht coffeeshops 161, 290-292 house) 217
Caravaggists Cohen, Job 283 De Stijl (movement) 187, 188
Caribbean 24, 110, 133-134, Cold War 276, 300-301, 304, 336 De Volkskrant (newspaper) 34,
136-138, 142-143, 235, 241, College van Bestuur (University 39, 339
338 Executive Board) 267 decolonization 133, 137-138,
Carolingian Empire 102, 106 Colonial Museum, see Koninklijk 140–143, 299-300
Cartesianism 125-126 Instituut voor de Tropen Defoe, Daniel 313
castellum (fortress) 99, 183 colonialism 49-50, 69, 71, 75, Dejima 133
Catholicism 14, 34, 36, 38, 111, 133-143, 200, 202-203, Delft 70, 110-111, 114, 124,
60-61, 88, 90-91, 113-114, 276-278, 299-300, 304 184, 266
116-117, 122, 137, 158, Commemmoration Day (Doden- Delta Works 252-255, 258
161-162, 164-167, 184-185, herdenking) 88, 145, 228 democracy 14, 21, 26-27, 29-30,
199-202, 205, 208, 224, 227, commercial channels 223, 226, 34, 36, 38-39, 51, 127, 138,
241, 266, 288, 327-328 228-229, 231, see also broad- 141, 147, 154, 257, 264, 281,
CDA, see Christen Democratisch casting 303, 305, 307, 315
Appèl Commissaris van de Koning Democraten 66 (Democrats 66,
Centraal Planbureau (Central (Commissioner of the King) D66) 29, 214
Planning Bureau, CPB) 53 26 democratization 164, 174, 267
Central Station, Amsterdam communism 36, 53, 147, 208, Den Haag (The Hague) 22, 25-
185 304 26, 50, 69-70, 73, 77, 79-80,
copyright law.
Charlemagne 102 Community art, see gemeenschaps- 115, 126-127, 138, 145-146,
Charles V 113-115 kunst 148, 166, 176, 179, 189, 193,
Charter of the Kingdom of the Concordat of Worms 102 265-266, 270, 277, 299-301,
Netherlands, see Statuut Congress of Vienna 134, 264 304-305, 308
344
AN: 1281176 ; .;
Department of Culture, 200, 202, 242, 276-277, 299, equality 33, 48, 62, 84, 90, 112,
Recreation and Social Work see also Indonesia 123, 164, 212-213, 217, 219-
38 Dutch Reformed, see Reformed, 220, 232, 261, 264-265, 268,
Descartes, René 117, 125-127, see also Protestant Church, 271, 280, 288
313 Hervormd Erasmus, Desiderius 105, 327

