Discovering

the Dutch
On Culture and Society of
the Netherlands
EMMELINE BESAMUSCA & JAAP VERHEUL [ EDS.]

AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY PRESS

Discovering the Dutch
Discovering
the Dutch
On Culture and Society of
the Netherlands

edited by

emmeline besamusca
jaap verheul

Amsterdam University Press

ISBN 978 90 8964 100 7
e-ISBN 978 90 4850 827 3
NUR 688

© Emmeline Besamusca and Jaap Verheul / Amsterdam University Press, 2010

Cover design: Kok Korpershoek

Book design and image research:
Kok Korpershoek, Jonatan van der Horst and Jorien Janssen
Index: Anne-Lieke Struijk

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no
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­copying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copy–
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Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illus­tra­
tions reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to
this material is advised to contact the publisher.
Table of Contents

Map of The Netherlands 9

Introduction 11
Emmeline Besamusca & Jaap Verheul
• Neither Wooden Legs nor Wooden Shoes: 14
Elusive Encounters with Dutch Identity
Wiljan van den Akker

Society
1 Citizens, Coalitions and the Crown 19
Emmeline Besamusca
• Princess Máxima: Enchanting the Monarchy 21
• Binnenhof: Traditional Heart of a Modern Democracy 24

2 The Economy of the Polder 33

Jan Luiten van Zanden
• Bulbs, Flowers and Cheese: 33
The Agricultural Face of an Urban Economy
• Royal Dutch Shell: Corporate Legacy of Colonialism 37

3 Dilemmas of the Welfare State 45

Lex Heerma van Voss
• Labor Productivity: Balancing Work and Leisure 46
• Pensions: Well-Deserved and Well-Funded 51

4 Randstad Holland 57
Ben de Pater & Rob van der Vaart
• The Amsterdam Canal Ring: 59
Urban Heritage of the Golden Age
• The Port of Rotterdam: A Logistical Hub of Europe 63

5 Idealism and Self-Interest in World Politics 71

Duco Hellema
• Hollanditis: The Politics of Pacifism 73
• Srebrenica: A Catastrophic Peace Mission 79
History
6 From the Periphery to the Center 85
Marco Mostert
• The Roman Limes: A Cultural Meeting Place 87
• Hebban Olla Vogala: The Beginnings of Literature 93

7 The Golden Age 97

Maarten Prak
• The Tulip Bubble: Horticultural Speculation 99
• William of Orange: Founding Father 103

8 A Tradition of Tolerance 109

Wijnand Mijnhardt
• Hugo Grotius: Founder of Enlightenment Thought 112
• Baruch de Spinoza: Philosopher of Liberty 115

9 Politics between Accommodation and Commotion 121

Ido de Haan
• Pillarization: Segregation and Consensus 122
• Pim Fortuyn: Libertarian Populist 129

10 The Second World War – Dilemmas of Occupation 135

Christ Klep
• Ausweis: The Dangers of Identity Registration 138
• Anne Frank: Icon of the Holocaust 142

Art & Culture

11 The Making of Rembrandt and Van Gogh 149
Ghislain Kieft & Quirine van der Steen
• Vermeer: Interior Fantasies 153
• Mondrian: Is this Art? 158

12 Style and Lifestyle in Architecture 163

Rob Dettingmeijer
• The Rietveld Schröder House: 167
Icon of Architecture for the Modern Age
• The Royal Tropical Institute: 175
Architectural Symbol of Colonialism

13 Literature, Authors and Public Debate 179

Frans Ruiter & Wilbert Smulders
• Multatuli: Anti-Colonial Literature 182
• The Assault: Writing the Second World War 186
 14 Three Feminist Waves 191
Rosemarie Buikema & Iris van der Tuin
• Joke Smit: Mobilizing Female Discontent 193
• Dolle Mina: Second-Wave Feminism and the Media 197

15 Excellence and Egalitarianism in Higher Education 203

Jeroen Torenbeek & Jan Veldhuis
• Aletta Jacobs: Emancipation through Education 207
• University College: Challenging Academic Traditions 211

Contemporary Issues
16 Religious Diversification or Secularization? 217
David Bos
• The Portuguese Synagogue: Monument of Asylum 222
• Mosques in the Polder:
Corner Stones or Stumbling Blocks? 226

17 Immigration and Multiculturalism 231

Han Entzinger
• Indonesian Rijsttafel: Sharing the Table 233
• Ahmed Aboutaleb: Multicultural Mayor 239

18 Law in Action 243

Freek Bruinsma
• Coffeeshops: From Permissiveness to Control 246
• Subsidies: Good Intentions, Bad Results 250

19 Living with Water 255

Rob van der Vaart
• The Beemster Polder: 256
Masterpiece of Designed Reclamation
• The Great Flood: Inducement for the Delta Works 259

20 In Foreign Eyes 267

Jaap Verheul
• Hans Brinker: Morality Behind the Dikes 272
• Frau Antje: Ambassador of Dutchness 275

Notes 279

About the Authors 290

Illustrations 295

Index 297
The Netherlands

GeoMedia, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University


 Introduction
Emmeline Besamusca & Jaap Verheul

This volume is intended as a helpful guide for anyone interested in exploring

the culture 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
perspectives 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 newcomers and outside observers. More im­
portantly, 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 iden­
tity. 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 ac­
quired 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 pannekoeken, 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 Neth­
erlands 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 Riet­
veld, 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 gezelligheid 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 character 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 busi­
ness meetings.
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 identification – or differentiation. Nor can a demarcation
be drawn around “Dutchness” that represents it as a sheltering haven against
the modern forces of globalization, Europeanization, individualism or multi­
culturalism. 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 net­
works, alliances and collaborations. As a result, Dutch national identity is not
static, but rather the outcome of a continuous process of identification, nego­
tiation and exploration. Yet this incessant interaction does not make Dutch
culture and society indefinable and inaccessible. On the contrary, this book
hopes to show some of the many routes that open up vistas of the vi­brant dis­
tinctiveness – and familiarity – of Dutch society.
This volume organizes perspectives on Dutch culture and society into
four different 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, the Netherlands is
known for its internationally oriented economy which is organized around
well-established welfare arrangements and a consensual political culture
that is sometimes affectionately described and even promoted as a “polder­
model.” In spite of the rural images of windmills and tulips, the western
Randstad is one of the most densely populated and cosmopolitan spots in the
world. The pervasive international outlook is also expressed in a foreign pol­
icy that is informed by both self-interest and idealism.
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, con­
tinued to manifest themselves in the following centuries. The 1960s re­
presented an important fault line in those legacies when the denominational
segregation in society, often described as “pillarization,” disintegrated, leav­
ing marks in the political arena and beyond well into the twenty-first century.
In spite of many persistent continuities, the Second World War formed an­
other dramatic turning point in the twentieth century as Dutch society ex­
perienced the atrocities of war and genocide and faced dilemmas that
influenced, and continue to influence, public culture and debates about gov­
ernmental powers, discrimination and international interventions to the
present day.
The section on art and culture guides the reader on a tour of cultural ex­
pressions and traditions that support the Dutch in their claim to international
fame as a cultural nation. It is an intriguing question, however, to which
de­g ree 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 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 development. In the
realm of literature the position and role of authors has been subject to cul­
tural 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 intellectual horizon of the Netherlands – the
Dutch mindset – is also very much a product of the internationally acclaimed
tradition of its higher education, which in turn has been shaped by the as­
pirations and historical developments of the society it serves.
The last section on contemporary issues explores public debates in Dutch
society at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The Netherlands are rou­
tinely described as a “Calvinist” nation – even by devout Catholics or ag­
nostics – with roots in strong religious identification and dissension. Yet one
can also argue that modern Dutch society today is better described in terms
of tolerance, secularization and a religious diversity that now includes Islam.
Many impassioned discussions about Dutch identity have been sparked by the
related issues of immigration and assimilation, and their political and social
consequences. Equally fundamental to an understanding of Dutch society
have been the recurring public debates about ethical issues such as prosti­
tution, abortion, drugs and euthanasia. Some of these vital questions have
been met at times with policy compromises that have confounded govern­
ment, public and foreign onlookers alike. A very real threat to Dutch exist­
ence, which consistently attracts foreign attention as well, is posed by the
ubiquitous water that continuously requires protective measures and difficult
choices. 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 dif­
ferent light as they are discussed and interpreted by the authors, as reality
sometimes escapes uniform definitions and categories. This multifocal per­
spective 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 on canonical Dutch personae and phenomena
that are sparked throughout the book. Some topics also appear in the his­
 torical canon that has been commissioned by the Dutch government, but
many other vignette topics are related to contemporary society. Although
these miniature windows on Dutch culture and society are connected to the
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
of sharing their insight into the culture and society of the Netherlands by
con­necting their academic expertise as scholars to their personal expertise as
natives. We hope that, in offering 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 Dutch Identity
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 sou­
venir of the journey. A tale that fits quite well within the prejudices
we share about identities: people not knowing their language or geo­
graphy. That is to say: the other people. Not us, the Dutch, of course.
The stranger on the train and I start a gentle conversation 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 discussions with each other about Schopen­
hauer, 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 identities 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 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 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 obser­
vation. 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
interesting 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,
de­fi ning ourselves as being 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 iden­
tity.
“Dutchness” is a very ambiguous term, like “Frenchness” or “Ger­
manness.” Once you try to grasp it, it will fade away. Once you deny
it, it will present itself. It boggles the mind. But isn’t this what the
mind is for? For trying to understand ambiguities, for looking at the
same thing from different angles, for constantly wondering? By trav­
eling, either in real life, or by way of books.
Last year I was traveling by train in Germany. A man in his fif­
ties, noticing me reading a Dutch history of German literature, ada­-
m­antly tried to convince me that the Dutch language was a German
dialect. I spent an entire hour trying 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 station, he said, shrug­
ging 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 be­
come a salesman. Of wooden legs.


Society
 Chapter 1

Citizens, Coalitions
and the Crown
Emmeline Besamusca


The Netherlands is often described as a country of paradox. 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 movements 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 elections. With
turnout rates for national elections around eighty percent on average, the
Dutch electorate seems to consider it important to participate and be repre­
sented. It may seem paradoxical then that actual government 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 pro-
vincial governments and the city mayors.
The Dutch political structure seems thus determined by a delicate but
self-evident balance between active citizens’ participation in political elec­
tions and governance by coalitions and appointed executives. Amidst this
paradoxical interplay of political forces, the hereditary monarch serves as a
symbol of national unity and represents the continuity of the nation.

The Orange Dynasty

The Netherlands was a republic until the early nineteenth century. The Re­
public 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 Holland under Louis Bonaparte – the emperor’s
 brother – in 1806. When the French occupation ended in 1813 the European
powers – convinced that monarchies would secure 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 stadholder,
who 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 statehood, when William of Orange-Nassau, 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 di­
rect successors were monarchs, but they played a crucial role in the Dutch
Republic as hereditary stadholders, 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. The many
letters citizens write to the queen, requesting her particular assistance or
support, give testimony of this unwavering faith in the House of Orange in
general, and the person serving as king or queen in particular.
The constitution stipulates that the Dutch throne is held by William I of
the Netherlands and his lawful successors, and carefully defines the line of
succession. It also stipulates that his heirs need to obtain parliamentary con­
sent to a proposed marriage in order to maintain their right to the throne.
Given this official public involvement, royal marriages can be regarded as a
sort of social thermometer. In the early 1960s, no parliamentary approval was
given to the marriage of Princess Irene, second in line only after her sister
Beatrix, to the Spaniard Hugo de Bourbon Parma, who made serious claims
on the Spanish throne. The fact that Irene converted from the traditional
Protestantism of the Orange Family to Catholicism caused an enormous stir
in a society still strongly segregated along religious and ideological lines. The
marriage of Princess Beatrix to the German diplomat Claus von Amsberg in
1966 was surrounded in clouds of smoke bombs thrown by rioters for dif­
ferent reasons: apparently, it was too soon after the Second World War for
the Dutch public to embrace a German spouse. 2 In the next generation,
religion no longer proved to be an issue in marriage approval, nor the fact
that none of the chosen partners were of noble descent. Yet, Prince Friso,
second in line of succession, did not receive parliamentary consent after it
became known that his fiancée had not been entirely honest about her past.
As the person fulfilling the position of king is not selected based on
personal merit, he or she needs to stay hidden behind the function. However,
it is inevitable that the person colors the function. In the absence of male
heirs, the Dutch throne has con­tinuously been in female hands since the end
of the nineteenth century. The respective personalities of each of the queens
seem to have suited their time remarkably well. The unflinching and head­
strong personality of Queen Wilhelmina, who formally ascended the throne
when she became of age in 1898, served her well during the years of occu-
pation 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 broadcasts of “Radio Orange.” Her only daughter, who assumed the
throne in 1948 as Queen Juliana, 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 April 30, Queen’s Day (Konin-
g­innedag), where they would parade by her, standing on top of the stairs of
her palace at Soestdijk amidst her family. In 1980, Juliana abdicated in favor
of the eldest of her four daughters, Beatrix, the “pro­fes­sional,” who has trans­
formed her position into a “job.” On Queen’s Day, she no longer invites the
public to come to her palace; instead, she pays a visit to two carefully selected
locations, accompanied by other members of the royal family. She is regularly
portrayed behind a desk in her “working palace” Noordeinde in The Hague,
and is said to be extremely dedicated, well-informed, and well-pre­pared.
Undoubtedly, the support for the monarchy is not only to be attributed to the
long-standing history between the Oranges and the Neth­erlands, but to the
personal qualities of the queen and the family of Orange as well.

Princess Máxima: Enchanting the Monarchy

In 2002, Crown Prince Willem Alexander mar­
ried Argentinean-born Máxima Zorreguieta.
With her engaging personality, natural spon­
tan­­­­­­­­­eity and stylish appearance, she has rapidly
become the most popular member of the royal
family.
The start of Máxima’s relationship with
the Netherlands was not without difficulties.
She became subject to a fervent public debate
because her father had served as Minister of
Agriculture during the exceptionally cruel mili­
tary regime of General Videla (1976-1981). This
made it seem questionable whether her mar­
riage to the crown prince would receive the
par­l ia­mentary consent that is constitu­t ionally
required for a marriage of all members of the
House of Orange in line of succession. Yet, Wil­
lem Alexander stubbornly refused to give up his
intention to marry Máxima, even suggesting he would prefer love
above the Dutch throne. A political debate was ultim­ately prevented
after Máxima’s father was per­suaded not to attend the wedding.
In her first public appearances in 2001, Máxima stole many hearts
with her pres­e nce, 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 wed­
ding 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 con­
tributed to the popularity of the monarchy, adding a charm to the
royal appearance, which is invaluable to the royal family’s media
presence. Part of her strength is that she seems to sincerely enjoy her
public functions. With an academic degree in economics she promotes
microcredit projects abroad. At home, she shows particular interest in
the position of immigrant women (as she herself is), incessantly
stressing the importance of learning Dutch and acquainting oneself
with Dutch culture. Her contribution to the presentation of an official
report on “Identification with the Netherlands” was received rather
critically though, not only because of its content – she stated that
“Dutch culture does not exist other than in many different contours
and colors” – but also because it was generally considered too out­
spoken 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 balance between dignitas and human­
itas, royalty 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,
Dutch media regularly present carefully directed moments in the
family’s life, such as skiing holidays or the first schooldays of the
children. In all the media attention surrounding her, Máxima con­
vincingly 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 consists of the Netherlands and six islands
in the Caribbean: five islands united in the Netherlands Antilles, and a sixth
island, named Aruba3. The relation between the Netherlands and the Nether­
lands Antilles was formally constituted with a charter in 1854, which also
included the small nation of Surinam in South America until its independence
in 1975. The Dutch king is thus head of state not only of the Netherlands, but
also of two countries in the Caribbean, which represent less than two percent
of the population of the Kingdom.
Contrary to many of the West-European constitutional monarchies, the
Dutch government is formed by the king and his ministers, together called
“the Crown.”However, the king has no political responsibility nor any formal
power; since the Constitution of 1848 the rule is maintained that “the king is
inviolable; the ministers are responsible.” This principle of “ministerial
responsibility” – which pertains to the 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 therefore 
 not refer to the king’s personal decision, but rather represents the unity of the
Crown. 5 The king’s signature is required as well, but as he is to remain
neutral and stand above the parties, his refusal to sign remains a rather
theoretical 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. Tradition has it that the monarch arrives at the govern­
ment 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
seated on a large throne 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 king that are heard.
Yet, the king is an unavoidable factor in the political process, given his
position, the average length of his reign and the royal privileges which the
nineteenth-century British economist Walter Bagehot famously defined as the
right “to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn the government.”6 To that
end, the king regularly consults with the prime minister, and thus is one of
the best informed people, and one who is assured of popular support Dutch
politicians can only dream about. Therefore, ministers are well advised to at
least listen carefully to any comments the king may have.7
During the often complex negotiations to form a new government after
parliamentary elections, the king plays a central, yet largely invisible role by
appointing the senior statesmen who coordinate this process. This role 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 reluctant to press the
issue, knowing that there is little support among the Dutch public at large for
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 coalitions certainly has its advantages. Since it is almost
unavoidable that some parties participate in various consecutive coalitions,
they represent a certain 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, given to a committee to be studied, or any
other strategy to avoid the coalition having to hand in its resignation before
the full term of four years is served. The necessity for coalitions has other
weaknesses too. Forming a coalition in such a fragmented political field is
usually a cumbersome and time-consuming process, in which the country is
virtually left without a new government. Furthermore, voters can never be
sure whether or not their party will actually end up participating in the
coalition, and adamantly proclaimed positions in the election campaign may
be given up during coalition negotiations. Consequently, this process renders
the electoral results rather inconclusive, as the electorate does neither directly
determine the formation nor the agenda of the new government. Also, the
public does not directly influence 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 Christan Democratic backbencher Jan Peter
Balken­ende who ended up leading several successive governments. It has
been suggested that the prime minister be directly elected; however, such a
proposal is far from gaining a parliamentary majority.
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” (Commissaris van de Koning) and to the municipal government,
which is headed by an appointed mayor. This appointive principle is trad­
itionally defended in terms of quality: appointment procedures allow se­lecting
well-qualified candidates, without being blinded by other, rather irrelevant
factors that may influence public elections. Furthermore, it is ar­g ued 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.
Centerpiece of the Inner Court is the Hall of Knights, or Ridder­
zaal, 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 intended to avoid favoring any particular city over another.
Den Haag, as the city became known, has remained the par­liamen­
tary center ever since – even though Amsterdam is the official capital
of the Netherlands.
Since 1904 the Hall of Knights is the venue of the annual opening
of the parliamentary year on Prinsjesdag (Princes’ Day), the third
Tuesday in September, an event wrapped in traditions and rituals.
The queen promptly arrives just before 1 p.m. in the golden carriage,
which was presented to Queen Wilhelmina by the city of Amsterdam
in 1898. Seated on her throne in the Hall she reads – in exactly twenty
minutes – the troonrede, outlining the plans of the government for
the coming year. Thereupon she returns to Noordeinde Palace, where
she appears on the balcony, together with other members of the royal
family, 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 gov­
ernment.
A new meeting hall for parliament was completed in 1992. The
architect Pi de Bruin masterfully managed to position it in-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 between 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 members of
parliament are not facing each other, but face the ministers who are
seated in the opposing governmental “box.”
The council of ministers is chaired by the Minister President or
Premier. His office is located at the Inner Court, in a small tower
affectionately known as “Het Torentje” where traditionally he could
be seen working through the cameras of the national evening news.
However, for security reasons its windows are now permanently
blinded and fences are erected. But the Inner Court is still open and
accessible, symbol of an open democracy.

Decentralized Unitary State
The administrative and electoral structure of the Netherlands is divided into
the national, the provincial and the municipal level. Additionally, twenty-
seven so-called water boards (waterschappen) are responsible for issues
related to water management. As the constitution assigns the legislative
competencies to the national level only, the Netherlands – notwithstanding
the plural in its name – is formally a unitary state.8 However, some of these
competencies are delegated to the lower levels, whose role can thus be
described in terms of co-governance and autonomy: serving as a link
between national legislature and local reality, implementing national legis­
lation at the local levels. For instance, it is the city council who, within the
general framework as outlined in the national law, designs a local policy
with regard to opening hours of shops on Sundays. This local autonomy may
result in differences between the various cities: whereas in some cities shops
can be open twelve Sundays a year – as is the legal maximum – other muni­
cipalities choose not to allow shops to open on any Sunday.
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 represent the public, to control the government and to pass
new legislation.
The fact that the House of Representatives is often loosely referred to as
“parliament” indicates that it is perceived as the center of the political pro­
cess. The hundred-and-fifty members are directly elected every four years,
according to the principle of proportionality, “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. Depending on turnout, usually around eighty per­
cent, this roughly amounts to about sixty thousand votes nationwide.9
The provincial councils (Provinciale Staten) and the municipal councils
(gemeenteraden) are elected every four years as well. In the absence of
prominently featured local politics, the municipal elections – taking place
simultaneously throughout the nation – mostly give an indication of the 
 relative positions of the national parties. Participation is generally around
sixty percent. The elections for the provincial councils attract considerably
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 to the public.

Two Ideological Dimensions

Although a proportional electoral system does not necessarily cause a frag­
mented political 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 can traditionally be understood by considering
two ideological dimensions, which created three distinct ideological “party
families:” social democrats, liberals, and Christian Democrats. It should be
noted that, as these ideological dimensions indicate differences between
parties, they present the relative positions and not absolute measurements.
The different positions can be illustrated by indicating how the parties stand
towards the issue of regulating shop opening hours – an issue which has been
on the political agenda repeatedly throughout the twentieth century.
The first dimension, dividing parties into left-wing and right-wing pos­
itions, is related to socio-economic issues and the preferred role of the gov­
ernment in this domain. On the left hand are the social democrats – the
Labor Party (Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA) – who consider it a funda­mental
responsibility of the government to redistribute the available means equally
and justly. With traditional support among the working class, the Labor Party
considered regulating shop hours to be a possible instrument to protect the
rights of employees. More recently however, it is also viewed as a possible
facilitator in increasing labor participation, especially of women. The liberal
parties on the right hand – the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy
(Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie, VVD) and the more progressive
Democrats ’66 (Democraten ’66, D’66) – prefer to limit the hand of the
government in the lives of individual citizens, thus allowing for the freedom
necessary for creative entrepreneurship to attain full bloom. On the issue of
shop opening hours they argue that a healthy market is best served by lifting
restrictions as much as possible.
A second dimension distinguishes between confessional and secular
political thinking. Confessional parties – the Christian Democratic Alliance
(CDA), the Christian Union (Christenunie, CU) and a small orthodox Prot­
estant party (Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij, SGP) – take religious prin­
ciples as a guideline in political thinking. The government should serve as a
protector of the same values the church instructs. This becomes most ap­
parent in ethical, non-material issues: the confessional parties support a
distinct government’s position, whereas for the non-confessional parties –
social democrats and liberals alike – such issues should primarily remain
subject to private, individual decisions. On the issue of shop opening hours
one may expect the confessional parties to argue in defense of Sunday as a
traditional Christian resting day. In addition, they stress the need to consider
regulation of shop opening hours in relation to the local social fabric in a
 neighborhood, the cornerstone of a “caring society.”
With the decline in ideological thinking and an 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 with social democrats
and liberals was formed – the so-called “purple coalition” – illustrating that
the traditional distinction between left and right was not as divisive as it had
been. On the other hand, with the ongoing secularization and general decline
of ideologically based political thinking, the confessional parties were losing
votes and for the first time ended up in the opposition.
New parties were established as well, such as Green Left (Groen Links), a
merger in 1989 of four former small progressive parties. The Socialist Party
(SP), a split from the former Communist Party in 1972, entered parliament in
1994. In addition, some one-issue parties emerged – such as the Elderly
People’s Party in the 1990s, and a Party for the Animals (Partij voor de Dieren,
PvdD) in 2006. Such parties can perhaps best be seen as politicized action
groups. They are sometimes accused of lacking a coherent political ideology
and instead presenting a collection of opinions and statements.

From Structured to Open Electoral Model

For a major part of the twentieth century, the three so-called “heartlands” of
the main party families determined electoral behavior. Many voters identified
with one of the party families and voted accordingly. Today, this structured
model of voting behavior is no longer as powerful as it once was.10 Party
identification is a decreasing factor in electoral behavior, as is also illustrated
in declining party-membership. Voters may change preference from one elec­
tion to the next, and increasing numbers of people work their way through
online questionnaires to identify the party which best suits their opinions.
The significant increase in electoral volatility and floating voters has
forced political parties to compete for votes – especially the undecided voters
in the so-called “battlefield” – which has put more pressure on election
campaigns. As increasing numbers of voters are not necessarily convinced by
political analysis only, more emphasis is placed on the personality of the
candidates to secure public support.
In a structured model of voting, the role of the candidates was rather
modest. The participating political parties present a list of candidates,
carefully drawn up, balancing men and women, various regional, social and
ethnic backgrounds, age groups and – within the Christian Democratic Party
(CDA) – the various “blood-groups,” in other words candidates with various
religious affiliations. A voter may give a vote of preference 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.
Increasingly, political personalities play a role in election campaigns.
Certainly the role of visual media as an instrument in election campaigns is
important here as well. The candidates – especially the person heading the
list (lijsttrekker) – should personify the party and be trustworthy to the
voters. In 2002, the first political group was formed around a personality
altogether: the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). Similarly, in 2006, the Freedom Party 
 (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) formed around Geert Wilders, and another poli­
tical movement was presented by Rita Verdonk, Proud of the Netherlands
(Trots op Nederland, TON), in 2007. In concentrating on issues related to im­
mi­gration and assimilation, these parties seem to confirm the suggestion that
a new, third ideological dimension is forming in the Dutch political field.11

Changes and Continuity

In a parliamentary democracy, elections represent the most commonly
known citizens’ participation in decision-making. However, parallel to a
diminishing position of the political parties, a certain public dissatisfaction
has surfaced, concentrating on the widening gap between politics and public.
At the local level such sentiments lead to the formation of so-called Leef­­
baar (“liveable”) parties in various cities, addressing issues of direct public
con­cern – such as safety, or even chewing gum, in the streets – instead of
ab­stract bureaucratic debates beyond daily realities.
But public discontent was also caused by a perceived lack of direct
involvement of the public, strengthening the call for directly electing mem­
bers in the executive branches. In selecting a new mayor, some municipal
councils have asked the population for their preference in a consultative
referendum. An elected mayor, though, is still hidden in the future, as is a di­
rectly elected prime minister. It has also been suggested to introduce a
decisive referendum, asking the citizens their view on new legislation, as the
ultimate means of direct influence on national policy. However, no political
majority exists for the necessary constitutional reforms to introduce such a
referendum, or even a corrective legislative referendum, allowing for the
public to express an opinion on laws as agreed on by parliament. Direct pub­
lic impact on the political process remains limited to elections.
Yet, it cannot be concluded that the Dutch parliamentary democracy
lacks in general public trust. Rather than in declining voters’ turnout at elec­
tions, dissatisfaction is materializing in volatile electoral behavior, a phe­
nomenon which has made Dutch political life more attractive and the
electoral campaigns more interesting.
Amidst this increasing political volatility and continuously changing
coalitions the role of the monarchy continues to enjoy broad support in
society, including the new, immigrant citizens as well.12 Perhaps it is the very
strength of the monarchy that it is not the product of political elections and
subject to political campaigning. Solidly rooted in the collective memory of
the citizens and supported by occasional displays of tradition, the monarchy
represents the continuity of the nation. Additionally, the neutrality of the
king allows all citizens equally 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.


 Further Reading
Andeweg, Rudi B. “The Netherlands. The Sanctity of Proportionality.” In: The Politics of Electoral
Systems, edited by Michael Gallagher and Paul Mitchell. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005.
Andeweg, Rudi B. and Galen A. Irwin. Governance and Politics of the Netherlands. Third revised
edition. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
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 (April 2003): 41-66.
Rochon, Thomas R. The Netherlands: Negotiating Sovereignty in an Interdependent World.
Boulder: Westview Press, 1999.
Special issue on the long year 2002, Acta Politica 38, no.1 (2003).


 Chapter 2

The Economy
of the Polder
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 economy is managed, the particular “business system” of the
Netherlands. With this concept 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 cultures. 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 “business
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 ur­
ban­­ized societies in the world is also one of the largest exporters of
agricultural products. 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
onwards, 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
played a role. In the low parts of
the country – Holland, Utrecht
and Friesland – conditions for
grow­­­­ing bread grains were rather
un­favorable; instead, farmers con­
­c en­­trated on livestock farming,
and bought (imported) rye and
wheat on the market in return.
When England and Germany be­
gan to industrialize during the
nineteenth century, Dutch farm­
ers 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, edu­
cation and extension services, largely managed by the agricultural
sector itself, and sponsored by the state. Also, cooperative agri­c ul­
tural banks emerged – which merged into today’s Rabobank – sup­
plying funds at low interest rates to the farming communities. And
when the Great Depression of the 1930s struck the Dutch economy, it
was agriculture that was supported first by the gov­ernment. A set of
policies to guarantee minimum prices was estab­lished, which even­
tually 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 concentration 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 States between 1900 and 2006. Already at the 
 100,000

10,000

1,000
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Netherlands United States

Figure 1 – GDP per capita in the Netherlands and the United States,
dollar value of 1990 (after Angus Maddison)

beginning of the twentieth century there was a gap: people in the United
States were on average better off than those in the Netherlands. Dutch
economic modernization had been rather slow during the nineteenth 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 fundamentally change the economy.
Although these new technologies originated in the United States and Ger­
many, Dutch companies were rather quick to adopt 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
economy. 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 completely 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
somewhat 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 economy was
in such 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 officially called. The program was an attempt to link these two fates:
oversupply of goods in the 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 consumption” during the 1950s, while
the Neth­er­lands and other European nations, although 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 American
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 coun­
tries – 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 the British 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 taxation 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 companies 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
directions, 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 preferred 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 con­sump­
tion goods that our (great)grandparents had 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 Neth­er­
lands 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, insurance and tourism. Industrial
products were increasingly imported from “low wage economies” – Japan at
first, Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia later on, and most recently, mainland 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 “re­
structuring” 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 devel­
opment 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 sixty 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 sub­
sidiary became larger and larger, and also started to sell its own
shares on the New York stock exchange, it adapted so well to the
United States that it was often also considered to be an American
company.
From small beginnings – the two companies who 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 associates. It was relatively successful,
also because anti-trust legislation in the United States led to the
partition of Standard Oil into a number of different companies (in
1911). After 1907 Royal Dutch Shell rapidly spread its activities from
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 company 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 environmentally
friendly (such as the “dumping” of the oil storage buoy Brent Spar).
The Dutch still own a relatively large portion of its shares, its inter­
national 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.

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 different. 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 different 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 “developed” world, two major types of “business systems” have been
distinguished. Continental 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
CMEs of Western Europe the state plays a large role in the economy, 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 interpretation of this concept is that the
Dutch, in their incessant battle against the water, set up their own insti­
tutions, 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. Farm­
ers 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 result, 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 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 parti­cular 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 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.
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 economy. 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 employers’ 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 suc­
cessfully 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,
particularly 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 cooper­ 
 ation between the three “social partners” – trade unions, employer’s organ­
izations and the government – the Netherlands was quite successful in
adap­t ­­ing to the changed conditions of the 1980s and 1990s, to the “post-
in­dustrial society” and the age of globalization.
This all sounds perhaps too good to be true – 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 concentrate 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 cooperation 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 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 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 Nether­
lands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (Centraal Planbureau, CPB),
initially meant as a “planning agency” to map out the reconstruction of the
economy after 1945. Its powers were rather limited however, especially when
compared with “real” planning agencies of the communist world, and it
developed 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 making, 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 parliament. 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 similar practices in business. Large companies in the Neth­
erlands 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 man­
aged 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 enhanced 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 decisions 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
bank 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 man­
agers? This decision-making model was therefore considered unfit for the
demands of a globalizing world. With the growing power of shareholders 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 financial crisis of 2008 has put an end
to this pressure to copy the “superior” American or 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 of growth and structural transformation it was not much
unlike that of Belgium, Germany, Denmark or the United Kingdom. Com­
pared 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 Netherlands. 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. With 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.


 Chapter 3

Dilemmas of the
Welfare State
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 submerged himself in Dutch society. Among his experiences
were receiving unsolicited payments: some D 500 every quarter with the one-
word explanation kinderbijslag (child benefit). Upon first receiving this
money, Shorto looked up the website of the benefactor, the Sociale Ver­
zekeringsbank (Social Insurance Bank), where the reason for this financial
transaction to every parent residing in the Netherlands was explained as
follows: “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 subsequent months. At the start of a school year the
Social Insurance Bank transferred D 316 to his account for every schoolgoing
child, to help pay for books. Other American expats who settled in Amster­
dam 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 after having given birth, as
well as regular checkups at a public health clinic. Day care for Julie’s children
was subsidized, so she could afford to continue 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:
52. 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 sociologist and welfare state specialist Gøsta Esping-
An­dersen categorizes as liberal, social-democratic and conservative.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 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 pensions through private insurance.
Hence, the liberal welfare state is relatively cheap and 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 entitlement 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. How­
ever, high taxes are needed to pay for all this.
Esping-Andersen’s third category is found in continental Europe. He calls
it conservative because rights are linked to social status, and the welfare
state is used to sustain 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 underdeveloped. The state aims to
fund only those programs that are not already well organized by civil society.
As the level of benefits is positioned between that of the two other types, so
does the tax level. The Netherlands is usually counted among the latter
welfare states. Yet, as the Dutch system includes some traits of the social-
democratic type, it is sometimes considered to belong to 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 impressive. Long holidays and short working weeks
mean that the number of working hours Dutch employees put 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 bonus.” 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 sky­
diving 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 – com­pared
to other Western coun­tries
– school meals, day care
fa­c ilities, 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 is among the leading
European countries in female paid employment. However, many
economists and politicians argue women should seek full-time jobs,
both in the interest of their careers as well as the national GDP.
Something similar applies to retirement. In the 1980s, when un­
employment was high, schemes to enable employees to retire early
were popular. The Dutch usually consider that working until one’s
early sixties is enough, allowing for a couple of years to enjoy retire­
ment in fairly good health. In most branches of the economy, it has
become possible to take early retirement from age 60 or 62. In fact, in
some jobs, like garbage collecting, bus driving or primary school
teaching, virtually no-one reaches the mandatory retirement age of 65.
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 department 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 overstaffed banks or
restaurants. Whether it would not be better 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.
Dur­i ng 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 dis­
eased. 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 deciding 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 courtyards (hofjes) that would house a limited number of the elderly
without other social support. Well into the twentieth century, these hofjes –
more than two hundred were built in Dutch towns over the past centuries –
generally functioned exactly as intended. Currently they are sought after
dwellings with a historical 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 cen­
tury. Even today, former poor houses 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 for
the poor were established. Additionally, it was not uncommon for guilds and
other professional organizations to take care of illness and poverty among
their membership. Others copied these mutual arrangements and created se­
par­ate 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 municipal or religious programs distinguished between 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 their relief at home, in secrecy, so the
stigma of being on the dole would be avoided. The poor from the working
class would receive relief only if they agreed to move to the poor house.
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 char­
ities, 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 main­
taining 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 con­
gregation 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 orthodox Protestant circles, but also 
 other churches – felt that what had developed organically in civil society was
to be preferred over a system governed through state bureaucracy and the
state was only to interfere with church and/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 twentieth century. By that time essential social services, such as
education, health care and poor relief, had become so expensive that the
churches were no longer able to pay for them. Yet, by public funding for pri­
vate 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.
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 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 polder­
model, became a hallmark of Dutch politics.
These ideals notwithstanding, during the first three quarters of the
twentieth century, the national state rationalized this organically grown
patchwork of private charities, 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 ac­
tively interfere in an attempt to prevent the existing unemployment relief
from collapsing under extraordinary demands. Between 1945 and 1963 an
extensive 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 supporting everyone not cov­
ered 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, being for whatever reason 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 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 arrange­
ments reflected this: child allowance was offered to support families in
raising their children, but no program existed to finance day care. However,
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 to
divorce 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 wel­
fare (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, resulting in ongoing improve­
ments in social legislation until the 1970s. Programs that had ori­ginally only
been targeted at wage workers 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 had risen to forty-five. The expense involved had
increased from ten percent of the national income in the 1950s to twenty-five
percent in 1974. In the 1970s, however the economic downturn 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 reconstruction, especially since the Dutch
welfare state faced a number of acute dilemmas.

