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Politieke theorie en geschiedenis (1987)

Politieke theorie en geschiedenis

(1987)–E.H. Kossmann–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

In praise of the Dutch republic: some seventeenth-century attitudes*

In 1666 an enterprising printer at Cologne published a book entitled Intérêts et maximes des Princes et des Estats Souverains which consists in fact of two entirely different works: one, a mere reprint of the Duke of Rohan's famous treatise of 1638, the other an extremely unsatisfactory concoction by an anonymous author. It is to this last piece that I should like to draw your attention, for bad books are, in a way, more characteristic than outstanding ones. The title of this anonymous exercise is Interets reciproques des princes et Estats Souverains. The purpose of our author was very different from what Rohan tried to do in his little book of 1638.1 Rohan wanted to determine the true foundations of the major European states; for that purpose he carefully analysed their ‘interests’ as well as what he considered the inevitable logic of their foreign policies arising out of these interests. Our anonymous author, however, merely listed in endless detail the parts of each other's countries that the great rulers of the world were claiming for themselves. He tells us that the Emperor thinks he is entitled to rule certain parts of France, England, etc., but that the French king wishes to have Navarre, England, Flanders, Genoa, Naples, etc., whereas the English king covets Normandy, Guyenne, Poitou, and many other areas in Europe. With the utmost seriousness but quite without passion, our political commentator enumerates the countless claims and counter-claims made by the great rulers, their wild pretensions, their fantastic aspirations, the strange expression of their boundless pride. Nor does he by any means confine himself to Europe: for we can learn here that the Arabs lay claim to the East Indies, the Negus of Abyssinia to Arabic territories, the Emperor of China to his neighbours' countries generally. Perhaps the book is typical of baroque power politics although often the author merely repeats the various official but admittedly empty sovereign titles that render royal names illustrious. Nevertheless, the book gives an impression of the way in which a not very intelligent or original observer reacted to the chaotic international situation of the mid-1660s.

The author described the ‘interests’ of twenty-one states or princes.

Number ten in his list is the United Provinces. The title of this chapter is ‘Interets de la Republique des Provinces-Unies des Pais-Bas’. It differs in one important respect from all the other titles in the book. For all the chapters except this are headed: ‘Intérêts’ of a particular state ‘sur’ another state, that is, of course, the claims of one state upon another state. What, in the view of this author, are the Dutch interests? It is quite easy to see: it is not expansion, not territorial aggrandizement, but purely and simply liberty and independence.2 The Dutch Republic is the only state in the whole book with no specific claims to make, no pretensions to boast of, no aggressive aspirations in the field of foreign policy to pursue. It is the only deeply satisfied and deeply pacific state which the author has found on his long journey through Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Two years later, in 1668, a Calvinist minister in Holland, Jacobus Lydius (1610-79), published a book in Latin which he proudly entitled Belgium Gloriosum, that is, the glorious Northern Netherlands.3 For the Latin name Belgium came in the seventeenth century to be used as a synonym of Nederland, which for the Dutch represented the Seven United Provinces, the true, the free (and the most powerful) provinces as contrasted with the Ten Southern Provinces, often called les provinces désunies. It is noteworthy that in the sixteenth century Belgium often indicated the whole of the seventeen Netherlands, North and South inclusive, a usage which shows how preponderant the Southern provinces then were since only they, after all, formed part of Caesar's Belgium.4 However, let us take care not to get entangled in this delicate aspect of national terminology, but rather ask what the author of Belgium Gloriosum considered as particularly glorious and why he should have written in 1668 such a resounding praise of his fatherland.

Lydius was an admirer of the Grand Pensionary John de Witt and his brother Cornelis who had an active part in the government of the author's home town, Dordrecht. The second Anglo-Dutch War had in 1667 brought what the Dutch rightly regarded as a victory, and shortly afterwards the Triple Alliance was concluded with the purpose of thwarting French imperialism. The Republic seemed at its most vigorous, its most influential. How mighty indeed had it become! Lydius was amazed at this entirely unexpected rise of his country, which in less than a century had traversed the course of the whole human race from misery and poverty to wealthy stability.5 True, it had always been famous for its courage