development aid 299, 304-305 Dutch Republic, see Republic of Erasmus (student mobility
development cooperation the Seven United Netherlands program) 270
304-305, 308 Dutch Revolt (1568) 14, 22, Esping-Andersen, Gøsta 57-58
Deventer 102-103, 106, 117, 113-116, 124, 160, 164, 184, Essalam Mosque 166
159, 192 , 327 195, 241, 312, 314-316 ethnic minorities 33, 37, 42,
Devotio Moderna, see Modern Dutch West India Company, 140, 164, 279-280, 284
Devotion see West-Indische Compagnie Ets Haim (Jewish seminary)
dialect 18, 101, 105, 238-239, 162
242-243, 245, see also economy 14, 37, 45-54, 59, European integration 41-42,
regiolects 61-65, 76, 85, 90, 109-111, 76, 302-303, 307
Diderot, Denis 314 128, 137, 143, 199-200, 257, European Recovery Program 47
diminutive 235-236 279-280, 296, 302, 304, 306, European Union (EU) 30, 42,
Directorate-General for Public 312-313, 326 46, 48, 79, 83, 89, 94, 235,
Works and Water Manage- education 15, 34, 40, 46, 49, 261, 270, 276, 280-282, 299,
ment, see Rijkswaterstaat 60, 85, 90, 104, 118, 129-130, 302-306, 308, 318
discrimination 14, 280, 284 135, 137, 143, 163, 166, 183- euthanasia 15, 93, 121, 287-
diversity 15, 37, 116-117, 122, 184, 204, 207, 212, 214, 216, 289, 292, 311, 319, 332
220-223, 229, 231, 261, 271, 218, 224, 261-271, 277, 280- Evangelical 157, 228
275-285, 317, 320 281, 330 export 45-46, 75-76, 83-85,
Dock Worker (Dokwerker, statue) Eerste Kamer (Senate, or Upper 103, 112, 223, 228-229, 255,
150 House) 28 290, 302, 318-319
Dodenherdenking (National Eesteren, Cornelis van 188, 191 Eyck, Aldo van 191-192
Memorial Day), see Commem- egalitarian 90, 261, 268, 288,
oration Day 314 feminism 15, 211-220, 265
Dodge, Mary Mapes 313-314 Eighty Year War 146, 241, First World War 61, 91, 146,
Doesburg, Theo van 188 see also Dutch Revolt 191, 200, 265
Dokkum 101, 158 Eindhoven 70, 73 Fitna (film) 41
Dolle Mina (feminist group) Elderly People’s Party 29 Flanders 97 103, 160, 237, 252,
214, 216-217 elections 21, 23, 26, 28, 30, 33, 254
Dordrecht Synod, see Synod of 36, 41, 51, 80, 149, 187, 266, Flemish 41, 79, 90, 103, 105,
Dort 280-281, 283-284, 302, 308 237-239, 242, 268
Dordrecht 70, 73, 79, 103, 116, Eleven-Cities Tour, see Elfsteden- Flemish (language) 237-238
161 tocht Flevoland 73, 80, 251, 324
Dorestad 101-103 Elfstedentocht (Eleven-Cities flood 42, 146, 153, 249-258,
Dou, Gerrit 171-172 Tour) 86-88 316
Douwes Dekker, Eduard, Elmina 134 Flood, the Great (1953) 249,
see Multatuli emancipation 15, 35, 130, 135, 252-254
Drees, Willem 63 164, 184, 212, 214, 265-267, Floris IV, Count 26
Drenthe 72-73 279, 284 Floris V, Count 26
Drucker, Wilhelmina 216 Emancipation Day 135 Fokker 84
DSM 84 emigration 142, 161, 164, 200, Fortuyn, Pim 30, 33, 36, 38-42,
Dudok, W.M. 190 276, 281 275, 281-282, 284, 306, 320
Duiker, Jan 191 Ende, van den Joop 228, 229 France 41, 45, 63, 76, 89, 101-
Dutch (language) 15-16, 18, 24, Endemol 229-231 102, 110, 112-113, 115, 118,
77, 86, 104-107, 117, 136-137, Engelandvaarders 150 122, 125, 128, 146, 153, 172,
152, 161, 164, 226, 235-245, England 22, 46, 90, 101, 103, 178-179, 199, 202, 263, 280,
268, 280, 287, 313, 316 110, 118, 122, 128, 146, 150, 291, 302-303, 314
Dutch Brazil 110, 134 189, 199, 202, 265, 312-315 Franeker 126, 264
Dutch East India Company, Enkhuizen 128 Frank, Anne 152-153
copyright law.
see Vereenigde Oost-Indische Enlightenment 124-129, 157, Franks, the 97, 99-102, 106
Compagnie 204, 313-314 Frau Antje 318-319
Dutch East Indies 49, 88, 109, Enschede 267, 270, 295-296, Free Moluccan Republic (RMS)
134, 136-137, 146, 186, 194, 332 140
345
AN: 1281176 ; .;
Freedom Party, see Partij voor de globalization 14, 49, 52, 54, 65, Guicciardini, Lodovico 312,
Vrijheid (PVV) 76 320
French 17, 21-22, 97, 104, 106, Glorious Revolution (1688) 311 Guyana, see Guiana.
113, 123, 125-128, 134, 153, Godefrid 102
163, 172, 174, 177, 203-204, Goekoop-de Jong van Beek and Haarlem 70, 73, 79-80, 98, 112,
206, 219, 237-238, 242, 264, Donk, Cecile 211-213 128, 164, 194, 316
275, 277, 292, 303-304, 313, Goens, Greek Rijklof Michael Haarlemmermeer 77, 251
318 van 129 Habsburgs 113-116, 241, 311
Friedan, Betty 213 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 312 Hall of Knights, see Ridderzaal
Friesland 45, 72, 86-87, 110, Gogh, Theo van (film director) Hall, Peter 77
114, 165, 244, 251 42, 275, 282, 283, 320 Hals, Frans 178
Frisia (historical Friesland) Gogh, Theo van (art dealer) Hans Brinker 315, 316
97-98, 101-104, 106-107, 158 177, 179 hard drugs 93, 189-291,
Frisian (language) 238, 243-245 Gogh, Vincent van 14, 171, see also soft drugs.
Fukuyama, Francis 288 176-180, 328 HAVO, see Hoger Algemeen
Golden Age 14-15, 45, 47, 59- Voortgezet Onderwijs
Galilei, Galileo 117 62, 69-71, 83, 109-118, 121, HBO, see Hoger Beroeps Onderwijs
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) 128, 129, 184, 194, 241, 252, HBS, see Hogere Burgerschool
47, 58, 62-63, 84, 90, 305 273, 312 health care 57, 60, 61, 65, 266,
gedoogbeleid (administrative Government 15, 21, 24-29, 33, 288, 292, 294
policy of toleration) 161, 36, 38-42, 46, 49, 52, 53, 57, Heerlen 70, 73, 267
289, 291, 292, 296 61, 64, 69, 70, 77-80, 84, 88, Heine, Heinrich 83
Gelderland 73, 114, see also 94, 115, 118, 130, 134, 138- Heineken 319
Guelders 140, 142, 143, 145, 146, 148, Heinich, Nathalie 203, 205
gemeenschapskunst (Community 149, 157, 160, 164, 167, 179, Heriold 102
Art) 185-186 184, 188, 190, 192-195, 214, Hermans, Willem Frederik
gemeenteraden (municipal 249, 254, 256-258, 261-264, 15, 199-201, 203, 205-208
councils) 28, 30 266-268, 279-281, 283, 288- Hertzberger, Herman 194
Gendt, A.L. van 185 295, 299-308, 311, 317, 320, Hervormd, see Protestant Church,
General Dutch Grammar, 330, 332, see also Council of Hervormd
see Algemene Nederlandse Ministers, coalition Het Vrije Volk (newspaper) 39
Spraakkunst (ANS) governmental 34, 78-80, 123, Hilversum 190
General Pensions Act, 146, 184, 185, 194, 243, 303, Hirsi Ali, Ayaan 320
see Algemene Ouderdomswet 331 Hitler, Adolf 147, 149, 152, 206
General Relief Act, see Algemene grachtengordel (Amsterdam Canal hofjes (almshouses) 59
Bijstandswet Ring) 70-71 Hofstede, Geert 90, 288
Gereformeerd, see Protestant ’s Gravenhage 26, see also Den Hoge Raad (Supreme Court of the
Church, Gereformeerd Haag Netherlands) 265, 292, 295
German 17-18, 34, 42, 75, 83, Great Depression 46-47 Hoger Algemeen Voortgezet Onder-
88, 97, 102, 106, 112, 115, Green Heart, see Groene Hart wijs (senior general secondary
129, 137, 145-154, 191, 204, Groen Links (Green Left) 29, 36 education, HAVO) 263, 268
206, 207, 228, 235, 237-238, Groene Boekje, Het (The Green Hoger Beroeps Onderwijs (higher
243, 244, 261, 275, 299, 304, Booklet) 242 professional education, HBO)
306, 313, 314, 318-319, 326, Groene Hart (Green Heart) 77- 263
332 78 Hogere Burgerschool (Higher Civil
German (language) 106, 235, Groningen 40, 70, 72, 84, 114, School, HBS) 264
237, 238, 242, 244, 313 189, 330 hogeschool (institution for higher
Germania (historical Germany) Groot, Hugo de (Grotius) 124- professional education)
98, 99, 311 125, 162 263, 266
Germanic (language) 15, 101, Groote, Geert 159 Holland Media Group 226, 229
157, 158, 238, 244, 311 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) hollanditis 301, 302, 317
Germany 18, 37, 45-47, 51, 52, 47-48, 58, 62-63, 84, 90, 305 homosexuality 93, 121, 130,
54, 63, 69, 76, 83, 84, 90, 94, Guelders (historical Gelderland) 151, 201
98, 101, 102, 106, 113-114, 102
copyright law.
118, 122, 125, 128-129, 146- guest workers 73, 166, 276, Honthorst, Gerrit 173
147, 150, 152-153, 193, 199, 278, 283 Hoog Catharijne, Utrecht 192,
202, 223, 263, 290-291, 302- Gugel, Eugen 184 194, 329
303, 317-319 Guiana 134, 241 Hoogovens 84
346
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House of Representatives, International Information Koolhaas, Rem 183, 193
see Tweede Kamer Center and Archives of the Kosovo 111, 305
Housing Act 187, 188 Women’s Movement (IIAV) KPN 84
housing corporations 89 266 Krier, Rob 193
Hubrecht, Henri 194 Irving, Washington 315 KRO (Catholic broadcasting