Does the Welfare State Work?

The general dilemma is whether the overall experience with the welfare state
has been positive. 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” initiatives. 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 prevented 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 cum­
bersome 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 the Dutch economic growth com­
pared 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 is
reduced. For instance, comparative research conducted in the Netherlands
over the 1985-1994 period has shown that in any given year about twenty
percent would fall below the poverty line without transfers through the wel­
fare state. Dutch welfare brought that figure down to five percent. In the
United States, which would have a comparable percentage of poor people
without interference, welfare only reduced this to eighteen 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
de­c reas­ed 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 wel­
fare themselves. Only elderly unemployed with 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.

Pensions: Well-Deserved and Well-Funded

Dutch pensions are funded in three tiers. At age 65, every Dutch citi­
zen is entitled to basic AOW, an acronym which stands for Algemene
Ouderdomswet or General Pensions Act, but has come to be a short­
hand for retirement pay. Old-age pensions for all citizens over 65
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 fifty percent of the net
minimum wage. An individual old age pensioner receives seventy
percent. In 2009 this was slightly less than D 1,000 per month.
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 typically raise
total retire­ment pay to seventy percent of the average wage earned
over one’s working life. In 2008, the Dutch pension funds together
held some D 700 billion.
This immense amount of capital means that Dutch pensions are
 among the most solidly financed in the world. In 2006, the capital of
 the Dutch pension funds equaled some 140 percent of GDP, compared
to ninety percent in the United Kingdom, twenty percent in Germany
or ten percent in France. 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.
About fifty percent of the money paid out as Dutch pensions are
AOW payments, forty-five percent is paid out by pension funds. The
remaining five 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 current Dutch system
is that it predicts pension levels. This frees the individual from worry­
ing about 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 mandatory retirement age will make it easier to finance
pensions, and at the
same time increases
the number of people
work­ing and thus pay­
ing taxes and social
in­s ur­a nce premiums.
With that in mind, for
the last ten years the
gov­ernment has struck
down meas­u res that
promoted saving up
money to fi­nance early
retire­m ent. It now
seems likely that in the
near fu­t ure the re­tire­­­
ment age in the Neth­er­
­lands will go up to 67.
Another measure that has been de­bated over the past years is making
the retired pay more taxes. However, most polit­ical 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 dilemmas. 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 Arbeidsongeschiktheids-
verzekering, WAO) was introduced in 1967, the premium added just over four
percent to what companies paid in wages, but this had risen to more than
twenty percent by 1983. Why did the disability insurance grow so much? The
WAO was administered in each branch by a bipartite industrial insurance
board (bedrijfsvereniging), in which trade unions and 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 knowledgeable 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 economy 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 unemployment relief. Disability pensions were somewhat
higher and unemployed workers were supposed to find a new job. The repre­
sentatives 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 the welfare state. Relief payments were cut
back. Unfairly, 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.
This situation was not unique to the Dutch welfare state, even if in­
dustrial 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 ad­
ministration of social insurances were laid down by law in 1995. The im­
plementation of social security and monitoring the system were separated.
Workers’ and employers’ organizations were kept at a distance. In 2005 the
WAO was replaced by a more restrictive system which paid benefits to dis­
abled 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 wel­
fare entitlements led to similar changes elsewhere. Poor relief payments were
cut back and municipalities were made responsible for deciding whet­her, out
of their budget, individual welfare recipients were eligible for 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 insurance 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 themselves, 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. Systems run by a state bureaucracy
may lead to too much red tape, which makes them 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 economy 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 re­
stored 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 inflation, 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
Although the Dutch welfare state seems to be doing well at the moment,
there are other 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 problem is ageing: the percentage of the
population over 65 will increase, as women give birth later, fewer children
are born and people live longer. Today, for every person of 65 and older the
Dutch population counts about four people in the age bracket 20-64, who
must earn an income and pay for the AOW 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.
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
made the long-term sustainability of the system an even more pressing con­ 
 cern and presented the Dutch welfare state with what may well become its
largest challenge ever. In fact, with its historical roots in the crisis of the
1930s, this is exactly what the system was designed for. The crisis also showed
that, although a welfare state is a way to cope with the uncertainties of the
future, that future is never wholly predictable. A few years ago an ageing
population seemed the largest risk for the welfare state, but in the shorter
term, the fact that the Dutch population is getting older results in far fewer
fresh young arrivals on the labor market than in the 1930s, thus easing the
strain of unemployment. Hence, the only thing one can really be certain of is
that the Dutch welfare state will remain for some time 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.



 Chapter 4

Randstad Holland
Ben de Pater & Rob van der Vaart

Some forty percent of the Dutch population and almost fifty percent of the
jobs are concentrated in an area that is about twenty percent of the national
land surface: the urbanized ring connecting the four largest cities of Am­
sterdam, 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 reinforced
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 lan­
guage 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 presents an empty
and scarcely populated country where only about five million inhabitants
lived. The map shows vast stretches of uncultivated land, innumerable and
generally tiny fields and meadows, 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 hundred 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 far ahead 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 quickly, 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 benefited from its central location and its
 improving connections in all directions by water, road and rail. As important
 Table 1: The ten largest cities of the Netherlands in terms of population (x 100,000): 1795, 1899, 2000

Ranking Inhabitants Ranking Inhabitants Ranking Inhabitants

1795 1795 1899 1899 2000 2000

1. 221 1. 511 1. 1003

Amsterdam Amsterdam Amsterdam
2. 57 2. 320 2. 990
Rotterdam Rotterdam Rotterdam
3. 38 3. 206 3. 610
The Hague The Hague The Hague
4. 31 4. 102 4. 366
Leiden Utrecht Utrecht
5. 31 5. 67 5. 302
Utrecht Groningen Eindhoven
6. 23 6. 64 6. 250
Groningen Haarlem Leiden
7. 21 7. 57 7. 241
Haarlem Arnhem Dordrecht
8. 18 8. 54 8. 218
Dordrecht Leiden Heerlen
9. 18 9. 43 9. 215
Maastricht Nijmegen Tilburg
10. 14 10. 41 10. 192
Delft Tilburg Groningen

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.

location factors for many factories, offices and institutions, Utrecht, too,
experienced considerable population growth after 1900.
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 1950.2
In 1900 the population density of the cities of Holland was very high.
Inconveniences such as noise and air pollution were an accepted fact of urban
life, particularly during 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 en­v iron­ment.
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” (southeast of Amsterdam) and using the train or streetcar to get to
their work in Amsterdam. Initially, these urban classes used their suburban 
The Amsterdam Canal Ring:
Urban Heritage of the Golden Age
The semi-circular canals Herengracht, Keizersgracht and Prins­en­
gracht, in the center of today’s Amsterdam, are easily recognizable on
the city map. This canal ring is a fine example of seventeenth century
Dutch urban design. In 2008, the government nom­i nated 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 gov­ern­
ment hesitantly took its first steps towards urban expansion. But
large-scale development 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 developed urban zones and 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 for the well-to-do. Port expansion, on three rect­
angular 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, 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 mer­
chants, 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 under­
developed until 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 residential area for Dutch celebrities from the world of art
and politics, it is among the Dutch public sometimes known as a sym­
bol of intellectual pretentiousness. However, to the observer, it first
and foremost exemplifies typical Dutch urbanism – the omnipresence
of water, relatively small-scale development, and the sight of bicycles
everywhere.

homes only during the summer, but gradually it became more common to
live in the countryside throughout the year. Such suburb­a nization is a phe­
nomenon that gained enormous dimensions during the twentieth century.
The cities of Holland not only expanded, but urban density decreased
simultaneously. The use of space gradually became less intensive. In 1850 the
nine largest cities of what we now call the Randstad had an average population
density of 21,600 inhabitants per square kilometer.3 By 1940 the average den­
sity 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 com­
parison with, for example, the urban zones in the southwest of the United
States. But Holland’s urban population density in 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 urbanization and suburbanization. These provinces had
1.2 million inhabitants in 1850 (or thirty-nine percent of the national popu­
lation) and seven million inhabitants in 2000 (forty-four 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, see the map on
page 9) and “the South­west” (province of Zeeland) lost position throughout
this period. They jointly housed twenty-two percent of the Dutch population
in 1850 (0.7 million people) and only thirteen 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 by 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 acti­v ities are located. In reaction to this concentration
trend, the provinces of the North and Southwest try to create counter-images
to the hectic, expensive 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 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 Euro­
pean regions.
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 thirty-nine percent of the national population in 1850 and forty-
three percent in the year 2000. During the late nineteenth and particularly
the early twentieth century, it was mainly the process of industrialization
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
the electronics company Philips. The coal mines 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 attracted hundreds of families
from the northern province of Drenthe. Miners from surrounding countries
came to the newly established coal mines 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 re­g ions 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 disadvantages of
agglomer­ation. As a result, the Randstad is expanding towards the south and
east, mainly along the motorway corridors with new industrial estates and
busi­ness 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. Increa­
singly, these motorways are flanked by businesses with a “sight loca­t ion:”
visible from the motorway and easily accessible by car rather than by public
transportation.
Already during the 1980s, regional planners invented the term “Central
Netherlands 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 counter-clockwise, we see an oval of cities: Utrecht,
Am­s terdam, Haarlem, Leiden, The Hague, Rotterdam, Dordrecht, Breda,
Eind­hoven, and back to our starting point. The concept of a Central Neth­er­
lands Urban Ring has fallen into disuse, but the U-shaped and pro­longed
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 housing 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
urban dwellers workplace and home were the same: artisans usually lived
behind their workshops; 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 geo­
graphical separation 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 five percent of the working population was commuting. In 1947 it
was fifteen percent, in 1971 thirty-seven percent. In 1986 over half the national
working population (fifty-two percent) was commuting and since then the
figure has gone up even more.
Urban expansion and declining urban density, a separation of functions,
and increased 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 (see the map on page 69).

The Port of Rotterdam:

A 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-days travel distance it in­
cludes a consumer market of about one hundred million people. The
port zone stretches out over some forty kilometers, from its oldest
parts in the heart of Rotterdam to its newest zones that were re­
claimed 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 important 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 set­
tlement developed, where goods were loaded manually from coastal
ships to riverboats and vice versa. Later on, the settlement also in­
creased its role as a fishery port.
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. Rotter­
dam, well connected to the Ruhr region by 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 Water­
weg), 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 recon­
struction years. Activity boomed because of European integra­t ion,
economic growth during the 1960s, and later on of course economic
globalization. From a Dutch perspective, 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. For this reason the Dutch state has invested heavily in the
new Betuweroute, a freight railway connecting Rot­terdam with
Germany. It remains to be seen to what extent this railway, heavily
contested during the construction phase by action groups, environ­
mentalists, planners and others, will give the port a competitive edge
in the future.

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 agglom­
erations, which were connected 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 intro­ 
 duced the concept “Randstad Holland” to the international academic and pro­
fessional 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 inter­
national governance in The Hague, harbor and wholesale functions in Rotter­
dam. He warned against the usurpation of the green central space by urban
expansion – otherwise the 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 plan­
ners and politicians for this policy intention – he felt that foreign col­leagues
had a lot to learn from Dutch metropolitan 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 in 1996 to
construct a tunnel for the high-speed train 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.
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 po­
sition, 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 Am­
sterdam Airport Schiphol. Thus, in spite of national spatial policy goals,
numerous housing estates, office blocks, and industrial zones, with accom­
panying infrastructure, arose in the Green Heart. A good example is Hoofd­
dorp in the Haarlemmermeer polder: until the 1960s just a small village close
to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, but today a suburb of almost American
proportions.
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 direction. 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 con­
tributing to the traffic jams that have become a structural and daily phenom­
enon – 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 regu­
lating the power of the state. In line with trends such as privatization,
deregulation and more generally a stronger reliance on “the market,” the
government 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 neighborhood 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 the
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 immigrants) or
about eleven percent of the national population, they make up thirty-five
percent of the population of the four big cities of the Randstad, even forming
the majority in some neighborhoods.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 geo­
graphical 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-econom­
ically. It is questionable, however, whether clustering and segregation are
indeed a handicap to integration, since there is little empirical evidence of
the relationship between geographical and social segregation.7

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 an inhabitant of Amster­
dam, Rotterdam, or Utrecht. But there is no Randstad identification. A
newspaper 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 instruments for local identification. In some cases, social
identification is at an even lower level of scale: people may identify them­
selves as an inhab­itant of Amsterdam-North or Rotterdam-South.
Identification with a home city or local region always implies the oppos­
ition 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 among key actors in the Rotter-
dam art sector.8 These art sector professionals 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 cultural elite of Rotter­
dam interviewed 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 a 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, Rand­
stad 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 seventy 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 competition. 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 Randstad 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 undermines 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 (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 the
telling title “Many Cities Do Not Make a Randstad” that shows that only
twenty percent of Randstad inhabitants commute between distinct urban
agglomerations.
There is also considerable political debate about the most desirable gov­
 ernance 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 governance. The
provinces of North Holland and Flevoland, together with the cities of
Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Almere, proposed to cooperate in the “Amsterdam
Metropolitan Area,” which would create an attractive, competitive and eco­
logically sustainable metropolis of two million inhabitants by the year 2040.
Meanwhile, the national government has decided on its own course “for an
integral development of the Randstad towards a sustainable and competitive
top European region in 2040” with the construction of half a million houses
over the next thirty years – forty percent of which should be realized in the
existing cities – and a “Green-Blue Delta,” linked to the IJsselmeer, the North
Sea, and to the waters of Zeeland in the south-east, as a region where surplus
water can be safely collected and controlled: the Rand­stad is to become
climate-change proof.
But 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 the Randstad, partially influenced by the private sector and
by regional and local authorities, will be quite different from the govern­
mental intentions. A captain may be lacking on the ship, but the Randstad
has lots of helmsmen and helmswomen.

Further Reading
Dieleman, F.M. and S. Musterd, eds. The Randstad: A Research and Policy Laboratory. Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 1992.
Hall, Peter. The World Cities. Third edition. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1984.
Kranenburg, Ronald H. Compact Geography of the Netherlands. Utrecht: Royal Dutch Geographical
Society, 2001.
Territorial Review: Randstad Holland, Netherlands. Paris: Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development, 2007.


The Randstad in 2000

GeoMedia, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University



 Chapter 5

Idealism and
Self-Interest in
World Politics
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 significance. After a painful process of decolonization and adaptation to
the post-war realities, the Netherlands has become a prosperous Northwest-
European country that is an active member of the European Union and the
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 pursue 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 occupied the Dutch East Indies,
which meant the end of three hundred years of Dutch colonial 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 governments 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
Western Europe’s recovery with economic and military means. The Hague
therefore welcomed and appreciated American leadership and Atlantic unity.
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 political 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 minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Luns, was highly critical of
the American refusal to support the West-European states in their post-
colonial conflicts with some of their former colonies. This resentment some­
times 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 the “radical years” of student protest and anti-American demonstra­
tions 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 Netherlands. 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 governments in those 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 gov­
ernment led by the pragmatic Christian-Democratic politician Ruud Lubbers
decided to pursue deployment of the cruise missiles in spite of massive
opposition. The coalition of the conservative-liberal VVD and the Christian-
Democratic CDA now managed to close the ranks and supported its govern­
ment, 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 mis­
understandings. 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 compared to other member
states, the Dutch were, in fact, sheltered from the major conflicts in world
politics. The Netherlands played its part within the allied military structure
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 army would be put to the test decreased even more. These
circumstances meant that the pre-war Dutch policy of aloofness and neu­
trality was continued in certain respects, be it under completely different
circumstances.
This passivity changed after the end of the Cold War. More so than dur­
ing 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 gov­
ernment put aside its traditional military reluctance. At the beginning of the
twenty-first century, Dutch governments and Defense ministers, supported
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 missiles 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 Neth­
erlands, the issue became particularly volatile politically because the
center-right coalition government of Christian-Democrat Dries van
Agt had granted NATO permission to deploy forty-eight cruise missiles
on Dutch soil, but lacked the parliamentary majority to enforce it, as
members of his own party (CDA) leaned towards the opposing social-
demo­crats’ position.
The deployment of the cruise missiles was to become the most
contested security issue in Dutch history. Stimulated by the im­
potence 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 prob­
ably 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 consequences of a Dutch refusal,
 attracted attention from all over
the world. According to the Ame­
ri­can histor­ian Wal­ter Laqueur,
a renewed Dutch neutra­lism – a
“dis­ease” he labeled “Hol­lan­di­tis”
– was spreading over Western
Europe.
The successive Dutch govern­
­m ents be­t ween 1979 and 1985
post­p oned the final decision-
making regarding the new mis­
siles again and again. In June 1984
the cen­ter-right government of
prag­matic Ruud Lub­bers (CDA)
finally forced a decision: the
Nether­­lands would start deploy­
ing if the Soviet Union contin­
ued to deploy SS-20 missiles
after November 1985. In the mean­
­t ime, the influence of the leftist
faction within the CDA had been
reduced, and t he Chr istian
Demo­­­crats were able to close
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
demon­strations 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 questionable.
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 conservative-liberal VVD, were not punished for their
behavior by the Dutch electorate, but even increased their parlia­
mentary 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 Community, which later in 1992 evolved into
the European Union (EU).
As a trading nation and modern export-oriented economy the Neth­er­
lands 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 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
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 stand­
point 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 jeop­
ardize 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 inte­
gration 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, starting with provisional, inter-
governmental decision-making procedures. The Dutch reacted to such pro­
posals 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 en­
dorsed European Political 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 construc­
tion 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
2007 even twenty-seven. 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.
In the early years of the twenty-first century, the Dutch views on Euro­
pean integration seem to have become more cynical. Most of the original
idealism, even if sometimes tainted by hypocrisy, seems to have vanished.
The Dutch became more assertive 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 Eurogroup (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 new Central
and East-European member states. Just like the French, in 2005 the Dutch
electorate rejected the so-called “European Constitution,” although it is not
impossible that considerations other than the specific content of this “consti­
tution” 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 employment 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 projects 
 in West New Guinea. For the time being, development aid to other non-West­
ern countries remained limited, and consisted mostly of the deployment of
experts, initially mostly former colonial civil servants.
In the 1950s, 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 Cooper­
ation was appointed, and a special Directorate-General for International
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 aid donors worldwide.
During the Den Uyl government (1973-1977) the radical social-democrat
Jan Pronk was minister for Development Cooperation. He advocated a new
policy in development cooperation, directed at contributing to structural
changes in the world economy (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, inclu­
ding communist states such as Cuba, the reunited Vietnam, and Mozambique.
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.
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 inter­
national 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 relations 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 active 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 stabilization
missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although the Srebrenica tragedy of 1995
had a huge political and emotional impact in the Netherlands, 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 internation­
alist ideals. Human rights are an interesting example. If the Dutch gov­ern­
ment 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 oppor­
tunism, 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 country, home to several huge corporations such as Royal Dutch
Shell, Unilever and Philips, and that it was inevitable that Dutch governments
would take these vital economic interests into account. Even more social-
democratic oriented governments had to live 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 economy, 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
traditional 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’s right-wing populist and anti-immigration
party “List Pim Fortuyn” (LPF) during the election campaign of 2002 changed
the Dutch political atmosphere. The successive coalitions led by Christian-
Democrat Balkenende since 2002 have shelved many of the old idealist stand­
points, 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 indignation. 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 thorough 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 to the Yugoslavian crisis had been
even-handed. The Dutch government, and especially Foreign Minister
Van den Broek, believed that
the unity of Yugoslavia had to
be preserved. When Serbian-
led Yugoslavia went to war
against the province of Croa­-
tia in June 1991 after it had
declared independence, this
stand­point proved unrealistic.
Under German pressure, the
Netherlands recognized the
independence of Slovenia and
Croatia in January 1992. When
the UN Security Council es­
tablished the United Nations
Mission 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 independence – the Dutch were prepared to
send a liaison battalion. Despite UNPROFOR’s efforts, the humani­
tarian situation in Bosnia became worse. In the meantime, the Dutch
impartial approach to 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 UNPROFOR seemed complicated and contradictory.
UNPROFOR was still a peace-keeping mission and the troops it de­
ployed 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 thousand 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 effectively 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 government nevertheless
firmly rejected the obligation to compensate the Bosnian victims.

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 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 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. Increas­
ingly, 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 these years. 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 Balken­
ende governments since 2002 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 consensus despite differences, its tolerant and inter­
nationalist 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. The Hague: Sdu Publishers, 2000.


History
 Chapter 6

From the Periphery

to the Center
Marco Mostert

The story of the delta before the Dutch nation is somewhat different from the
later history 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. To civilized Romans, the inhabitants of the delta, as this
region can best be called, may have seemed to be like the mythological Tritons,
who were 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 con­
trary. They participated in the Mediterranean civilization of Rome, and Bata­
vian 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 centuries, when they defini­
tively 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
rela­t ively urbanized region which was in 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 missionary efforts in
the seventh and eighth centuries, Christianity had become the dominant
reli­gion, and in the later Middle Ages urban forms of spiritual life developed
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 understandable against the back­
ground of the flourishing of manuscript culture and the subsequent 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 contact 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 position 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 land­
scape. 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 maintained. Thus, we
find Frisians trading with the Romans. They even drew up contracts 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 prevailed, 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 eco­
nomic 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
minuscule lumps of lead – discovered recently through the use of metal
detectors – have been 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 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 terri­
tories 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
geography 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 settlement 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 ruins 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 flourished next to the castellum and
 further along the Roman road
granaries, a watchtower, a cem­
etery 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 the
local inhabitants.
A lthough the ca stellum at
Utrecht was a much smaller affair
it nevertheless still symbolized the
Roman presence centuries later.
The Frankish king Dagobert I (†639)
built his church within its walls to
stress the perceived continuity
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 repre­sent­
atives 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 limes was more of a meeting
place than a border guarded by military force.

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 migrations 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 im­
portance, “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 Fris­
ians,” 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 converts 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 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 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 participated. 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 become 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 effectively 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 primarily a
regional matter.

Land Reclamation, Urbanization,

Literacy and Spirituality
Although politically on the sidelines, the delta began to escape the periphery
of European medieval history in economic, social, cultural and spiritual
respects. This was the 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 reclamations realized by hand, using nothing
more than wooden spades that were only reinforced 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 eighty 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 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 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
monasteries and cathedrals. According to the Fourth Lateran Council, called
by the pope in 1215, each parish church had to have its own school. Ap­
parently, this injunction was taken seriously in the Low Countries. In the
sixteenth century the Italian historian Guicciardini noticed that here even
peasants could read. Latin schools were attached to an 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.
Schools were too important, however, to leave to the Church. From the
fourteenth century, 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, arithmetic and bookkeeping. Some
Latin schools taught at university level; their teachers had received a univer­
sity 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 elsewhere. 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 twentieth 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 important 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 network 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 with the aim of perfecting their personal
spiritual lives. 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 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 Roch­
ester 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 recognized 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, however, before literary
works in the vernacular would be written there.
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, 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, already
in the eighth century, long before literary works were produced in
Dutch, Latin literary texts were imported. In the mission at Utrecht
the lives of saintly missionaries were written, and in or around Maas­
tricht 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 generations after the abbey’s foundation. Latin literature was
followed by literature in French and German. Texts in these lan­guages
were read, heard and emulated 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 civilization.
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 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 similarities with
that of its neighbors. Daily life was not all that different from the way it was
lived in neighboring areas, nor were beliefs, neither before nor after the
introduction of Christianity. Maybe, because of the mobility of traders,
knowledge of 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 relatives, 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 sustain a conversation
with an inhabitant of a town in the South East such as Maastricht about any­
thing 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, 1999.
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 www.brepolis.net.


 Chapter 7

The Golden Age

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 Rembrandt 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-embracing and therefore slippery concept. None­
theless, the concept can be used, if it is disaggregated, precise bench­marks
are applied, and 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 anything – was modern about the Dutch Golden Age.

The First Modern Economy

Perhaps the most straightforward indicator of the modernity of any pre-
modern economy 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 I clearly shows how sub­
stantial numbers of Dutch workers 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
consequence 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 fifty percent. All sectors of the economy – in Holland the economy
grew by more than one 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 the seventeenth century. Shortly before 1600 a new
 Table I: Percentage distribution of the workforce in England, France, and the Dutch Republic in 1700.

Rural Urban Rural

agricultural non-agricultural

England 55 17 28

France 63 11 26

Dutch Republic 40 39 21

Source: E.A. Wrigley, “Urban Growth and Agricultural Change: England and the Continent in the
Early Modern Period,” in People, Cities and Wealth: The Transformation of Traditional Society
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), tables 4, 8, and 9.

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 Oost-Indische Com­pag­nie,
VOC) in 1602. It was the world’s first large-scale joint-stock company. By 1700
the VOC was employing around twenty-five thousand, of whom eighteen
thousand were working in Asia. Almost four thousand were stationed in
Batavia (now Jakarta), the town set up by the Dutch as their commercial
headquarters in the Indonesian archipelago. Another four thousand were
plying Asian waters, ferrying cargo between the numerous VOC trading posts
set up in Japan, on 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; the station eventually became Capetown.
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 Por­
tugal. 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 Amsterdam 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 Nether­
lands before, say, 1580. The same was true of 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 families. 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 grown commercially in Holland for the first time shortly after
1600, and as a 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 even the poorer
social classes.
A distinguishing feature of the Dutch economy was its high level of inte­
gration. The relations between towns and countryside have been charac­
terized as “symbiotic.” During the middle decades of the seventeenth century
an extensive network of new canals was created, along which towboats main­
tained a regular service, ensuring easy (and comfortable) connections be­
tween 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 botanists. Most notable among them was Charles de l’Éscluse, or
Carolus Clusius (1526-1609), a native of Arras in the Habsburg Nether­
lands. Clusius helped establish the Imperial Botanical Garden at
Vienna, at the behest of Emperor Maximilian II, and then created
another botanical garden in Frankfurt, before his appointment as
Horti Praefectus at the recently established university of Leiden in the
Netherlands in 1592. Clusius had the largest collection of tulip bulbs
in Europe and ensured that the university’s botanical garden included
numerous varieties of tulips.


 By then the tulip had already become a fashionable item in aristo­
cratic gardens; in the Dutch Republic it was to become a truly popular
flower. Emanuel Sweerts from Amsterdam
published his Florilegium in 1612, the first
sales catalogue that included tulips. Dutch
agriculture was already highly commer­
cialized and quick to pick up 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 fash­
ionable canals. Especially in demand were
the so-called broken var­i eties, which
displayed flamed patterns of many colors,
instead of the more common solid coloring.
Twentieth-century labora­tory tests would
reveal that breaking occurred as the result
of a viral infection in the bulb. In the
seventeenth century it was only under­
stood that the broken varieties were rare,
and therefore valuable. Of the Semper
Augus­t us, 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 Europe was still a society overwhelmingly dominated by the
countryside. Before 1800 less than ten 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 variations 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 by the thousands throughout the
seventeenth century.
Social change in the Dutch Golden Age consisted first and foremost of
this combined 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 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 systems of the Holland towns in
particular were said to be among the most generous in 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 dominated 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, some 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.

Local Autonomy
The linchpin of the urban elites’ dominance over society was their success in
monopolizing 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 inde­
pendent states. They were ruled by dukes (Gelderland), counts (Holland,
Zeeland), bishops (Utrecht, Overijssel) 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 sixteenth
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’ former 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 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.
Formally, all the provinces were equal. Holland, however, contributed
almost sixty percent 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 stadholder, who was the informal head of state as well as
the commander-in-chief of the army and the navy.5 Under the Habsburgs, the
stadholder 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 eventually 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 stadholderate, albeit with a restricted
mandate and under their own control. But time and again capable stadholders
from the Orange dynasty managed to maneuver themselves into a domin­
ating position, often with the help of the smaller provinces. And when
persuasion failed, there was always the army to support them. In 1618 stad­
holder Maurice overthrew Holland’s Grand Pensionary Oldenbarneveldt, and
had him tried (and beheaded) for treason. In 1650 stadholder 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 stadholders’
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 constitution: it was a hodgepodge of compromises. Politics
in the Dutch Republic was essentially the art of squaring this particular
circle.
According to the standards of political “modernization” the outcome was
disappointing. Centralisation completely failed to gain a foothold. The central
bureaucracy in The Hague, moreover, was understaffed and corrupt. And yet,
if one looks at the results 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 estimates the Dutch army in
the 1630s and 1640s was about sixty thousand strong. France, with a 
 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 ac­
cept this inheritance and title on
condition that he would be raised
at the imperial court and convert to
Catholicism. In Brussels, William
learned French and colloquial
Dutch, accepted many diplo­m atic
and military responsibilities and
quickly became an influential con­
fidant of the emperor, earning the
epithet “the Silent” for his ability to
conceal his true intentions. When Charles V formally abdi­cated in
1555 he famously leaned on the shoulder of the young Prince of
Orange. His son, King Philip II, admitted William to the influential
Council of State and appointed him stadholder (governor) of the key
provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht when he departed for
Spain, making him the most powerful nobleman in the Netherlands.
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 perse­
cution 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 restore order
and installed a special court which executed thousands of heretics
and disloyal subjects, among whom two of William’s closest allies,
the prince of Orange fled to his estates in Germany to organize
opposi­t ion. The failed military invasions which William launched
against Alba in 1568 mark the beginning of a war that would last
eighty years and resulted in Dutch independence.
Although William’s plans for a union of seventeen Dutch pro­
 vinces failed, ultimately his brother Jan the Elder managed to unite
 seven northern rebellious provinces 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 position
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
French Catholic in 1584, at the zenith of his popularity. His son Prince
Maurice succeeded him as stadholder of Holland and Zeeland, and
later acquired that position in most other provinces as well, estab­
lishing the practice of a Republic with a hereditary stadholder.

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, albeit 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

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 divergent 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 background 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
Inquisition. Therefore the Union of Utrecht of 1579, which bound the rebel
provinces together in their struggle against Spain and later came to be seen
as the Dutch constitution, 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 ten 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 converted 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 especially 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 influ­
ence 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. Given the size of their community, their religious needs could
not be ignored. The authorities in many places therefore accepted their meet­
ings (and the celebration of mass) in so-called hidden 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 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 became even
formally regulated during the 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 significant liberties in Amsterdam, including access to the town’s
citizenship (albeit 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 communities were allowed
to build huge synagogues in Amsterdam; the municipal authorities 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 preventing 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, surpris­
ingly large numbers of people nonetheless accepted the implications of the
fact that their neighbors, colleagues and even relatives were of a different
persuasion.9

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, sixty-four percent were
able to sign their names; among females this was forty 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 languages other 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 Nether­
lands, 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 Amster­
dam.10 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 Middelburg 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-maker produced the first
microscope. 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 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 also 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 Calvinist 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 this 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 effectively 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 reli­
gious freedoms available to non-Calvinists in the Netherlands. These free­
doms were circumscribed in various ways, but they were significant
none­t heless, 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 age.
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 coincidence. Both areas displayed two
crucial features: high levels 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 innovations, 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.

Further Reading
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.
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.
 Chapter 8

A Tradition of Tolerance
Wijnand Mijnhardt

Today 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 conscience was enshrined in the law,
resulting in the influx of refugees of all possible religious 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 toler­
ance 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
permissiveness 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 religion.” 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, never developed their own full body of theo­
retical 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 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 participated 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 contention and seek compromises acceptable to an ever-changing majority
without pushing 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 forty 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 twenty per­
cent of the inhabitants.4
As a result, quarrels over religion were endemic and took place against a
background 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 urbanization. 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 anonymous 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, linguistic (inhabitants of Dutch cities were used to hear­
ing 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 difficult 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 and that is
exactly what they wanted to be. Most consistories, the congregation’s gov­
erning 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 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. Governmental 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 Republic 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 himself in relation to the state, was continu­
ously being redefined in the Republic.
Most Dutchmen were townsmen. They were also citizens by want of any
substantial aristocracy. Quite naturally the Republic knew great hierarchical
and social differences, 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 abun­
dance. These often underground passageways and alleys connected a large
number 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 townspeople to give and take. Within this
framework, conspicuous consumption was unacceptable and unwise.
Religious as well as social tolerance in the Republic was both principled
and pragmatic. The key to successful social interaction and religious
cohabitation was relative tolerance, or rather a general culture of lenient
permissiveness that aimed at the preservation 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
conformity, 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 under­
stood 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.