and strength. The ancestors possessed outstanding virtues, living already at the dawn of Western European history in a free republic that, in 1668, could look back to an unbroken tradition of more than 1700 years.6 Yet, affirms Lydius, such glories as we have now attained, our ancestors would have been unable even to visualize. Some of our towns are worth a kingdom, Amsterdam above all, ‘that pick of towns, that treasury of all the wealth and splendour of the earth, that synthesis of the world, that market of all countries which has no equal, built as it is in muddy pools but raising its head to the stars’.7 But what, asks Lydius, is the purpose of our power and wealth? It is peace. For the happier one is, the more one wants peace.8 We made war on England because we were forced to do so; we even sent our navy into the Medway and destroyed our enemy, not however for the sake of plunder or of fleeting fame but to capture on the very coast of Britain that Peace which had fled so far.9 All this we owe to God alone. In all our work we must follow His orders. We must obey Him, the Lord of Peace, who wants us not to fight but to live a quiet and happy life in freedom, praising His name.

Lydius's book seems to me interesting both for what it says and for what it leaves out. It is the work of a Calvinist and there is no reason to suspect its orthodoxy. Yet Lydius's pacificism is somewhat surprising if compared with the tradition of Calvinist pugnacity. Moreover, when stating that God wants peace and that the Dutch, in wanting this too, obey His orders, he omits to draw the conclusion that the Dutch nation has thus a specific task to perform in the European community by bringing peace wherever possible through its determined and vigorous mediation. Indeed, there is no word throughout this book which might inspire its reader with some feeling of responsibility for Europe or Christendom or the human race generally. This glorification of the Dutch Republic and of peace consciously isolated the country from its European neighbours. Pious enjoyment of wealth, gratefulness to the Lord who gave the Dutch as much protection as he gave to Israel, these are the virtues which Lydius hopes will retain for the Republic its present happiness.

Lydius's book is fairly typical of many others. Isolationism, pacifism, collective self-glorification - these values were rampant in the circles in which he moved. The whole spirit of that age, the age of John de Witt, was characterized by such limited aspirations. It is true enough that Lydius's theme was greatly developed by outstanding publicists and philosophers who succeeded in rendering it infinitely more interesting and dynamic. Nonetheless, in Belgium Gloriosum we certainly possess a textbook example of Dutch seventeenth-century patriotism which entirely

bears out the observation of the anonymous author of the Interets reciproques des Princes et Estats Souverains with which I began.

How far is this peculiar to the style of John de Witt's age and his school of thought? In themselves self-glorification and love of peace, of course, are neither new nor unexpected components of ‘national’ feeling during the ancien régime. The greatest Dutch seventeenth-century poet, Joost van den Vondel, gave voice to crude and highly combative patriotism in the innumerable verses which he rhymed in praise of Holland, of Amsterdam, and of the many victories won by the national heroes over the Spaniards and the Englishmen with their diabolical tails, as well as to a deep Christian pacificism of Augustinian inspiration. Yet there is a marked difference between Lydius's partisan rhetoric and Vondel's much broader idealism. For whereas both agreed that the Dutch Republic fought only to defend its freedom and not for spoils, Vondel, influenced by the Stoics, was deeply aware of Dutch responsibility for the well-being of the whole of Christendom.10 In his view Holland, or rather Amsterdam, was perhaps the most magnificent of God's creations but it did not symbolize God's ultimate aim for mankind nor constitute a self-contained splendour jealously to be preserved in its acquired form. Another author, much less renowned but in his own day a man of international reputation, mostly as a classical scholar, R.H. Schele, in one of the earliest dithyrambs on the freedom of the Dutch state and the practical as well as moral virtues of a purely republican government, emphasized about 1650 the great task now before the Netherlands of accomplishing for others what the Dutch had accomplished for themselves: the establishment of perpetual peace and domestic liberty.11

Pacific isolationism and awareness of international responsibilities alike belong essentially to the late seventeenth century. It is already remarkable enough that such concepts should have developed in that age which was one of numerous wars: in the half-century from 1648 to 1700 the Republic fought three wars with England and two with France, and took part in various Scandinavian conflicts; in the colonies in East and West the navy and army were also often engaged. Yet compared to the thirty-six years of war of the first half of the century, the second half might seem fairly tranquil. So it is not difficult to see why it was only after the Peace of Munster that pacifism came fairly generally to be accepted in Europe as a typically Dutch characteristic. At the beginning of the century the Dutch presented a totally different picture to the outside world. They looked rather like the Swiss. Their very existence was war. They were cradled in war; their state owed its life to war. It was difficult to see how it could survive without war. The Truce of 1609-1621 had

been in many ways a disastrous experience, leading to civil strife and threatening the young republic with disruption. During the 1620s, 1630s, and 1640s it was repeatedly stated that never again should the risk be taken of such a pacific adventure, which divorced the state from its origin in war and from its true traditions - that is, once again, war. War seemed the natural element in which alone the Republic could flourish. It constituted, moreover, the only guarantee that the state would remain united and that it would be capable of furthering the spread of true religion.12