Huguenots 112 Islam 40-42, 130, 143, 166, company) 224, 227-228
Huizinga, Johan 199 167, 275, 279-282, 284, 285, Kröller-Müller Museum,
humanist 105, 125, 157, 184, 320 Otterlo 179, 329
266 Israel, Jonathan 320 Kuyper, Abraham 164, 327
Hunger Winter (1944-45) 153, KVP See Katholieke Volkspartij
326 Jacobs, Aletta Henriëtta 265,
Huygens, Christiaan 117 266 Labor Foundation, see Stichting
Huysum, Jan van 172 Japan 45, 47-49, 110, 133, van de Arbeid
134, 138, 139, 146, 174, 299 Labor Party, see Partij van de
ICC, see International Criminal Java 136, 202 Arbeid (PvdA)
Court Jespersen, Otto 240 labor productivity 46, 58-59,
identity card, see persoonsbewijs Jewish 60, 112, 117, 122, 125- 85
IIAV, see International Informa- 127, 137, 148–152, 161-164, labor union, see trade union
tion Center and Archives of 228, 265, 275, 326 land reclamation 97, 102, 103,
the Women’s Movement John Adams Institute 57 106, 250-252, see also polder
IJssel (river) 102, 103, 255, 327 John Paul II, Pope 165 Laqueur, Walter 302, 319
IJsselmeer 251, 252, 318, 324 John XXIII, Pope 165 Latin 98, 99, 103-104, 106,
IKV, see Interkerkelijk Vredesberaad Jong, Loe de 154 159, 238, 239
immigrants 30, 37-38, 42, 78, Jugendstil 204 Le Corbusier 192
112-113, 117-118, 122, 126, Juliana, Queen 22, 146, 228 Leefbaar Nederland (Livable
128, 136, 140, 142-143, 192, Netherlands, LN) 40,41
244, 275-285, 311, 314, 316, Kagan, Robert 300 Leeghwater, Jan Adriaenszoon
320, 324 Katholieke Volkspartij (Catholic 250
immigration 15, 37, 39-41, 70, People’s Party, KVP) 34, 36 Leeuw, C.H. van der 190-192
91, 112, 128, 130, 142-143, Kempis, Thomas à 159 Leeuwenhoek, Anthony van
275–285, 306, 331 Kennedy, James 43 117
inburgering (civic integration) Keynes, John Maynard 48 Leewards Antilles 137, see also
166, 280 Kiefhoek, Rotterdam 189-190 Antilles
Indo-Europeans 136, 139 kinderbijslag (child benefit) 57 Leiden 70, 73, 79, 99, 111, 118,
Indonesia 49–51, 88, 110, 133- King’s Day, see Koningsdag 126-128, 150, 161, 195, 264,
134, 136-143, 165, 195, 202, King’s Speech, see Troonrede 270, 313, 330
241, 276–278, 299, 300, 304 Kingdom of Holland (1806- Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht 78
Indos, see Indo-Europeans. 1810) 21 Lentz, Jacobus 148
industrialization 49, 73, 129, Kingdom of the Netherlands Lex Salica 239
204, 315 24, 83, 133, 134, 137, 138, liberal political parties, see Volks-
industry 34, 46, 50, 52, 64, 154, 165, 235, 241 partij voor Vrijheid en Democratie
109, 117, 128, 153, 179, 186, Kingdom of the United Nether- (VVD) en Democraten 66 (D66)
194, 218-219, 227, 229, 264, lands 264 Liberals 28-30, 33-34, 36, 38,
266, 275, 306, 311, 315, 316, KIT, see Koninklijk Instituut voor 41, 51, 57, 62, 121, 164, 189,
319, 329 de Tropen 202-205, 214, 224, 225, 265,
ING (bank) 84 Klerk, Michel de 186 279, 281, 288, 300, 302, 305
inlanders 136 KLM 84 Liberation Day 88, 145
Inquisition 164 KNMG, see Royal Dutch Medical Lijnbaan, Rotterdam 191-192
Integration Policy 280, 281 Association Lijphart, Arend 35, 331
Integration 15, 41-42, 76, 78, Kohl, Christoph 193 Lijst Pim Fortuyn (List Pim For-
111, 113, 118, 130, 142, 166, Kok, Wim 33, 36, 38-39, 280, tuyn, LPF) 30, 33, 38, 41
276–285, 320, 331-332 307, 332 Limburg 73, 79, 200, 238, 244,
Interkerkelijk Vredesberaad (IKV) Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day) 245
167 22, 88, see also Koningsdag limes (Roman border) 98-101
copyright law.
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Koningsdag (King’s Day) 88, 145 literacy 98, 102-104, 106, 117,
Forces Treaty 302 Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen 122, 159, 264
International Criminal Court (Royal Tropical Institute, literature 15-18, 85, 104-106,
(ICC) 305 KIT) 194, 195 143, 199-208, 239, 241, 316
347
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Liudger 101 Middle Ages 15, 45, 51, 97-98, National Monument, Dam
Livable Netherlands (LN), 104, 106, 109, 114, 158-159, Square Amsterdam 88, 145,
see Leefbaar Nederland 189, 238, 239, 241, 250, 288 167
Loevestein castle 124 Middle Dutch 107, 238-240, nationalism 21, 128, 137-139,
Lokhorst, J. van 184 243, 245 149, 173, 314