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 11 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 leading 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 main­tain­
ing civil order (for example the existence
of God and Divine Providence) ought to
be enforced, while all other differences
on theological doctrines should be left to
private con­science. Grotius’ involvement
in religious and political strife caused his
arrest and his confinement for life in
Loevestein castle. He succeeded to escape
in 1621, with the help of his wife and a
maid servant, in a bookcase. In the Nether­
lands 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 slipping 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 Euro­
peans 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 asked
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) 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 con­t ribution.
The consequences were immense. Grotius made it possible to con­
ceive 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 philosophy 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
philosopher, 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 ration­
alist 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 professor of theology Gisbert Voetius (1589-1676), claimed that Cartes­
ianism 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 contradic­
tions and discrepancies, that it would be a disgrace to God to attribute its
authorship to Him. Spinoza, equally setting out from Cartesian premises in his
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) reached even more outrageous 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
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 ultimately successful campaign against the Cartesian radicals was organ­
ized 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 religious and moral
order.
A crucial role in the framing of a new consensus in the field of theology
and philosophy 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 previous Calvinist theologian. He forged a
theology linked to reason and produced a synthesis of the new philosophy
and reformed theology, in which Christianity was portrayed 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 imperial 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 Rand­
stad – 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 business. In
1656 Spinoza was served the most radical sentence available to his
religious community: he was excommunicated for “monstrous deeds”
and “abominable heresies.” Though the
documents never made clear what these
heresies exactly contained, it is very
likely that he already had explored ideas
that would become part of his legacy
later: the rejection of the idea of a provi­
dential God, the denial of the im­mor­
tality of the soul and the claim that the
Law did not come from God and there­
fore could not be binding for Jews or
anybody else.
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 supported himself 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 published 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 physi­
cal 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 re­veng­
ing God who nevertheless can also present 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 political philosophy and a
penetrating critique of the Scriptures.

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 succeeded in maintaining its
internatio­n al 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
surpassed 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 reduction 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 polarization of
the division of income. Beginning in industrial regions around Haarlem and
Leiden, the polarization drove considerable numbers of the ordinary towns­
people 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 eight
percent of the Dutch population – albeit with heavy concentrations in the
Holland towns where foreigners could count for between thirty and forty
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
homogeneous. 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 revolutionary 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 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 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 Neth­
erlands would continue to be the most religious nation in Europe. Church
membership and church attendance were invariably high and Christian
parties, who since the introduction 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 enshrine 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 forty 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 secularization and modernization. In the Netherlands modern mass
politics had fully integrated 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
This cultural revolution exemplified by values such as authenticity,
expressivity, reflexivity, culminating in individual self-fulfillment clashed
radically with the inflexible and authoritarian character of Dutch Christianity.
It is here that we find the causes 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 individuals, 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 enforcing 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 predominantly 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
different religious and cultural backgrounds, did not impair the prevalent
policies of permissiveness 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 themselves 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 permissiveness 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, tol­
erance and permissiveness. After 9/11, Muslims soon came to serve chiefly as
the image of the “Other,” as the opposite of the favored Dutch self-image of a
nation of tolerant individuals, as a representation of a past that the Dutch
were now glad to have shaken off and even as a danger as they might func­
tion 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 traditional values seems to be gathering momentum and
citizens increasingly ask for non-permissive and strict governance 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 elites.

Further Reading
Israel, Jonathan. The Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Kaplan, Benjamin J. Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early
Modern Europe. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Kloek, Joost and Wijnand Mijnhardt. 1800: Blueprints for a Society. London: Palgrave/
MacMillan, 2004.
Mijnhardt, Wijnand W. “The Construction of Silence: Religious and Political Radicalism in
Dutch History,” in The Early Enlightenment in the Dutch Republic, edited by Wiep van
Bunge, 231-262. Leiden: Brill, 2002.



 Chapter 9

Politics between
Accommodation and
Commotion
Ido de Haan

On May 6, 2002, Pim Fortuyn was killed. He was the leader of a new populist
party, simply 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 in­
clination towards – or at least the self-image of – a politics of peaceful accom­
modation, 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, towards a much more eventful and antagonistic polit­ical
climate. The nation known for its tolerance suddenly seemed to have turned
into an intolerant nation, where ethnic minorities 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 “Islam­
ization” 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 towards the more traditional
attitudes among Moroccan and Turkish minorities. Careful accommodation
was thus replaced by constant commotion.
This unexpected reassessment of Dutch political culture can only be
understood against the historical background of Dutch politics. What was the
nature of the politics of accommodation? What are the causes and conse­
quences of its transformation? How did Dutch political elites respond to these
changes?

Politics of Accommodation
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
Pillarization: Segregation and Consensus
One of the most distinctive characteristics of the Netherlands is the
religious, social and cultural segregation the Dutch call verzuiling,
which is most commonly translated as “pillarization.” This societal
structure dominated Dutch society from the beginning of the twen­
tieth century until the late 1960s and left remnants well into the
twenty-first century.
Pillarization originated in the late nineteenth century from the
desire of Catholics, conservative Calvinists, and socialists to empha­
size and preserve their identity within a society dominated by a
liberal political elite and the Dutch Reformed Church. Whereas the
process of pillarization has been interpreted as a process of eman­
cipation of minorities, it was also a strategy of the religious elite to
insulate members in their congregation from an increasingly secular­
ized world. Since each compartment comprised both lower classes
and elites the vertical metaphor of a separate “pillar” was used.
Each of the groups created their own social and political in­
stitutions. An orthodox Protestant, for instance, would vote for the
Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP), belong to a Protestant labor union
and read a Protestant newspaper such as Trouw, whereas a Catholic
would vote for the Roman Catholic State Party (RKSP), join a Catholic
labor union and read a Catholic newspaper. It went without saying
that one could only shop at a grocer, baker or butcher of one’s own
pillar. Pillars also had their own hospitals, insurance companies,
housing corporations, youth clubs, sports clubs, marching bands and
other social organizations – a practice which turned the Roman Cath­
o­lic Pigeon Fancier’s Club into a proverbial example of pillarization in
popular culture. The number of “mixed marriages” between partners
of different pillars declined between 1945 and 1960, indicating a


 reinforcement of the social aspects of pillarization in the immediate
postwar period.
The legacy of pillarization was probably most prominent in
media and education. With the introduction of radio and television
each pillar created its own broadcasting association, each of which
would survive the end of pillarization and continued to characterize
the Dutch public media landscape in spite of the competition from
commercial networks. More importantly, each denomination founded
its own schools. The ensuing political battle over governmental
funding for education was solved in a famous agreement in 1917 that
guaranteed all schools equal financial support, regardless of their
religious identity. This pragmatic arrangement, which was formalized
in article 23 of the Dutch constitution, is often described as the high-
water mark of pillarization.
Pillarization declined after the 1960s when secularization and
democratization undermined the denominational and ideological
iden­tity of each pillar and as increased prosperity allowed for more
mobility, education and the availability of television that offered
people a glimpse across the boundaries of their own group. The
Catholic and socialist labor unions merged into one union (FNV) in
1975 and the three mainstream religious political parties united into
one Christian Democratic Alliance (CDA) five years later.
Some argue that the influx of Muslim immigrants since the 1970s,
who initially were not particularly encouraged to integrate but left to
their own resources, created a new form of “pillarization.”

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.1 While political
elites stirred up their constituencies with their manifest political rhetoric, he
argued, they showed prudent constraint in their dealings in the backrooms of
politics. Dutch political elites 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 techno­
cratic advisory boards, or by postponing a decision by turning it over to com­
mittees of wise men.
According to Lijphart’s colleague Hans Daalder, this mode of conflict
resolution had a long pedigree in the “consociational” tradition that stood at
the basis of the Dutch Republic, 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.2 From this
perspective, the elite’s “rules of engagement” that emerged 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 integrating new groups into the Dutch state.
Yet, from another perspective, the politics of accommodation can be seen
as a new invention, aimed not at emancipating and integrating, but at mo­
bilizing and disciplining a constituency, which could function as the storm
troopers in the struggle between political elites. This point of view also
affected the perspective on the famous Pacification of 1917 by which the elites
reached an agreement on two issues that had been fiercely contested in the
years before – the position of confessional schools and the introduction of
universal suffrage. This agreement was now 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 system of pillarization had been remarkably stable between 1917 and
the middle of the 1960s. It survived severe criticism from intellectuals outside
and even inside the pillars, as well as the German occupation between 1940
and 1945. After 1945, all major parties returned to the scene, be it for some
under another name: the Protestant parties ARP (Anti Revolutionaire Partij)
and CHU (Christelijk Historische Unie) returned unaltered, yet the Catholic
party was re-established 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), while the
more conservative oriented liberals formed the People’s Party for Freedom
and Democracy (Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Democratie; V VD). 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 the 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. During elections in the 1950s, at the highpoint of pillarization,
the five main political parties received ninety-five 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 insuper­able
advantage over interests not represented by the cooperating elites.3

Shifting Involvements
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 official warning (Mandement) the Dutch bishops issued
in 1954, in which they threatened to excommunicate all Catholics who had
sym­pathized, or even just interacted with social-democrats. Was this a sign 
 of ultimate assertiveness, or of increasing uncertainty of the Catholics?
Al­though historians are still undecided on the issue, it is clear that it signaled
the beginning of deteriorating relations between political elites, in 1958
finally resulting in the end of twelve years of political cooperation between
Catholic and socialist parties.
Political interaction became much less predictable in the following
decade, leading to a major political crisis and a landslide defeat of the
Catholic party KVP in 1967. This inaugurated 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 the 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 thirty-five percent in the elections of 1977, crowding
out the other small left-wing parties of communists, pacifists and radicals,
which finally merged in 1990 becoming 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 re-emerge 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 Demo­
crats, which had formed three consecutive governments under prime min­
ister 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 already in 2003, making room for a series of other political
newcomers to experience their fifteen minutes of political fame. As pollsters
and political scientists have acknowledged, the very radical swings in voters’
preference 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, fragmen­
tation, secularization, 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.

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 Neth­er­
lands had a substantial agricultural sector and an industrial working class.
The latter formed a reservoir of political mobilization that quickly dis­ap­
 peared 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 suburban areas or even
in newly developed cities in the polders, such as Almere – es­tablished in 1976
and already the seventh largest city in the Netherlands.4
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 rad­
ical experimentation – exemplified by relatively marginal social groups, such
as students and intellectuals – the more decisive transformation might actu­
ally be the sudden and widespread acceptance of progressive cultural values
among the majority of the Dutch population.5 Yet, while the cultural homo­
geneity 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, Bel­
gium, 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.” 6 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 the progressive
values receive wide support, while at the same time an increasingly intolerant
attitude has emerged towards the new minorities that deviate from this
progressive consensus.

Pillarization and the Welfare State

These changes are not unique to the Netherlands, but characteristic of all
Western countries. Yet in the Netherlands, these developments were re­i n­
forced by two additional 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 development was strongly promoted 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 un­
dermine the normative 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 – “freedom in connectedness.” As a result,
Dutch political elites were committed to a kind of pre-emptive progressivism,
in other words they aimed at stimulating the development of individual auto­
nomy as a precondition of responsible citizenship and social stability. For
example, the Department of Social Work, established in 1952 as a bulwark of
Catholic organizations for social work, changed in the 1960s into a Depart­
ment 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. The
Ameri­c an neoliberal political science of the 1980s described this as the
mechanism of rising expectations, provoked by the tendency of the bureau­
cratic 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
as 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 consecutive
“purple” coalitions of social democrats (red party colors) and liberals (blue)
that governed between 1994 and 2002. These were not only the first coalitions
without participation of any of the confessional parties since 1917, but also
coalitions that presented themselves as explicitly non-ideological, 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 was held
accountable for a series of unfortunate 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 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 “autochtonous” people in the older districts of the major Dutch
cities.


The Disconnection of State and Society
The rise and fall of Fortuyn’s populist movement LPF points to a third
development, which is the transformation of the relations between state and
society. During the 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-chief of the newspapers of their own pillar, and parties had a
strong grip on their own public broadcast 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
members of the PvdA in the 1950s, to respectively 70,000 and 58,000 in 2008
– while the population grew by fifty percent. Political parties remained the
main channel for recruitment of political personnel, yet the pool from which
people were selected had diminished. Moreover, the media became inde­
pendent 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 March 30, 1991.
The public broadcast companies kept their identity for a longer time,
mainly because their broadcast license was based on the idea that they
represented a relevant group in society. But their ratings suffered from the
competition of commercial private broadcast companies, which tried to gain
access to the broadcast system 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 government lost much of their legitimacy, a tendency that was exacer­
bated 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 turn-out – this has been invariably high, around eighty percent since
mandatory voting was abolished in 1970. Yet the politicians themselves
became increasingly worried about the relationship with their constituency.
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.7


 Pim Fortuyn: Libertarian Populist
Pim Fortuyn was the colorful populist who is credited with exploding
the political consensus system in the Netherlands by mobilizing
resentment against immigration and the political elites.

W.S.P. (Pim) Fortuyn (1948-2002) was born into a Catholic family. He
studied sociology in Amsterdam, where he submerged in Critical
Theory and 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 disser­
tation on the policies of economic reconstruction in the Netherlands
between 1945 and 1949.
His academic career stagnated in the late 1970s, perhaps due to
his quarrelsome character. He left the university to become a pro­
fessional policy consultant 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 privat­
ization 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 that
consistently returned in all his later work, 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
entrepreneurs 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 immigration and multi­c ultur­
alism, and warn against the “Islamization of the Netherlands.” After
9/11, increased media attention for these issues helped his voice 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 (Leefbaar Nederland). He made a spectacular
im­p ression in the media with his acceptance speech, ending by
salut­i ng the audience, shouting, in English, “At your service!” Not­
with­stand­ing the remarkable rise of the party in the polls, Fortuyn
managed to anger his party by his anti-immigration rhetoric and
resigned as party leader in February 2002. Two days later he presen­
ted a new List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). After winning a landslide victory
with “Liveable Rotterdam” in the local elections in Rotterdam on
March 6, 2002, Fortuyn became a media hype, irresistible to polit­icians
and jour­n alists alike, none of whom were able to cope with his
inflammatory rhetoric. The polls for the national elections on May 15
predicted a huge success for the LPF: “Mark my words, I will become
the next Prime Minister of this country,” Fortuyn prophesied. On May
6, 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 remarkable resemblance between Fortuyn
and later populist leaders such as Rita Verdonk and Geert Wilders, and
Austria’s Freiheitliche Partei Österreich (FPÖ) of the late Jörg Haider, the
Flemish Vlaams Blok of Filip Dewinter, 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, as well as
by an attack against foreigners within the country. 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 traditional parties have
also reacted differently in the various countries. While the Flemish Block has 
 been isolated within a cordon sanitaire, the Austrian confessional 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 26 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 gained international attention with his internet
video-pamphlet Fitna in 2008. After he left the liberal VVD, Wilders won six
percent (nine seats) in the parliamentary elections of 2006. A year later,
another liberal renegade, Rita Verdonk, created the movement Trots op Neder­
land (Proud of the Netherlands), which for a while also scored high in the
polls. Even more remarkable is the adoption of populist themes in other, more
mainstream parties. Especially after the murder of controversial filmmaker
Theo van Gogh by a radical Muslim on November 2, 2004, there has been a
strong tendency to adopt a much more negative stance against foreigners and
a widespread call to reinforce the 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 the 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 “autochtonous” Nether­
landers, and to impose stricter norms on “alloch­tonous” – that is, especially
second and third generations immigrants from Morocco and Turkey.
The result of all this has been a long series of heated debates on 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) were an indication of their insufficient integration
in Dutch society. And the social democratic minister for Housing, Neigh­
borhoods and Integration, Ella Vogelaar was criticized as “weak on Islam” for
suggest­ing that in the course of the next centuries it might become another
cultural influence in Dutch society. In 2008 she was forced to resign, not
by the populist opposition but by her own party, PvdA, because of her lenient
 stance towards minorities.
In response to these changes, historians have begun to question the self-
image of the Dutch nation and to look for the more rebellious and violent
aspect of Dutch history. Yet, as the Dutch-American historian James Kennedy
has argued, it is not so much the violent nature of Dutch political trans­
formation, 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 pro-active
attitude of Dutch elites.8 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 accommodation of the conflicts of the twenty-first century.

Further Reading
Daalder, Hans. “Consociationalism, Centre and Periphery in the Netherlands.” Politiek en
Historie: Opstellen over de Nederlandse Politiek en de Vergelijkende Politieke Wetenschap,
21-63. 1981; Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1990.
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.
Second Revised Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
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.


 Chapter 10

The Second World War:

Dilemmas of
Occupation
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,
during which time public transportation comes to a stand-still. In most cities
and villages people gather around monuments, listen to speeches and lay
down flowers to remember the dead. The official commemoration, which is
attended by the Royal Family, members of the government, military author­
ities and representatives of the resistance movement and survivors of perse­
cution, 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 the Queen’s Birthday on April 30,
belong to the few truly national holidays during which the Dutch display and
ponder their national identity, as is witnessed by the traditional playing of
the national anthem and the general display of the tricolored flag, both rare
occurrences in the Netherlands.
Although the commemorative festivities aim to address wider themes of
freedom and liberation from all kinds of war, persecution and hatred, 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 com­
mander 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 common parlance the twentieth century is divided into
prewar and postwar generations. Even more than half a century later refer­
ences to the war can be found 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, participation in international peacekeeping operations,
abidance to international law and taking a stance against genocide, the
experience of the Dutch during five years of German occupation is still an
essential frame of reference.

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 conflict. 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, but
consisted of no more than a quarter of a million troops, most of whom were
young recruits and poorly equipped. Since the Eighty Year 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 perfected and
expanded during the nineteenth century, mainly protected “Fortress
Holland,” 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 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 conquering 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 Luftwaffe 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 territories. 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
Netherlands. 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 spring board in the German military plans for this Operation See­
löwe. But occupation of the Netherlands was equally 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.

The German Administration

of the Occupied Territory
National-socialist Germany had two aims for the occupied territories in the
Netherlands, one mainly economic, the other ideological. First of all, the
Netherlands presented 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 curfew, black-out 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 occupation 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 success­
ful because 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 centralist and collective ideology such as Nazism. Denomi­
national and political segregation, or “pillarization,” as a form of institut­
ionalized tolerance, was a further strength in Dutch society and largely
 contradictory to the centralism as embraced by Nazism. Furthermore the
churches, to which eighty percent of the population belonged, provided an
ideological alternative. And, finally, Queen Wilhelmina in London, after
the first disappointment of 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.

Ausweis: The Dangers

of Identity Registration
One of the deadliest instruments the
German occupation admin­i stration
used to control the Dutch population
was the introduction of a new iden­
tity card. In April 1941 all citizens
older than fourteen years were re­
quired to carry a newly issued iden­
tity card (persoons­bewijs). The new
identity card was almost impos­sible
to forge and also meticulously regis­
tered in a central file system. This
handed the Germans a highly effi­cient
and 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
registration of all citizens. The govern­m ent had
declined implementation, however, because it felt
such registration conflicted with Dutch customs and
traditions. But once the German occupation author-
ities had expressed the wish to register all citizens
Lenz 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 central 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 who failed to register. In September 1940
exactly 140,552 Jews and 20,268 citizens of partial Jewish decent were
registered in his file system. The files would be used one year later
when the Germans started the large razzias with which 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
identity 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 accommodation, collaboration and resistance. Although these are useful
categories in understanding 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 at
their posts, some for formal reasons since a government directive from 1937
ordered them to obey any authority, others arguing that their resignation
would only mean replacement 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 sharpened 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 through­
out 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 eight 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 convincing 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.
A similar fate was destined for the 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 circum­
stances providing few places to hide because 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. Only a few
dozen of the some 1,700 resistance fighters who tried to reach England
(Engelandvaarders) succeeded in completing the difficult journey over sea or
over land through neutral territory. 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 individual activities, such
as sabotage of military installations and the execution of German officers or
known collaborators. But the Germans often reacted with heavy reprisals
against the civilian population, 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 universities had to sign a “non-Jew” decla­r ­ation,
Professor Rudolph Cleveringa, the dean of the Law School at Leiden Univer­­ 
 sity, 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 popu­
lation. 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” (onderduikers), 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 350,000 people were in hiding at one point,
assisted by 15,000 members of the resistance.
Another major activity of the resistance was the production and distri­
bution of an underground press, which was extremely important since
Germans controlled all Dutch newspapers and radio networks. At one point,
there were twelve hundred different 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 Neder­
land (Free Netherlands) and Trouw (Loyalty). Looking back, it is amaz­i ng
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
nazification of the Netherlands was the elimination of Jews, gypsies,
homosexuals and other groups it considered undesirable or inferior. The
prosecution of the Jewish population is one of the darkest periods in Dutch
history. Less than thirty percent of the total Jewish population of about
140,000 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 seventy 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 thorough­
ness 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 of 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 concen­t ration. 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 identification 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 administrative and physical concentration was executed
with the assistance of the Dutch police, public transportation, and citizens.
Things would rapidly get worse. Foreign and stateless Jews had already
been transported to Westerbork, a former refugee camp in the north-east of
the country. In July 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 107,000 people were
deported. Only 5,200 returned. At the end of the war an astounding seventy
percent of Dutch Jews had perished.

Anne Frank: Icon of the Holocaust

Anne Frank was born in 1929 in Germany, the daughter of Otto, a
Jewish businessman, and his wife Edith. Immediately after Hitler
came to power in 1933 Otto decided to move the family to Amsterdam,
where he had business connections. Anne went to school, learned
Dutch and lived the life of any other girl. When the German occu­
pation brought persecution of the Jews to the Netherlands, however,
she was forced to move to a segregated Jewish school and had to
wear a yellow Star of David. When the Germans started the deport­
ation of Dutch Jews in July 1942, Otto moved the family into a secret
hiding place that he had prepared in a house behind his firm at
Prinsengracht 263. The entrance to the Achterhuis, or annex, was
hidden behind a bookcase and only known to four trusted employees
who provided the family with food and other necessities.

 The narrow three-storied house be­
came 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, some­
times under unbearable ten­s ion,
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 tran­
sit camp Westerbork, and from there
on to extermination camp Ausch­
witz. Anne and Margot were trans­
ported 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 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 coming-of-age in a slightly fic­
tionalized form to her imagined friend Kitty. After the war Otto
learned that Anne’s diaries had been rescued from the hideaway 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
published 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 was 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 human dignity in the face of per­
secution. 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 transportation 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
memory of the occupation as a period of suffering, even though most Dutch­
men 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
forty percent of industry was 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 its start as a modern state in 1814/1815 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 150,000 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 period of re­
venge 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 Institute for War Documentation, NIOD), headed by Lou de
Jong, a historian who had worked for Radio Orange in London during the
war. De Jong started the public discussion by presenting a popular television
documentary series on the Occupation in the 1960s and authored The King­
dom of the Netherlands during the Second World War, the officially com­mis­
sioned 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 described the Dutch occupation and holocaust for a broader
readership.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 invasion and the mobilization of the Dutch
army, which looked at 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 collabo­
ration 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 years.
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 tolerance, human rights, and democracy.

Further Reading
Dwork, Debórah, and Robert Jan van Pelt. The Holocaust: A History. New York: Norton, 2002.
Fuykschot, Cornelia. Hunger in Holland: Life During the Nazi Occupation. Amherst: Prometheus,
1995.
Jong, Louis de. The Netherlands and Nazi Germany. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.
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. London: Arnold, 1997.
Wolf, Diane L. Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2006.


Art & Culture

 Chapter 11

The Making of
Rembrandt and
Van Gogh
Ghislain Kieft & Quirine van der Steen

Rembrandt and Van Gogh are names every reader and every visitor of
museums knows – their names are so familiar that even the illiterate and the
blind will recognize them. In every history of Dutch art substantial and
deserved attention is given to their paintings; 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 himself). A considerable amount of money is spent on re­search­
ing 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”: both Rembrandt and Van Gogh ended in the top ten.
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 in the history of the geo­
graphically broader defined “Low Countries” even more so. However, Rem­
brandt (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.
Dou, Van Mieris and Van der Werff
were considered typical Dutch paint­
ers of the genre. “Genre” is a term
used for the depictions of seem­i ngly
every­day life, like snap-shots. Such –
often small-sized – paintings, de­
picting scenes of the decent, bourgeois,
Dutch interiors, but also the scenes of
taverns and brothels or sometimes
odder topics, were pro­duced in con­
sider­able quan­t ities during the seven­
teenth century. Gerrit Dou’s “Dropsical
Woman” (right, 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 paint­i ng, then in Turin, was
given to a French general during the
siege of that Italian city in 1799, in
order to avoid its ransacking by the
French.
Yet, the subject of the painting
could raise questions. Who would want to paint a girl suffering from dropsy?
On closer inspection, however, one learns the girl has another kind of
“illness:” she is lovesick. The man standing next to her, in his fanciful dress,
is inspecting 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 Ooster­
wijck (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 cu­
linary pornography. Similar things can be said about landscapes: although
the genre is very Dutch, the subjects often were not. The Dutch loved moun­
tainous scenery set in sunny Italy, or Germany, or even Sweden or Brazil; 
 it was only for the foreigners to later prefer
the cliché of flat grasslands, wind­m ills and
cows.
In this array of Dutch spe­cialties – genre,
still life, land­scape – the work of Rembrandt
does not fit. He rather seems an exotic Dutch
painter, who was not “made in 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 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
(left, 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 com­
mon commission, but Rembrandt carried it out in his own way: it looks like
an episode in a thea­t rical 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 commissioned 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, a genre never con­sidered 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 inter­e st is
everywhere to be seen in Rembrandt’s work; his “Blinding of Samson” (page
152, Städelsches Museum, Frankfurt) is both in size and cruel sublimity
compar­able to works of such artists as Titian or Michelangelo.
Rembrandt indisputably was interested in dramatic painters like Cara­
vaggio, 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 Rem­
brandt 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 historiography of Dutch art. In the nineteenth century art history
was written in a nationalistic register of thinking. It was the age of expres­
 sions 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 foreign­
ers initially thought interesting and were willing to pay for – suddenly
seemed somehow to represent the pure, unadulterated face of the Neth­
erlands. Anything 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.
Yet, in that cult of patriotism, it was precisely the odd-one-out, Rem­
brandt, 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 in a square – another custom from the nine­
teenth 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 concen­
trate on the beauty of practically nothing. Zen-like maybe, but not epic. Per­
haps 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 collections were moved to museums that were accessible to the
public. Such democratization of art was initiated under the French occupation
in the early 1800s, when the art collections of the stadholder became the
nu­c leus 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
Amsterdam. When the Rijksmuseum moved to the present location in 1885,
architect P.J.H. 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 fur­t her emphasizing its canonical status. Thus Rembrandt
entered the conscious­ness of the wider public.1

Vermeer: Interior Fantasies

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is def­
initely famous. His name often ap­
pears 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 during his life, Ver­
meer’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 dis­c uss the actual size
of Rem­brandt’s oeuvre, which con­
sists of about three hundred paint­
ings. 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 nineteenth century that scholars and art
lovers rediscovered Vermeer and his paintings. Instantly, his paint­
ings became 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, dominate the image. Her mouth is slightly opened as
if she is expecting something, which gives the painting an almost
 sensual atmosphere. The luminous 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 en­
gaged 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 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.
As a result of the movie and the world-wide distribution of repro­
ductions her image has become familiar to many. But believe us, the
mass media reproductions by no means come close to experiencing
the real painting as it can be admired in the Mauritshuis Museum.

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 famil­
iar. Yet, Van Gogh himself aspired to be a painter in the canonical art tra­
dition. Throughout his short life he was full of breathless 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 27 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 (page 155, Anton Mauve, Sheperdess with sheep (1885-1886),
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). 
 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. Not­
withstanding such rather short-lived and unsuccessful 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 letters have been preserved and selections 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 honesty, it should
not mislead us in thinking that he was naïve: those letters are very much a
careful picture of what he liked us to think about him, ear and all (page 156,
Courtauld Institute Galleries, London). 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 fash­
 ioning a personal, coherent oeuvre, as if he wanted to leave a legacy of his
paint­i ngs for posterity (and to make
things easy for later curators and art
histor­ians). The concept of creating a
per­sonal oeuvre, to reveal one’s art­
istic personality to the world, was not
com­p letely new in the nineteenth
century. Yet, Van Gogh considered it
an almost religiously inspired life’s
commitment to leave a “legacy to
humanity.”2
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
“finished” paintings he worked on and
corrected in his studio. In his letters
he mentions this oeuvre to consist
of fifty (or later he mentions thirty)
paint­i ngs. 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 devel­
opments 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 out­
side 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 photography. 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 increasingly 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 (ca. 1582-1666), 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 republic: Rembrandt, that broad-
minded naturalistic man, as healthy as Hals himself. 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 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 artistic career. Although a great deal is known about the per­
sonal 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 painting 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 roman­
tic cliché of an artist was not an invention of Van Gogh. But what he acci­
dentally 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 draw­
ings. In the subsequent 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 dis­
play 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 Mauritshuis in The Hague is the felici­
tous product of the struggles of some art lovers who persuaded 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 ship­
ping magnate Anton Kröller, formed the basis for the Kröller-Müller Museum
in Otterlo, which possesses another substantial number of Van Gogh’s paint­
ings 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, 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 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 century. 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, realism
already meant something different than it did to Rembrandt. But to
Mondrian, realism was an entirely new concept altogether. Mondrian
asked himself 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 remark­
able 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 other painters were dealing with similar questions. Yet,
they found different answers. To Mondrian a canvas was also a nat­
ural object and should be part of the larger nature it was an element
of. In his view, the entire world around him 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 directions: ver­
tical 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 every­
thing 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, geïllustreerde en
geannoteerde uitgave. 6 vols. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009.
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. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2009.


 Chapter 12

Style and Lifestyle

in Architecture
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 pro­
duction 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 memories 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 edu­
cation) 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 Metropolitan Architecture – who
have designed the master plan for the Utrecht University campus – but also
UN-studio, Mecanoo, Wiel Arets, Neutelings and Riedijk, Jan Hoogstad 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), touching the limits of the Roman castellum, which was built to defend
the northern border of the empire, formed by what was then the main 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 Academiegebouw, 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 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 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 person 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 Renais­
sance 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 solution, 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 con­
flict, ordered the placement of a new monumental entrance to the cloister in
the gothic style as close as possible to the new building (above).
This story clearly illustrates that the difference of opinion was not about
the function, 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
nineteenth 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 the Dutch Revolt by the seven Protestant prov­inces 
 against Catholic Spain. Consequently, the “Dutch Renaissance” or “Old Dutch”
architecture of this period and most of the Golden Age was seen as the
national style.

The architect of most of the Catholic churches was Pierre Cuypers.3 He be­
came 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, page 166 top), 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 in a renaissance-style, to the way the second series of designs of Ber­lage
evolved, in which he incorporated the examples and theories pro­v ided by
architects Semper and Viollet-Le-Duc (see 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 sculp­
 tures, tiles and texts, a utopian socialist vision was clearly expressed, which
was rather strange for a “palace for trade.” This Dutch version of the Gesamt­
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.
It is not surprising that Berlage liked 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 ease that they commis­
sioned 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 architect of the
next gener­ation. So one could con­
sider Eduard Cuy­pers the true father
of the Amster­dam School, rather
than Berlage who often has been
given that tribute.
Without doubt the most famous
prod­ucts of the Amsterdam School
can be found in the Spaarn­dam­-
mer­­buurt (left).5 Michel de Klerk
com­p osed three blocks (1913-1915;
1915-1916; 1917-1920) in a flam­boyant
way, making him inter­n ationally
famous over­n ight. No side of a
build­ing block looks the same and
the some­­t imes complicated com­
bin­ations of differ­ent types of dwell­ 
 i­ngs, 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 (for
example 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 outstanding expression of human creative genius in its purity
of ideas and concepts 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 recognition which only came
later.
The house is revolutionary in at least three aspects: the trans­
lation of the way a widow with children wanted to express her mo­
dernity; the way a building 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.
 Rietveld was already well-known for his modern furniture and inter­
ior 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 differ­
ent functions at different times. So by moving panels to 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 bedrooms, 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 Rosen­
berg, the owner of the Galerié de l’Effort Modèrne in which the first De
Stijl exposition in Paris was held. It deconstructed one solid 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
almost taking them apart. At first glance this just looks like an
abstract play, but the horizontal protruding planes give shelter from
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 Existenzminimum, 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 onward 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 thou­
sand inhabitants 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 planning is Amsterdam South. In the first 
 plan (1900-1904) Berlage designed a picturesque cityscape, under the influ­
ence of foreign city planners and theoreticians, such as the noted Austrian
architect Camillo Sitte. His second plan shows a more dramatic, almost
bar­oque monumental style that was adapted to the view from modern trans­
portation – such as car or tram – rather than that of a pedestrian (1915-1917).
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 differ­
ent style, but about providing elements for a new way of life. Rotterdam suc­
ceeded in building the most social housing projects, although they hardly
looked like “palaces for the workers.” 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 housing 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 these neighborhoods, Spangen (1918-
1920) and Tusschendijken (1920-1922).7 Although they all looked beautiful in
pictures and provided considerably better living conditions than the inner
city, they were still too crowded to the liking of social democrats and progres­
sive liberals, and far too luxurious for the conservatives. How important the
 idea was for every family to have at least a front door and a window facing
the street is demonstrated in the design by Michiel Brinkman for Spangen
(page 169). At considerable expense an elevated street (“luchtstraat”) was
created, running along the entire inner courtyard of the large building block.
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 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-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 architectural 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 the town hall, many schools, and even a cemetery in
a moderate modern architectural language, which was nationally and inter­
nationally 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 example of the average taste is the
Mu­seum Boymans (1935, Rotterdam), 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, also in Rotterdam.9

Most famous is the Van Nelle factory and offices, designed by J.A. Brink­
man and L.C. van der Vlugt (page 170), 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 de­creas­
ing 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 on glazed transport belts into the
buildings. The construction consists of slender armed concrete floors sup­
ported by mushroom pillars; a curtain wall envelops the buildings. The stair­
cases 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 trans­
parency 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 firmly 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 plan­
ners in all the devastated cities.10 Middelburg 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 develop­
ments, especially the increase of traffic. Rotterdam started as blank as
possible by tearing down all ruins and clearing the way for a far more ration­
alized city-plan, with new bridges, great parkways, and boulevards and cre­
ating 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 modern 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 separated, 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. Maas­
kant (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
voorschrif­ten”), which were used as a guideline for all the building of houses.
What was defined as Existenzminimum (minimum for existence) became the
max­i mum allowed. Younger architects cried out that the dream of avant-
gardist and elegant designers like Rietveld, Van der Vlugt, and Duiker was
lost. Aldo van Eyck stated that the profession had never had so many oppor­
tunities, yet had failed so deeply.