It should be profitable to analyse and compare the two concepts on which I have touched: the ideals of Dutch society either as essentially warlike or as essentially pacific. Various factors have combined to produce this dichotomy. There is, of course, the time factor. It is obvious that pacifism could not become a real principle before the country acquired its legal independence, and that happened only in 1648. There are, in the second place, the social and political factors. For the military leaders of the Republic, the Princes of Orange and the nobility, peace was much less attractive than for the merchants in Holland. There is, finally, the religious factor. Early seventeenth-century Calvinists, many of them refugees from the Southern Netherlands, continued to hope for an expansion of their religion and were eager to drive the Spaniards out of Belgium. There cannot be much doubt that the economic, social, and psychological influence of the partly latitudinarian regent class ruling in Holland and dependent on mercantile prosperity was so overwhelming as to determine to a large extent the development and character of Dutch patriotism, and yet in the early seventeenth century this was by no means easy to predict. After all, in 1618 the Stadholder, Prince Maurice, won a notable victory. His adversary, Oldenbarnevelt, died on the scaffold. The synod of Dordrecht settled the religious disputes in a strictly orthodox way. It might well have seemed likely to contemporaries that the Republic was destined indeed to become another Switzerland, not another Venice or Athens. The Contra-Remonstrants looked like monopolizing Dutch patriotism.

I have purposely used the term ‘patriotism’ here, and although I am aware of the danger of seeming pedantic I think that a short terminological analysis may help us to understand the evolution of Dutch ‘national’ feeling. The French word patrie is a typical Renaissance word. In medieval Latin patria meant both heaven, where we all come from and hope to return to, and our actual place of birth in this world. Only in the latter half of the sixteenth century did the French humanists coin the term patrie,

and then at times as a rather shocking neologism.13 It meant what the ancients had understood by fatherland. It was no longer just a geographical indication but in truly classicist style a word full of emotional values. The German- and Dutch-speaking peoples soon adopted the word, translating it into Vaterland or vaderland, both being terms already known but only in the sense of fatherland in heaven.14 Thanks to this shift in meaning of the word patrie, the word patriote, which both in its Greek and its medieval Latin forms merely meant ‘inhabitant of a country’, also acquired deeper connotations. During the Revolt of the Netherlands a good or true or old patriot is - at any rate in the Northern provinces - a Calvinist who fights for liberty, political as well as religious. Indeed, the term in its French form becomes more or less a party name, although one does not yet speak simply of ‘les Patriotes’ but of ‘les vrais, bons, anciens Patriotes’.15

It is remarkable that terms like patrie, fatherland, patriot, which seem to symbolize the development of national consciousness, are in fact sixteenth-century literary innovations representing by no means a national but a truly international fashion. The history of these words in all European, or more specifically Western European, languages is similar. If anything were needed to prove the fundamental unity of our European civilization, it might surely be the fact that even the conscious effort of the sixteenth-century intellectual élite to break it up into national entities should be so universal. It is equally remarkable that the history of the word patriot in the seventeenth century seemed to indicate a sort of affinity between English and Dutch developments. In English the term ‘good patriot’ came into use somewhat later than on the continent. At any rate, the first instance mentioned by the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1605. But then the term, although probably not yet becoming a real party name, was more or less annexed by the opposition. Already in the 1630s Sir Robert Filmer warned that ‘the new coined distinction into Royalists and Patriots is most unnatural’.16 That may be true. Yet the distinction is exactly that which was made half a century earlier in the Netherlands.