Lothar I 102 Mieris, Frans van 171 national-socialism 147, 149, 154
Louis the Pious, Emperor 102 migration 72-73, 78, 101, NATO, see North Atlantic Treaty
Louis XIV, Emperor 126 117, 133, 136-138, 140-143, NAWSA, see National American
LPF, see Lijst Pim Fortuyn 275-277, 281 Woman Suffrage Association
Lubbers, Ruud 36, 300, 302 Millett, Kate 215 nazism 47, 147, 150-151, 165,
Luns, Joseph 300 ministerial responsibility 24 319
Luther, Martin 105, 160 minorities 37, 42, 118, 129, NCRV (protestant broadcasting
Lutherans 90, 113, 122, 160, 137, 141, 145, 162, 164, 276, company) 224-225, 227-228
161, 163, 165 284, see also ethnic minorities Nederlands Verbond van Vakvereni-
Mobarak Mosque 166 gingen (Dutch Trade Unions’
Maas (river) 97, 101, 106, 249, Modern Devotion (Devotio Association, NVV) 39
255 Moderna) 105, 159 Nederlandse Taalunie (Dutch
Maaskant, H.A. 191 modernism 193, 207, 208 Language Union) 243
Maastricht Treaty 271 modernization 14, 45-46, 85, Nederlands-Indië, see also
Maastricht 70, 103, 106, 107, 93–94, 109, 115, 129, 204, Indonesia
193, 267, 270, 271 255, 267 nederwiet, 291, 292, see also
Maddison, Angus 47 Mol, de John 229, 231 cannabis, drugs
Malaysia 49, 230 Moluccan 140, see also Free Netherlands Antilles, see
Mandement 36 Moluccan Republic (RMS) Antilles
Man-Vrouw-Maatschappij monarchy 14, 21-24, 27, 126, Netherlands Institute for
(Man, Woman, Society, MVM) 167, 227, 241 Social Research, see Sociaal en
214, 217 Mondrian, Piet 13, 179-181 Cultureel Planbureau (SCP)
Marijnissen, Jan 42 Montesquieu 128, 312 Netherlands Institute for War
market economy 54, 257 Moroccan 33, 42, 142, 166, Documentation (NIOD)
Marshall Plan (European 167, 243, 276, 279, 281-284, 154-155, 306-307
Recovery Program) 47 327 neutrality 23, 146, 153, 299-
Marvell, Andrew 312 Morocco 42, 73, 91, 278 300
mass culture 129, 204, 205, mosque 91, 157, 165-166 New Amsterdam 110
317 Motley, John Lothrop 315, 320 New Guinea 138, 214, 300, 304
Matlock, David 218 Mulisch, Harry 199, 206 New Netherland 134
Maurice, Stadholder 114, 115 Multatuli (Eduard Douwes New York 49, 77, 110, 153,
Maurits See Maurice Dekker) 129, 199, 202, 203 193, 315
Mauritshuis Museum, The multicultural 14, 33, 38-40, Nieukerken, J. J. van 194, 195
Hague 176, 179, 327 42, 78, 93, 142, 275, 279, Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam
Mauve, Anton 176, 177 281-285, 320 157, 160-161, 163-164, 167
MAX (broadcasting company) municipal councils, see gemeente- Nieuwe Waterweg (New Waterway)
224 raden 76
Máxima, Queen 22-24, 331 municipalities 26, 28, 70, Nijmegen 70, 73, 99, 103, 195,
McEwan, Ian 319 77-78, 80, 89, 114, 117, 138, 266
media 24, 30, 39-41, 145, 176, 166, 241, 255, 256, 258, NiNsee (National Institute for
204, 207, 216, 223-232, 311, 291- 292, 295-296, 327 the Study of Slavery) 135
320, 328 Mussert, Anton 149 NIOD, see Netherlands Institute
Mediterranean 37, 97, 106, MVM, see Man-Vrouw-Maatschappij for War Documentation
142, 192, 276 Nagasaki 133 Noord-Brabant (North-Brabant)
Meijer, Lodewijk 125 NAi, see Dutch Architecture 73, 91, see also Brabant
Meijer, Maaike 215, 216 Institute Noord-Holland (North-Holland)
Mennonites 160, 161 Napoleon, see Bonaparte 69, 72, 80
Merseburg, Thietmar of 106 Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging Nooteboom, Cees 199
Metropolis 133, 137, 138, 140, (National-Socialist Movement, North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
copyright law.
141 NSB) 149 tion (NATO) 145, 297, 298,