From New Forms of Dwelling to New Forms for Roofs

The young architects, like Van Eyck and Bakema, concluded the wrong
persons and institutions profited from 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 con­
trol with his “story of the family.” Van Eyck tried to combine the tradition of
the modern avant-garde, classical and vernacular architecture, and used in­
stitutions, 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 design­
ing buildings, 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 173) – 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 end­
less 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 intersection 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 favored elements – such as small individual
rooftops and decorative elements, suggesting individual 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 Hertzberger or
Piet Blom tried to provoke people to live more sociably by providing them
with only the framework to finish according to their own liking, or with a
very exuberant form such as the houses in the form of tilted cubes (kubus­
woningen). Lesser talents created mazes of small houses which all wanted to
be original and became boring. Especially in Germany, but increas­ingly all
over the world, this escape from boring modernism (before post­-modernism
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 in the
beginning post­modern architecture had hardly any influence.
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 Rotterdam, 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 inspiration was more oriented at the boulevards and vistas of the
European cities in general.
In the 1980s and 1990s “architecture as culture” became official gov­
ernment policy and the best expression of this is seen in the Dutch Archi­
tecture Institute, designed by Jo Coenen (1988-1993).
In the meantime things were changing rapidly. Housing was now con­
sidered 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 students. They did not want to
part with the old city, but also wanted the neatness of almost gated com­
munities. The best translation of this desire is Brandevoort near Helmond
(above), built under the supervision of Krier & Kohl. It poses as a historically
developed town, but is in fact an almost cartoon-like collage of most beloved
building 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.
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 “passages” 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 everything except the concert-
hall was demolished. Hertzberger himself supervised the building of a new
superstructure, a “Music Palace,” above his hall, incorporating different
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. 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 Haarlem, had proved increasingly use­f ul in the
training of civil servants and future leaders of plantations and estates
in the Dutch East Indies. In 1910 the geographer, 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 expression of the intentions of the Colonial Society.” The gov­
ernmental architectural “esthetics committee” (schoonheidscom­mis­
sie), 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 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 completed. Visitors who had climbed the large outside
staircase were welcomed in a large hall before entering the audi­
torium. The museum had an almost as 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 col­
onies were used. Walls were decorated with majolica and paintings
celebrating 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 the institute at first glance looked old-fashioned, it was
in fact a modern building 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
imperialism, such as the monumental staircase, which was demo­lished
because it was considered undemocratic.
Today, the KIT is a center of knowledge and expertise in the
areas of international and intercultural cooperation, and contributes
to sus­tainable development, poverty alleviation, and cultural preser­
vation and exchange.

Further Reading
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.
Kuper, Marijke, and Ida van Zijl. Gerrit Th. Rietveld: The Complete Works. Utrecht: Centraal
Museum, 1992.
Longmead, Donald. Dutch Modernism: Architectural Resources in the English Language. London:
Greenwood, 1996.
Woudsma, J. The Royal Tropical Institute: An Amsterdam Landmark. Amsterdam: KIT Press, 1990.
Zijl, Ida van, ed. 60 + 20: The History of the Rietveld Schröder House. Utrecht: Centraal Museum,
2005.
Zijl, Ida van, and Bertus Mulders. The Rietveld Schröder House. Utrecht: Matrijs, 2009.


 The Dutch Architectural Institute (NAi) 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.


 Chapter 13

Literature, Authors
and Public Debate
Frans Ruiter & Wilbert Smulders

Dutch is spoken by some twenty-five million people living in the Netherlands

and Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Before decolonization it
was also spoken in the East Indies (now Indonesia). South African, with its
rich literary tradition, directly developed from Dutch. The famous Dutch his­
torian Johan Huizinga once described the Netherlands as a transit port, both
in a literal as well as in an intellectual sense. Neighboring cultures from Eng­
land, France and Germany met and were connected in the Netherlands. This
has led to a cosmopolitan and outward looking literary tradition, which pro­
duced great writers such as the romantic Multatuli in the late nineteenth cen­
tury, 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 essen­
tial 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 his merciless
po­lem­ical writ­i ngs; 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 infra­
structure and an economy that had virtually come to a standstill. Thus it was
in the wake of a long period of postwar 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 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 con­
sidered it a mission to antagonize the bourgeoisie. As shortly after the exal­
tation of the liberation in 1945 the pressure of common decency and mor­ality
increased, and everyone was again supposed to stay in line with 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 worlds of De Sade and surrealism, and on the
other hand the stern world of science and technology. His poetics is a harsh
plea against a psychological version of modernist literature, which generated
novels evoking infinitely subtle reflections of a particular sensitive mind,
preferably that of the author himself. As opposed to this, Hermans was
strongly in favor of unadulterated fiction. He was convinced that it was
through the internal logic of literary fiction that literature allows us to ex­
perience, 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 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 suffo­
cated all non-conformist inclinations. Both demanded “total authorship:”
rather than a regular profession, writing is to be considered a calling. A call­
ing, which very regularly conflicted with the narrow-minded social con­
ventions of the time. As in the 1960s these conventions loosened, the nature
of their conflicts changed as well, and their friendship would not last.

Summoned
The antagonistic character of their work brought both authors into 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 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!

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 prov­i ng the superiority of his world-view over that of his
plaintiffs. On the contrary, he rather stressed the autonomous and fictional
character of lit­e rature. According to Hermans, one could not blame an
author for a char­acter in his novel doing something illegal. To ignore this
simple dis­t inction would be tantamount 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 denom­i national 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 because 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 homosexuality, Reve had already purposely anta­
gonized the Christian community years earlier. 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 passages?” [I would] start kissing Him en pull Him
inside and after a tremendous 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 narrowly – 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 blas­
phemous images on mission calendars. 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
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 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 prepared to be robbed
of it, by nobody whomever.

Ultimately, in an 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 secularization, which marked a sudden end to the
seg­regation of Dutch society along denominational 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
Netherlands. When in the first half of the nineteenth century roman­
ticism 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 cap­
tain who intended him for trade, he went as 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 ser­
vant, 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
re­t urned to the Netherlands, where he sought to disclose the state
of his affairs. Nobody listened. It was from that moment on that he 
 re­luctantly decided to become a writer, and
with­in thirty days he wrote Max Havelaar of de
koff yveilingen der Nederlandse Handelmaat­
schappij (Max Havelaar: Or the Coffee Auctions
of the Dutch Trading Company) in a hotel room
in Brussels.
The novel has an imaginative compos­ition.
Effectively disguised as an innocent humor­­istic
story, it turns out to be a combin­ation of bright
satire and bitter social complaint, ending in an
appeal to the Dutch King William III to do
something about it. Immediately upon publi­ca­
tion the novel was the talk of the day. It also
be­came the subject of fierce debates in parlia­
ment, but to the great disappointment of the
author it was primar­i ly praised for its literary
qualities. D.H. Lawrence judged: “As far as com­
position 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 continue to do so. From the date of
publication onwards, and more particularly so after his death in 1886,
many literary authors, freemasons, anarchists, socialists and free­
thinkers found something to their liking in his overwhelming oeuvre
and in his unconventional behavior in public life. The twentieth-
century novelist Willem Frederik Hermans admired the temperament
and the freshness of Multatuli’s writing, but still entitled his biog­
raphy of Multatuli “The enigmatic Multatuli.”

Artist and Community

In modern times, the relation between artist and bourgeois has changed rad­
ically from – in the terminology of the French sociologist of art Nathalie
Heinich – a régime de communauté to a régime de singularité.3 That is a transi­
tion 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-bour­
geois culture in the nineteenth century.4 At the time that the régime de singu­
 larité started to take shape in the Netherlands, the liberal-bourgeois culture
was being rapidly displaced by a “pillarized” bourgeois culture, split up along
denominational lines. This pillarized culture represents the specific Dutch
context to the modernist antagonism between bourgeoisie and artist, charac­
teristic of the régime de singularité.5 Hermans and Reve saw themselves con­
fronted 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
presented 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 happened to be a sheer necessity
in an increasingly specializing, differentiating and industrializing 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 min­
isters of 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 constellation was inspired by a utopian ideal: as
critical and virtuous citizens, all people are 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, pre­
sented a formidable 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 pretense 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, religious 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 compelled to increase
their influence. A variety of revival and restoration movements emerged. The
threat of apostasy was the whiplash, which prompted more close-knit organ­
ization 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 essen­
tially unattractive for the intellectuals. The pillars were more successful in
the domain of mass culture. The public broadcasting system was established
in the 1920s with separate broadcasting associations. It even gloriously man­
aged 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 means of transcendence other 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 voca­
tion, 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 succession 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 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 out of pro­
portion. The trials and tribulations of this poetic 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 bourgeoisie. On the other side, the bulk of the population (labor­
ers, 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 gra­
dually started to change. Several indications showed that postwar artists and
writers were eager to break away from their “modernist” isolation. For Men­
no 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 admit­
ted 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 dif­
ferent 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 Tach­
tigers. Pop culture is a fact.
Modern Dutch literature in the 1960s found itself in a remarkable po­
sition. 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 antagonism 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
ré­g ime de singularité becomes inextricably entwined in a new, postmodern
régime de communauté.

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 corrupting 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 having 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-intelligence operation by the Germans, using
captured resistance fighters as double agents against the Allies. The
recent translations in English, French, and German triggered great
critical acclaim for the novel, amongst others by Milan Kundera, who 
 praised the exploration of the fatal moral
ambiguity of wartime presented in a
thriller-like setting.
Harry Mulisch thoroughly exam­ined
the roots of evil in De zaak 40/61 (The
Case 40/61, 1962), a report of the Eich­
mann 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 trans­
port all sick negroes to modern hos­pitals,
he would have done so without failing –
with the same pleasure in his own fas­
tidi­ousness 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 Steen­w ijk
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, 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 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 Germans, the neighbors? In a fascinating quest
this tragic problem is unraveled. In 1986 Dutch director Fons Rade­
makers 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 and Reve found
themselves unwillingly 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 increased substantially.
Both authors grew into media personalities, becoming public figures in a
society adrift. Yet they reacted very differently to these changed conditions.
It was not until 1958 that Hermans succeeded in reaching a larger audi­
ence, with the novel De donkere kamer van Damocles (The Darkroom of Da­
mocles). He gained strong literary prestige with his ruthless polemical writings
(Mandarijnen op zwavelzuur, Mandarins on Vitriol, 1964), his bril­liant poet­
ical essays (Het sadistische universum, The Sadistic 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 estab­
lished a literary standard. However, his nihilistic, conservative worldview did
not gain that much prestige. Hermans remained the kind of contrary
intellectual artist from the heyday of modernism 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 meaning­
fulness; it only knows the beauty of indifferent physical matter.
Reve too was a melancholic pessimist, but he looked for a kind of re­
demption, 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 perfectly 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 program, containing for example
a dialogue in heaven between Reve and God, illustrates the change men­
tioned above: some branches of literature developed into a kind of perfor­
mance art, that is to say a kind of literature that is primarily an opportunity for
successful 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.
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 inter­
pretation 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 bourgeois, but he did this
very ironically. He labeled himself not as a worker or employee, but as a gro­
cer (“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 pic­
ture of the author as a precautious 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 with 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 illus­
trate 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 attitude 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 friend­
ship between Hermans and Reve was broken off in the 1960s.

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, 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.

 Chapter 14

Three Feminist Waves

Rosemarie Buikema & 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 by now; 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 move­
ment. 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 con­
tinuities 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 in the Netherlands – 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
in which that insight can enrich our scholarly understanding 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 Netherlands. Nevertheless, there has not been
much feminist academic analysis of the novel. A large number of characters
cross the path of Hilda van Suylenburg, the novel’s socially engaged heroine,
and this ploy serves to 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 backdrop 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 emancipation – 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, legis­
lation 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 Netherlands, 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 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 sub­
servient 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 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. Bergman, too, deploys the 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: subser­ 
 vience in freedom. This particular female doctor is having an affair with an
unhappily married artist who now has discovered his true love. 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. 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 structures.
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 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
understanding 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 hall­
mark 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
nineteenth-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, a canonical manifesto 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
automatically led to the seminal article “Women and their Discon­
tents” (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 professor of trans­
lation 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 neces­
sary 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.
“Women and their Discon­tents” raises almost all issues of the
feminist cause in the 1970s. From legalizing abortion and free con­
traception to creating part-time employment and child care centers,
challenging role-patterns, and 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 governmental bodies. About fifteen 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, matri­
monial 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
Emancipation Committee that advised the government on a new
phenomenon: emancipation policy. Some years later, Joke Smit and
her allies were involved in creating 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 feminist wave, but had to make way for new
forms of feminism and activism.1

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
independent 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 inde­
pendence 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 language
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 iden­t ification. In
writing, she had to invent 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 language 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 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 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 representation 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 identification. 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 feminism 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 exemplary 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 popular 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, paying 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 embraced 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 development of Dolle Mina can
 hardly be characterized as well-structured, especially 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 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
typical, 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
membership were absorbed by the many other groups that sprung up,
representing the entire spectrum of feminist philosophies in the
Dutch 1970s, such as the feminist publishing house De Bonte Was
(representing radical feminism), Paarse September (lesbian feminism)
and Sister Outsider (black lesbian feminism).

Over the Hill: Third-Wave Feminism

The work of third-wave feminists such as the Dutch documentary filmmaker
Sunny Bergman 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 docu­
men­t ary 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 photoshopped
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 having 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-aging 
 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 relationship 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 pressure 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 California 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, Bergman announces her wish to prepare a lawsuit
against the cosmetic industry for damages caused to the female psyche,
launching a website to support this case.7 The ensuing 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 under­
stand 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 ex­
perience. 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 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.
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 them­
selves 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 attractive 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 para­
doxical position for women, third-wave feminists are better equipped than
their predecessors to affirm the multifarious forms of feminism and acknow­l­
 edge 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 transnational phenomena such as
capitalism and ethnocentrism, as well as of personal and subconscious iden­
tification 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 distribution 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 character. Sunny Bergman, finally, re­
presents the third wave by underlining that change can only be accomplished
if women try to achieve equality, difference, and deconstruction simul­
taneously. 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 Netherlands is unique in its “glocal” position as a kind of
“borderland” which enabled the Dutch feminist tradition to become in­
creasingly transnational. Moreover, the development 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
traditions. From its ability to bridge these different discourses, the Nether­
lands 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 feminist cause,
allowing it to develop in 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 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
reading 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 Netherlands. Third-wave feminism is affirmative about feminisms of
the past, especially in its orientation to 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 feminism 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 gener­
ational 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 perceptions of
feminism. This shifting also applies to the spatial dimensions of equality,
differ­ence, and diversity. A transnational approach to feminism also demon­
strates 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 commen­
surable with an Anglo-American perspective on equality or diversity. The
Nether­l ands has been able to bridge these geographical and historical
differences.

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.



 Chapter 15

Excellence and
Egalitarianism in
Higher Education
Jeroen Torenbeek & Jan Veldhuis

As a relatively wealthy nation with intensive international trade connections

and an enthusiasm for innovation and exploration, the Netherlands has de­
veloped into a gateway of ideas and an ambitious hub of education and re­
search. The nation’s international reputation is reflected by such indicators as
the number of Nobel Prize winners, the proportionally very high 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 Dutch CWTS (Leiden) rank­i ngs,1 the Netherlands, as one leading
British newspaper con­ceded, is emerging “as continental Europe’s principal
power in higher educa­tion.” 2
Although the Netherlands is firmly embedded in the European structure
for higher education, its academic structure is also a reflection of trad­itions
and culture that are the products of a specific national history. One of those
parti­c ular constants is the desire to reconcile the appeal of egali­tarianism
with the drive for excellence.

Fundamental Characteristics
The Netherlands was an eager participant in the recent Bologna Process
which aimed to homogenize the European higher education area. Although
the Netherlands embraced the uniform organization and structure of “Bo­logna,”
it is not difficult to discover the special characteristics of Dutch edu­cation under
this seemingly homogeneous surface.
A first striking trait is that higher education – as all other education – is
primarily a public responsibility. This is the case in most continental Euro­pean
countries. In the Netherlands it means that the national government by law is
responsible for the regulation of the main characteristics, such as govern­ance,
structure and quality control, and for funding – currently about eighty percent.
This directly leads to a second characteristic, which is more specific for
the Netherlands: the essential equality between all institutions of higher edu­
cation. In line with traditional egalitarian Dutch ideas, public funding follows
the principle of equal distribution. All academic institutions receive similar
 funding for staff, housing and equipment.
Consequently, the third characteristic is that the quality of all institutions of
higher education is largely comparable, and relatively high. The insignifi­cant
differences that remain may be attributed to geographically determined
social stratification. The social elite still prefers the traditional, established
universities in the urban agglomeration in the north-west and the center of
the country over the oftentimes younger universities in the other regions.
Qualitative differences mainly exist in the field of research, mostly resulting
from the selective funding by national science foundations (quality criteria)
and by private companies and semi-public organizations (contract research).
A fourth characteristic is the fact that admission into an institution of
higher education is based on exit rather than entrance exams. Only a limited
number of study programs – mainly in the fields of arts and life sciences –
adopt additional entrance procedures, largely as a consequence of a gov­ern­
ment-imposed numerus fixus, a limited number of places made available to
first-year students. The main reason for this absence of entrance exams is the
strongly selective and profiled structure of secondary education. Three dif­
ferent school types in secondary education are designed to prepare for a spe­
cific form of further education. Preparatory vocational secondary educa­tion
(VMBO), with a curriculum of four years, leads to senior secondary voca­
tional education and training (MBO) – for at least another year, to fulfill the
legal requirement of education until the age of seventeen. VMBO covers
slightly over fifty percent of the age cohort. Senior general secondary edu­ca­
tion of five years (HAVO), which covers approximately twenty-eight percent
of the age cohort, prepares for higher professional education (HBO). The six-
year curriculum of pre-university education (VWO) prepares students for
education at one of the research universities (WO). About eighteen per­cent of
the age cohort enroll in these schools, which are comparable to the older
gymnasia. Moreover, students choose from four different “profiles:” sci­ences,
life sciences, economy & society, or arts & society. Each of these pro­files may
contain subjects required for the admission to matching study programs.
This highly selective structure in secondary education, and especially the
differences in duration, content and quality between the HAVO- and the
VWO-certificate, is the main reason for a fifth characteristic: the persistence
of the binary system in higher education. There is a clear distinction between
research-oriented universities on the one hand and institutions of higher
professional education on the other. In 2008, about 200,000 students were
enrolled in the thirteen research-oriented universities and eight academic
medical centers that constitute the sector of tertiary education that is known
as WO (Wetenschappelijk Onderwijs, or academic education). Only these
research-based universities offer PhD programs. Another 350,000 students
were enrolled in the about fifty tech­n ical or vocational institutions that
constitute the sector of higher profes­sional education known under the
acronym HBO (Hoger Beroeps Onderwijs). Although these institutions of
higher professional education have been renamed as “universities of profes­
sional education” and are given limited opportunities to develop and carry
out applied research projects, the binary system is still firmly in place.3
A sixth feature of Dutch higher education, especially of the research
univer­sities, is its strong international orientation, both in the curricula and
in the international exchange programs. Staff and student exchanges are not 
 only stimulated by the universities themselves and by the Dutch government,
but also very strongly by European programs and by European and global
net­works in which Dutch universities often play a prominent role, for
example in the Coimbra, UNICA and Utrecht networks. Languages tradition­
ally have had a strong position in Dutch education, with English, French and
German com­pulsory in secondary education. In the last decades the position
of French and German has weakened, mainly because English, as elsewhere,
has be­come dominant. In 2005 English was also introduced in the curriculum
in the last two years of primary school. In higher education, an increasing
number of courses are offered in English, especially in the master’s programs.
Some programs are completely offered in English, as are the curricula of the
Uni­versity Colleges of Utrecht, Maastricht and Middelburg. The influx of
foreign students in regular study programs and in summer schools also
demonstrates the attractiveness of Dutch education abroad.
Notwithstanding the international orientation of Dutch higher education,
only relatively few Dutch students spend part of their studies at a foreign
university. The high quality of Dutch higher education itself and – until
recently – the favorable job market for graduates may help to explain this
rather homebound attitude of the students. But this is also stimulated by the
attractive character of Dutch student life. The majority of Dutch students,
and particularly university students, leave the parental home and rent rooms
in privately owned student-houses or university housing. In university cities
the student organizations traditionally dominated a large part of the students’
social life, with clubs, student houses, debating societies, gala parties, formal
dinners and yearbooks. Although membership of these traditional student
organizations has declined from eighty to about fifteen percent in the past
four decades, a great variety of other student organizations have taken their
place, including many of the customs and practices of the traditional student
organizations.
A seventh characteristic of Dutch higher education may have contributed
to this widely developed student life, namely the government-funded system
of grants and loans (studiefinanciering) that are available to all students for
the duration of their curriculum. This grant system is based on the idea that
higher education should be available and affordable to all, regardless of back­
ground or financial means. All Dutch students under thirty years of age are
eligible for a grant that consists of a rather modest basic grant and free public
transport. Such a grant is “performance-related,” which means it has to be
paid back if a student fails to earn a diploma. Depending on their parents’ in­
come, some students are also eligible for a supplementary grant. In addition
to the performance-related grant, students can borrow money to help cover
the tuition and additional costs. The maximum monthly support package
amounts to slightly more than D 900. Many students opt to take on jobs to
supplement this amount for a pleasant student life or to avoid accumulating
large loans.
A final factor that continues to shape Dutch higher education is the solid
governance and fairly efficient organization of the universities which is
largely a legacy of the “external” democratization of higher education that
took place after the Second World War. A significant increase in participation
 of large segments of the population was facilitated by a reorganization of
secondary education that was implemented by law in the 1960s. This state-
supported democratization led to a spectacular enrolment of middle and
even lower income groups in universities. The student revolt, which had
started already in the early 1960s, gained new support among the growing
student population and young faculty in their call for democratization of
university governance. The vehement student protests of 1968/1969 in many
Western countries ultimately resulted in the Netherlands in “internal” demo­
cratization of universities which introduced institutionalized involvement of
both faculty and students. Already in 1969 the govern­ment responded to the
student protests by proposing a new law (Wet Univer­sitaire Bestuursher­
vorming, WUB) which was accepted in 1971. It formalized co-man­agement
(medezeggenschap) of students, faculty and staff in all levels of university
gov­ernance.
At the end of the 1980s the demand for participation, which had led to
continuing unrest and instability, subsided. University governance finally has
been stabilized by a new law on Modernization of University Governance (Wet
Modernisering Universitaire Bestuursorganisatie, MUB) in 1997 which provided
employees and students with an advisory voice in governance, management,
and curriculum, and at the same time allowed for more efficient decision
making. Dutch higher education institutions are now governed by an Executive
Board (College van Bestuur) – consisting mostly of President, Rector and a third
member. The Supervisory Board (Raad van Toezicht) – which ap­points and
oversees the Executive Board – consists of five persons with pro­fessional,
corporate, governmental or academic expertise. The OECD, the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development, the international organization of
thirty affluent countries, sees so many advantages in this dis­t inctive Dutch
system of governance, which allows for both participation of stakeholders and
vigorous decision making, that it suggests that this should be considered by
other nations.

Education, Urbanization and Emancipation

These specific traditions and organizational arrangements of higher edu­
cation are a reflection of the historical developments and national culture of
the Netherlands. Intellectual cosmopolitanism and academic inquiry were
greatly stimulated by the high level of urbanization which characterized the
seven northern provinces of the Low Countries – Groningen, Friesland, Gel­
derland, Sticht (Utrecht), Oversticht (Overijssel), Holland and Zeeland – as
early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These provinces formed the
highly decentralized “Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.” Social care
and education, as provided by for example 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). The most prosperous city, Amsterdam,
founded its own “Atheneum Illustre.” Famous seventeenth-century scientists
like Regius, Willem Stratenus, Herman Boerhave and Willem Jacob’s Grave­
sande attracted students and illustrious visitors from all over the world. 
 Aletta Jacobs:
Emancipation through Education
Aletta Jacobs challenged male-dominated
aca­demic education by becoming the first
female medical doctor. As a leading suffra­
gette, re­former and proponent of birth con­
trol, she went on to become an enduring
inspiration for the feminist movement.
Born in 1854 into a large Jewish doctor’s
family in a poor peat-winning district in the
north-east, Aletta Henriëtta 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 secondary education
(HBS), if only as a listener. She subsequently
received permission 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, doctor Jacobs opened a medical prac­
tice in the working class neighborhoods of Amsterdam. As a pro­
gressive reformer she offered practical advice in child care and
hygiene, denounced the living conditions of the urban poor, advo­
cated better working conditions for salesgirls, and started promoting
birth control to alleviate the plight of working class women. In spite
of wide-spread resistance she became an active member of the Dutch
Neo-Malthusian Society and introduced the diaphragm as contra­
ceptive in the Netherlands.
Convinced that full constitutional equality of men and women
was essential for further reform, Jacobs started a tenacious struggle
for women’s right to vote. Litigation to be put on the ballot failed
when the highest court argued that she was ineligible for election,
simply because women never had that right. After continuing to pro­
mote women’s suffrage in a series of lectures and articles, she be­
came president of the Dutch Women’s Suffrage movement and editor
of its journal in 1903. She held this position until 1919, successfully
raising money to organize conferences and staging protest marches
in The Hague. Jacobs also actively promoted international solidarity
by traveling the world and seeking cooperation with like-minded ac­
tivists such as Carry Chapman Catt, the powerful president of the
National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). After the
 outbreak of the First World War her international network became a
 vehicle for pacifist and humanitarian initiatives, in 1915 leading to the
founding of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
in The Hague, the oldest women’s peace organization in the world.
In 1917 the Dutch government, fearing widespread revolt, con­ce­
ded 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 consti­
tution by “persons,” as Jacobs had argued for years. The “Jacobs Bill”
eliminated constitutional gender differentiation 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 collec­
tion on the heritage of the women’s movement.

In the nineteenth century, after the French occupation and the Congress of
Vienna, the seven provinces were united into one nation state. Therefore the
national government became a major influence in the further growth of
academic education. The only three remaining universities of Leiden, Utrecht
and Groningen became national universities, while the city of Amsterdam
upheld its Atheneum Illustre, which became a national university in 1876. The
new Constitution of 1848 gave great impetus to the further development of
the whole educational system. During the following three decades, new laws
dealing with primary, secondary and higher education were passed, creating
educational opportunities for segments of society previous excluded from
higher education. For the middle classes, in 1863 a new type of secondary
education was introduced: the Higher Civil School (HBS), with a curriculum
of three or five years, offering a preparation for positions in trade, merchant
shipping, banking, industry and agriculture – but not for the “learned pro­
fessions” that required a university education: church ministers, lawyers,
medical doctors, gymnasium and HBS teachers, and university professors.
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 education. This fundamental struggle over the
schools – one of the main factors of the “pillarization” of society – was finally
resolved in 1917. In a groundbreaking agreement, the national government
agreed to provide equal funding for both non-denominational (public) and
denominational (“private”) schools. Many new Catholic and Protestant
schools were founded, first at primary level, and in the second half of the
century at secondary level. In higher education this process of religious
emancipation led to the founding of the Protestant Free University of Am­
sterdam (VU) in 1879, and half a century later to the founding of the Roman
Catholic University at Nijmegen (KUN) in 1923 and the Roman Catholic
Higher Trade School at Tilburg in 1927. 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.
It should be noted here that “private” schools and institutions in the
Netherlands therefore refer to privately governed schools and institutions,
which are financed with public funds. In 1991 humanists made use of the
same laws to fund their own Humanistic University, and more recently Mus­
lims started to make a strong case for an Islamic university.
Another stimulus for extension of higher education came from the
develop­ments in the field of 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,” and
three new institutions for higher education were founded: the Colleges of
Higher Trade Education at Rotterdam (1913), of Higher Agricultural Education
at Wage­ningen (1917) and of Higher Veterinary Education at Utrecht (1917).
These col­leges admitted students who had finished HBS, rather than gym­
nasium. This in turn stimulated the admission of HBS graduates to the other,
older colleges of higher education, and especially those in the field of med­
icine and the sciences. Increasingly, the term “hogeschool” was used for prac­
tice-oriented institutions of higher professional education.
The third external factor to greatly impact the organization of Dutch
higher education was the rebuilding and modernization of society after the
Second World War, combined with the further socio-economic development
of the northeastern, eastern and southern part of the country. This led to the
foun­dation of Technical Colleges of Higher Education at Eindhoven (1956) in
the southern province of Brabant, and in Enschede in Twente (1961) in the
east, and the foundation of the University of Maastricht (1976) in the far
south of Limburg. An increasing need for medical staff led to the foundation
of the Rotterdam Faculty of Medicine (1966), which in 1973 merged with the
College of Higher Trade into the Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 1986 the
three Technical Colleges, the Agricultural in Wageningen and the Trade Col­
lege in Tilburg were renamed “universities.” The Veterinary School in Utrecht
has al­ready in 1925 been incorporated into Utrecht University.

Harmonization in Europe
The European Union (EU) has steadily affected Dutch higher education. The
attempts to reinforce the knowledge infrastructure of the budding European
organizations in the 1950s evolved into a whole range of European “frame­
work programs” for the funding of research and development. In the 1980s
and 1990s, higher education was used as a tool to help promote the partici­
pation of citizens in the European community. Hundreds of thousands of
students have participated each year in exchange programs that are funded
by the Erasmus and Socrates programs since 1987. This seems to indicate that
the future intellectual elite of Europe has become considerably more mobile
– and more Europe-minded – than earlier generations.
However, only after the signing of the Maastricht treaty in 1992 did Eur­ope
really 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 them­
selves had different ideas. In 1998, during the festivities for the 750th anni­
versary of the Sorbonne in Paris, the first plans were made to harmonize
higher education in Europe. In 1999, the oldest university in the world, that of
Bologna, Italy, gave its name to a major structural change in higher education
when twenty-nine ministers of education signed an agreement to make
academic degrees and quality assurance between their nations more com­
patible by bringing greater uniformity in the maze of European curricula and
diplomas. Dutch universities were among the first to adopt the proposed
Anglo-American system of three separate cycles for bachelor, master and
doctorate (PhD) students.
It has become clear that the European Union explicitly aims at designing
a new landscape for higher education, and thus provides the framework in
which Dutch higher education will develop further, but likely with much
diversity. We will illustrate this with two examples: the binary system, and
the equality between institutions.
Most European countries have a binary system in higher education, dis­
tinguishing between universities and for example the Fachhochschule (in
Germany), högskolan (in Sweden), or hogescholen (in the Netherlands). The
division seems crystal clear: universities prepare students for academic pro­
fessions or for a life in science and academia, whereas the hogescholen pre­
pare students for professional practice. In other words, an academic way of
thinking versus practical competencies: history of art and musicology versus
art school and conservatorium, economics versus business school, philology
versus journalism and computer science versus computer programming. The
new landscape in Europe, however, is supposed to reduce the gap between
the two categories of higher education institutions, especially by more dif­
ferentiation of the tracks within each of the two categories. In an inter­
national context, this sounds logical and plausible, but it remains to be seen
to what extent such a new structure imposed by Brussels will become more
than a thin layer of veneer under which the binary system remains in exis­
tence. After all, in many European countries – and in the Netherlands very
distinctly – secondary education has been organized in preparation for either
university education or for higher vocational training.
Another important characteristic of higher education in continental
Europe is its fundamental egalitarian nature, and the equal treatment its
institutions receive. The policymakers in Brussels intend to end this situation
before long. Differentiation will be the keyword, and the main goal is to
create new qualitative heights: continental Europe should also have its Cam­
bridge and Oxford, or its Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Berkeley. It is beyond
the scope of this chapter to analyze whether this is a desirable goal and
whether it can be enforced in such a manner. We may wonder, though, whether
the ambition to create one or two top scientific institutions in the Netherlands,
with its public structure and high quality of all universities and most
institutions for higher professional education (hogescholen), is realistic. For
one thing, this would require some fundamental choices. Should the Univer­
sities of Utrecht and Amsterdam be upgraded, leaving the other research-
universities second rank? Or would it be better to opt for time-honored
institutions at Leiden and Groningen? Perhaps the universities of Rotterdam
and Maastricht, the youngest two, are suitable candidates? If the Technical 
 University Delft were made the top institute, what will be the future for the
institutions in Eindhoven and Twente? And what about the world famous
University of Wageningen? Since it would imply a great loss of human and
physical capital, this idea is not realistic.
Nevertheless, it goes without saying that higher education should always
aim for excellence. But in a densely populated country as the Netherlands
with rather short distances, greater excellence can better be achieved by
promoting specific top schools and top institutes within each of the univer­
sities and by closer cooperation between and specialization of such groups, in
other words, by aiming at the creation of Universitas Neerlandica.

University College:
Challenging Academic Traditions
In August 1998 Utrecht University opened its University College for
the first 180 students, arriving from twenty-eight nations from all
over of the world for a university education which was to challenge
Dutch academic traditions in numerous ways. As founding father
professor Hans Adriaansens phrased it, UCU intended its students “to
cross the widest possible river.”
The three-year English-spoken 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 or academic discipline right from the start,
University College mirrored English and American exam­ples in
encour­aging students to first explore and develop their talents and
ambitions.
University College was set up as the “International Masterclass”
of Utrecht University. Students were carefully selected in an extensive
process including motivation letters and interviews, emphasizing the
importance of ambition and motivation. Such competition for ad­
mission may be rather common around the world, but was relatively
new to the Dutch situation. By law all Dutch students who success­
fully complete preparatory academic education (VWO) have access to
university programs. Since this makes selection “at the gate” impos­
sible, University College invited students “behind the gate,” once they
were registered at Utrecht University. This was a typical Dutch way
of experimenting first before adjusting rules and regu­l ations to
changed realities.
The highly selective admission to University College challenged
students to live up to the expectations. Small classes stimulated
active participation and allowed for individual attention to students,
in contrast to the sometimes rather massive and traditional lectures
– the unavoidable consequence of the democratization process in the
 1970s in Dutch higher education – which provide a less challenging
and student-focused teaching format. Thus, University College
stimulated an attitude more competitive than is customary among
Dutch students, who may strive to do their best but not necessarily
measure their accomplishments in relation to those of other students.
Such competitiveness was further enhanced by the rather confined
community “on campus” – another novelty in Dutch higher education.
The campus, located at the former Kromhout military barracks, pro­
vi­ded not only classrooms and ample study places, but living accom­
modations and three daily meals in the “Dining Hall” as well. These
arrangements aimed at facilitating students in completing a calcu­
lated workload of fifty-six hours per week, as the regular annual
workload for students was condensed into 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, establishing the College’s name in the international
academic world. Every year some 200 new students are enrolled.
Meanwhile, two more, similar colleges have opened their doors –
University College of Maastricht University and Roosevelt Academy
in Middelburg of Utrecht University – and honors tracks and talent-
classes have developed in regular universities as well. The University
of Amsterdam and the Free University in Amsterdam have opened
the University College Amsterdam in 2009. Leiden planned the start in
2010 of a mainly on social sciences based University College. University
College Utrecht was a pioneer on the road to new traditions.