The history of the Dutch word ‘patriot’ in the seventeenth century has never been analysed and it would be risky to make firm statements about it before studying all the material available in correspondence, pamphlets, and literature generally. But because I have not shouldered this Her-

culean task and shall most certainly never shoulder it, I can only tentatively suggest that in the early seventeenth century it was highly popular among the adherents of the House of Orange without, of course, becoming their exclusive property, whereas in the second half of the century the group of John de Witt did not tire of repeating that they, the true republicans, were also good patriots. When in 1617 the conflict between Arminians and Contra-Remonstrants, between Oldenbarnevelt and Prince Maurice, was rapidly approaching its climax, William Louis, Maurice's cousin, the Stadholder of Friesland and one of the staunchest Calvinist statesmen in the Republic, in the many letters which during these dramatic days he wrote to the Prince of Orange, used the word patriot innumerable times, mostly however with a prefatory adjective. He writes of ‘distinguished’ or ‘sensible and loyal’ or ‘good’ or ‘true’ or ‘good and simple’ patriots,17 but occasionally also of ‘all the patriots’,18 indicating in this way the Orangists who, he affirms, praise Maurice as the ‘libérateur et conservateur de la patrie et de la religion reformée’.19 It is thus quite clear that the Orangists used the words in exactly the same sense as had been given to them by the rebels of the 1570s and 1580s who belonged to the party of William the Silent.20 But of course their enemies in the early seventeenth century also valued this relatively new and still very significant word. Did not Oldenbarnevelt on the scaffold say (to quote Huizinga) with a voice that has engraved itself on Dutch history as a chisel on stone:21 ‘Men, don't believe that I am a traitor. I have acted honestly and piously as a good patriot and such shall I die’? I do not think it altogether unlikely that even a few moments before his ignominious death this courageous and inexhaustibly pugnacious man challenged his opponents by applying to himself the word patriot which they were so eager to equate with Orangist. He had, in fact, the right to do so, for in the 1570s he had belonged to the small group of men supporting William the Silent.

The conflict of 1617 and 1618 was not the last conflict between Orangists and anti-Orangists. A second major clash occurred in 1650. But on that occasion William Frederick, the Stadholder of Friesland, a nephew of

his predecessor William Louis who (as we have seen) was so emphatic in his use of the word patriot, does not seem to have been very fond of the term. Only once does it occur in his correspondence, when he complains (in 1649) that it is rather difficult to find ‘vieulx patriots’ loyal to the House of Orange.22 The fact is that the Orangists no longer called themselves with such relish true patriots. They used all kinds of periphrases, from ‘les plus affectionnés pour le bien publyc’23 to simply ‘les bienintentionnés’.24 Even William III, after his success of 1672, did not find the word particularly attractive. It hardly ever occurs in his correspondence with either Heinsius or Bentinck.25 This growing indifference of the Orangists indicates, I think, a remarkable shift in their general outlook. At the beginning of the century they still considered themselves as a political party. At its end they had risen above this status. It was loyalty to a dynasty, not to a party, that then inspired them.

But in Holland, in the anti-Orangist group around John de Witt, patriot was from the 1650s to the 1670s an immensely popular word. It is, if I am not mistaken, nearly always used with the adjective ‘good’. Good patriots indeed abound in John de Witt's correspondence26 and even in his conversation.27 They are, needless to say, his own adherents, truly loving their dear fatherland and extremely reluctant to allow the House of Orange much influence on the direction of Dutch policy. Thus ‘patriot’, the word which had originally and for long indicated an Orangist Calvinist fighting for religious and political liberty against the foreign sovereign, the King of Spain, came in the 1650s to be monopolized by the group of people opposed to the dynastic and more or less monarchical inclinations of the House of Orange. The fact that it was now commonly used with the sole addition of ‘good’, and no longer with the variety of other adjectives with which it was adorned in previous times, is perhaps an indication of its having acquired a certain stability and of its tending to become a clear label for a political group. In the eighteenth century, of course, it obtained the status of a party symbol. Then its meaning was so self-evident that all adjectives could be dropped. A late eighteenth-century patriot is obviously an anti-Orangist reformer. Yet in the middle of the eighteenth century it had been once again the Orangists who, after

nearly fifty years (1702-47) of political impotence, made a bid for their ancient title of honour. This clearly reveals their willingness to lay less emphasis on dynastic loyalty, but soon they were so manifestly put on the defensive as to have to resign themselves to calling their party that of the ‘old-fashioned Patriots’.28

Perhaps I should apologize for this excursus into the field of political terminology; at any rate I must now return to the theme I have abandoned. For the development of the two antithetical concepts relating to the nature and the meaning of the Dutch community, though in reality of course determined by social, economic, and political factors, possesses one less obvious but interesting aspect to which I should like to draw your attention. The Calvinist concept of the Dutch state as a warlike, combative institution that could not be expected to survive the pleasures of peace, sprang from realistic awareness of its youth, its being unfinished, extremely vulnerable, in fact not much more than an ad hoc alliance concluded for the purpose of carrying on the war.29 The Contra-Remonstrants had little confidence in the viability of the Dutch Republic. No doubt they knew that there had always been Dutch men and women. But the Dutch state was a very recent creation, or incident, which it would take a long time to develop into anything approximating to an established political society.