Meulenbelt, Anja 215, 216, National American Woman 299-303, 305
219 Suffrage Association North Sea 99, 101, 150, 249,
Middelburg 135, 191, 270 (NAWSA) 265 251, 254, 311
348
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North-Brabant, see Noord- Papiamentu 137 prime minister 21, 25-27, 30,
Brabant parliament 25-30, 39, 41-42, 33, 36, 41, 42, 135, 146, 265,
North-Holland, see Noord- 53, 88, 138, 203, 253, 283, 302, 307, 331, 332
Holland 289, 295, 301, 303, 320, 332 Prinsjesdag (Princes’ Day), 26, 88
NPO (public broadcasting Partij van de Arbeid (Labor Party, Productivity, see labor produc-
channel) 224 PvdA) 29, 34, 36, 38-39, 42, tivity
NSB, see Nationaal-Socialistische 165, 214, 280, 281, 283 Pronk, Jan 304, 305
Beweging Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the prostitution 15, 93, 311
numerus fixus 262 Animals, PvdD) 29 Protestant Church, gereformeerd,
NVV, see Nederlands Verbond van Partij voor de Vrijheid (Freedom 29, 91, 164, 165, 327
Vakverenigingen Party, PVV) 30, 33, 42, 275, Protestant Church, hervormd,
282, 284, 306 91, 164, 165
O.M.A, see Office of Metropolitan Pauw, Adriaen 112 Protestant Church, see also
Architecture Pendrecht 191, 328 Reformed Church
Obama, Barack 283 pensions 57, 61, 63–66, 289 Protestant 29, 34-36, 43, 60,
occupation (French) 21, 174, Pentecostal 157 91, 114, 137, 157, 159-161,
264 permissive 121, 123, 129, 130, 164-165, 184, 203, 224, 225,
occupation (German) 22, 34, 162, 282, 289, 290, 311, 317 227, 228, 266, 275, 288, 328
145–154, 206, 228, 235, 304 persoonsbewijs (identity card) Protestant, see also Reformed
OECD, see Organization for 147-149 provinces 28, 69, 72, 73, 80,
Economic Cooperation and Philip II, King 113-114, 311, 113-116, 121, 153, 160-161,
Development 314, 315 184, 238, 245, 264, 311
Office of Metropolitan Architec- Philips (company) 47, 48, 73, Provincial Estates 122
ture (O.M.A.) 193 84, 305 Provinciale Staten (provincial
official language 69, 235, 237, pidgin (language) 241, 242 councils) 21, 26, 28
241-242, 244, 245 pillar 33-37, 39, 129, 190, 204, Provo (countercultural
Old Dutch (language) 105, 205, 208, 223-225, 279, 288, movement) 216
238-240, 243 303 purple coalition 29, 38
Oldenbarneveldt, Johan van pillarization, see verzuiling PvdA, see Partij van de Arbeid
124 Pius X, Pope 165 PvdD, see Partij voor de Dieren
onderduikers (persons in hiding) Pius XI, Pope 165 PVV, see Partij voor de Vrijheid
150 PKN (Protestant Church in the
ontzuiling (depillarization) Netherlands) 165, see also Queen’s Day, see Koninginnedag
36, see also verzuiling (pillar- Reformed Church, Protestant
ization) Church Raad Social Insurance Bank,
Onze Taal (Dutch Language pluriformity 223, 226 see Sociale Verzekeringsbank
Society) 243 polder 37, 51, 77, 165, 191, Raad van State (Council of State)
Oosterschelde (estuary) 254 192, 250, 251, 256, 288, 311, 113, 332
Oosterwijck, Maria van 172 316, 324, 328 Rabobank 46
Orange-Nassau, House of 22, poldermodel 14, 15, 45, 49, Rademakers, Fons 207
113 51-54, 61, 288, 289, 296, 311, Radio Orange 22, 147, 152,
oranjegevoel (orange-sentiment) 332 154
23 policy, see beleid Randstad (employment agency)
Organization for Economic political parties 21, 25, 26, 30, 84
Cooperation and Develop- 33-34, 37, 39, 53, 64, 91, 157, Randstad Holland 14, 69-80,
ment (OECD) 267 187, 214, 279, 288 84, 126, 129, 254, 324
Oscar (film prize) 153, 207 populism 30, 33, 38-39, 41, 42, realism 62, 178, 180
Otterlo 179, 192, 328 135, 306, 320 Red Light District, Amsterdam
Oud, J. J.P. 189, 190 Portuguese Synagogue, 317
Oude Kerk, Amsterdam 159- Amsterdam 162-163 Reformation 60, 98, 122, 160,
161 postcolonial 133, 138, 140- 241, 327, 328
Our Lord in the Attic (church) 143 Reformed Church 91, 118,
161 postmodernism 193, 199, 205, 122, 136, 160-161, 163-165,
227 see also Protestant Church
copyright law.
Paarse September (feminist pragmatism 35, 123, 138, 150, Reformed 34, 116, 122, 126,
publishing house) 217 189, 244, 288, 289, 293, 300, 160, 162-164, 241, see also
Pacification (1917) 34, 35, 165, 302, 308 Protestant
266 premier, see prime minister régime de communauté 203-205
349
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régime de singularité 203-205, 146, 166, 189, 191-193, 254, Shorto, Russell 57-58, 61-62,
208 266, 270, 277, 282-284 66, 320
regiolects 243, 245, see also Royal Dutch Medical Associa- Simonsz, Menno 160
dialect tion (KNMG) 292 Sint Maarten (Saint Martin)
regional advisory bodies 292 Royal Dutch Shell 47, 49–50, 158
Rembrandt van Rijn 14, 171- 84, 305 Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas)
176, 178-180 Royal Tropical Institute, 13, 88, 91-93, 161
Remonstrants (Arminians) see Koninklijk Instituut voor de Sister Outsider (feminist
116, 161 Tropen publishing house) 217
Renaissance 92, 183-185, 241, RTL 4 (first commercial Sitte, Camillo 188
250 television channel), 228, 229 slavery 93, 110, 134-137, 242
Republic of the Seven United Ruhr region 69, 75, 77, 79 Smit, Joke 213-214
Netherlands (Seven United rural 14, 59, 109, 110, 113, Snoga (synagogue) 162
Provinces) 21-22, 26, 28, 42, 252, 255 Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau
59, 83, 97, 109-118, 121-123, Rushdie, Salman 167, 280 (Netherlands Institute for
125-126, 128, 161, 178, 183, Ruyter, Michiel Adriaensz de Social Research, SCP) 86
241, 264, 275, 299, 311-315 160, 174 Sociaal-Economische Raad (Social
republicanism 312, 314 and Economic Council SER)
Research and Development Saba 138, 241 52, 289
(R&D) 50, 52 Sanders, Th. 185 social democratic 26, 28-30,
Reve, Gerard 15, 199-203, 207, Saxons 101, 238, 244, 245 34, 36, 38-40, 42, 57-58, 63,
208 Scandinavia 37, 58, 72, 84-85, 165, 187, 189, 214, 224-225,
Reve, Karel van het 17 90, 97, 101, 112, 223, 288, 266, 288, 300, 304, 305, 307
Rhine (river) 76, 97-99, 101, 304, 317 Social Economic Council, see
102, 106, 183, 249, 251, 255 Schama, Simon 320 Sociaal-Economische Raad (SER)
Rhineland 97, 98, 103, 316 Scheffer, Paul 281, 331 social security 37, 57, 58, 62,
Ridderzaal (Hall of Knights) Scheldt (river) 97 65, 84, 112, 256, 289
25-26 Schiller, Friedrich 314 Sociale Verzekeringsbank (Social
Riebeeck, Jan van 242 Schiphol, see Amsterdam Airport Insurance Bank, SVB) 57
Rietveld Schröder House, Schiphol St. Maarten (island) 24, 138,
Utrecht 1870-188, 195 schoonheidscommissie (esthetics 241
Rietveld, Gerrit 13, 188, 191 committee) 194 Social Democratic Party,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Schröder, Truus 188 see Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA)