 Combining Quality with Equality
The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
provides a much valued annual analysis of the higher education system of its
member countries. Its country note on the Netherlands in 2007 gave much
reason to be satisfied.4 The OECD praised the country’s strong institutions for
higher education maintained by public funding, with their effective
governance structure, good system for quality care and also the use of
English in teaching and research, producing high quality results. Scientific
research is exceedingly productive: the Dutch represent only a quarter of a
percent of the world population, but they account for two percent of the
global scientific output.
Furthermore, the OECD report mentions the reasonable tuition fees as a
strong point of Dutch higher education, as it results in affordable education.
This public character has created equal opportunities for students from
underprivileged social backgrounds. Yet, notwithstanding this positive
characteristic of Dutch higher education, the OECD report indicates that
participation of young people from lower income backgrounds, including
people from ethnic minorities, does not exceed twenty percent of the age
cohort (versus forty-five percent on average). Although the ethnic minority
groups recently made remarkable progress, overall the problem remains
serious.
There are more challenges the Dutch higher education still has to over­
come, according to the OECD report of 2007. A second, unmistakable weak­
ness that it points out in Dutch higher education are the relatively high
drop-out rates, at thirty percent on average (except for medical sciences). It
has been suggested that the issue of these drop-out rates could be remedied
by “selecting at the gate,” through entrance exams or weighing of final high
school exam results. After all, such a selection could filter out the students
lacking either talent or motivation, causing them to drop out eventually. Yet,
pilot testing at Leiden University has thus far not proven a direct correlation
between selection at the gate and academic success. 5 This may be due to a
restriction in range, that is to say that the variation among prospective
students is too small – each of them having a rather comparable upper level
secondary school degree in the very selective layer structure of secondary
education – and the absence of actual experience of both student and
institution in the university curriculum. An instrument which has been
developed is a form of “selection after the gate:” the so-called Binding Study
Advice (BSA), forcing students to leave if they did not complete a minimum
part of the first year curriculum. This instrument is used by an increasing
number of institutions, to prevent a likely drop-out later on in the curriculum.
The Dutch educational landscape is changing, so much is clear. The
open, low-threshold, concept of higher education for all seems to have
outlived itself. The taboo around differentiation and selectivity has been
broken, not only by Europe, but also from within. In 2004, the State Secretary
for Education and Science entitled her bill “Fast track for talent.” It is very
likely that the future will see further differentiation in higher education. The
cherished equality between universities needs to be balanced against
 increasing demands for more challenges and quality in the form of top
institutes and centers of excellence. The consequence for the students will be
more differentiation, more challenges and honors programs. Increasing
numbers of ranking lists – based on student evaluations, citation indices,
statistics of numbers of graduates and doctorates, opinions of colleagues and
specialists – already provide proof of this growing focus on quality and
quality assessments. Yet, thus far, these rankings do not seem to seriously
influence students’ choices. They still choose a field of study, an institution
with a seemingly pleasant atmosphere, a city not too far away from home,
and an appealing student life.6
The Dutch educational landscape is gradually changing as higher edu­
cation is becoming more internationalized, globalized and harmonized.
Nevertheless, just under the surface one can find the national traditions and
individual characteristics that are the foundations of academic excellence
and intellectual wealth.

Further Reading
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.
Kaiser, Frans et al. Issues in Higher Education Policy 2006: An Update on Higher Education Policy
Issues in 2006 in 10 Western countries. Den Haag, Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en
Wetenschap, 2007.
Litjens, Judith. “The Europeanisation of Higher Education in the Netherlands.” European
Educational Research Journal 4, no. 3 (2005): 208-218.
Marginson, Simon, Thomas Weko, Nicola Channon, Terttu Luukkonen and Jon Ober.
Thematic Review of Tertiary Education: The Netherlands; Country Note. Paris: Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2007.
Weert, Egbert de, and Petra Boezerooy. Higher education in the Netherlands: Country Report.
Enschede: Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies, 2008.
Witte, J., M.C. van der Wende and J. Huisman. “Blurring Boundaries: Bologna and the
Relationship Between Types of Higher Education Institutions in Germany, the Netherlands
and France.” Studies in Higher Education 33, no. 3 (June 2008): 217–231.

See website of the Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education,
www.nuffic.nl.


Contemporary
Issues

 Chapter 16

Religious Diversification
or Secularization?
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 fifteenth-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. Since the 1960s, a thousand church buildings have been closed
down, and demolished or converted into museums, concert halls, apartments,
restaurants, clubs, shops, or mosques. Many citizens have given up church
membership. In surveys, forty to sixty percent – depending on how the ques­
tion 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 denominations.
This decline of religious affiliation is paralleled only by some formerly
communist countries, where institutionalized religion was deliberately
thwarted. In the Netherlands, by contrast, Christian political parties such as
CDA participated in each and every government coalition since 1918 – except
for a brief interlude between 1994 and 2002 – 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 funda­
mentalism? Of merchants or ministers?

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, dome­
nica, 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. These
tribes, wrote the Roman historian Tacitus, “do not consider it consistent with
the grandeur of celestial beings to confine the gods within walls, or to liken
 them to the form of any human countenance.”
Yet, in the southwest of the country now known as the Netherlands, where
three European rivers run 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 celeb­r ity, 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. In­
stead 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, like the fourth-century scholar Servatius,
bishop of Mosae Traiectum (Maastricht). North of the big rivers, the new reli­
gion remained almost absent. Not until the year 630, a church was built in
Traiectum (Utrecht), for soldiers of the Frankish king Dagobert 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.

Official and Popular Religion

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 them­
selves in fine garments, with shining chalices, jewelry, books, and relics –
tokens of a superior civilization. They demonstrated that the indigenous
deities were powerless by violating religious taboos, and destroying holy ob­
jects. 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 religion – even in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when Cath­
olics again confronted 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
It was only at the end of the Middle Ages that a regular church life emerged.
Parish formation shaped the countryside, as craftsmen and shopkeepers set­
tled around the house of God and that of His servant. Before the intro­duction
of signposts, travelers found 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 died before long. Wealthy families, guilds, and other associations had
“me­morial Masses” read for their deceased members. Were they so worried
about sal­va­tion, so anxious about the purgatory? 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. Amster­
dam 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 sickbed, but spat out the con­
secrated wafer. The maid threw his vomit into the fire, but the next morning
she found the Host 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 preach­
ers to new religious orders, who specialized in hearing confession and “talk­
ing 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 Mo­
derna, 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 denounced clerical laxity and immorality
and the haughtiness of building an enormous cathedral (Dom) in Utrecht,
partly financed by selling indulgences.
More and more religious dissidents came forward, rejecting everything
that stood between God and the (individual) believer. 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 prac­
ticed 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 were allowed
to marry. Similar was the fate of Wendelmoet Claesdochter from Monnick­
endam, who blew it by bluntly saying: “That sacrament of yours is bread and
flour to me.”
Equally offensive was 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 posses­
sions – 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 Ana­
baptists. Whereas these “Mennonites” contended themselves with a minority
position, shunning all dealings 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 Luther­
anism, 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, “revolutionary” Refor­mation.
In 1566, after decades of meeting in secret or abroad, Protestants mani­
fested themselves with “hedge preaching:” open-air church services, usually
outside cities. When the summer 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.
The Nieuwe Kerk hastily closed its doors, but in the Oude Kerk, where a baby
was being baptized, the mob got in. “You papist,” shouted someone, “stop
swearing the devil out of children! Baptize in Jesus’ name, like the apostles
did!” Then boys began to throw stones at the altars. Weyn Okkers, an other­
wise respectable housewife, flung a slipper at the Virgin, and her maid Trijn
violated St Roch. “Just wanted to check if it was properly fixed,” she ex­plained
in court, but Weyn and Trijn were found guilty, and drowned in a wine barrel.

Public Church
Not until 1578 did the merchants who ruled Amsterdam join the Dutch Revolt.
An inscription 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, how­e ver.
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
whitewashed, and the pews were often moved a quarter turn. Instead of fa­
cing the “choir,” they were now arranged around the pulpit, so that con­
gregants 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 confirmed – usually no more than a
third of the Reformed “constituency.”
Although the Reformed Church regarded itself as the only true religion,
and jealously protected its monopoly on public worship – for example by bap­
tizing and marrying each and every Christian – it lacked both the power and
the ambition to drive 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 east­
ern regions that were re-conquered by “Spanish” troops, Protestants fled or
defected. Even after the States General eventually 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 named for Staphorst (a village near Zwolle) or for 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. 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 Ar­
minius “remonstrated” an interpretation that left more room for human
choice. This theological dispute brought the Republic to the brink of a civil
war, because it was connected with political explosives: the power balance
between Holland and the other provinces, and that between State and
Church. According to the Arminians – better known as Remonstrants – the
former 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 condemned 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 standardized the Dutch language. How­
ever, 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, loud 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 anything but hidden. One
now serves as the auditorium of the University of Amsterdam.

The Portuguese Synagogue:

Monument of Asylum
The monumental Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam testifies to
the prominence of religious minorities in Dutch history and forms an
enduring legacy of Sephardic Jewish culture.
The first Jews who settled in Amsterdam were Catholic, at least
in name. In Portugal, where they had their roots, Jews had been
forcibly baptized since 1496. It was for its economic opportunities that
these Sephardim (from sepharad: Hebrew for “Spain”) came to Am­
sterdam, where they were welcomed for their know-how in inter­
national trade. Not before long, some of them came out as being
Jewish, and began to return to their ancestral religion. Imported rab­
bis, teachers, cantors, and ritual butchers gradually convinced them
that this implied a whole way of life. In 1614, the city allowed them to
open a Jewish cemetery, in Ouderkerk (south of Amsterdam). Two
years later, it ordered Jews to abstain from criticizing Christianity,
and converting, circumcizing or courting 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 for centuries
– to wear a distinguishing 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
towards “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. It was out of curiosity and intellectual ri­
valry rather than animosity that Reformed theologians organized
disputations with Jewish scholars. The latter, who had often had a
thorough Christian education, debated so well that the Sephardic
mahamad (“church council”) eventually ordered them to stop “pro­
voking hatred against us among the gentlemen who live around us.”
In the meantime, many Jews from Central and Eastern Europe
had arrived in Amsterdam. These Ashkenazim 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 Amsterdam –
and Western Europe. But the Sephardim outshone them four years
later with their Snoga or Esnoga. Designed by the city architect, with
reminiscences of the Temple of Salomon, 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.
The Portugese Synagogue became home to the seminary Ets
Haim (“Tree of Life”) which owns the largest Sephardic library in the
world. After a donation by librarian David Montezinos in 1889 it holds
thirty thousand printed works and five hundred manuscripts that
cover all aspects of Jewish studies and cultural history. The “Livraria
Montezinos” was placed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register
in 2004.
The Portuguese Synagogue was left intact by the Nazis and their
helpers during the Second World War. The building was restored in
the 1990s 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: the Nieuwe Kerk, of course.
Like Napoleon, William valued religion as an instrument for nation-
building. He reorganized the Lutheran, the “Israelite,” and the Reformed
Churches. Since the “Synod of Dort,” the latter had had a decentralized struc­
ture because the States General, weary of church infighting, had not allowed
any more national synods. But a unitary state needed a unitary church. In
1816, government imposed a centralized 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 centra­l­
ization of church governance, and with liturgical renewal – hymns, rhythmic
singing, and organ music – broke out in the 1830s. Hendrick de Cock, a
handful of fellow-pastors, and thousands of members seceded from the
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,
imprisoned 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 autocratic regime. Their time came with Thorbecke’s 1848 Constitution
that again promised 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 scenarios 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 reverend 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 inaugural ceremony for a neo-Calvinist “Free University” 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 in­
venting 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 [khristus] instead of [kristus] became a
shibboleth of gereformeerden. It placed them on an equal footing with
Catholics, who had southern roots and led the way in “pillarization.” 9

Discipline and Emancipation

Since the 1795 Revolution, public schools were no longer Reformed, but they
continued 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 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 siren songs of modernity. Socialism became a redoubtable competitor
for the Hervormde Kerk 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 Randstad. All over the country, many hervormden quit in
the 1920s, when for the first time they were asked to pay a contribution.
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
Hervormde Kerk began to stand for its convictions. After the war, too, it pro­
nounced upon many questions, often taking a progressive stance. In 1952 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. Since 1960, 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, fifty-five percent be­
longed to the Hervormde Kerk, in 2000 this was true of just eight 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 con­
servative 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 – exemplified by the 1966 international bestseller New Catechism.
Whereas Pius X and Pius XI had called Dutch Catholicism exemplary, the Va­
tican now began to worry. From 1970 onwards, it curbed progressivism by
parachuting conservative bishops. Then the percentage of Catholics began to
drop: from forty-one percent in 1971 to seventeen percent in 2000. 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 indi­
cations of religious dif­ference which tend
to spark heated debates on things unseen.
Although the Kingdom of the Neth­er­
lands had considerably more Muslim than
Christian subjects until Indonesia gained
independence in 1949, the first mosque in
the Neth­erlands was not built until 1955, in
The Hague. Its founders came from Surinam
and belonged to the Ah­m ad­d iyya move­
ment – 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 ini­
tially looked ra­t her like a nursing-home.
The two small portal turrets it now sports
were added in the 1960s, and the min­a ret
as recently as 2005.
The Turkish and Moroccan “guest workers” who came to the
Nether­l ands in the 1960s had even less conspicuous places of
wor­ship. As far as these young men were observant Muslims, they
per­form­e d 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 wives and children over, which made them directly re­sponsible
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 including classrooms, offices, a tea-
house or two, and shops. At present, there are some 450 official mos­
ques, which come under various denominations. Some of them are
controlled by foreign governments, others reject “State Islam” – but
not always “Petrol Islam” – and promote views that are either con­
siderably stricter or more liberal.
A growing number of mosques are newly built. In public discus­
sions on such projects, the architectural design is usually interpreted
as a direct indication of the religious community’s integration into
Dutch society. Large buildings with tall minarets and other “ethnic”
features are deemed triumphant, backward intrusions upon main­
stream Dutch society – much like neo-gothic Catholic churches were
in the late nineteenth century.
After its completion, Rotterdam’s Essalam Mosque – commis­
sioned by a Dubai sponsor – will be the second largest in Europe. But
will it get a full house? Even though many Turkish-Dutch and Moroc­
can-Dutch youth strongly identify as Muslims, and eagerly observe
Ramadan, very few of them go to the mosque. The imams who lead
prayer and preach there on Fridays often only speak Turkish or Ara­
bic, and are hardly familiar with Dutch society.
Many young Muslims find spiritual guidance on the Internet,
where “cyber muftis” – often based in the Middle East – offer inter­
pretations of Islam which pretend to be pure and universal, devoid of
“cultural accretions” and “superstitions.” To counter such foreign
influences, and offer an alternative to imported imams, a Dutch uni­
versity training for Muslim clergy was established in 2005. Soon, the
first students will graduate. Much is expected from these home-
grown imams, but will mosques want to employ them?

Born-Again Citizens
Have the Dutch had it with religion? Since 1983, the Constitution no longer
mentions churches. But in those same years, a Christian peace movement
(IKV) organized the largest political demonstration in Dutch history, and
thousands discovered post-Christian spirituality: Bhagwan, New Age, or
psychic-healer Jomanda. Broadcasted charity collections, funerals of cele­
brities, and silent marches – invented by nineteenth-century Catholics to
evade the ban on processions – mobilize and move masses of people. Religion,
the provision of meaning and belonging, has grown more diverse. But
citizens 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. Newcomers are taught to separate
church and state, but in order to “integrate” them, that sacred principle is
often violated, for example by government attempts to educate “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 queen
approaches 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.

Further Reading
Bodian, Miriam. Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern
Amsterdam. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
Coleman, John A. The Evolution of Dutch Catholicism, 1958-1974. Berkeley: University of
California, 1978.
Knippenberg, Hans. “The Netherlands: Selling Churches and Building Mosques.”
In 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.


 Chapter 17

Immigration and
Multiculturalism
Han Entzinger

The prevailing self-image of the Dutch has always been one of a strong inter­
national orientation and an open mind towards influences from abroad: an
open society with open borders. The Dutch prided themselves on their toler­
ance for other cultures and religions, and they were believed to welcome im­
migrants 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 residents. Its generous and respectful policies of multi­
culturalism 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 immigration, in particular from Muslim
countries, shocked the nation. In the 2009 European elections Geert Wilders’s
anti-immigration and anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV) became the second
largest party of the country, only three percentage points behind the Christian
Democrats (CDA).
Why this sudden change? Is immigration really undermining the coun­
try’s stability and culture, as certain antagonists claim? Is it really challen­
ging the country’s identity, 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 ques­
tions 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 thousands 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, forty 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 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.
Much of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were charac­
terized 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 re­
cruitment 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 eleven percent of the Dutch population of 16.5 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.
Thus, one in five persons living in the Netherlands is either an immigrant
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 official Dutch statistics call them, stands at around 1.8
million, just over one-tenth of the population. Among these “visible minor­
ities” three communities stand out in size: Turks, Surinamese and Moroccans,
each numbering between 300.000 and-400.000.
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 generous program of settlement and family reunion. Most mi­
grants from Surinam arrived in the 1970s, when this former Dutch colony
acquired political independence. Since the late 1980s the origins of im­m i­
gration 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.
Foreign citizens constitute only a minority of all people of immigrant
descent. In fact, only 4.5 percent of the population of the Netherlands do not
hold a Dutch passport, less than in most nearby countries. This is largely an
effect of a generous naturalization policy in the past and 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 popu­
lation. 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, if so, at what stage in the
integration process or even after how many generations.
Settlement patterns of people with an immigrant background, irre­
spective of where one places the defining boundary between allochtoon and
autochtoon, are quite 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 employ­
ment 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 thirteen percent of the total population of the Netherlands, but they
accommodate over thirty percent of all immigrants. In Amsterdam and
Rotterdam almost 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 autochtone
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 gener­
ations 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 unsophisticated traditional
Dutch cuisine may not have been too appetizing to them anyway.
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 favorite in numerous Indo­
nesian restaurants around the country, was unknown until after the
Second World War. In fact, it is an invention of the Dutch colonial
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, limit­
ing themselves to just one or two of these dishes, or even just a bowl
 of fried rice.
After Indonesia’s independence, over three hundred thousand “repa­
triates” – made up of the Dutch colonial elite as well as Indo­nesian
Dutch of mixed origin (Indische Nederlanders) – came to the Nether­
lands. 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 the world more,
cooking in the Netherlands has become more inter­national, as in
many other coun­t ries. However, good old rijsttafel remains an inter­
esting example of how migration may af­fect eating habits in two
directions.
Over half a century has passed since the large scale immigration
from Indonesia. A third generation has come of age and, sadly, the
typical colonial Indische culture in the Netherlands has almost dis­
appeared. “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 married a native Dutch
person may have contributed to this. However, every Dutchman
knows what nasi goreng, babi panggang, gado gado, sambal goreng
boontjes 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 im­
migration 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 assimilate 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
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 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 intro­
duction 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 iden­
tities was not new to the Dutch. Under the segregated system known as pil­
larization (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 spe­
cific 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 institutional 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 sup­
port measures provided by the then still generous welfare state, promoting
equal treatment, and encouraging “emancipation,” while aiming at the pre­
servation 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 homo­
geneity now introduced the notion of ethnicity as a basis for differential
pol­icy­making. The authorities and a vast majority of the population were
con­v inced that this was the best way to promote the “emancipation” of
mi­g rants. It was this policy of deliberate separation that drew worldwide
 attention from protagonists of multiculturalism.
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 phenomenon known as ethnicization or minor­i zation. This
was all the more worrying, since the economic downturn in the early 1980s
had left large numbers of low skilled workers – 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
even 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.
Nevertheless, dissatisfaction grew under the surface. In 1991, the leader
of the conservative Liberal Party (VVD), Frits Bolkestein, triggered a first
public debate about immigration, which focused on the presumed incom­
patibility of Islam and “Western 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 inspired the Minor­
ities’ 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. Tra­
ditionally, they had been the heralds of pillarization. This explains why the
new coalition of three non-religious parties, headed by Labor Party (PvdA)
leader Wim Kok, was now able to shift the policy focus from respecting cultu­
ral 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 im­
migrants 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, edu­
cation, housing, and other significant spheres of society proved to be quite
successful. Registered unemployment among allochtonen dropped drama­
tically, though it still remained substantially 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 over­
represented in lower forms of secondary education, their participation in
higher education went up rapidly and their school dropout rate declined. The
housing situation of immigrants no longer differed significantly from that
of the native population of similar income levels. In other words, immigrant 
 in­tegration, measured by the traditional standards, advanced. The Dutch
be­lieved they were on the right track.

Problematizing the Issue

Nevertheless, certain problems related to immigration proved to be more per­
sistent. The still rather amateurish integration courses failed to meet the rising
expectations about the Dutch language proficiency of immigrants. Growing
segregation led to a decrease in inter-ethnic contacts both at schools and in
immigrant concentration districts. The still pillarized school system reinforced
existing patterns of segregation and facilitated Muslims in estab­lishing Islamic
primary 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 the lack of oppor­
tunities and of discriminatory practices. Later, the in­ability of immigrant
parents to raise their children in a Western environ­ment and, in­c reasingly,
their unfamiliarity, if not disagreement with Western values such as equality
and tolerance were blamed for faltering integration and high crime rates.
Finally, concerns were growing, though seldom ex­pressed, about the relati­v­
ely strong reliance on various social policy pro­v isions among ethnic minorities.
At the start of the new millennium, two contradictory narratives began
to emerge in the Dutch public debate on integration. The “official” one ex­
pressed that considerable progress had been achieved in all major indicators,
such as participation in employment, in education and housing. Overall, the
second generation was doing significantly better than their parents, par­
ticularly among the Surinamese. The continuing identification 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 immigrants 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 multiculturalism had failed.5 Instead, he argued, a new eth­
nic underclass was emerging of immigrants who did not identify sufficiently
with Dutch culture and society, and who were unwilling and unable to inte­
grate. Scheffer voiced the concern that many Dutch people felt – but did not
express – about continuing immigration, stagnant integration, 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 developments. Their cultural relativism had allegedly
prevented them from demanding the newcomers to adapt. Respect for cul­
tural 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 reinforced 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, par­
ticularly 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, came in 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 coalition that embarked on a tough anti-
immigration agenda, which included the curtailing of family migration and
the promotion of returns. Soon thereafter, immigration to the Netherlands
dropped significantly. Between 2004 and 2007 the country’s migration
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 out­
numbered immigrants.
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 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 citi­zen­
ship, for example, was made much more difficult and expensive, which pro­
voked 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 author­
ities to prevent people with low incomes (that is to say immigrants) 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 multi­c ulturalism,
were now blamed for their lack of identification 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 feature 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
consider 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, Theo van Gogh was
murdered in 2004 by a Dutch-born Muslim funda­men­t alist of Moroccan
background who felt the film director had insulted Islam. This murder 
 provoked strong reactions among large segments of the native pop­u lation,
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 considered a trademark of
the Neth­er­lands.8 Several members of parliament and celebrities, some of
immigrant origin themselves, have been threatened and are now under
constant security protection. One of them is Geert Wilders, the leader of the
newly established Freedom Party (PVV), which has a strong anti-Islam and
anti-immigrant agenda and which, according to opinion polls in 2009, is
favored by about one-fifth of the electorate.

Ahmed Aboutaleb: Multicultural Mayor

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 Netherlands. 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
600,000 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 be­
coming the founding director of Forum, a
publicly financed information and advocacy
agency for multiculturalism. After he acquired
a feel for politics in that position, 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 on the Mo­roccan
and on the Dutch side. He proved to be a real bridge-builder, not by
talking softly about the need for mutual under­s tanding, but by
demanding that the Mo­roccans step up their integration ef­forts and
 consider the Netherlands une­qui­vocally as their first home.
 After it had supported multicul­t uralism for many years, the Dutch
Labor Party (PvdA), of which Aboutaleb mean­while had become a
prominent member, was eager to hear this message from some­one
who had been an immigrant. When Labor joined the national gov­
ernment after the November 2006 elections, Aboutaleb became the
Deputy Minister for Social Affairs and Employ­ment. His nomination
did not pass without political turmoil, as several 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 national government upon nomination of the city council, as is
customary in the Netherlands. Local politics in Rotterdam had been
sharply divided since Pim Fortuyn’s party Leefbaar Rotterdam (“Live­
able 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 nomination, 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. Although a Dutch mayor is supposed to stand above all parties,
he often has to maneuver very skillfully. In a socially, ethnically and
politically polarized city like Rotterdam this certainly is a challenge,
even for an immigrant as successful as Ahmed Aboutaleb.

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 expla­
nations. These, however, are worldwide phenomena 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 Freedom Party – the belief
is widespread now that earlier policies of multiculturalism must be held ac­
countable 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 eman­
cipation of native religious and ideological 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 evi­
dence that most people of immigrant background living in the Netherlands are
faring quite well.9 An all-party parliamentary committee concluded in 2004
that “in most cases immigrants 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 over the past ten years.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 reli­g ion and
issues rela­ted to it. At the same time, however, both allochtonen and autoch­
tonen 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 optimistic about their own fu­t ure than
Dutch youngsters and also less optimistic than they were ten years ago.
Such findings, confirmed by numerous other research outcomes, may
lead to the conclusion that, in fact, immigrant integration has been quite suc­
cessful in most cases, but that the dominant definition of “successful inte­
gration” has changed meanwhile. Undoubtedly, Dutch society has changed
profoundly in the last few decades. Immigration 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 hospitable 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 generation 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. 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
Ederveen, Sjef, et al. Destination Europe: Immigration and Integration in the European Union.
The Hague: CPB/SCP/CBS, 2004.
Gijsberts, Mérove. Ethnic Minorities and Integration: Outlook for the Future. The Hague: Social
and Cultural Planning Office (SCP), 2005.
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.

 Chapter 18

Law in Action
Freek Bruinsma

The postal code of the Red Light District in Amsterdam is 1012. Coalition Pro­
ject 1012 is a joint effort of public authorities, private citizens and local busi­
nesses to counter the degradation of the district. It assumed its full-fledged
form with a budget of forty-five million euros at the end of 2007. The Project
aims to abolish the criminal infrastructure of women trafficking, drug
dealing and money laundering. Repression of prostitution is not its goal.
Prostitution was allowed in Amsterdam as far back as 1413 when the city
decreed: “Because whores are necessary in big cities and especially in cities
of commerce such as ours – indeed it is far better to have these women than
not to have them – and also because the Holy Church tolerates whores on
good grounds, for these reasons the court and sheriff of Amsterdam shall not
entirely forbid the keeping of brothels.” Prostitution has been made legal in
2001, although a brothel keeper needs a license and new licenses for window
prostitution are only issued for two locations. The municipal authorities
retain some control because they can refuse contracts, subsidies or permits if
they have serious doubts about the integrity of the applicant.

Beleid: Combining Bottom-Up

and Top-Down Strategies
Because of its non-legalistic leanings, law in action in the Netherlands can be
characterized as pragmatic. A basic tenet is that 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. There is
even a word for it. Beleid is a concept which is difficult to translate, as it is an
integral part of Dutch culture and so­ciety. The English equivalent “policy”
covers only half of its meaning. Char­acteristically, an authoritative dictionary
of the Dutch language offers con­t radictory 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 seems to imply top-down planning. On the
other hand, however, it defines the term as a considerate approach (bedacht­
zaamheid), preferably by hearing all those concerned and giving them a say.
These definitions may seem con­tradictory: one can either take decisions against
the wishes of at least some of those concerned or one can come to an agree­
ment with mutual consent, which implies non-decisions in the case of a veto
or resistance. In theory and practice beleid is a mixture of both. Beleid is the
art of rule-making and rule-implementation in context. It uses bottom-up and
 top-down strategies at the same time.
The egalitarian facade of beleid hides a solid tradition of authority. Up to the
1960s this could be characterized by the concept of “pillarization” (verzuiling).
Each pillar – the Reformed, the Catholic, the liberal and the socialist pillar –
had its own elites that maintained moral and social control within. Although
the pillars imploded in the 1960s, all attempts to increase democratization by
introducing a referendum, an elected mayor or lay re­presentation in the
professional judiciary have failed. These initiatives were doomed because
direct democracy and participation interfere with beleid, which the elites
prefer to develop in negotiations rather than by public vote. Beleid, then, is
also a mix of elitist rule and popular influence.
Pragmatism is conditioned culturally as well as structurally. According to
the sociologists Geert Hofstede and Gert-Jan Hofstede the Netherlands share
an extremely feminine culture with the Scandinavian countries, stressing
values such as equality, solidarity, sympathy for the weak, and resolution of
conflicts by negotiation and compromise.1 A need to negotiate and to com­
promise is structurally embedded in politics as there is never one party
gaining an absolute majority. As a consequence, Dutch politicians are used to
wheeling and dealing. This is particularly true for the Christian Democrats
who have participated in all coalition governments since 1917 but for an inter­
val from 1994 until 2002. On the one hand, moral crusades thus never found
an unmitigated outlet in moral legislation, and, on the other hand, the Chris­
tian Democrats could always veto attempts to legalize practices that they
considered immoral. Only during the brief interlude when the Christian
Democrats were out of office, the coalition of socialists and liberals managed
to lift the ban on brothels (2000), euthanasia (2001) and same sex marriages
(2001). Since Christian Democrats, together with social-democrats and a
small orthodox Christian party, formed a coalition government in 2006, a
new tendency to restore conservative values has become apparent, as illus­
trated by “Coalition Project 1012” or the ban on tobacco smoking in cafes and
restaurants, introduced in 2008.
Two policy areas may help illustrate Dutch law in action: the approach to
crimes without victims and the practice of institutionalized consultation with
interest groups that is called the “poldermodel.”

Pragmatism Towards Crimes Without Victims

Although abortion and euthanasia, alcoholism and drug addiction, prosti­
tution, gambling, pornography, and homosexuality might be criminal ac­
cording to the statutes, these various kinds of behavior have been labeled
“crimes without victims.”2 Philosophers might argue that there are victims,
yet such crimes refer to strongly demanded goods or services, creating a
black market and a subculture when legally proscribed. The lack of a com­
plainant makes criminal law difficult to enforce.
This is pragmatism at its best. Since there are no sound practical reasons
to outlaw crimes without victims, the law in action calls for a policy (beleid)
of non-enforcement. For decades the law in the books symbolically reflected
moral condemnation, while the practice was permissive. Pragmatism uses the
tool of a sliding scale: at the one extreme a blind eye is turned to vices with
minor ramifications such as drug abuse in private, and at the other extreme 
 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
cases in-between are of course the difficult ones: what is the approach to
hard-drug addicts, and to the suppliers of soft drugs? In theory, pragmatism
tackles these questions one by one and by trial and error, trying to strike a
balance between a counter-productive zero tolerance and an unproductive
wait-and-see attitude. In practice, however, the facts are quite often decisive,
resulting in an unfounded and half-hearted “yes.” Pragmatism prefers incon­
sistent outcomes over blind rule enforcement.
In the 1970s a committee of experts, chaired by a neurologist, laid the
basis for the Dutch policy of tolerance with regard to soft drugs. The com­
mittee refuted the stepping-stone 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. Since the criminal law allows,
but does not compel the prosecution services to bring a crime to court, non-
prosecution can be a matter of policy (beleid). The guidelines that set explicit
standards for prosecution and non-prosecution with regard to drugs were
adopted in 1976 by the most left-wing government in Dutch history, the Den
Uyl coalition government (1973-1977).3 These prosecution guidelines elaborate
on the distinction in the Opium Act between “soft” and “hard” drugs, and
add a second distinction between consumption and production. Possession of
soft drugs was considered negligible up to thirty grams, small amounts of
hard drugs could be ignored except where there are prior convictions; oc­
casional dealing within a pattern of addiction would be penalized with fines,
yet systematic and quasi-professional dealing, especially importing and ex­
porting, was penalized with stiff prison sentences.
This was only half of the story, however, namely the story of law in
books. The other half, law in action, was that the police anticipate beleid of
the prosecutors and took it as a starting point for setting their own priorities
at grassroots level. They tried to get professional dealers in hard drugs con­
victed, 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 con­
sequence also why and why not, the law would be enforced.
Obviously the borderlines between permitting the small-scale use of soft
drugs and prosecuting 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-con­
trolled distribution of the heroin substitute methadone. 4 How does one
defend the quality checks on ecstasy pills at rave parties? The authorities are
of the opinion that if one cannot eradicate illegality it is better to monitor
illegal situations in the interests of other concerns, such as public health.
Should the police show an interest in the supply of soft drugs to coffeeshops?
Police closed some of the fully equipped and computerized greenhouses, only
to give the competitors new opportunities.
The year 1996 marked the end of the heydays of the drugsbeleid. New
guidelines for (non-)prosecution were published. While the basic distinction
between soft and hard drugs was preserved, the allowable amount of soft
 drugs for personal use was significantly reduced from thirty to five grams.
Several municipalities at the national borders have decided to a further
reduction to three grams, for sale only to registered members of a particular
coffeeshop. The Dutch drug policy remains a bone of contention in European
politics.5 In the absence of state-controlled growing, the illegal cultivation
and trading of Dutch cannabis (nederwiet) has become big business. Only
twenty percent of production is for domestic consumption by an estimated
number of 400,000 cannabis consumers, leaving half a billion kilo nederwiet,
representing a market value of two billion euros, for export – tax free, of
course, since it is illegal.

Coffeeshops: From Permissiveness to Control

In the Dutch language the word coffeeshop is used for 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 soft drugs from hard drugs. A coffeeshop had
to meet specified requirements to be tolerated: no sale of hard drugs
and alcoholic drinks, no selling to minors, a maximum of five grams
for each transaction, no more than five kilos of soft drugs in stock, no
advertising and no nuisance to the neighbors.
Only 105 of the 443 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 702 in 2007. Amsterdam in particular witnessed
a dramatic decline: from 450 in 1995 to 228 in 2007. After the Christian
Democrats returned into the national government in 2006 the number
was further reduced by stipulating that a coffeeshop would not be
tolerated within five hundred meters of a school. The mayor of Am­ster­
dam openly regretted that this government policy led to the closure
of another forty-three coffeeshops, because he feared that illegal and
irresponsible drug runners would fill the gap.
The coffeeshop has lost much of its innocence as a symbol of the
underground youth culture, however. About eighty percent of the li­
cense holders in Amsterdam and Venlo (a provincial town in the
south of the Netherlands near the border with Germany) was dis­
covered to have an average criminal 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. 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 euros, until it was forced to close in 2008.
Moreover, with so much local experience in vegetable gardening, it
did not take long to produce nederwiet of potent quality, thus blurring
the distinction between soft and hard drugs. After the ban on tobacco
smoking in pubs in 2008, 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 smart shops that sell hallucino­
genic mushrooms (180 in 2007) and grow shops that sell seeds and
equip­ment for growing marihuana (from 106 in 1999 to 375 in 2007).
The suicide of a seventeen-year old French girl in Amsterdam in 2007
provided the minister of Public Health with sufficient support for put­
ting 126 types of hallucinogenic mushrooms on the list of proscribed
drugs the following year, depriving smart shops of their main source
of income. Grow shops are still legal, but no one knows for how long.