This doubt may explain why their patriotism, though certainly genuine enough, seems strictly limited intellectually as well as emotionally, when compared to the messianic fervour of men like Milton and Cromwell. But there is a problem here.30 It has recently been shown that the Dutch seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Calvinists were no less eager than the English Puritans to represent their own country as the new Israel, a country elected by God.31 Groenhuis who studied seventeenth-century material provides ample evidence for this, and his quotations are fully convincing. So are those of Huisman who considered the opinions of a number of eighteenth-century Dutch Calvinist ministers. The Dutch appear in this prose and verse as God's chosen people ‘to whom the Lord has come [very] close and whom He has elected to His own in a special way’.32 As a consequence, the Dutch must continue their struggle against Spain and Rome under the leadership of the Prince of Orange, keep up a strong army, maintain and seek to expand trade, especially the trade of the West India Company so that Brazil (lost in 1661) may be recovered

and the Gospel proclaimed there.33 Gradually, however, the dynamic element which the Calvinist conception still possessed tended to disappear with the result that in the eighteenth century Calvinist sermons do not seem to have stressed the need for the Dutch to pursue an active foreign policy with the purpose of spreading the Gospel. On the whole, Huisman concludes, the Calvinist mood was strictly conservative, satisfied with and grateful for God's generous treatment of the fatherland. In the eighteenth century the Dutch Calvinists, as studied by Huisman, certainly did not expect that through Holland God wished to bring liberty and true religion to mankind. Even in the seventeenth century they did not really expect this. This, at any rate, is the impression left by Groenhuis's analysis and quotations. The Dutch Calvinists were less self-confident, less dynamic in their aims and aspirations than the Puritans and it might be possible that this bears some relation with the perception of the Dutch state as being young as well as labile.

There is another point that deserves some consideration. Both Groenhuis and Huisman describe the identification of the Republic with Israel as an expression not only of religious convictions but at the same time of national consciousness. Now it is remarkable that the Calvinist ministers did not worry about the fact that the larger part of the Dutch population did not belong to their Church. Their orthodox followers formed only a minority. God Himself does not seem to have worried about it either for in spite of it He bestowed great benefits and blessings upon the country as a whole. How do we explain this? The obvious answer is that it is by no means unnatural for a specific group in the population to consider itself as the core and essence of the nation without sparing much attention for those inhabitants who do not belong to that group. Such an élite takes itself to be the true representative of the whole nation and its major interests. In the case under review, however, arguments of this kind do not seem to work properly. Of course the Dutch Calvinists, elected by God and tied to Him with a special bond, did not at all wish to serve as the representatives of Roman Catholics, libertarians, or even atheists. The Calvinists regarded themselves undoubtedly as the essence of the Netherlands and they regarded their religion as the basis of the Dutch state, and however problematic this may in reality have been, it is a point of view easy to understand. Their own group, and the state built by and around them, formed an extremely precious element in history for which they felt most grateful. All this is true but when we define this feeling as ‘national consciousness’ we run into the serious difficulty that the group, absolutely convinced to be an elite chosen by God, did not identify itself with what is nowadays called the ‘nation’ but what they and we call the ‘state’.

It seems to me that with the orthodox Calvinist Lydius, who is already familiar to us as the author of Belgium Gloriosum, we reach a somewhat different level of argumentation. He, too, emphatically stated that Holland is Jerusalem.34 But he represents the rather exceptional case of a minister firmly and loyally attached to the anti-Orangist party and its peculiar historical conceptions. He was a Calvinist, an anti-Orangist, and a true pacifist. How can we account for his pride and his confidence in the strength and durability of his nation? The answer is that the group to which he belonged held a view of Dutch history altogether different from that of the early seventeenth-century Calvinists. Lydius did not think that the Republic was at all young and unfinished. On the contrary, it was immensely old. More than 1700 years of unbroken tradition gave the Republic an antiquity and a nobility hardly equalled by any other nation. Even the historically minded French scholars, who certainly did not tend to underrate the greatness of their past, claimed for their country an uninterrupted history of a mere 1200 years.35 Of course, Lydius was a mediocre historian. Nevertheless, he shows us clearly how an historical myth, more or less playfully put forth by humanist erudites, could in certain cases provide a whole group of people with such necessary components of national consciousness as self-confidence and pride.