174, 176, 179, 185, 327 SCP, see Sociaal en Cultureel Socialist 29, 34-36, 42-43, 57,
Rijkswaterstaat (Directorate- Planbureau 61, 165, 185, 187, 189, 203,
General for Public Works Second World War 14, 22, 25, 205, 214, 218, 224, 288
and Water Management) 47, 76, 88, 134, 136, 138, 140, Socialistische Partij (Socialist
252, 254, 256, 258 142, 145–154, 163, 165, 199, Party, SP) 29, 42
rijsttafel (Indonesian rice table) 205-206, 215, 227-228, 235, sociolects 243
277-278 253, 267, 276-278, 288, 299, Socrates (Higher Education
RKSP, see Rooms-Katholieke 302, 305, 319 Mobility Program) 270
Staatspartij secularization 29, 36, 129, 157, soft drugs 121, 289-291, 317,
RMS, see Free Moluccan 202, 327 318, see also cannabis,
Republic segregation 14, 34, 34, 78, 129, nederwiet, hard drugs
Röell, Herman Alexander 126 147, 149, 151, 202, 280, 281, South Africa 50, 133, 134, 142,
Roman Catholic State Party, see 288 230, 242, 243
Rooms-Katholieke Staatspartij Senate, see Eerste Kamer South Holland, see Zuid-Holland
(RKSP) Sephardim 112, 117, 162 SP, see Socialistische Partij
Roman Empire 98-100, 114, SER, see Sociaal-Economische Raad Spaarndammerbuurt,
251, 311 Serbs 111, 306, 307 Amsterdam 186
romanticism 173, 174, 179, Servatius 106 Spain 72-73, 89, 92, 110,
199, 202, 203, 314-316 Seyss-Inquart, Arthur 147 112-114, 116, 134, 137, 162,
Rooms-Katholieke Staatspartij SGP, see Staatkundig Gereformeerde 172, 184, 230
(Roman Catholic State Party, Partij Spangen, Rotterdam 189
copyright law.
RKSP) 34 Shakespeare, William 18, 312 Speech from the Throne, see
Rorik 102 Shell, see Royal Dutch Shell Troonrede
Rotterdam 17, 40, 41, 69, 70, shipping 110, 128, 179, 264, Spinoza, Baruch de 16, 117,
73, 75–76, 77, 79, 80, 85, 126, 275 125-127
350
AN: 1281176 ; .;
Sranan, see Sranantongo Terbrugghen, Hendrick 173 United Nations Mission Protec-
Sranantongo 137, 241, 243 terrorist attacks of September 11 tion Force (UNPROFOR)
Srebrenica 145, 305-307, 333 40, 130, 281, 301, 305, 320 307
St. Eustatius 138, 241 The Hague School 176 United States 16, 29, 37, 45-50,
Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij The Hague, see Den Haag 52-53, 57, 62, 72, 85, 90, 153,
(Political Reformed Party, Thorbecke, Johan Rudolph 161, 164, 230, 261, 267, 281,
SGP) 29 164, 265 283, 288, 299-301, 303, 305,
stadtholder 21-22, 113-115, Tijen, W. van 191 308, 317, 319, 320
174, 313-314 Tilburg 70, 73, 266 university 40, 60, 104, 111,
Standard Dutch, see Dutch Time (magazine) 317-318, 320 116, 118, 124, 126, 150, 164,
(language) toleration, see gedoogbeleid 183, 184, 213, 263-271, 313
Statenbijbel (States’ Bible), Traa, C. van 191 The Voice of Holland (TV show)
see Statenvertaling trade union 33-34, 37, 39, 51- 231
Staten-Generaal (States General) 52, 54, 64, 65, 208, 214, 279 UNPROFOR, see United Nations,
26, 28, 114, 161, 163 trade 14, 71, 75, 83-85, 97, United National Mission
Statenvertaling 161, 241 101-103, 106-107, 109, 110, Protection Force
States General, see Staten-Generaal 113, 116, 118, 128, 133-136, UN-studio 183
States of Holland, the 162 162, 185, 194, 202, 261, 264, Upper House, see Eerste Kamer
Statuut (Charter of the Kingdom 266, 275, 279, 289-290, 299, urbanization 15, 72, 73, 102,
of the Netherlands) 138 302-303, 311, 313, 327 106, 112, 118, 122, 129, 251,
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam Traiectum 158 264, 315
171 transnational 142, 211, 218- Utopia (TV show) 231-232
Steur, A. van der 190 220, 223, 229 Utrecht Caravaggists 173
Stevin, Simon 117 Troonrede (speech from the Utrecht 17, 45, 69, 70, 72-73,
Stichting van de Arbeid (Labor throne) 25, 26, 167 78-80, 97, 99, 101-104, 106,
Foundation) 294 Trots op Nederland (Proud of the 113-114, 116-117, 121, 123,
STIVORO (lobby group against Netherlands, TON) 41 125-126, 129, 158-160, 162,
smoking) 294 Trouw (newspaper) 34, 151 166, 173, 183, 189, 192, 194,
street language 243 Tuindorp Oostzaan 187 264, 266, 268–271, 277, 326,
studiefinanciering (study aid) Turkey 73, 91, 111, 172, 230, 327, 330, 331
263 275, 278 Uyl, Joop den 36, 290, 300,
Stuers, Victor de 184, 195 Turkish 33, 111, 142, 166, 304, 306
Stuyvesant, Peter 315 243, 276, 279, 281, 284, 327
subsidies 57, 78, 188 Tweede Kamer (House of Repre- Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
suffrage 129, 216, 265, 266 sentatives, or Lower House) 171, 179, 328
Sukarno 138, 139 28, 42 Van Nelle factory, Rotterdam
Supreme Court of the Nether- Twente 73, 79 190-192
lands, see Hoge Raad Tinbergen, Jan 53 VARA (social democratic broad-
Surinam 134, 136-138, 140- tolerance 14, 15, 33, 116-117, casting company) 224-225
143, 166, 192, 235, 241, 243, 121–130, 147, 151, 154, 275, verb second language 236
276, 278, 281 280, 284, 287, 289, 295, 299, verbal cluster 237, 238
surrealist 200 308, 313, 314, 319, 320 Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie
SVB, see Sociale Verzekeringsbank Tulip 14, 17, 85, 110–112, (Dutch East India Company,
Sweerts, Emanuel 111 172, 174, 275, 311, 317-319 VOC) 83, 109, 110, 133, 134
Swift, Jonathan 313 Vermeer, Johannes 13, 109,
synagogue 117, 161–163 UN, see United Nations 174, 175, 180
Synod of Dort (1618-19) unemployment 48, 52, 59, 61, verzuiling (pillarization) 14, 15,
116, 161, 163 62, 64-66, 72, 85, 279, 280, 34–39, 90, 129, 130, 147,
288 154, 164-165, 167, 208, 223-
Tachtigers 204, 205 UNESCO 70, 187, 250 224, 279, 280, 284, 288, 331
Tacitus, Publius Cornelius Unilever 84, 305 Vietnam 300, 304, 305
97, 157, 311 Union of Utrecht (1579) 114, Vijftigers 200
Talmud School 126 116, 121, 160, 183 Vikings 102
Tarantino, Quentin 317, 318 United Kingdom 37, 45, 47-48, VINEX (Vierde Nota Ruimtelijke
copyright law.
television 15-16, 26, 87, 92, 54, 57, 63, 223, 230, 277, 280, Ordening Extra) 78, 324
135, 145, 154, 171, 207, 303 Viollet-Le-Duc, E.E. 184, 185
223-232, 244, 318 United Nations (UN) 93, 138, Vlaams Blok (Flemish political
Temple, William 313, 320 145, 299, 305, 306 party) 41
351
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Vlugt, L.C. van der 191 waterbewustzijn (water conscious- William I (1772-1843), King
VMBO, see Voorbereidend Middel- ness) 249, 254-258 22, 163
baar Beroepsonderwijs waterschappen (water boards) William II (1626-1650),
VOC, see Vereenigde Oost-Indische 28, 51, 103, 256, 258 Stadholder 115
Compagnie Watertoets (Water Impact Assess- William III (1650-1702),