The Balancing Acts of Euthanasia

At issue is the art of following a beleid that balances between enforcing rules
in a way that is not so strict as to become formalistic and not so lenient as to
lose control. While the Dutch drugsbeleid illustrates the latter, the legalization
of euthanasia, which took a long gestation period of a beleid of prosecution
guidelines, is much more balanced. This second example introduces a more
respectable group, namely doctors who occasionally 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. Whereas drug tourism
is a serious problem, any fear of euthanasia tourism to the Netherlands is
unfounded: euthanasia is carried out within the context of a long-standing
relationship between the doctor and the patient.
Parliament passed a Euthanasia Bill in April 2001, which went into force
in 2002. The first section of Article 293 of the Criminal Code still threatens
someone who takes the life of another at the explicit and earnest request of
the latter with a maximum sentence of twelve years of imprisonment. But a
new second section exempts a doctor from criminal liability, provided (s)he
has met criteria which have been developed in the case law and informs the
municipal coroner immediately after the lethal act. Whereas the non-prose­
cution beleid concerning soft drugs stands in isolation, the non-prosecution
beleid concerning euthanasia was a process of fine-tuning consisting of
leading cases submitted to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands (Hoge Raad),
and prosecution guidelines in close concert with the professional association
of doctors (Royal Dutch Medical Association, KNMG).
Beleid started to play a key role in the early 1990s when the conditions for
non-prosecution were laid down. The government wanted to know more
about the practice of euthanasia before embarking on new legislative at­
tempts, and needed the cooperation of doctors.6 The KNMG was willing to
cooperate in return for clear prosecution guidelines, in order to make sure
that doctors who assisted terminally ill patients to end their life did not have
to fear prosecution. Beleid allows for a gray zone between what is lawful and
what is unlawful, at the same time trusting that doctors will not decide im­
prudently. This is not equivalent to a right to non-prosecution, because in
every report of an unnatural death the prosecution takes a decision on the
merits of the case. The most important condition for non-prosecution is a
procedurally controlled ascertainment 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.
According to the requirements of the Burial Act a doctor has to certify
each case of death. The notification procedure specifies the questions that the
doctor has to answer under two headings: natural or unnatural death. Before
this provision of the Burial Act came into force in 1993, a survey among doc­
tors revealed that less than twenty percent of all cases of physician-assisted
death were reported. Similar surveys carried out in later years showed a
much higher percentage of forty-one in 1995 and further increases to fifty-
four percent in 2001, and eighty percent in 2005. At the end of 1998 five re­
gional advisory bodies, consisting of three experts (in law, medicine and
ethics) were established between the doctor who helped a patient to die and
the prosecutor who can still charge the doctor. Their task is to evaluate the
doctor’s decision. In only three of the 2,123 voluntary reports of unnatural
death in 2000 did they come to the conclusion that the euthanasia decision
had been wrong, but none of these cases were pursued.7 The purpose of the
advisory bodies is to persuade doctors to report more honestly, in order to
bring euthanasia out into the open.
By the same token, in spite of the notification procedure and the beleid of
non-prosecution, many cases of euthanasia used to be reported as natural
deaths, which was an easy way out if the doctor wanted to avoid trouble him­
self or for next of kin of the deceased. After euthanasia was legalized another 
 more legitimate evasion has become more popular, namely palliative sedation
by means of a strong tranquillizer. 8 Although the advisory bodies have
strictly speaking become superfluous after legalization, they are still thought
to be useful. In the new Act the advisory bodies only have to inform the Pub­lic
Prosecution Service when they have found that the requirements have not
been met.

The Poldermodel
The reconstruction after the Second World War laid the foundations for what
has been coined the poldermodel. The term “polder” – reclaimed land – refers
to the Dutch struggle against the water and the miraculous transformation of
water into land. Metaphorically, however, poldermodel stands for decision
making on the basis of mutual trust and consensus building. In the strong
version it de­notes corporatist self-government: the programs 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” – and independent experts appointed by the government.
With an eye on the less extensive welfare programs of the other member
states of the European Economic Community a consensus emerged since the
1970s that the Dutch welfare state might be out of control: the deficits in the
public budget increased and loopholes undermined the fairness of the welfare
policies. In the self-regulatory administration of the social security system,
for example, nobody had a sufficient incentive not to grant disability pensions
or early retirement plans. Employers who wanted to get rid of elderly work­
ers, 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 insurance adminis­
tration saw little chance to resist the consensual determination of the em­
ployer, employee and medical officers in exploiting the collective funds.
To avert the threat of direct government intervention, employers and
unions accepted that something had to be done and concluded the Wassenaar
Agreement of 1982. Measures against the self-service arrangements of the
welfare state have been taken, and by cuts in spending the public budget has
decreased from sixty-seven percent of the Gross Domestic Product in 1983 to
less than half after 1999. At the beginning of the twenty-first century both
employers and employees gave up control over the implementation of social
security, and therewith the weak version of the poldermodel supplanted the
strong version of corporatist self-government.
The weak version of the poldermodel can be credited for this recovery
from the budgetary crisis. It consisted of a cultural mix of consensus, egali­
tarianism and what Francis Fukuyama called “trust.” 9 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 is non-legalistic and con­sensual. Insti­
tutionalized consultation is a weaker version of the poldermodel than cor­
poratist self-regulation, but more efficient because the government is the only
 player with the powers to end the discussion and to take decisions against the
wishes of the other participants.10 It is in this spirit that the Social and
Economic Council (Sociaal-Economische Raad, SER) functions as an ad­v isory
body for parliament and government. It is very influential when the composite
parts – employers, employees and independent experts – agree on the socio-
economic beleid for the years to come. The poldermodel is at risk if one of the
participants does not show the self-restraint required by the system. For this
reason the income of the Prime Minister (D 181,000 in 2009) is adopted as a cap
to limit the higher incomes in the public and the semi-public sector.

Subsidies: Good Intentions, Bad Results

Subsidy is an important instrument of the welfare state and open-
ended subsidizing is one of the factors that contributed to the
budgetary crisis at the end of the twentieth century. Three subsidies
deserve special attention because means and ends were unrelated:
ends belonged to the political realm of ideals, whereas means became
goals for subsidy recipients.
As a token of the appreciation of
their heroism in the resistance move­
ment during the Second World War, a
unique subsidy system for sculptors and
painters was introduced in 1949 (Beel-
dende Kunste­naarsregeling, BKR). In 1952
the BKR supported a mere 142 artists for
the equivalent of D 136,363. In 1982, 3,295
artists together received almost sixty
million euro. Budget­a ry reasons put an
end to this grant scheme in 1987.
The manner in which these art
subsidies were awarded illustrates the
concept of beleid. Artists submitted their
art works to local com­m ittees of art
experts, including practicing artists. The
committees advised on the quality and
the price to be paid. The price, on average
almost three times the market value,
was converted into a welfare benefit for
a specified number of weeks. New art
works could be submitted only after-
wards. Thanks to the BKR all government
build­ings in the Netherlands are decorated with works of modern art,
but most subsidized art works have been stored away for many years,
only to be auctioned off or returned to the artist in the 1990s.
Between 1978 and 1989 investments were subsidized by the state
on the basis of a tax reduction (Wet Investeringsrekening, WIR). Approxi­
mately twenty-five billion euros were spent. It started as a socialist 
 idea to influence business investment plans in politically correct
directions, but it ended in a gift scheme for all kinds of business
activities. The Netherlands became a tax haven and goal displacement
took place: the subsidy did not function as an investment incentive,
but became a source of quibbles between corporate lawyers and the
Dutch tax department. At the end of February 1989 news leaked out
that the scheme would end in a few days time. The last weekend of
February 1989 notary offices worked round the clock to register an
additional and very final D 454 million in WIR claims.
The migrant worker and his family became the object of sub­
sidized activities in the late 1990s. From 1998 to 2002 the sum total
spent to improve their position in society rose from the equivalent of
D 680 million to D 1.5 billion. Three different public consultancy firms
came to the same conclusion: wasted money. The subsidies were
based on the incorrect assumption that foreigners would become
quasi-Dutch if asked to take lessons in the Dutch language and in
cycling for example, while they would receive money to maintain
their own cultural identity at the same time. Integration while pre­
serving one’s own identity (“integratie met behoud van eigen iden­ti­teit”),
as the para­doxical beleid slogan stated. As a result, the Nether­lands
has become a multicultural society where different ethnic communi­
ties live apart together.

Gedoogbeleid and Elusive Responsibilities

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 accept devi­
ations from the letter of the law. This policy of tolerance is adopted as a fall-
back in cases where beleid does not work. Too much gedoogbeleid results in a
shadow administration which becomes a 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 constituted the official
legal order.
One particular event brought two leading cases before the Supreme
Court. Contrary to the rules, a local official had allowed polluted dredgings
to be dumped in a nature area. The Supreme Court ruled in the ensuing law­
suits that i) civil servants are not liable to punishment if the wrongdoing fits
within the pattern of the municipality’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 control).11
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 May 13, 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 has been
here since a long time and it has some leverage on the municipality because
of its importance for the local economy and the labor market. What about the
permission required? The answer: in fact, the factory had permission for only
three containers, but another four were tolerated. In a second disaster four­
teen youngsters lost their lives and more than three hundred were ser­iously
burned on New Year’s Eve 2001 when a fire broke out in an overcrowded 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 business because of his influential position as successful busi­nessman in a
small community. The parents of the victims erected a me­morial that reads:
“Due to indulgence and negligence we lost our children and thus our desire
to live.”
In both disasters the prosecution refused to instigate proceedings
because of the case law, in the absence of which other authorities were asked
to investigate the disasters in a non-committal and therapeutic way.12 In a
third disaster only public authorities were involved. Awaiting their expulsion
eleven refugees died in a fire in the night of October 27, 2005, while they were
locked in a temporary detention center near Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. An
official investigation concluded a year later that “no or fewer casualties would
have been deplored if the authorities had complied with the rules.” Two
ministers resigned, one for each of the two coalition parties, yet one of them
returned in the new cabinet at another post. Repair legislation, introducing
legal responsibility for civil servants, is in preparation.
It may be difficult to translate the concept of beleid, but it is even harder
to translate its extended and, at the same time, contradictory version of
gedoogbeleid, and it is almost impossible to understand its rationale. Readers
who are used to thinking in terms of a system of checks and balances will be
surprised to hear that legitimate powers are very illusive in the Netherlands.
The civil service is a complex of more or less independent agencies, each with
its own beleid towards their own client groups, with minimal judicial review.
The same readers will be pleased to hear that the leading circles in the
Netherlands agree with them: Coalition Project 1012 is a good example of the
new approach.

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.
Bruinsma, Fred J. Dutch Law in Action. Second edition. Nijmegen: Ars Aequi Libri, 2003.
Hondius, Ewoud, M.J. Chorus and Piet-Hein Gerver, eds. Introduction to Dutch Law for Foreign
Lawyers. Fourth edition. Deventer: Wolters Kluwer, 2004.
Griffiths, John, Heleen Weyers and Maurice Adams. Euthanasia and Law in Europe. Oxford:
Hart Publishing, 2008.
Hofstede, Geert, and Gert Jan Hofstede. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind.
Second edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.


 Chapter 19

Living with Water

Rob van der Vaart

“How do we manage to do this? Such a small country. So much water and a

climate that is changing. And yet remaining in balance. Quite difficult! But
together with you we provide dry feet and clean water. Dive into that!” This
is the voice-over of the television ad of the government campaign “The Neth­
erlands Lives with Water” that was launched in spring 2008. The ad shows a
green raft in the shape of the Netherlands that floats in the sea. On the raft
groups that represent the Dutch population keep their balance, such as an ice
skater, a young couple, and soccer fans in orange clothing. The ad­vertisement
invites citizens, consumers and NGOs to visit the campaign web­site and help
provide solutions to the problems the Netherlands faces as a result of climate
change.1 In this way the national government hopes to create more under­
standing and public support for its water policy, which requires sacrifices
from everyone and a long-term vision.
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. Pro­
tecting the west of the country against risks of flooding is a matter of con­
sistent 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 the issues raised by this government television
ad: water consciousness in Dutch society and the policy alternatives 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 north­
western Europe, climate change will result in a higher frequency of extreme
weather conditions, 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 con­
sciousness in all layers of Dutch society – politicians, public and private
sector, civil society – and water policy are therefore very important issues.
Before moving to these issues, this chapter will first address major issues in
 Dutch water history.
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 Beem­
ster, a large lake north of Amsterdam with a perimeter of almost
forty kilometers. The group saw this project as a good investment op­
portunity. The flourishing and growing 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
reclamation 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 wind­
mills 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 ar­
rangement of the polder could start.
The chessboard layout of roads, ditches, and parcels in the polder
is typical of Renaissance geometrical landscaping design. The Beem­
ster polder is internationally famous for its parcellation pattern and
design principles. This is one of the reasons why the polder was


 in­c luded in the UNESCO World Heritage 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.
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 constant pumping. During the
nineteenth century steam-driven pumping installations were intro­
duced, 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. Ar­
able farmers need other water tables than cattle farmers, and village
residents need very high groundwater levels since the pile foun­
dations 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 al­
lowed for bigger or deeper lakes to be reclaimed. Reclamation of the
Haarlemmermeer, where Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is located,
only became an option in the nineteenth century thanks to steam
power. The largest-scale projects were realized during the twentieth
century, with the reclamation of three huge sections of the IJssel­
meer, the freshwater lake that originated out of a corner of the sea
after the completion of the Afsluitdijk. Together they now form the
new province of Flevoland, a new space for farming, recreation, ur­
banization, and nature.

Water Management in the Past

“God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland,” according to a pop­
ular expression. 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 southwest 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 sometimes created new lakes. The
north was an indented coast with the current islands (Waddeneilanden) still
more or less connected to the mainland by a stretch of salt marshes. The Zui­
derzee 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 (particularly 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 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 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 settlements and back into the river further downstream.
These early forms of flood-protection were very local: continuous and inte­
grated 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 inhab­
itants 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 created the rural landscape with nar­
row 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 accessible peat packages, those above the ground­
water level, were first exploited. The demand was such, however, that later
on peat was even extracted from below the water level. Holes in the land­
scape were the result: new and often large lakes, created by the work of thou­
sands of turf cutters.
The presence of all the lakes, particularly in Holland, not only limited the
agricultural surface and therefore farm production, but also created a new
danger for local inhabitants. When storms would sweep up the water sur­
faces, 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.2 Until the nineteenth century, 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 devastating
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 Zuiderzee, in the heart of the country, became the IJssel­
meer 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.

The Great Flood:

Inducement for the Delta Works
What happened during the cold winter night preceding February 1,
1953, is collectively remembered by the Dutch as a national disaster.
An enormous storm raised the tide and the power of waves ham­mer­
ing 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 collected all
over the country and international emergency aid ar­r ived. 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 recon­
struction years, dike improvement was not a priority. But in 1953
Dutch politics and society had to learn by shock. Shortly after the
disaster, an ambitious plan for storm surge protection in the South­
west was accepted by Dutch parliament: the so-called “Delta Plan.”
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 management functions and add to
 the accessibility of the area from the southern Randstad region.
 The storm surge barriers
in the Oosterschelde are
exceptional. The environ­
mental awareness of the
1970s made it unacceptable
that the highly valuable
brackish and tidal ecosys­
tem of the Oosterschelde
would be destroyed by
closing it off completely
from the sea. The com­
pro­m ise was a mas­t er­
piece of engineering: a
bar­rier with com­part­ments
that are open during nor­
mal 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 absence of a dam here implies that the
most southwestern part of the Netherlands, Zeeland Flan­ders, did not
benefit from improved accessibility like the other parts of Zeeland.
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, con­
necting 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 cen­
tury. 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 engineers of Rijkswaterstaat.
It came as a complete surprise to many people, therefore, that about
200.000 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, neither 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 solution
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.
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 in the year 2000, was entitled “A Different Ap­
proach to Water.”3 The first chapter, “Rising Sea Level and Subsiding Land,”
sets the context of climate change and Dutch physical-geographical con­
ditions. 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 established
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 ground­
water 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). 4 It
entails a smart mix of various measures, adapted to local circumstances 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 creating bypasses. Approximately D 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 rhe­
toric water may be seen as an opportunity or as a friend, be it a very expensive
friend. The Delta Commission, installed for exploring needs for flood pro­
tection until 2100, concluded in 2008 that more than hundred billion euro
will be needed during this century to ensure a climate-proof future for the
country.5

Water-Conscious Citizens?
Water consciousness is one of the key words in recent Dutch water policy.6 It
is considered to be essential for popular support for an expensive water pol­
icy and for responsible action by all relevant actors – municipalities, in­
vestors, and society at large – with regard to water issues. But what exactly is
“water consciousness” (waterbewustzijn)? Some Dutch scholars have sug­
gested 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.7 In this definition knowledge 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 op­
portunities are manifold: the water-rich country as a location factor for
companies and as an asset for attracting tourists; water management ex­
pertise as an export product; or water as an experience factor in neighbor­
hoods or recreational areas. Yet, in the international use of the concept
“water consciousness” some experts tend to focus on the problematic side of
water, such as the increasing global scarcity of drinking water and the effects
of climate change for coastal cities.8
Water consciousness is not automatically present in a country such as the
Netherlands. 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.
Do the Dutch know and care about water issues? A 2005 survey showed
that water is clearly a low interest issue.9 In answer to the question “What do
you seriously worry about?” respondents – predictably – mentioned increas­
ing 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 nine 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 or­
ganized 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 citizens. 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 context of the issue nicely demonstrates
the dilemmas: in case of calamities no one can be held personally account­
able, although personal legal accountability does apply in cases of negligence.
But where is the line between calamity and negligence to be drawn in cases
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 account­
ability.” Nevertheless, water insurance is a legal minefield. One interesting
example concerns a major residential area to be developed in the Zuidplas­
polder, 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 regulations 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 fu­
ture infrastructural needs and that a consistent national water management
policy requires planning over several government terms. They also know that
market pressure for urban development can jeopardize long-term water man­
agement priorities and should therefore be controlled rather strictly. But they
are also aware that the success of water management since the 1950s has de­
creased 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 enhance public awareness of the need for
consistent water policy and water management.
But it is not for professionals in the water sector to decide on spatial
development and the dynamics of land use. The practice of spatial develop­
ment 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 interests of the water sector – climate-proof solutions
that diminish rather than enlarge future flood risks – is just one set of
interests 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 me­
dium-sized city along one of the big Dutch rivers. The local administration
knows exactly which areas within its borders have been reserved for im­
plementing 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 farmland 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 management 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. Repre­s entatives 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
thousands of decisions like this one, some local, others regional or national,
sometimes in line with the water sector advice, other times against such ad­
vice. 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 government has
taken two important measures for stimulating the inclusion of water issues in
daily planning practice at all levels. One is the so-called Water Impact As­
sessment (watertoets). The other is the National Administrative Agreement on
Water (Nationaal Bestuursakkoord Water, NBW).
Water Impact Assessment (WIA) became mandatory in November 2003.
For every new spatial plan, such as a local plan or a regional plan, the water
board of the region will give a written advice. Local planners have to expli­
citly present in their final plan how and to what extent 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.10 Often
WIA had only marginal 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.”
The National Administrative Agreement on Water (NAAW) involves na­
tional government, all provinces and municipalities, and all water boards.
The agreement was signed in 2003 in order to tackle the big challenges of
water management in the twenty-first century “jointly and in an integral
way.” Large-scale spatial reservations, for “Room for the Rivers” projects for
example or for future coastal improvements, require integrated action and
short communication lines. Quick repair of weak spots in the national flood
protection system, such as relatively weak dike sections, equally requires
collaboration and efficient communication. Evaluation of the NAAW in 2006
showed some shortcomings rather similar to those of the Water Impact
Assessment. And again there is considerable confusion about money: which
division of government has to pay for what and what exactly is the financial
role of the water boards that manage regional water systems? 
 Towards a Sustainable Future
In the face of climate change and a subsiding underground, large parts of the
Netherlands 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 transition in governance style: from a technocratic
and scientific style, dominated by the rather closed “state in the state” Rijks­
waterstaat, towards an integral and participatory style, characterized by
slogans such as “The Netherlands Lives with Water” and “Room for Water.”
Efforts are made to involve civil society, the private sector, and all sectors of
government in concerted action, and to raise water consciousness among citi­
zens, planning professionals, and other groups.11 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 improved 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: neither for mentality change, nor for
flood prevention. The transition might become a success and result in a
broadly shared sense of urgency and direction, but it is just as well possible
that the state will have to take very strict control over market pressures and
decisions of individuals in order to avoid unacceptable risks for the future.

Further Reading
A Different Approach to Water: Water Management Policy in the 21st Century. The Hague:
Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, 2000. 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. 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.
www.verkeerenwaterstaat.nl.
Working Together with Water:A Living Land Builds for its Future; Findings of the Deltacommissie
2008. Deltacommissie, 2008. www.deltacommissie.nl.


 Chapter 20

In Foreign Eyes
Jaap Verheul

The Netherlands has evoked divergent images in the eyes of foreigners. Al­
though one of the most densely populated countries in the world, it is cheer­
fully associated with windmills, tulips, wooden shoes, and green polders
where black-and-white cows peacefully graze. In its picturesque inner cities
people joyfully ride their bicycles along the canals. People speak their minds
freely, are averse to 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 permissiveness and
moral bankruptcy. In recent years foreign media have routinely associated
the Netherlands with drugs, prostitution, child pornography, abortion, eutha­
nasia and other controversial “ethical issues.” The term “Dutch disease” has
been coined to criticize an over-generous welfare state doling out earnings
from natural resources to voluntarily unemployed citizens and recent immi­
grants 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 function 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 begin­
ning 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
centuries 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 formally recognized in 1648 as the Dutch Republic of
 the United Provinces, but had 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 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 Antwerp 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,
languages, 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, 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, introducing 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 markets 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. Play­
wrights 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 op­
ponents by arguing that they “are more famous for their Industry and Ap­
plication, than for Wit and Humour.”
Not surprisingly, most English invectives were directed against the mari­
time presence of the Netherlands. At the beginning of the first Anglo-Dutch
naval war, statesman and poet Andrew Marvell effectively expressed the irri­
tation of his countrymen in his satirical poem “Character of Holland.” Al­
though 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 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 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 nobility. He published his Observations
upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands in 1673, one year after the Re­
public 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 Neigh­
bours.” He gave a detailed 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 Countrey,” 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 Humour; And
more Wealth than Pleasure.” Temple’s work was immediately translated into
Dutch, French, German, and Italian, and it became a bestseller that in­
fluenced the image of the Netherlands until well into the eighteenth century.
Temple later became instrumental in the marriage between stadholder
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
competition, French and German intellectuals during the Age of Reason
discovered it as a beacon of freedom and tolerance in a world that remained
obscured by monarchical absolutism. After all, the Dutch Republic had of­
fered 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 controversial 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 insisted, “where one can enjoy full freedom, where one
sleeps with less concern, where there are always foot soldiers at large to pro­
tect you, where poisoning, betrayal and conspiracies are hardly known, and
where so much is left of the innocence of our forefathers?”4
The philosophers of the French Enlightenment warmly embraced the
Dutch Republic in their battle for tolerance, religious freedom and progress.
Voltaire, the 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, tolerance and egalitarianism of Hol­
land which he found sadly missing in France, where he had been incar­cerated
and expelled for his political views. He jealously reported how he encoun­
tered the stadholder 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 has sympathetically described
how the Dutch republic had rebelled against the cruel despotism and re­
ligious persecution of Philip II and had subsequently defended its liberty with
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 ru­
mored 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 Mon­
tesquieu 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
na­t ionalist ambitions of the early nineteenth century the Netherlands
sometimes 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 conveni­
ently served as an example for political theories about popular sovereignty
and emerging ideas about national identity. It was no coincidence that Robert
Watson, a historian from Scotland – a hotbed of nationalist resentment and
political theory – published 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 German 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 the first installment of an
ambi­t ious 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 perception of the Netherlands. In the first years of independence
the young American Republic looked with mixed feelings to its fellow repub­
lic across the Atlantic. Americans 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. Instead of the ex­
pected 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 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 at­
tractive richness of Dutch history. 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 ef­
fectively 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-industrial “Holland” –
as the nation affectionately was called after its largest province – char­ac­
terized by sailing ships, quaint cobbled alleys, and cohesive coziness was
extremely appealing to an American nation undergoing a rapid and some­
times painful process of industrialization and urbanization. A romantic, his­
toricized and somewhat stagnant Holland became a blissful counterpoint to
the grim realities of modernity.6
As tourism developed during the nineteenth century out of a romantic
quest for authenticity and exoticism, this picturesque image of the Nether­
lands found its way into travel guides. It is no coincidence that the first
 tourist guide­book ever to be printed, John Murray’s famous Red Book of 1834,
Hans Brinker: Morality Behind the Dikes
The book that most successfully embed­ded the pastoral image of the
Netherlands in American popular culture is the 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 wel­
come 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 bewil­
dering jungle of houses, bridges, churches, and ships, sprouting into
masts, steeples, and trees.” As she explained in her book, Dodge con­
sidered Holland as “Odd-land or Con­t rary-land; for in nearly every­
thing 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.
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 stories she was inspired to write
about the Netherlands by read­ing John Motley’s works on the Dutch
Revolt. She diligently col­lected information
on Dutch his­tory, litera­t ure, and art, and
learned many stories from a befriended
Dutch im­m igrant family. Dodge craftily
assembled all these as­sorted details and
anecdotes in her story about the fifteen-
year-old boy Hans Brinker and his lit­t le
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 meanwhile embark on
a skating tour through the country, and
through the eyes of these small children
the reader in passing 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. Returning 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 darkness, cold and fear the little
hero perseveres until he is discovered the next morning and villagers
come to the rescue. 
 A stunning 300,000 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 persever­
ance and courage. Al­t hough 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.

led its readers first to Holland, followed by Belgium and the Rhineland.
“Upon the whole,” the English publisher claimed, “Holland 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
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,
Vander­velde, and other Dutch artists.” 7 As his example was followed by Kurt
Bae­deker, Eugene Fodor and the many other guidebook authors, this sed­uc­
tive 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 inter­
national 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 com­
mentators 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 tax­
ation, 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 especially accessible case study.
International newspapers and magazines began to turn out gloomy
articles about permissiveness and moral decay in the Netherlands. The
magazine Time characteristically voiced American disapproval in a 1978 issue
with the rhetorical question “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 Tra­
volta) discuss a trip to Amsterdam as they drive to a hit job. When his col­
league incredulously asks whether smoking hashish is really legal in
Amster­dam, John Travolta’s character eagerly explains the Dutch policy to­
wards soft drugs: “Yeah, it breaks down like this: it’s legal to buy it, it’s 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 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. Al­
though Dutch policy towards soft drugs is not that different from other Euro­
pean nations and even many American states, the “coffeeshops” 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 pres­
sure to change its policy from other EU partners, most notably the French
who condemned it as a “narco state.”
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 eu­t hana­sia – 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
compelling. 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 assertion, 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 “Hollanditis” to describe the pacifist neutralism that swept
over Western Europe like a contagious disease. A highly influential voice in
the US foreign policy community, Laqueur published his article with the om­
inous title “Hollanditis: A New Stage in European Neutralism” in Com­mentary, 
 Frau Antje: Ambassador of Dutchness
Perhaps the most recognizable sym­
bol of the Netherlands in neigh­bor­
ing Germany is “Frau Antje”. The
wholesome young girl in traditional
costume who cheerfully advertises
cheese and other dairy products re­
presents “typical” Dutch culture,
although both her role and appear­
ance 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 Nether­
lands to life. Her folkloristic fan­
tasy dress was based on tradi­tional
cos­t umes worn in Volendam, the
small fishing village on the IJs­
selmeer 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 pro­
duced 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 unknown in her country of origin, the jovial
cheese girl soon became a celebrity in her own right who was well-
known to over ninety percent of the Germans. Accordingly, the export
of Dutch cheese to Germany grew from twenty-eight thousand tons
in 1954 to over 200,000 tons at the end of the cen­tury.
Although Frau Antje was born in the pre-modern world of folk­
lore and idyllic tradition, even she fell victim to the forces of mo­
dernity. Just when Dutch export managers began to worry that the
stereotype of the cheese girl was so old-fashioned that it would hin­
der 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 Ger­
man magazine Der Spiegel canonized the dystopian image of Holland
in an article aptly titled “Frau Antje’s Change of Life.” Its ar­g ument
that the Dutch period of tolerance was coming to an end was effec­
tively illustrated by a Sebastian Rügen cartoon that displayed a
 defiant 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.”
Rügen’s iconic cartoon, which evoked a wave of anger and shock
in the Netherlands, but was followed by many similar images in Euro­
pean magazines, symbolized the soured image of the Netherlands in
foreign eyes. Yet, after relations between Germany and the Nether­
lands improved at the end of the century, Frau Antje sprang back to
life as a modern, efficient and environmentally friendly ambassador
of Dutch culture and, of course, cheese.12

the leading opinion magazine of the neoconservative movement in the United

States. He warned his readers that the cultural revolution of the 1960s now
threatened to turn the Netherlands into “one of the weakest links in the
Western alliance.”
American neoconservatives added a new chapter to this dystopian nar­
rative 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 filmmaker 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 rec­
ognized 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 hundred most influential people in the world by Time
magazine in 2005 and joined the neoconservative think tank the American
Enterprise Institute after she decided to give up her parliamentary seat when
her citizenship was called into question. In many books in which American
conser­vative journalists attacked the European tolerance towards Islamic
extrem­i sm, the Netherlands is described as a particularly disappointing
example.10

Usable Dutchness
Dutch culture and society are evidently many things to many people.
Although some of these utopian and dystopian images may be based on travel
experiences, international exchanges, journalistic inquiries or even scholarly
research, they derive their appeal and significance from forces and needs orig­
­i nating beyond 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 indispensable ingredient in
each national identity. Consequently, the Dutch “other” has been used to 
 le­g itimize geopolitical ambitions or facilitate domestic debates about the
relationship between government and citizen, the moral and ethical fabric of
society, and integration and diversity. In that sense “Dutchism” may be added
to infamous essentialist concepts such as Orientalism and Occidentalism.
Yet constructions of Dutch identity have also fostered international dia­
logue 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 ambitious and emotional, but also kindly think of them
as helpful, rational, efficient, independent and far more honest than the
Dutch consider themselves. The Dutch, with their trading nation with many
inter­n ational 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, Ernest Zahn, Jonathan Israel and Russell
Shorto. Dutch readers even took foreign criticism in stride and turned judge­
mental essays by expats and immigrants into a popular literary genre. They
were eagerly in­formed by Portuguese writer José Rentes de Carvalho that
they are com­placent, narrow-minded and utterly joyless, they proved willing
to be told by American sociologist Derek Phillips that their academic and
moral standards were weak, they were chastised in essays by Algerian-French
journalist Sylvain Ephimenco for being too lenient towards immigrant minor­
ities, and they even digested the sardonic ethnography of The UnDutchables
by American writers Colin White and Laurie Boucke in translation. Foreign
perceptions of the Netherlands, then, have served as a convenient mirror to
the spectator and as a carnival mirror for the Dutch.11

Further Reading
Buruma, Ian. Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance.
New York: Penguin, 2006.
Galema, Annemieke, Barbara Henkes and Henk te Velde, eds. Images of the Nation: Different
Meanings of Dutchness, 1870-1940. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1993.
Goodfriend, Joyce D., Benjamin Schmidt and Annette Stott. Going Dutch: The Dutch Presence in
America, 1609-2009. Leiden: Brill, 2008.
Krabbendam, Hans, Cornelis A. van Minnen and Giles Scott-Smith. Four Centuries of Dutch-
American Relations, 1609-2009. Albany: State University of New York, 2009.
Stott, Annette. Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture.
Woodstock: Overlook Press, 1998.


 Notes

Chapter 1
1 Coos Huijsen, De Oranjemythe: Een postmodern fenomeen (Zaltbommel: Europese Bibliotheek,
2001).
2 Incidentally, largely on personal merit, Prince Claus became one of the most beloved
members of the royal family, and his death in 2002 was mourned by many.
3 The Netherlands Antilles is scheduled to be dissolved as a political entity in 2010, when the
five islands – Curaçao, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba and Sint Maarten – will acquire a new
constitutional status within the Kingdom. See: www.minbuza.nl/en
4 The Dutch constitution refers to the head of state as “king,” regardless of whether a man or a
woman fulfils the position.
5 B.P. Vermeulen, A.P. Krijnen and D.A. Roos, De Koning in het Nederlandse staatsrecht
(Nijmegen: Ars Aequi Libri, 2005), 25.
6 Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867).
7 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.
8 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.
9 Rudi B. Andeweg and Galen A. Irwin, Governance and Politics of the Netherlands.
Third revised edition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 82.
10 Joop J.M. van Holsteyn and Galen A. Irwin, “Never a Dull Moment: Pim Fortuyn and the
Dutch Parliamentary Election of 2002” in West European Politics 26, no. 2 (April 2003), 47-50.
11 Rudi B. Andeweg and Galen A. Irwin, Governance and Politics of the Netherlands (London:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 62.
12 Monique Doppert and Mariette Hermans, eds., Beatrix: Koningin van alle Nederlanders
(Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 2005).

Chapter 3
1 Russell Shorto, “Going Dutch” The New York Times, 3 May 2009, New York edition, p. MM42,
www.nytimes.com. Actually, not all Shorto’s income was taxed at fifty-two percent.
This figure only applies to his income over D 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).

Chapter 4
1 Statistical data about the 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 translation: 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 the Randstad.
5 VINEX stands for “Vierde Nota Ruimtelijke Ordening Extra,” a 1995 planning memorandum
from the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment.
6 The data used here are from the Central Bureau of Statistics (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 Publisers, 2007).

Chapter 7
1 Jan Luiten van Zanden, “Economic Growth in the Golden Age: The Development of the
Economy of Holland, 1500-1650,” in The Dutch Economy in the Golden Age:
Nine Essays edited by Karel Davids and Leo Noordegraaf, Economic and Social History in
the Netherlands vol. 4 (Amsterdam: NEHA: 1993), 20 (table 4).
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).
5 Herbert H. Rowen, The Princes of Orange: The Stadholders of the Dutch Republic (Cambrid­ge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988).
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,” A Financial History of
the Netherlands, edited by 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, H.F.K. van Nierop, eds., Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch
Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
9 Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early
Modern Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007).
10 Klaas van Berkel, Albert van Helden, 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 8
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 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.

Chapter 9
1 Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation, Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).
2 Hans Daalder, “On the Origins of the Consociational Democracy Model” in Consociationalism,
Pillarization and Conflict-Management in the Low Countries, ed. M.P.C.M. van Schendelen,
special issue, Acta Politica 19, no. 1 (1984): 97-116.
3 See for a more general discussion of the “frozen” nature of the Dutch political system in
a comparative perspective: Stefano Bartolini and Peter Mair, Identity, Competition,
and Electoral Availability: The Stabilisation of European Electorates, 1885-1985
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
4 See Kees Schuyt and Ed Taverne, 1950: Prosperity and Welfare. Dutch Culture in a European
Perspective, vol. 4 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
5 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).
6 Jan Lucassen and Rinus Penninx, Newcomers: Immigrants and Their Descendants in the
Netherlands, 1550-1995 (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1997).