Dutch medieval history displays a highly complicated pattern of contrasting developments, false starts, surprising incidents. Just as confused is Dutch medieval historiography. Yet it can be convincingly argued that whereas the sometimes very promising historiographical efforts in many of the Dutch provinces for one reason or another ultimately failed, the province of Holland, where Dutch historiography had started, still produced at the end of the Middle Ages works of importance and distinction.36 It is therefore only natural that humanist historiographical devices should have impressed the historians of Holland in the first place. The young man who finally, after the birth of the Dutch Republic, moulded the humanist tendencies into their definite form was the Hollander Hugo Grotius. In 1610 he published a very influential book on the antiquity of the Batavian Republic, that is: ‘the State of Holland’.37 Probably this book was written, or in any case drafted, much earlier, perhaps as early as c. 1601 when Grotius, eighteen years old, was working on a very elaborate comparative study, a Parallelon Rerumpublicarum, which should make it clear that morally and intellectually the Hollanders, now and in the

past, were equal to both the ancient Greeks and the Romans.38 He did not complete this large work. Only the purely historical parts, probably rewritten, were printed. But the other books of the Parallelon, preserved in manuscript and published in the nineteenth century, indicate the style of the whole exercise. It was an attempt by a very young and naïve man to show how learned, how patriotic, and how up to date he was.

He certainly was all this. Yet it is rather unlikely that he was altogether serious.39 He probably meant what he wrote. Why should he not have thought that Holland was more virtuous, more courageous than any other country? But this idea sprang not only from emotional attachment to the country of his birth but also from his knowledge of foreign humanist historiography. For many years foreign historians had been busy demonstrating, in a highly competitive way, the outstanding qualities and immemorial antiquity of their respective fatherlands. At this rather late stage Holland, forcefully pushed by Grotius, also entered the ring. Once he asked himself whether it was not slightly pretentious to compare to Greece and Rome a country whose very name was unknown to so many, but he found sufficient consolation in Tacitus, who considered the Batavians the best of the Germanic peoples.40 For since the early sixteenth century all learned men in Holland agreed that the Hollanders were the direct descendents of the Batavians. But whereas the sixteenth-century humanists inclined to depict the ancient Batavians as a kind of Tacitean bons sauvages, Grotius insisted on the high level of their civilization and their intricate, finely balanced, truly admirable system of government.41 They were not very different from early seventeenth-century Hollanders. The Batavian Republic, shortly, was a very old institution that had survived many attacks and desperate situations and in 1610 stood as firmly as in Caesar's time, still vigorous and capable of undreamed-of future greatness.42

Grotius's authority in judicial and historical matters was accepted both by the orthodox Calvinists and Arminians. But it was mainly the élite of Holland which was directly influenced by his views and which found in his daring interpretation of Holland's history a means of offsetting the paralysing doubts about the country's future felt by the Contra-Remonstrants. Equipped with such a long and laudable past, the Dutch Republic (or its centre, Holland) was declared by Lydius to be certain of a

future at least equally long. It had never changed. Thus one could expect that it never would change. This belief, highly characteristic of the seventeenth century's passionate quest for security, was one of the elements which rendered the Dutch republicans confident enough to risk making and maintaining peace. This old state was so firmly established in its past and its glorious present that it was in no danger of being shaken.

If proof of the intellectual vitality and flexibility of seventeenth-century Holland were needed, one should refer to the fact that outstanding adherents of John de Witt (who seemed to act as a representative of these pacific, self-satisfied and conservative views) started to challenge them at the moment when they were victorious. I mention only one name: that of Spinoza, whose political theory owes much to some adventurous Dutch predecessors.43 These men succeeded in transforming the political and national, as yet rather unsophisticated opinions of De Witt's strictly republican party into a coherent philosophy which was neither conservative nor backward-looking but astonishingly advanced. They broke through the strict limitations of their seventeenth-century environment and put forward ideas which in some respects anticipate the conceptions of Rousseau. As I am now not concerned with political ideas, I need only deal with their view that a state like the Dutch Republic, which was admittedly a free state and was greatly to be admired for its achievements, had by no means already reached its definite form but should become both more democratic and ruled in a more strictly absolute way whereas its territory, already so exceedingly small, ought perhaps even to be reduced.