ment, WIA) 257 Stadholder 115, 313
Voetius, Gisbert 125 welfare state 11, 29, 34, 37-38, William III (1817-1890), King
Volendam 296, 332 48, 57-66, 84, 90, 94, 278- 202
Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en 279, 288-289, 311, 317, 332 William of Holland (d. 1256),
Democratie (People’s Party for welfare 14, 37, 48, 57, 58, 60, Count 102
Freedom and Democracy, 61, 62, 64, 65, 279, 289, 290, Willibrord, Clemens 101, 158
VVD) 29, 33, 34, 41, 42, 279, 317, see also bijstand Windward Antilles 137,
300, 302 Werff, Adriaan van der 171 see also Antilles
Voltaire 128, 313, 314 Westerbork 151, 152 Winkelman, Henri 146
Voorbereidend Middelbaar Westerschelde (estuary) 254 WIR, see Wet Investeringsrekening
Beroepsonderwijs (preparatory West-Indische Compagnie (Dutch Witt, Johan de 115
vocational secondary West India Company, WIC) Witte Boekje, Het (The White
education, VMBO) 262, 263 110, 133, 134 Booklet) 243
Voorbereidend Wetenschappelijk Wet op de Arbeidsongeschiktheids- Witteveen, W.G. 191
Onderwijs (preparatory verzekering (Work Disability WO, see wetenschappelijk onderwijs
academic education, VWO) Insurance Act, WAO) women’s suffrage movement
262, 263 48, 64, 65 265, 266
VPRO (liberal protestant broad- Wet Universitaire Bestuurs- Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal
casting company) 224-225, hervorming (WUB) 267 (Dictionary of the Dutch
228 Wet Werk en Inkomen naar Arbeids- Language, WNT) 243
Vreewijk, Rotterdam 189-190 vermogen (WIA) 65, 258 Woordenlijst Nederlandse Taal
Vrij Nederland (newspaper) 151 wetenschappelijk onderwijs (Lexicon of the Dutch
VVD, see Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en (academic education, WO) Language) 243
Democratie 262, 263 WUB, see Wet Universitaire
VWO, see Voorbereidend WIA, see Water Impact Assess- Bestuurshervorming
Wetenschappelijk Onderwijs ment
WIA, see Wet Werk en Inkomen Yugoslavia 305-307
Waalsdorpervlakte, Den Haag naar Arbeidsvermogen
145 Wibaut, F.M. 187 Zeeland 72, 79, 102, 113-114,
Wageningen 145, 266 WIC, see West-Indische Compagnie 135, 146, 153, 252-254
WAO, see Wet op de Arbeids- Wilders, Geert 30, 33, 41, 42, Zeeuws-Vlaanderen (Zeeland
ongeschiktheidsverzekering 275, 282 Flanders) 254
Wassenaar Agreement 52, 53, Wilhelmina, Queen 22, 88, Zuiderzee 251, 252
289 146, 147, 227, 326 Zuid-Holland (South-Holland)
water boards, see waterschappen Willem, see William 69, 72, 242, 253
Water Impact Assessment, Willem-Alexander, King Zuidplaspolder 256
see Watertoets 22, 23, 88, 228 Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) 92, 93
water management 28, 51, William I (1533-1584), Stad- Zwolle 73, 117, 161, 192
103, 250-258 holder (William of Orange)
water policy 249, 254, 255, 257 22, 113-115, 314, 315
copyright law.
352
AN: 1281176 ; .;
This volume of lively essays by renowned scholars offers a well-balanced
introduction to the culture, society, and history of the Netherlands.
Dutch experts evaluate the complex historical heritage of the Golden
Age, colonialism, Protestantism, and the war memories from the dark
days of Anne Frank. They also present such treasures as the paintings
of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Van Gogh in their proper context, address
future challenges in the almost proverbial Dutch struggle against
water, and unravel a sometimes mind-boggling culture of tolerance,
diversity, and “pillarization.” Rather than a pastoral society of wind-
mills and wooden shoes, this volume opens up a modern, cosmopolitan,
and dynamic democratic monarchy. Moreover, it underlines the Dutch
connections with the wider world, presenting invaluable inside
knowledge for a global perspective on the Netherlands.
Emmeline Besamusca lectures in Dutch Culture at Utrecht University