7 See for a discussion of the developments leading to the events of 2002, 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.
8 James Kennedy, Nieuw Babylon in aanbouw: Nederland in de jaren zestig (Amsterdam:
Boom, 1995).

Chapter 10
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 joden-
vervolging: Een overzicht 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
werkelijkheid (Utrecht, Antwerpen 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 and had
actually been growing until 1944, since Dutch companies tended to cooperate rather that
commit sabotage.
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
impressive 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 (Amster-
dam: 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, not making any conscious choices to do either
“good” or “bad,” and therefore we should be very careful in judging behavior in retrospect.
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). Gerard Aalders analyzed in Nazi Looting:
The Plunder of Dutch Jewry During the Second World War (Oxford: Berg, 2004) why the
percentage of Jews deported from the Netherlands was considerable higher than from
other European nations.

Chapter 11
1 Museums all over the world have Dutch seventeenth-century art included in their collections.
In the Netherlands the collections 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 Maurits-
huis 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).
3 Vincent van Gogh, letter to Emile Bernard, Arles, c. July 25, 1888.
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 a beautiful location. All these museums have very good websites,
in Dutch as well as in English.

Chapter 12
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).
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 from 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 for the semi-permanent exhibition in the NAi. Among the contributions
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; 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).


 Chapter 13
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 TV-kanaal,” http://geschiedenis.vpro.nl.

Chapter 14
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 www.beperkthoudbaar.info.
8 Étienne Balibar, “Europe as Borderland” (The Alexander von Humboldt Lectures in Human
Geography, Radboud University Nijmegen, 2004).
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.
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).

Chapter 15
1 See for these rankings: Academic Ranking of World Universities, Institute of Higher
Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, www.arwu.org; Centre for Higher Education
Development (CHE) in Germany, www.che-concept.de; Centre for Science and
Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, the Netherlands, www.cwts.nl.
In each of these three rankings Utrecht University is positioned first within the Netherlands,
Amsterdam University or Leiden University mostly second and third.
2 Martin Mince, “US and UK fill top 10 places,” The Times Higher Education Supplement,
9 November 2007.

 3 Simon Marginson, Thomas Weko, Nicola Channon, Terttu Luukkonen and Jon Oberg,
Thematic Review of Tertiary Education: The Netherlands; Country Note (OECD, 2007).
4 Denny Borsboom, “Selectie aan universiteiten is lege huls” NRC Handelsblad, 6 September
2006, www.nrc.nl/opinie.
5 “Studenten negeren ranglijsten massaal”, NRC Handelsblad, 8 December 2005,
www.nrc.nl/dossiers/hoger_onderwijs.

Chapter 16
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
legend that once, when he met a naked beggar, he tore his cloak in two and gave away one
half.
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, forthcoming).
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:
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.

Chapter 17
1 The most comprehensive overview 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:
 Han Entzinger, “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.
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
Hagendoorn, When Ways of Life Collide: Multiculturalism and its Discontents in the
Netherlands (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
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 Jaco Dagevos and Mérove
Gijsberts, eds., Jaarrapport Integratie 2007 (The Hague: SCP, 2007); Jaarrapport Integratie
2008 (The Hague: CBS, 2008).
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
themselves 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 18
1 Geert Hofstede and Gert-Jan Hofstede, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005).
2 Edwin M. Schur, Crimes without Victims: Deviant Behavior and Public Policy (Englewood
Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965); Edwin M. Schur and Hugo Bedau, Victimless Crimes: Two Sides
of a Controversy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974).
3 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. 
 4 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 Methadone Maintenance
Treatment in Heroin Addicts in Two Randomised Trials,” British Medical Journal 330,
no. 7503 (June 2005): 1297-1300.
5 C. Chatwin, “Drug Policy Developments within the EU: The Destabilizing Effects of Dutch
and Swedish Drugs Policies,” British Journal of Criminology 43, no. 3 (2003): 567-582.
See also Boekhout van Solinge (2004).
6 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 should first be awaited.
7 The number of voluntary reports of unnatural death decreases gradually: 2,216 in 1999,
2,123 in 2000, 2,054 in 2001, 1,882 in 2002, 1,815 in 2003, 1,886 in 2004, and 1933 in 2005.
According to Griffiths et al. (2008) the number of voluntary reports reflects the actual
number of euthanasia decisions.
8 The top of the prosecution services (College van Procureurs-Generaal) announced in 2005
that palliative sedation followed by death would not be prosecuted if the guidelines of the
KNMG were followed. The number of this kind of physician-assisted death increased from
8,500 in 2001 to 9,700 in 2005.
9 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).
10 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 prize, and Prime Minister Wim Kok was given the
opportunity to address the G-7 in Denver.
11 Pikmeer I, 23/04/1996, and Pikmeer II, 06/01/1998.
12 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.

Chapter 19
1 This campaign website is only available in Dutch: www.nederlandleeftmetwater.nl.
The Dutch text of the ad: “Hoe doen we dat toch? Zo’n klein land. Zoveel water en een
klimaat dat verandert. En dan toch die balans houden. Knap lastig. Maar samen met u
zorgen we voor droge voeten en schoon water. Duik daar maar ’ns in.”
2 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).
3 A Different Approach to Water: Water Management Policy in the 21st Century (The Hague:
Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, 2000), www.waterland.net.
4 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.

5 Deltacommissie, Working Together with Water. A Living Land Builds for its Future; Findings
of the Deltacommissie 2008 (Deltacommissie, 2008), www.deltacommissie.nl.
6 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
education 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.
7 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).
8 T. Lohan, ed., Water Consciousness: How We All Have to Change to Protect our Most Critical
Resource (San Francisco: AlterNet Books, 2008).
9 TNS-NIPO, Nederlanders Zijn Niet Goed op de Hoogte van Waterproblematiek (Amsterdam:
TNS-NIPO, 2005), www.waterland.net.
10 Landelijke Werkgroep Evaluatie Watertoets, Watertoetsproces op Weg Naar Bestemming.
Landelijke Evaluatie Watertoets 2006 (The Hague: Ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat,
2006).
11 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 For foreign descriptions of the Netherlands see Robert Fruin, “De Nederlanders der
zeventiende eeuw door Engelschen geschetst [1861]” in Robert Fruin’s Verspreide Geschriften,
ed. P.J. Blok and P.L. Muller (The Hague: 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, “Engel-
schen 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 (The Hague: 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 February 1993.
10 Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within
(New York: Doubleday, 2006); Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam. The Death of Theo Van
Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (London: Atlantic Books, 2006); Paul Scheffer, Het land van
aankomst (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2007); Jaap Verheul, “The Dutch 9/11: A Transatlantic
Debate About Diversity and National Identity,” in Four Centuries of Dutch-American Relations,
1609-2009, eds. Hans Krabbendam, Kees van Minnen and Giles Scott Smith (Albany: State
University of New York, 2009), 1106-1116.
11 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 Wecheljahren,” Der Spiegel, 28 February 1994;
Sophie Elpers, Hollandser dan kaas: De geschiedenis van Frau Antje (Amsterdam: Amsterdam
University Press, 2009).


About the Authors

Wiljan van den Akker

is Professor of Modern Dutch Literature and Dean of the Faculty of Human­ities 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 Organisa­
tion for Scientific Research (NWO). He wrote a PhD thesis on the Dutch poet Martinus Nijhoff
and has lectured 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 N. 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 is frequently invited
as a guest lecturer at various universities around Europe, and teaches at the Utrecht University
Summer School. She has designed numerous courses related to Dutch culture, and authored
applied course readings, such as her recent monograph Kennismaken met Neder­l and (Getting
Acquainted with the Netherlands; University of Vienna, 2008).

David J. Bos
is Assistant Professor in History of Christianity at Utrecht University and Lecturer in Sociology
at the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Amsterdam.
Previously, he worked as the editor of Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid (published by the
Netherlands Insti­t ute of Mental Health and Addiction). Among his publications 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, forthcoming).

Freek J. Bruinsma
is Professor Emeritus of Law and Society at Utrecht University. His research interests are the
judiciary and the legal professions in a comparative per­spective. Among his publications in
English that are relevant for foreign readers are Dutch Law in Action (Ars Aequi Libri, 2003 –
a new edition is forthcoming) and (with David Nelken) Explorations in Legal Cultures (Reed
Business, 2007), a collection of cross-cultural case studies.

Rosemarie L. Buikema
is Professor of Art, Culture and Diversity at Utrecht University. She is Head of the Department
of Media and Culture Studies and chairs the Graduate Gender Program. She has published
widely in the field of feminist theory, post-colonial theory and memory studies. She currently
works in the field of transitional justice. Her latest book (co-edited with Iris van der Tuin) is
Doing Gender in Media, Art and Culture (Routledge, 2009). See also www.genderstudies.nl.


 Rob Dettingmeijer
is Assistant Professor of History and Theory of Architecture and Urban Planning at Utrecht
University. He is Vice President of the European Archi­tectural History Network. His PhD thesis
is entitled Open City, City Planning, Housing and Architecture between the Two World Wars in
Rotterdam (1988). He has lectured at numerous universities and participated in numerous
inter­­national meetings including Transfer and Metamorphosis: Architectural Modernity between
Europe and the Americas 1870-1970 (Zurich 2008). Among his recent publications is an article
about the “Werkbund” in Archis/Volume (2009). He has organized exhibitions at the Museum
Boymans-van-Beuningen (Rotterdam) and the Dutch Architectural Institute (NAi, Rotterdam)
and is currently preparing an exhibit on Rietveld for 2010.

Han B. Entzinger
is Professor of Migration and Integration Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is a
board member of the Research Committee on Migration of the International Sociological
Association and a member of advisory boards to several research institutes in a number of
countries. He regularly acts as a consultant to the European Commission, the Council of
Europe and various governments. His research interests include international migration,
integration, multiculturalism and the welfare state. Among his recent publi­cations are Migration
between States and Markets (Ashgate Publishing, 2004) and “Changing the Rules While the
Game is On: From Multiculturalism to Assimilation in the Netherlands,” in Migration, Citizen­
ship, Ethnos (Palgrave MacMillan, 2006).

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 “Paths of Normalization
after the Persecution of the Jews: The Netherlands, France, and West-Germany in the 1950s,” in
Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and
1950s (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and “The Paradoxes of Dutch History: Historiography
of the Holocaust in the Netherlands,” in Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence,
Challenges, Polemics and Achievements (Yad Vashem, 2008).

Lex Heerma van Voss

is a Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History in Amster­d am and
Professor of History of Labor and Labor Relations at Utrecht University. 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 dockworkers and textile workers,
and on the history of capitalism around the North Sea in the Dutch Golden Age.

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 foreign rela­t ions, the Cold War and the history of international relations in general.
His most recent publication is Foreign Policy of the Netherlands: The Dutch Role in World Politics
(Republic of Letters, 2009).

 Ghislain J.P. Kieft
is Assistant Professor of Art History and Iconology at Utrecht University. His research interests
involve paintings and artists of the Northern Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth
century, 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 Assistant Professor of History of International Relations at Utrecht University. His research
interests are the Second World War and international peace operations. 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 operations since the
Second World War (now in its completely revised third edition).

Wijnand W. Mijnhardt
is Professor of Comparative History of the Sciences and the Humanities, and Director 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) and (with Lynn Hunt and
Margaret Jacob) The Book that Enlight­ened Europe: Picart and Bernard’s Religious Ceremonies of
the World (Harvard University Press, 2010).

Marco Mostert
is Professor of Medieval Written Culture at Utrecht University. In addition to many publications
on the social history of literacy and communication, he has also written on the (early) medi­
eval history 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 Implications (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy 20, forthcoming). 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.

Ben C. de Pater
is Associate Professor of Human Geography and Urban and Regional Planning at Utrecht
University. 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), and is co-author and co-editor of a number of Dutch books.
Recently, he published (with B. Schoenmaker et al) Grote Atlas van Nederland/Compre­hensive
Atlas of the Netherlands 1930-1950 (Asia Maior/Atlas Maior, 2005), co-authored (with Otto
Verkoren) Noord-Amerika. Een geografie van de Verenigde Staten en Canada (Van Gorcum, 2007)
and published West-Europa. Hoofdlijnen van geografie en ruimtelijke planning (2009).

Maarten R. Prak
is Professor of Economic and Social History at Utrecht University, where he is also Director of
the Research Institute for History and Culture. He is currently working on projects concerning
citizenship in Europe before the French Revolution, and cultural industries. Among his recent
publications is The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: The Golden Age (Cambridge 
 Uni­ver­sity Press, 2005), which was also translated into Hungarian and Chinese. He co-edited
(with S.R. Epstein) Guilds, Innovation, and the European Econ­omy, 1400-1800 (Cambridge
Univer­sity Press, 2008).

Frans Ruiter
is Managing Director of the Research Institute for History and Culture of Utrecht University.
He wrote about the reception of North-American Post­modernism in Germany and the Nether­
lands in International 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 Neder­
land, 1840-1990 (De Arbeiderspers, 1996), a context-oriented literary history of modern Dutch
literature. Since autumn 2009 he is the co-director (with Wilbert Smulders) of an NWO post-
graduate research program which focuses on the moral dimension of autonomous literature.

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) Litera­t uur en Moderniteit in Nederland, 1840-1990 (De Arbeiderspers, 1996),
a con­text-oriented literary history of modern Dutch literature. Since autumn 2009 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 History and Art History at Utrecht University.
She worked at Christie’s in London and graduated in Art History from Utrecht University with
a thesis in Iconology. Previously she was Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, offering
courses on 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). He is
also Director of the James Boswell Institute at Utrecht University, the institute providing
language training and other courses to university staff and students. He previously served as
Director of Inter­national Relations at Utrecht University, and initiated the European Utrecht
Network, which facilitates student mobility between the participating insti­t utions. Between
2002 and 2004 he was president of the European Association for International Education
(EAIE).

Iris van der Tuin

is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at Utrecht University. She has published on feminist
theory and the philosophy of science in Australian Feminist Studies and the European Journal
of Women’s Studies. Her main field of interest is the new materialism. She has edited Doing
Gender in Media, Art and Culture (Routledge, 2009) with Rosemarie Buikema and is currently
working on The Engaged Humanities: Situating the Humanities within the Philosophy of Science
 with Rick Dolphijn.
 Rob van der Vaart
is Professor of Social Geography and Dean of University College, the honors college of Utrecht
University. From 2000 to 2004, he held a chair in Geography and Geographical Education at
Utrecht University. He represents Utrecht University in the Oxford Network, in which leading
universities such as Cornell, Stanford and Princeton work together to strengthen learning and
teaching in a research-intensive setting. He served on the Committee for the Development of
the Dutch Canon. In addition to specific attention to the application of geography, particularly
in secondary education, his research also focuses on the nature and effects of mental images of
the world.

Jan G.F. Veldhuis

chairs the Board of Quality Assurance Netherlands Universities and the NUFFIC and is a board
member of the Roosevelt Study Centre. He published numerous articles related to issues in
education, mostly in Dutch. 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. He served as
president of Utrecht University between 1986 and 2003, during which period he was awarded
an honorary doctorate by the University of Florida. He chaired the Board of the Fulbright
Centre, two national com­m ittees on secondary education and participated internationally in
evaluation committees of institutions of higher education.

Jaap Verheul
is Associate Professor of History and Director of the American Studies Pro­g ram 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 American percep­
tions of Europe and transatlantic cultural relations. He has published on Dutch and American
cultural history, 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).

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 include The Road to the Industrial Revolution: The European Economy in Global
Perspective, 1000-1800 (Brill, 2009) and (with Tine de Moor) “Girlpower. The European Marriage
Pattern (EMP) and Labour Markets in the North Sea Region in the Late Medieval and Early
Modern Period,” Economic History Review (forthcoming).


 Illustrations

2 Satellite photo of the Netherlands

9 Map of the Netherlands: GeoMedia, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University
10 Areal view of Utrecht from the Dom tower: Laurent Dambies
15 Train during thundershower: NS Beeldbank
18 Dutch soccer fans during game between the Netherlands and the Czech Republic,
2000: Pim Ras, Hollandse Hoogte
21 Princess Máxima: Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst
25 Dutch Parliament, with at left “Het Torentje,” the office of the prime minister
32 Greenhouse: Lidian Neeleman
34 Madeleen Driessen poses as Frau Antje: Nederlandse Zuivelbureau
38 Shell gas station near Amstelveen: Marco Hillen, Hollandse Hoogte.
44 Father and his children on a carrier-cycle (bakfiets): Kim Kaminski,
Nationale Beeldbank
47 Dutch holiday mobile home (caravan): Netfalls
52 Pastime fishing
56 Aerial view of new urban development near Amsterdam (Zuidas):
Mirande Phernambucq, Hollandse Hoogte
59 View of the Reguliersgracht on the corner with the Keizersgracht, in Amsterdam:
Massimo Catarinella
63 Port of Rotterdam: Teun van den Dries
69 Map of the Randstad in 2000: GeoMedia, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University
70 Peace Palace, The Hague: Jan Kranendonk
74 Poster by cartoonist Opland (alias Rob Wout) for peace demonstration in
Amsterdam, November 21, 1981
79 Dutch United Nations battalion Dutchbat II, Srebrenica, Bosnia:
Nederlands Instituut voor Militaire Historie
84 Interior of a 16th century printing shop, Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris
88 Remains of a Roman ship uncovered at Nieuwe Markt in Woerden, 2003:
Jean-Pierre Jans
93 Manuscript with the first sentence in the Dutch language, from the abbey of
Rochester: Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS
96 Jacob van Ruisdael, View of Haarlem from the northwest, with the bleaching fields in
the foreground (ca. 1670): Collection Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
100 Anonymous 17th-century watercolor of the Semper Augustus, famous for being
the most expensive tulip sold during tulip mania
103 Adriaen Thomasz. Key, Portrait of William of Orange, ca. 1579: Collection
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
108 First marriage of a gay couple in Amsterdam, April 1, 2001: Maurice Boyer,
Hollandse Hoogte
112 Michiel Jansz. van Mierevelt, Portrait of Hugo Grotius (1631): Collection
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
115 Frédéric Hexamer, Statue of Baruch de Spinoza (1880) at Paviljoensgracht,
The Hague: Roel Wijnants
120 Trèveszaal, Meeting hall of the Dutch Cabinet: Robin Utrecht, ANP Photo
122 Dutch public broadcasting associations
125 Pim Fortuyn accepts election as party leader of Leefbaar Nederland,
November 25, 2001: Robin Utrecht, ANP Photo
134 National Monument on Dam Square in Amsterdam on Commemoration Day,
May 4 2008: Koen van Weel, ANP Photo
138 Identity Card (Ausweis) of Antonius Johannes Klep: Collection Christ Klep
143 Anne Frank, May 1942: AFF Basel/AFS Amsterdam
148 The painting of reproductions of Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh in Japan


 150 Gerrit Dou, The Dropsical Woman (1663): Musée du Louvre, Paris
151 Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-Portrait (1640): National Gallery, London
152 Rembrandt van Rijn, The Blinding of Samson (1636): Städelsches Museum,
Frankfurt
153 Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring (ca. 1665-1667): Collection
Mauritshuis, The Hague
155 Anton Mauve, Sheperdess with sheep (1885-1886): Collection Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam
156 Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889): Courtauld Institute
Galleries, London
159 Piet Mondriaan, Composition A: Composition with Black, Red, Grey, Yellow and Blue
(1920): Collection Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome
162 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
164 The Academiegebouw, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Utrecht: Rutger Hermsen
165 The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Postcard ca. 1895
166a The Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam
166b Spaarndammerbuurt, Amsterdam: Rob Dettingmeijer
167 Rietveld-Schröder House, Utrecht: Collection Centraal Museum, Utrecht
169 Spangen, Rottterdam: Alvelyday
170 Van Nelle factory, Rottterdam: Van Nelle Ontwerpfabriek
173 Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam: Cor Mulder, ANP photo
174 Brandevoort, near Helmond
175 Main Hall of the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam: Tilo Driessen
178 Willem Frederik Hermans and Gerard Reve at Waterlooplein, Amsterdam in 1954:
Cas Oorthuys, Nederlands Fotomuseum
183 Cover of Multatuli, Max Havelaar: Pandora Publishers
187 Cover of The Assault (English Translation of De Aanslag) by Harry Mulisch:
Pantheon Publishers
190 Glamour Stiletto Run, March 6, 2008, P.C.Hooftstraat, Amsterdam:
Pim Ras, Hollandse Hoogte
194 Joke Smit-Kool, 1972: ANP Photo
197 Dolle Mina protest “Baas in Eigen Buik,” Utrecht, 1970: Spaarnestad Photo,
Hollandse Hoogte
202 Senate Hall, Academiegebouw, Utrecht University, December 7, 2007:
Ivar Pel, Utrecht University
207 Aletta Jacobs as a new graduate of medicine: University Library, University of
Groningen
212 Entrance gate, University College Utrecht: Michael Kooren, Utrecht University
216 New Church, Amsterdam: Lisa Dröes en Bart de Vries
223 Interior of Portuguese Synagogue, Amsterdam: Massimo Catarinella
226 Mobarak Mosque, The Hague: Radio Nederland Wereldomroep
230 Women with headscarves, Amsterdam, 2009: Evert Elzinga, ANP Photo
234 Indonesian rice table (rijsttafel): Gary Lim
239 Ahmed Aboutaleb, mayor of Rotterdam: The Municipality of Rotterdam
242 Police officers on mountain bikes, Dam Square, Amsterdam: John Schaffer,
Hollandse Hoogte
246 Coffeeshop Checkpoint, Terneuzen: Marcel van den Bergh
250 Art storage, CBK, Rotterdam
254 Dike houses at Rozewerf, a small community in the town of Marken:
Klaas Lingbeek-van Kranen
256 Aerial view of Beemster polder: Peter Bolhuis, Pandion
260 Dreischor, Zeeland, Februari 1953
266 Madurodam miniature city, The Hague: Madurodam
272 Cover of Mary Mapes Dodge, Hans Brinker and The Silver Skates
275 Sebastian Rügen, Frau Antje. Erich Wiedemann, “Frau Antje in Den Wecheljahren”,
Der Spiegel, 28 Feb 1994


 Index

Name Index Cohen, Job, 239 Groote, Geert, 219

Cormon, Fernand, 155 Groot, Hugo de (Grotius), 112-114,
Aboutaleb, Ahmed, 239, 240 Costera Meijer, Irene, 196 222
Adriaansens, Hans, 211 Couperus, Louis, 179 Gugel, Eugen, 164
Agt, Dries van, 72, 73 Cuyp, Aelbert, 273 Guicciardini, Lodovico, 91, 268,
Alba, Duke of, 103 Cuypers, Eduard, 166 277
Arets, Wiel, 163 Cuypers, Pierre, 153, 165 Hall, Peter, 64, 65
Ariosto, Ludovico, 151 Daalder, Hans, 123 Hals, Frans, 157
Arminius, Jacobus, 221 Dagobert I, King, 88, 89, 218 Heinich, Nathalie, 183, 186
Augustus, Emperor, 86 Dahl, Robert, 121 Heriold, 89
Bagehot, Walter, 23 d’Ancona, Hedy, 194 Hermans, Willem Frederik,
Bakema, Jaap, 172 De Gaulle, Charles, 75 13, 179-189
Balkenende, Jan Peter, 24, 78, Defoe, Daniel, 269 Hertzberger, Herman, 173, 174
81, 131 Descartes, René, 106, 113-115, 269 Hirsi Ali, Ayaan, 276
Beatrix, Queen, 20, 21 Diderot, Denis, 270 Hitler, Adolf, 137, 140, 142, 187
Bekker, Balthasar, 113 Dodge, Mary Mapes, 272 Hofstede, Geert, 244
Bergman, Sunny, 192, 198-200 Doesburg, Theo van, 168 Honthorst, Gerrit, 151
Berkel, Ben van, 163 Dou, Gerrit, 150 Hoogstad, Jan, 163
Berlage, H.P., 165, 166, 169, 175 Douwes Dekker, Eduard. Hubrecht, Henri, 175
Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh, 227 See Multatuli Huizinga, Johan, 179
Blocher, Christoph, 130 Drees, Willem, 51 Huygens, Christiaan, 106
Blom, Piet, 173 Drucker, Wilhelmina, 197 Huysum, Jan van, 150
Boerhave, Herman, 206 Dudok, W.M., 170 Irene, Princess, 20
Boeyinga, B.T., 167 Duiker, Jan, 172 Irving, Washington, 271
Bolkestein, Frits, 236 Eesteren, Cornelis van, 168, 171 Israel, Jonathan, 277
Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon, 19 Eichmann, Adolf, 187 Jacobs, Aletta Henriëtta, 207, 208
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 19, 20, Ephimenco, Sylvain, 277 John XXIII, Pope, 222
158, 224 Erasmus, Desiderius, 93, 285 John Paul II, Pope, 226
Boniface (Bonifatius), 89, 218 Esping-Andersen, Gøsta, 45, 46 Jomanda, 227
Boucke, Laurie, 277 Eyck, Aldo van, 172, 173 Jong, Lou de, 141
Bourbon Parma, Hugo de, 20 Floris IV, Count, 24 Juliana, Queen, 20, 21, 136
Braak, Menno ter, 185 Floris V, Count, 24 Kagan, Robert, 72
Brinkman, J.A., 171 Fortuyn, Pim, 28, 78, 121, 125, Kempis, Thomas à, 219
Brinkman, Michiel, 170 127-131, 231, 238, 240, 276 Kennedy, James, 132
Bruin, Pi de, 25 Foulkes, Charles, 135 Keynes, John Maynard, 36
Busken Huet, Conrad, 117, 224 Frank, Anne, 142, 143 Klerk, Michel de, 166
Butler, Samuel, 269 Friedan, Betty, 194 Kohl, Christoph, 174
Caesar, Julius, 86, 87 Friso, Prince, 20 Kok, Wim, 80, 121, 125, 127, 128,
Caland, Pieter, 64 Fukuyama, Francis, 249 236, 287
Calvin, John, 220, 221 Galilei, Galileo, 106 Koolhaas, Rem, 163, 173
Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi Gendt, A.L. van, 165 Krier, Rob, 174
da, 151 Gesner, Conrad, 99 Kundera, Milan, 186
Chapman Catt, Carry, 207 Godefrid, 90 Kuyper, Abraham, 225, 285
Charlemagne, 89 Goekoop-de Jong van Beek and Laqueur, Walter, 74, 274
Charles V, 101-103 Donk, Cecile, 191-193, 200 Lawrence, D.H., 183
Chevalier, Tracy, 154 Goens, Greek Rijklof Michael Le Corbusier, 172
Claus, Prince, 20, 279 van, 117 Leeghwater, Jan Adriaenszoon,
Cleveringa, Rudolph, 140 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 270 256
Clovis, King, 88 Gogh, Theo van, 131, 231, 238, Leeuw, C.H. van der, 171, 172
Clusius, Carolus, 99 239, 276 Leeuwenhoek, Anthony van, 106
Cock, Hendrick de, 224 Gogh, Vincent van, 13, 149, 154-158 Lentz, Jacobus, 138, 139
Coenen, Jo, 174 Gorbachev, Michael, 74 Lijphart, Arend, 123, 286


Liudger, 89 Rockefeller, John D., 38 Willem. See William
Lokhorst, J. van, 164 Röell, Herman Alexander, 114 Willem-Alexander, Prince, 21
Lothar I, 89 Rosenberg, Léon, 168 William of Holland, Count, 90
Louis the Pious, Emperor, 89, 90 Rügen, Sebastian, 275, 276 William I, King, 20, 224
Louis XIV, Emperor, 114 Rushdie, Salman, 227, 236 William I, Stadholder (William of
Lubbers, Ruud, 72, 74, 125 Ruyter, Michiel Adriaensz de, Orange), 20, 102-104, 270, 271
Luns, Joseph, 72 152, 221 William II, Stadholder, 102
Luther, Martin, 93, 220 Sanders, T., 165 William III, King, 183
Maaskant, H.A., 171 Schama, Simon, 277 William III, Stadholder, 102, 269
Maddison, Angus, 35 Scheffer, Paul, 237 Willibrord, Clemens, 89, 218
Marijnissen, Jan, 131 Schiller, Friedrich, 270 Winkelman, Henri, 136
Marvell, Andrew, 268 Schröder, Truus, 168 Witt, Johan de, 102
Mary II, Queen of England, 269 Schweitzer, Albert, 187 Witteveen, W.G., 171
Matlock, David, 199 Servatius, 94, 218 Wrigley, E.A., 98
Maurice, Stadholder, 102, 104 Seyss-Inquart, Arthur, 137 Zahn, Ernest, 277
Maurits. See Maurice Shakespeare, William, 16, 268
Mauve, Anton, 154, 155 Shorto, Russell, 45, 46, 49, 51,
Máxima, Princess, 21, 22, 286 55, 277
McEwan, Ian, 274 Simonsz, Menno, 220 Subject Index
Meijer, Lodewijk, 114 Sitte, Camillo, 169
Meijer, Maaike, 196 Smit-Kool, Joke, 193-195 9/11. See terrorist attacks
Merseburg, Thietmar of, 94 Spinoza, Baruch de, 14, 106, ABN-AMRO (bank), 42
Meulenbelt, Anja, 195, 196, 200 113-116 abortion, 13, 109, 194, 244, 267,
Michelangelo, 151 Steur, A. van der, 170 274
Mieris, Frans van, 150 Stevin, Simon, 106 Academiegebouw (University Hall,
Millett, Kate, 195 Stratenus, Willem, 206 Utrecht University), 163
Mondrian, Piet, 11, 158, 159 Stuers, Victor de, 164, 175 accommodation, 121, 123-125, 132,
Montesquieu, 116, 270 Stuyvesant, Peter, 271 139
Montezinos, David, 223 Sweerts, Emanuel, 100 Afghanistan, 78
Motley, John Lothrop, 271, 272, Swift, Jonathan, 269 Afsluitdijk (closing dam), 257, 259
277 Tacitus, Publius Cornelius, agriculture, 33-35, 37, 91, 97, 98,
Mulisch, Harry, 179, 187 217, 267 100, 125, 137, 208, 209, 231,
Multatuli (Eduard Douwes Tarantino, Quentin, 274 258, 276
Dekker), 117, 179, 182, 183 Temple, William, 269, 277 Ahmaddiyya movement, 226
Mussert, Anton, 140 Terbrugghen, Hendrick, 151 Alexanderpolder, 172, 283
Napoleon. See Bonaparte Thorbecke, Johan Rudolph, Algemeene Nederlandsche Diamant-
Nieukerken, J.J. van, 175 207, 224 bewerkersbond (ANDB), 166
Nooteboom, Cees, 179 Tijen, W. van, 171 Algemene Bijstandswet (General
Obama, Barack, 239 Tinbergen, Jan, 41 Relief Act), 49, 50
Oldenbarneveldt, Johan van, Titian, 151 Algemene Ouderdomswet (General
102, 112 Traa, C. van, 171 Pensions Act, AOW), 51, 52, 54
Oosterwijck, Maria van, 150 Uyl, Joop den, 72, 77, 78, 125, 245 Alkmaar, 66
Oud, J.J.P., 169, 170 Verdonk, Rita, 29, 130, 131 allochtoon (non-indigenous), 126,
Pauw, Adriaen, 100 Verhagen, Maxime, 131 232, 233, 236, 238, 239, 241, 286
Philip II, King, 103, 104, 276, Vermeer, Johannes, 11, 97, Almere, 66, 68, 126, 280
270, 271 152-154, 158 Amersfoort, 62
Phillips, Derek, 277 Viollet-Le-Duc, E.E., 164, 165 Amstel (river), 60
Pius X, Pope, 226 Vlugt, L.C. van der, 171, 172 Amsterdam, 24, 25, 45, 48, 57-59,
Pius XI, Pope, 226 Voetius, Gisbert, 113 62, 63, 65-69, 73, 92, 98,
Pronk, Jan, 77 Vogelaar, Ella, 131 100-102, 105, 106, 114, 115, 129,
Rademakers, Fons, 187 Voltaire, 116, 270 135, 139, 141, 142, 149, 151-154,
Reagan, Ronald, 74 Washington, George, 271 157, 158, 165, 166, 168, 169,
Regius, Henricus, 206 Watson, Robert, 270 171, 172, 174, 175, 182, 193, 197,
Rembrandt van Rijn, 13, 97, Webber, Peter, 154 206-208, 210, 212, 217, 219, 220,
149-154, 157, 158 Weber, Max, 185 222, 223, 225, 232, 233, 239,
Rentes de Carvalho, José, 277 Werff, Adriaan van der, 150 243, 246, 247, 252, 256, 257,
Reve, Gerard, 13, 179-182, 184, White, Colin, 277 274, 280, 283
187-189 Wibaut, F.M., 167 Amsterdam Airport Schiphol,
Reve, Karel van het, 15 Wilders, Geert, 29, 130, 131, 64-66, 252, 257
Richter, Jean Paul, 183 231, 239 Amsterdam Stock Exchange,
Rietveld, Gerrit, 11, 167, 168, Wilhelmina, Queen, 20, 25, 165, 166, 175
172, 176 136, 138, 282 Anabaptism, 220


ANDB. See Algemeene Nederlandse Brussels, Belgium, 65, 103, 183, conservatism, 45, 46, 71, 72, 74,
Diamantbewerkersbond 210 77, 122, 124, 125, 169, 170, 181,
Anglo-Dutch War, 268 Burgundians, 101 225, 226, 236, 244, 273-275
Anglo-Saxon, 39, 42, 85, 89, 218 Cabinet of Ministers. Constitution, 12, 19, 20-23, 26, 29,
anti-immigration, 78, 130, 231, 240 See Ministerraad 76, 77, 102, 104, 109, 123, 207,
Antilles. See Netherlands Antilles Calvinism, 13, 104-107, 110, 111, 227, 279
anti-Semitism, 141 113, 114, 122, 217, 220, 221, 224, of 1848, 22, 208, 224
AOW. See Algemene Ouderdomswet 225, 268 Council of State, See Raad van
Arbeitseinsatz (forced labor), 141 Caribbean, 22, 98 State
architecture, 13, 59, 163-177, 271, Carolingian Empire, 89, 90, CPB. See Centraal Planbureau
272 94, 95 Criminal Code, 248
Arminians. See Remonstrants Cartesianism, 113, 114 Crown, the, 22, 23
Arnhem, 58, 62, 91, 105, 143 castellum (fortress), 87, 88, 163 cruise missiles, 72-74
ARP. See political parties, Anti Catholicism, 13, 20, 46, 48, 49, CU. See political parties,
Revolutionaire Partij 103-105, 110, 122-126, 128, 164, Christenunie
Aruba, 22 165, 179, 181, 182, 185, 188, 189, D66. See political parties,
Ashkenazim, 101, 105, 223 208, 218, 221, 222, 224-227, Democraten 66
assimilation, 13, 29, 233, 235, 238 244, 247, 271, 283, 285, 286 Damrak, Amsterdam, 165
atheism, 114 CDA. See political parties, Christen Danube (river), 87
autochtoon (indigenous), 127, 131, Democratisch Appèl De Bonte Was (feminist publishing
233, 238, 239, 241 Centraal Planbureau (Central house), 198
avant-garde, 170, 172, 184-186, 188 Planning Bureau, CPB), 40, 41 De Gids (magazine), 193
Baltic Sea, 91 Central Station, Amsterdam, 165 De Stijl (movement), 167, 168
Batavian Republic, 19 Checkpoint (coffeeshop), 246, 247 De Volkskrant (newspaper), 128
Batavians, 85, 87, 267 child benefit. See kinderbijslag Delft, 58, 98, 99, 104, 112, 164, 209
bedrijfsvereniging (industrial Christian-Democracy, 27, 28, Delta Works, 259
insurance board), 53 72-74, 78, 123, 125, 131, 231, democracy, 12, 19, 26, 29, 39, 40,
Beeldende Kunstenaarsregeling 236, 244, 247, 286 75, 76, 78, 80, 116, 128, 137, 145,
(art subsidy, BKR), 250 Christianity, 27, 85, 86, 89, 92, 176, 225, 237, 238, 264, 271
Beeldenstorm (iconoclastic fury), 94, 95, 112-115, 117, 118, 163, democratization, 123, 152, 205,
220 164, 181, 217-227, 272, 285, 286 206, 211, 225, 244
Beemster polder, 256, 257 CHU. See political parties, Den Bosch, 62
Begijnhof, Amsterdam, 219 Christelijk Historische Unie Den Haag (The Hague), 21, 23,
beleid (policy), 243-245, 247-252, civic integration. See inburgering 39, 57, 58, 62, 65, 67, 72, 73, 77,
286 climate change, 68, 255, 261-263, 78, 81, 102, 114, 115, 135, 136,
Belgium, 15, 42, 53, 75, 126, 130, 265 139, 154, 158, 169, 174, 207, 208,
140, 141, 143, 144, 179, 247, coalition, 19, 23, 24, 28, 29, 41, 72, 226, 233
260, 273 73, 78, 114, 125, 127, 131, 217, Department of Culture, Recreation
Benelux, 75 236, 238, 243, 244, 245, 252. and Social Work, 126
Betuweroute (railway line), 64, 69 See also government Der Spiegel (magazine), 275
Bevrijdingsdag (Liberation Day), Coalition Project 1012, 243, 244, development aid, 71, 76-78
135 252 development cooperation, 77, 80
Bible, 114, 222, 224, 225 coffeeshops, 222, 245-247, 274 Deventer, 90, 94, 105, 173, 219, 285
bible-belt, 221, 271 Cold War, 72, 73, 77, 232 Devotio Moderna. See Modern
Bijlmermeer, Amsterdam, 172 College van Bestuur (University Devotion
bijstand (welfare), 50 Executive Board), 206 Directorate-General for Public
Binnenhof, The Hague, 24-26 Colonial Museum. See Koninklijk Works and Water Management.
BKR. See Beeldende Kunstenaars- Instituut voor de Tropen See Rijkswaterstaat
regeling colonialism, 37, 39, 57, 60, 63, 71, discrimination, 12, 241
Bologna Process, 203 72, 76, 77, 99, 175, 176, 181-183, diversity, 13, 104-106, 110, 126,
Bosnia, 78-80 232-234 201, 209, 210, 236, 239, 273, 277
bourgeoisie, 40, 101, 107, 150, Commentary (magazine), 274 Dock Worker (Dokwerker, statue),
165, 174, 180, 183-186, 188, Commissaris van de Koning 141
189, 270 (Commissioner of the King), 24 Dodenherdenking (National
Boymans Van Beuningen Museum, communism, 28, 41, 77, 125, 137, Memorial Day), 135
Rotterdam, 170 188, 217 Dokkum, 89, 218
Brabant, 66, 67, 90, 103, 181, 209, Community art. See gemeenschaps- Dolle Mina (feminist group),
259 kunst 194, 197, 198
Brainpark (Utrecht University), Concordat of Worms, 90 Dom church, Utrecht, 219
163 Congress of Vienna, 208 Dordrecht, 58, 62, 67, 91, 105, 221
Brandevoort, 174 consensus, 39-42, 51, 81, 114, 122, Dordrecht Synod. See Synod of Dort
Breda, 62, 103 126, 129, 132, 184, 249, 267 Dorestad, 88, 89, 91


Drenthe, 61 81, 86, 90, 91, 94, 97, 107, Church, Gereformeerd
drugs, 13, 109, 173, 243-248, 267, 109, 116-120, 200, 268, 276, Germania (historical Germany),
273, 274, 276 277 86, 87, 89, 90, 94, 101, 103, 217,
Dutch East India Company. economy, 33-35, 39-42, 63, 64, 218, 267
See Vereenigde Oost-Indische 72, 97, 98, 107 Germany, 16, 20, 33-35, 39, 40,
Compagnie education, 114, 203, 205, 209, 42, 52, 57, 64, 71, 75, 76, 79, 85,
Dutch East Indies, 37, 71, 98, 137, 210, 213 86, 102, 103, 107, 110, 113, 116,
166, 175, 179, 181, 182, 232, 233. Enlightenment, 113, 114, 116 117, 124, 126, 135-144, 150, 171,
See also Indonesia European Recovery Program, 36 173, 179, 182, 186, 187, 203, 209,
Dutch Reformed. See Protestant European Union (EU), 34, 36, 210, 231, 247, 269, 270, 273, 275,
Church, Hervormd 67, 71, 75, 76, 78, 80, 81, 209, 276, 287
Dutch Republic. See Republic of 210, 232, 236, 238, 274 globalization, 12, 37, 41, 42, 54,
the Seven United Netherlands immigration, 231-233, 235, 236, 64, 214
Dutch Revolt, 12, 20, 102-104, 240, 241 Glorious Revolution (1688), 269
112, 164, 176, 220, 224, 268, integration, 75, 76, 78, 80 Golden Age, 12, 13, 33, 35, 47, 48,
270-272 Maastricht treaty, 209 57, 59, 60, 97-107, 109, 116,
Dutch West India Company. monarchies in, 19, 22 165, 175, 231, 258, 270
See West-Indische Compagnie religion, 104, 105, 110, 112, 117, Gouda, 262
economy, 12, 33-43, 47, 49-51, 53, 118, 217-220, 223, 225-227 government
54, 64, 75, 77, 78, 97, 99, 116, urbanization, 57, 58, 61, 68, 107, Balkenende, 81, 131, 238, 240,
126, 180, 204, 236, 252, 264, 110, 114 244, 247
268, 269, 282 welfare state compared, 46, 47, Den Uyl, 72, 77, 78, 245
education, 13, 34, 37, 49, 92, 106, 55, 105, 106 Kok, 80, 287
107, 117, 118, 123, 129, 163, 164, euthanasia, 13, 109, 241, 247, Lubbers, 72, 74, 125
184, 188, 192, 194, 195, 197, 199, 248, 267, 274, 287 Van Agt, 72, 73
203-214, 223, 224, 226, 233, 236, Evangelicalism, 217 grachtengordel (Amsterdam Canal
237, 285, 288 Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging Ring), 60
Eerste Kamer (Senate or upper (FNV), 123 ’s Gravenhage, 24. See also
house), 26 feminism, 13, 191-201, 207 Den Haag
egalitarianism, 203, 210, 244, 249, First World War, 49, 136, 171, Great Depression, 34, 35
270 180, 207 Groene Hart (Green Heart), 60-62
Egmond, 85, 94 Flanders, 86, 90, 179, 220, 259 Groningen, 58, 61, 101, 169, 206,
Eighty Year War. See Dutch Revolt Flevoland, 61, 62, 68, 257, 280 208, 210
Eindhoven, 58, 61, 62, 209, 211 flood, 123, 136, 144, 255-265, 272 Groothandelsgebouw (Wholesale
Elseviers Weekblad (magazine), 129 Flood, the Great (1953), 259, 260 Building), 171
emancipation, 13, 118, 122, 164, FNV. See Federatie Nederlandse Gross Domestic Product (GDP),
192, 195, 208, 235, 240 Vakbeweging 35, 37, 47, 50, 52, 77, 249
emigration, 117, 181, 224, 232 France, 16, 19, 20, 33, 52, 64, 75, Guelders (historical Gelderland),
Engelandvaarders (resistance), 140 76, 85, 88, 90, 92, 98, 101-103, 90
England, 20, 34, 89, 91, 98, 107, 107, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 136, guest worker, 61, 226, 232, 235, 239
110, 116, 136, 137, 140, 169, 179, 144, 150, 152, 155-157, 179, 182, Haarlem, 58, 62, 67, 68, 86, 100,
182, 207, 211, 268, 269, 271 184, 208, 224, 231, 233, 236, 116, 175, 272
Enkhuizen, 117 247, 269, 270, 274 Haarlemmermeer (lake), 65, 257
Enlightenment, 112-114, 116, 117, Franeker, 114, 206 Habsburg Empire, 99, 101-103,
184, 185, 217, 227, 270 Franks, the, 85, 87-89, 94, 218 105, 267
Enschede, 209, 251, 287 Frau Antje, 275, 276 Hall of Knights. See Ridderzaal
equality, 121, 192, 193, 200, 201, Friesland, 34, 61, 99, 101, 206, Hans Brinker, 272, 273
203, 207, 210, 213, 237, 244 225, 258 Harderwijk, 206
Erasmus (Student Mobility Frisia (historical Friesland), HAVO. See Hoger Algemeen
Program), 209 85, 86, 88-92, 94, 95, 218 Voortgezet Onderwijs
Essalam Mosque, 227 gedoogbeleid (administrative HBO. See Hoger Beroeps Onderwijs
ethnicity, 28, 66, 121, 126, 213, 225, policy of tolerance), 251, 252 HBS. See Hogere Burgerschool
227, 232, 233, 235-237, 240, 251 Gelderland, 61, 62, 101, 206 health care, 45, 49, 209, 247
ethnocentrism, 200 gemeenschapskunst (Community Heerlen, 58, 61
Ets Haim (Jewish seminary), 223 Art), 166 Heineken, 276
Europe, 12, 19, 22, 68, 71-75, gemeenteraden (municipal Helmond, 61, 174
98-101, 104, 106, 107, 109, 112, councils), 26, 29 Hervormd. See Protestant Church,
116, 132, 137, 138, 164, 174, 176, General Pensions Act. Hervormd
200, 201, 203, 205, 246, 247, See Algemene Ouderdomswet Het Vrije Volk (newspaper), 128
249, 255, 268, 270, 271, 273, 274 General Relief Act. See Algemene hidden churches, 105, 222
Dutch position in, 22, 33, 39, 42, Bijstandswet Hilversum, 170
46, 47, 54, 61, 75, 76, 78, 80, Gereformeerd. See Protestant Hoek van Holland, 64


hofjes (almshouses), 48 Interkerkelijk Vredesberaad (IKV), Livraria Montezinos (Jewish
Hoge Raad (Supreme Court of 227 library), 223
the Netherlands), 248, 251 Intermediate-Range Nuclear LN. See political parties, Leefbaar
Hoger Algemeen Voortgezet Forces Treaty, 74 Nederland
Onderwijs (senior general International Criminal Court Loevestein castle, 112
secondary education, HAVO), (ICC), 78 LPF. See political parties, Lijst Pim
204 International Information Center Fortuyn
Hoger Beroeps Onderwijs (higher and Archives of the Women’s Lutheranism, 103, 110, 220, 222,
professional education, HBO), Movement (IIAV), 208 224, 225
204 Islam, 13, 79, 80, 118, 119, 121, Maas (river), 85, 88, 94, 255, 261
Hogere Burgerschool (Higher Civil 123, 130, 131, 209, 226, 227, 231, Maastricht, 58, 91, 94, 95, 174, 205,
School, HBS), 207-209 236-241, 276 209, 210, 212, 218
hogeschool (institution for higher Japan, 33, 35-37, 71, 98, 137, 152 mahamad (church council), 223
professional education), 209, Jews, 48, 101, 105, 106, 110, 113, Malaysia, 37
210 115, 138-142, 207, 222, 223, 225, Mandement, 124
Hollanditis, 73, 74, 274 231, 282 Man-Vrouw-Maatschappij (Man,
homosexuality, 109, 118, 141, 181, John Adams Institute, 45 Woman, Society, MVM), 194,
182, 244 Jugendstil, 185 195, 198
Hoofddorp, 65 Kiefhoek, Rotterdam, 170 market economy, 42, 264
Hoog Catharijne, Utrecht, 172, 174 kinderbijslag (child benefit), 45 Marshall Plan (European Recovery
Hoorn, 66 Kingdom of Holland (1806-1810), 19 Program), 35, 36, 72
House of Representatives. Kingdom of the Netherlands, mass culture, 118, 184, 185, 273
See Tweede Kamer 22, 144, 226 Mauritshuis Museum, The Hague,
Housing Act, 167, 168 KIT. See Koninklijk Instituut voor 154, 158, 282
Huguenots, 101 de Tropen media, 22, 28, 123, 128, 130, 135,
humanism, 93, 114, 164, 209, 217 KNMG. See Royal Dutch Medical 154, 184, 188, 197, 267, 276
Hunger Winter (1944-45), 144 Association Mediterranean, 85, 94, 126, 172,
ICC. See International Criminal Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day), 21 232
Court Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen Mennonites, 220, 222
IIAV. See International Informa- (Royal Tropical Institute, KIT), Middelburg, 106, 171, 205, 212, 283
tion Center and Archives of 175, 176 Middle Ages, 34, 39, 40, 85-95, 97,
the Women’s Movement Kosovo, 78, 99 101, 169, 219, 257
IJssel (river), 90, 91, 261, 285 Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, migration, 12, 61, 65, 89, 106, 231,
IJsselmeer (lake), 68, 257, 259, 158, 283 232, 234, 238, 239
275, 280 KVP. See political parties, minister president (prime minister),
IKV. See Interkerkelijk Vredes- Katholieke Volkspartij 19, 23, 24, 26, 29, 74, 80, 121,
beraad labor productivity, 34, 36, 46, 47 125, 130, 131, 136, 207, 250,
immigration, 13, 22, 29, 59, 66, 78, labor union. See trade union 286, 287
101, 105-107, 110, 115, 116, 118, lale (tulip), 99 ministerial responsibility, 22
123, 126, 127, 129-131, 172, 231- land reclamation, 85, 90, 91, 94, Ministerraad (Cabinet of
235, 267, 271, 272, 276, 277, 256-258. See also polder Ministers), 23, 136, 252
280, 285, 286 Latin, 86, 87, 91, 92, 94, 219 minorities, 107, 111, 118, 121, 122,
inburgering (civic integration), 236 Leiden, 58, 62, 67, 87, 99, 106, 126, 131, 136, 213, 220-222, 225,
indigenous. See autochtoon 114-116, 140, 203, 206, 208, 210, 232, 235, 236, 237, 240, 277, 283
Indische Nederlanders (Indonesian 212, 213, 221, 270 Mobarak Mosque, 226
Dutch), 234 Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht, 60 Modern Devotion (Devotio
Indonesia, 37-39, 71, 72, 76, 98, Lelystad, 66 Moderna), 93, 219
176, 179, 182, 226, 232-235 liberalism, 27, 28, 39, 45, 46, 50, modernism, 39, 97, 107, 167, 173,
industrialization, 37, 61, 118, 185, 64, 71, 72, 74, 77, 78, 109, 122, 174, 179, 180, 184-189, 225,
271 124, 125, 127, 131, 169, 182-185, 271, 275
industry, 34-38, 40, 41, 53, 57, 61, 195, 207, 224, 236, 237, 244 modernization, 33, 35, 57, 97, 102,
62, 64, 65, 78, 97, 98, 101, 106, Liberation Day. See Bevrijdingsdag 118, 176, 185, 206, 209, 262
107, 116, 124, 125, 137, 144, 158, Lijnbaan, Rotterdam, 171, 173 monarchy, 12, 19-25, 29, 114, 220,
166, 171, 174, 175, 184, 198, 199, Limburg, 61, 67, 181, 209 228, 269
208, 209, 231, 260, 267, 268, limes (Roman border), 86-88 Monnickendam, 220
271-273, 276 literacy, 86, 87, 90-92, 94, 95, 106, Morocco, 61, 121, 131, 226, 227,
Inquisition, 104, 224 110, 206, 219 232, 235-241
integration, 13, 66, 99, 101, 107, literature, 13-16, 89, 92-94, 110, Mosae Traiectum, 218
118, 119, 123, 124, 127, 131, 227, 117, 143, 179-189, 193, 269, 271, mosque, 217, 226, 227
233, 235-241, 251, 258, 264, 277, 272, 277 Ms (magazine), 195
285, 286 Livable Rotterdam. See political multiculturalism, 12, 66, 121, 127,
Integration Policy, 236, 238 parties, Leefbaar Rotterdam 128, 130, 131, 231-241, 251, 276


municipal councils. See gemeente- North Atlantic Treaty Organiza- policy. See beleid
raden tion (NATO), 71-75, 78, 136 political parties, 19, 23, 24, 28, 29,
Muziekcentrum, Utrecht, 174 North Sea, 68, 87, 89, 140, 255, 41, 52, 123, 124, 126, 128, 167,
MVM. See Man-Vrouw-Maatschappij 257, 259, 267 194, 217, 235
NAAW. See Nationaal Bestuurs- North Brabant. See Noord-Brabant Anti Revolutionaire Partij
akkoord Water North Holland. See Noord-Holland (Anti-Revolutionary Party,
Nagele, 172, 283 NSB. See Nationaal-Socialistische ARP), 122, 124
NAi. See Dutch Architecture Beweging Christelijk Historische Unie
Institute Nuenen, 156 (Christian Historical Union,
Nationaal Bestuursakkoord Water numerus fixus, 204 CHU), 124
(National Administrative Agree- NVV. See Nederlands Verbond van Christen Democratisch Appèl
ment on Water, NBW), 264 Vakverenigingen (Christian Democratic Party,
Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging O.M.A. See Office of Metropolitan CDA), 27, 28, 72-74, 123, 125,
(National-Socialist Movement, Architecture 217, 231, 236
NSB), 140 occupation Christenunie (Christian Union,
National Administrative Agree- French, 19, 152, 208 CU), 27
ment on Water. See Nationaal German, 20, 76, 124, 136-144, Democraten 66 (Democrats 66,
Bestuursakkoord Water 186 D66), 27, 195
National American Woman Suf- OECD. See Organization for Elderly People’s Party, 28
frage Association (NAWSA), Economic Cooperation and Groen Links (Green Left), 28, 125
207 Development Katholieke Volkspartij (Catholic
National Monument, Dam Square, Office of Metropolitan Architec- People’s Party, KVP), 124, 125
135, 228 ture (O.M.A.), 163, 173 Leefbaar Nederland (Livable
nationalism, 19, 117, 140, 151, 270 onderduikers (persons in hiding), Netherlands, LN), 29, 130
national-socialism, 137, 140, 145 141 Leefbaar Rotterdam (Livable
NATO. See North Atlantic Treaty ontzuiling. See verzuiling Rotterdam), 29, 130, 240
Organization Oosterschelde (estuary), 260 Lijst Pim Fortuyn (List Pim
naturalization, 131, 232, 237, 238 Opium Act, 245 Fortuyn, LPF), 28, 78, 121, 125,
NAWSA. See National American Orange-Nassau, House of, 19-22, 128, 130, 131
Woman Suffrage Association 102-104 Partij van de Arbeid (Labor Party,
Nazism, 35, 137, 140, 141, 223, oranjegevoel (orange-sentiment), PvdA), 24, 27, 28, 51, 72, 77, 80,
225, 274 29 124, 125, 127, 131, 167, 169, 194,
NBW. See Nationaal Bestuurs- Organization for Economic 225, 236, 237, 240, 244
akkoord Water Cooperation and Development Partij voor de Dieren (Party for
Nederlands Verbond van Vakvereni- (OECD), 206, 213 the Animals, PvdD), 28
gingen (Dutch Trade Unions’ Otterlo, 158, 172, 283 Partij voor de Vrijheid (Freedom
Association, NVV), 128 Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, 219, 220, Party, PVV), 29, 131, 231, 239
Nederlands-Indië. See also 222 Rooms-Katholieke Staatspartij
Indonesia Ouderkerk, 222 (National Roman Catholic
Netherlands Antilles, 22, 279 Our Lord in the Attic, 222 Party, RKSP), 122
Netherlands Institute for War Overijssel, 61, 101, 206 Socialistische Partij (Socialist
Documentation (NIOD), Paarse September (feminist Party, SP), 28, 131
79, 80, 144 publishing house), 198 Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij
neutrality, 23, 29, 71, 73, 74, 78, Pacification (1917), 124, 225 (Political Reformed Party,
136, 137, 140, 144, 171, 274 parliament, 20, 21, 23-26, 28, 29, SGP), 27
New Amsterdam, 98 41, 53, 72-74, 127, 128, 131, 137, Trots op Nederland (Proud of the
New Guinea, 72, 77 140, 183, 236, 238-241, 248, 250, Netherlands, TON), 29, 131
New York, 38, 65, 98, 143, 173, 259, 276, 286, 287 Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en
271, 272 Pendrecht, 172, 283 Democratie (People’s Party for
New York Times (newspaper), 121 pensions, 46, 49, 51-54, 233, 249 Freedom and Democracy, VVD),
Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, 217, Pentecostalism, 217 27, 72, 74, 124, 131, 236
220-222, 224, 225, 228 permissiveness, 109, 111, 117-119, politics, 12, 19-29, 36, 40, 47, 49,
Nieuwe Waterweg (New Water- 222, 238, 244, 246, 267, 273 51-53, 60, 65, 71-81, 90, 95, 97,
way), 64 persoonsbewijs (identity card), 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 110-118,
Nijmegen, 58, 62, 87, 91, 208 138, 139 121-132, 136, 140, 173, 185, 195,
NIOD. See Netherlands Institute Philips (company), 35, 36, 61, 78 198, 199-201, 221, 238-240, 244,
for War Documentation pillarization. See verzuiling 250, 255, 259, 263, 273, 276,
non-indigenous. See allochtoon polder, 33, 39, 40, 42, 65, 126, 172, 281, 286
Noord-Brabant, 61, 62, 209, 259. 226, 249, 256, 257, 262, 267, Portuguese Synagogue, Amsterdam,
See also Brabant 273, 280, 283 222, 223
Noordeinde, Palace, 21, 25 poldermodel, 12, 13, 33, 37, 39-42, populism, 78, 121, 127-131, 276
Noord-Holland, 57, 60, 68 49, 244, 249, 250, 287 post-modernism, 173, 179, 186


pragmatism, 72, 74, 80, 81, 111, 71, 85, 97-107, 109-117, 123, 163, SGP. See political parties,
123, 140, 169, 243-245 206, 221, 231, 267, 269, 270, 271 Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij
prime minister. See minister presi- republicanism, 12, 19, 268, 271 Shell. See Royal Dutch Shell
dent Research and Development, 39, shipping, 63, 64, 98, 116, 158, 182,
Prinsjesdag (Princes’ Day), 25 41, 209 208, 231, 271, 272
productivity, 34-36, 46, 47, 213 Rhine (river), 64, 85-92, 94, 163, Sint Maarten (Saint Martin), 218
progressivism, 71, 81, 121, 124, 126, 255, 258, 261 Sinterklaas (Saint Nicholas),
128, 132, 225, 226 Rhineland, 86, 91, 273 11, 221
prostitution, 13, 243, 244, 267 Ridderzaal (Hall of Knights), 23, 24 Sister Outsider (feminist publishing
Protestant Church Rietveld Schröder house, Utrecht, house), 198
Gereformeerd (Reformed), 27, 167, 168, 176 Snoga (synagogue), 223
110, 111, 114, 122, 221-225, 285 Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 153, Sociaal-Economische Raad (Social
Hervormd (Dutch Reformed), 154, 158, 165, 282 and Economic Council, SER),
122, 224, 225, 244 Rijkswaterstaat (Directorate- 41, 250
Protestantism, 20, 48, 49, 103, 122, General for Public Works and social democracy, 24, 27, 28, 45,
124, 125, 164, 184, 208, 217, 220, Water Management), 259, 260, 46, 51, 72, 77, 80, 124, 125, 127,
221, 224, 225, 231, 283 263, 265 128, 130, 131, 167, 169, 194,
Provincial Estates, 110 Rijnsburg, 115 225, 244
Provinciale Staten (provincial rijsttafel (Indonesian rice table), Social Economic Council.
councils), 26, 27 233, 234 See Sociaal-Economische Raad
Provo (countercultural move- RKSP. See political parties, Social Insurance Bank. See Sociale
ment), 197 Rooms-Katholieke Staatspartij Verzekeringsbank
Purmerend, 66 Roman Catholic Higher Trade social security, 45, 46, 50, 51, 53,
PvdA. See political parties, School, Tilburg, 208 54, 101, 126, 249, 262
Partij van de Arbeid Roman Empire, 85-89, 91, 94, Sociale Verzekeringsbank (Social
PvdD. See political parties, 95, 101, 163, 217, 218, 258, Insurance Bank, SVB), 45
Partij voor de Dieren 267, 285 socialism, 28, 45, 49, 122-125, 131,
PVV. See political parties, romanticism, 152, 157, 179, 182, 165, 167, 169, 183, 185, 194, 199,
Partij voor de Vrijheid 183, 271 225, 244, 250
Queen’s Day. See Koninginnedag Rorik, 89 Socrates (Higher Education
Raad van State (Council of State), Rotterdam, 16, 57, 58, 62-65, 67, Mobility Program), 209
103, 287 114, 129, 130, 136, 169-174, 209, Soestdijk, Palace, 21
Rabobank, 34 210, 227, 233, 238-241, 260, 285 South Africa, 39, 179
Radio Orange, 20, 138, 143, 144 Royal Dutch Medical Association South Holland. See Zuid-Holland
Ramadan (Islam), 227 (KNMG), 248, 287 SP. See political parties, Socialis-
Randstad Holland, 12, 57-69, 114, Royal Dutch Shell, 35, 37-39, 78 tische Partij
118, 225, 259, 279, 280 Royal Tropical Institute. Spaarndammerbuurt, Amsterdam,
realism, 51, 156, 158, 159 See Koninklijk Instituut voor 166
Red Light District, Amsterdam, de Tropen Spain, 12, 20, 47, 61, 98, 101,
243, 274 Ruhr region, 57, 64, 65, 67 103-106, 150, 165, 221, 222
Reformation, 48, 86, 93, 105, 110, rural area, 12, 47, 97, 98, 101, 258, Spangen, Rotterdam, 169, 170
220, 221, 283, 285 261 Speech from the Throne.
Reformed. See Protestant Church, Saxons, 89 See Troonrede
Gereformeerd Scandinavia, 46, 61, 77, 85, 89, Srebrenica, 78-80
régime de communauté, 183-186 101, 126, 244, 273 stadholder, 20, 102-104, 152, 269,
régime de singularité, 183-186, 189 Scheldt (river), 85 270
religion, 12, 13, 20, 27, 28, 48, 86, Schiphol. See Amsterdam Airport Staphorst, 221
88, 91, 92, 95, 97, 103, 104-107, Schiphol Staten-Generaal (States General),
109-113, 115, 117-119, 122, 123, schoonheidscommissie (esthetics 24, 26, 102, 221, 222, 224
154, 156, 181, 184, 185, 188, 189, committee), 175 Statenvertaling, 222
208, 217-228, 231, 235, 236, Second World War, 12, 20, 35, 64, States General. See Staten-
238, 240, 267, 270. See also 71, 75, 78, 135-145, 180, 185, 186, Generaal
Anabaptism, Calvinism, 195, 205, 209, 223, 225, 232, States of Holland, the, 222
Catholicism, Islam, Lutheranism, 233, 235, 249, 250, 259, 274 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam,
Pentecostalism, Protestantism, secularization, 13, 28, 118, 122, 123, 149
Remonstrants 125, 182, 185, 217, 285 studiefinanciering (study aid), 205
Remonstrants (Arminians), segregation, 12, 20, 66, 118, 122, subsidies, 45, 65, 168, 243, 250, 251
105, 221, 222 137, 139, 142, 181, 182, 235, 237 suffrage, 117, 124, 197, 207, 208
Renaissance, 163-165, 256 Senate. See Eerste Kamer Supreme Court of the Netherlands.
Republic of the Seven United Sephardic, 105, 105, 222, 223 See Hoge Raad
Netherlands (Seven United SER. See Sociaal-Economische Raad Surinam, 22, 172, 226, 232, 235,
Provinces), 19, 20, 24, 28, 48, Serbs, 79, 80, 99 237


SVB. See Sociale Verzekeringsbank University College, Utrecht, 205, Waalsdorpervlakte, Den Haag, 135
synagogue, 105, 222, 223 211, 212 Waddeneilanden, 257
Synod of Dort (1618-19), 105, 221, UNPROFOR. See United Nations, wage moderation, 40, 41
222, 224, 285 United National Mission Wageningen, 135, 209, 211
Tachtigers, 185, 186 Protection Force WAO. See Wet op de Arbeids-
Talmud School, 115 UN-studio, 163 ongeschiktheidsverzekering
Terneuzen, 247 Upper House. See Eerste Kamer Wassenaar Agreement, 40, 41, 249
terrorist attacks of September 11, urbanization, 13, 33, 34, 40, 48, water boards. See waterschappen
2001, 73, 78, 119, 130, 237, 276 57, 58, 60, 62, 86, 90, 91, 94, Water Impact Assessment.
The Hague. See Den Haag 100, 101, 107, 110, 118, 206, See Watertoets
The Hague School, 154 257, 260, 264, 271 water management, 26, 40, 91,
Third World, 39, 60 Utrecht, 15, 34, 57, 58, 60, 62, 66, 257-265
Tilburg, 58, 61, 208, 209 67, 85, 87-92, 94, 101, 103-105, water policy, 255, 260-263
Time (magazine), 273, 274, 276 109, 111, 113, 114, 117, 151, 163, waterbewustzijn (water conscious-
tolerance, 12, 13, 71, 81, 104-106, 164, 169, 172, 174, 205, 206, ness), 255, 260-265, 288
109-119, 121, 137, 141, 145, 231, 208-212, 218-220, 233, 284, 285 waterschappen (water boards),
237, 240, 245, 251, 269, 270, Utrecht School (Caravaggists), 151 26, 39, 40, 91, 262-264
275, 276. See also gedoogbeleid Valkenburg, 87 Watertoets (Water Impact Assess-
TON. See political parties, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, ment, WIA), 264
Trots op Nederland 149, 157, 158, 283 welfare. See bijstand
trade, 12, 60, 63, 71, 75, 85, 88, 89, Van Nelle factory, Rotterdam, welfare state, 36, 37, 45-55, 124,
91, 94, 95, 97, 98, 101, 105, 107, 170-172 126, 127, 235, 249, 250, 267, 273,
116, 166, 175, 182, 203, 208, 209, Veluwe, 99 274, 287
222, 232, 245, 267-269, 285 Venlo, 247 Westerbork, 142, 143
trade union, 39-42, 49, 53, 54, 126, Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie Westerschelde (estuary), 260
128, 189, 194, 235 (Dutch East India Company, West-Indische Compagnie (Dutch
Traiectum, 218 VOC), 98 West India Company, WIC), 98
Troonrede (speech from the verzuiling (pillarization), 12, 13, Wet Investeringsrekening (WIR),
throne), 23, 25, 228 118, 119, 122, 123-128, 137, 144, 250, 251
Trouw (newspaper), 122, 141 181, 184, 189, 208, 225, 226, Wet op de Arbeidsongeschiktheids-
Tuindorp Oostzaan, 167 235-237, 240, 244, 286 verzekering (Work-Disability
tulip, 12, 15, 99, 100, 150, 152, Vietnam, 72, 77 Insurance Act, WAO), 37, 53
232, 267, 274-276 Vijftigers, 180 Wet Universitaire Bestuurs-
Turkey, 61, 99, 121, 131, 150, 226, Vikings, 89 hervorming (WUB), 206
227, 232, 235-237, 241 VINEX (Vierde Nota Ruimtelijke Wet Werk en Inkomen naar
Tusschendijken, 169 Ordening Extra), 66, 280 Arbeidsvermogen (WIA), 53
Tweede Kamer (House of Repre- Vlaams Blok (Flemish political wetenschappelijk onderwijs
sentatives or lower house), 26 party), 130 (academic education, WO), 204
Twente, 61, 66, 209, 211 VMBO. See Voorbereidend WIA. See Water Impact Assess-
UN. See United Nations Middelbaar Beroepsonderwijs ment
unemployment, 36, 37, 40, 47, VOC. See Vereenigde Oost-Indische WIA. See Wet Werk en Inkomen
49, 53, 55, 236, 249 Compagnie naar Arbeidsvermogen
UNESCO, 59, 167, 223, 257 Volendam, 252, 275, 287 WIC. See West-Indische Compagnie
UNICA (Network of Universities Vondelpark, Amsterdam, 165 WIR. See Wet Investeringsrekening
from the Capitals of Europe), Voorbereidend Middelbaar WO. See wetenschappelijk
205 Beroepsonderwijs (preparatory onderwijs
Unilever, 78 vocational secondary education, Women’s suffrage movement,
Union of Utrecht (1579), 104, 109, VMBO), 204 Dutch, 197, 207
111, 163, 220 Voorbereidend Wetenschappelijk WUB. See Wet Universitaire
United Kingdom, 33, 35, 37, 42, Onderwijs (preparatory Bestuurshervorming
45, 52, 75, 126, 233, 236 academic education, VWO), Yugoslavia, 78-80
United Nations (UN), 71, 78, 79 204, 211 Zeeland, 61, 67, 68, 90, 101, 103,
United Nations Mission Protection Voorburg, 115 104, 136, 144, 206, 259, 260
Force (UNPROFOR), 79 Vredenburg, Utrecht, 174 Zeeuws-Vlaanderen (Zeeland
United States, 14, 33-38, 40, 41, 45, Vreewijk, Rotterdam, 169, 170 Flanders), 260
50, 51, 60, 71-73, 75, 78, 80, 126, Vrij Nederland (newspaper), 141 Zierikzee, 117
143, 221, 224, 239, 249, 273, 276 VVD. See political parties, Zuiderzee, 257, 259
university, 48, 92, 99, 104, 106, Volkspartij voor Vrijheid en Zuid-Holland, 57, 60, 259
112, 114, 129, 140, 141, 163, Democratie Zuidplaspolder, 262
164, 193, 204-212, 222, 225, VWO. See Voorbereidend Weten- Zutphen, 91
227, 270 schappelijk Onderwijs Zwolle, 62, 105, 173, 221

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