and the University of Vienna.
Jaap Verheul is Associate Professor of Cultural History at Utrecht
University.
“Like the paintings of Holland’s Golden Age, the Dutch themselves

have many layers of meaning. Discovering the Dutch unravels the
mysteries and contradictions of these people, to whom we owe the
foundations of western principles of democracy and justice. Did you
know that Hans Brinker was more American than Dutch? Want to
understand how the Dutch Calvinists literally bet their houses on a
tulip bulb? Read this book for these and other fascinating insights.”
Cynthia P. Schneider, former U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands
“From Rembrandt to Anne Frank, pancakes to coffee shops, canal

houses to modern design, this volume explores myths and explodes
misconceptions about the Netherlands and ‘Dutchness.’ Whether
you are planning to spend a week in Amsterdam or are writing a
dissertation on Dutch culture and history, this is a very useful volume.”
Russell Shorto, author of Amsterdam: A History of the World’s most
Liberal City
“Judicious, useful, expert and concise – it would be hard to imagine a

better guide to the cultural and historical reality of Dutch society
today.”
Jonathan Israel, author of The Dutch Republic
copyright law.
AUP.nl
9 7890 8964 792 4

AN: 1281176 ; .;

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revised and enlarged edition

EBSCO : - printed on 9/1/2019 3:50 PM via UTRECHT UNIVERSITY

amsterdam university press

EBSCO : - printed on 9/1/2019 3:50 PM via UTRECHT UNIVERSITY

ISBN 978 90 8964 792 4

Cover design, book design and image research: Kok Korpershoek

EBSCO : - printed on 9/1/2019 3:50 PM via UTRECHT UNIVERSITY

Note for the Revised Edition 11

2 Politics between Accommodation and Commotion 33

3 Economy of the Polder 45

4 Dilemmas of the Welfare State 57

6 Distinctive within the Global Fold? 83

7 From the Periphery to the Center 97

8 The Golden Age 109

9 A Tradition of Tolerance 121

10 From Colonial Past to Postcolonial Present 133

11 The Second World War: The Dilemmas of Occupation 145

12 Religious Diversification or Secularization? 157

Arts & Culture

14 Style and Lifestyle in Architecture 183

The Royal Tropical Institute: Architectural Symbol of Colonialism 194

Multatuli: Anti-Colonial Literature 202

16 Three Feminist Waves 211

17 The Double Bind of Television 223

18 Global Dutch 235

20 Excellence and Egalitarianism in Higher Education 261

21 Immigration and Diversity 275

22 Legal Culture 287

Hollanditis: The Politics of Pacifism 301

24 In Foreign Eyes 311

About the Authors 335

EBSCO : - printed on 9/1/2019 3:50 PM via UTRECHT UNIVERSITY

It is a pleasure to present an updated and enlarged edition of Discovering the Dutch. In

emmeline besamusca and jaap verheul

by emmeline besamusca and jaap verheul

ter of Dutch social behavior with provincialism, penny-pinching materialism or even

represents it as a sheltering haven against the modern forces of globalization, Euro-

Neither Wooden Legs nor Wooden Shoes:

I’m travelling by train somewhere in the United States. It is my first trip to a

laws of the others seem strange, or even unnatural.

“Dutchness” is a very ambiguous term, like “Frenchness” or “German-

me reading a Dutch history of German literature, adamantly tried to convince

and the Crown

The Netherlands is often described as a country of paradoxes. Born in the sixteenth

The Orange Dynasty

Queen Máxima: Enchanting the Monarchy

ultimately prevented after Máxima’s

King and Crown

Binnenhof: Traditional Heart

government for the coming year. Thereupon he returns to Noordeinde Palace,

provincial, and municipal levels. Additionally, twenty-four so-called “water boards”

Two Ideological Dimensions

could traditionally be understood by considering two ideological dimensions, which

left, embrace the principle of solidarity: it should be a fundamental responsibility of

From Stability to Volatility

as it once was. Party identification is decreasing, as is also illustrated in declining party

In the election campaigns, personalities seem of increasing importance to secure

Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.