Spinoza, of course, was not a Protestant. But the authors who before him extolled the democratic, sea-faring republic, closely integrated and essentially pacific, were protestants. I have said that their conceptions anticipated in some respects Rousseau's views. In other respects they seem to anticipate English utilitarianism. How remarkably modern and untraditional they were becomes very clear when their work, dating from the 1660s, is laid besides the Discourses Concerning Government of Algernon Sidney, like them a republican Protestant and born in the same year as one of Spinoza's most influential predecessors: John de la Court. Once again, I must refrain from discussing political theory, but I may draw attention to two essential differences between the outlook of Dutch and English republican Protestants. Sidney declared his purpose to ‘maintain... the Cause of Mankind, which ought not to suffer’,44 a statement which would be inconceivable in the much more sceptical Dutch literature I am considering. In the second place, he put a remarkably heavy emphasis on the moral and practical merits of imperialism and the

need for a state to be militarily powerful. This was just the opposite of what his Dutch contemporaries and congenial spirits propounded: what they wished to achieve for their country was lasting peace and hedgehoglike contraction.45

Of course they failed. In 1672 De Witt's régime collapsed. William III valiantly defended his country against the joint French and English attacks and spent his life making the Republic the centre of European resistance to French imperialism. Perhaps this was the greatest role of the Republic. Stubborn confidence in its durability, unwavering belief in the moral righteousness of its cause, deep awareness of its responsibilities in the widest sense of the word combined to solve the problem of how to justify the existence of the Dutch state. For William III Europe was a reality; ‘the well-being of the whole of Europe’ was both an aim which he pursued and an expression which frequently in one form or another, occurs in his correspondence.46 But is it rash to assume that he was the first, or one of the first, among Dutch statesmen to use this expression, and that it was English rather than Dutch traditions which inspired him to believe in it? John de Witt would not have given expression to such aims. In fact, I do not think that even Christian solidarity was an argument De Witt was likely to take to, except when questions of a merely practical nature were involved - as, for instance, during the Second Anglo-Dutch war, when he advised against burning villages on the English coast because this was useless as well as unchristian.47 Only under William III did European and Christian welfare become in Holland an object of political pursuit and a matter of excellent propaganda value.48 It was of foreign, mainly British, making.

It cannot be the purpose of this lecture to trace through the later history of the Netherlands the development of the three national concepts which I have described. Probably the isolationist, pacific, and mercantile tend-

encies turned out ultimately to be the most influential.49 John de Witt's régime, merely an episode of twenty years, is thus in many respects characteristic of lasting Dutch idiosyncrasies. Yet one should not entirely ignore the impact on Dutch national consciousness of either of the other two interpretations. Early seventeenth-century Contra-Remonstrant criticism of the Dutch state and Calvinistic emphasis on the necessity of power and war were in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries echoed by the radical reformers who were instrumental in setting up a unitary Dutch monarchy. William III's rather outlandish, and not exactly modest, awareness of the country's European responsibilities was, especially in the nineteenth century, combined with Dutch mercantile isolationism. For in the nineteenth century the Dutch, who wanted neutrality and in 1830 were happy to lose the Southern Netherlands, no longer used utilitarian but rather ethical arguments for the justification of their policies. From 1830 to 1940 Dutch national consciousness was dominated by the idea that the Netherlands constituted a haven, indeed the world centre, of justice.

The petulant reaction of the Dutch in the 1830s to diplomatic efforts helping them to sever their links with Belgium is characteristic of legalistic pretensions that were in some danger of becoming obsessive. In 1832 the Dutch foreign minister addressed Parliament in the following terms: when we see how Holland, a country full of respect for the sanctity of treaties and scrupulously meeting its obligations towards foreign powers, is treated by them, we are reminded of the lot of Aristides, ostracised by the Athenians because they disliked hearing him called ‘the just’.50 Later in the century the Netherlands extolled its pacifism and self-satisfaction as sublime virtues beneficial not only to the Dutch but to the whole of mankind. Just after the start of the Second World War a member of the Dutch parliament expressed the views of his colleagues as well as of the Dutch government when he solemnly stated: ‘We who as neutrals are not carried away by the passions of war have in these days the task to preserve for mankind and for Europe the higher moral values’.51 These words, in all their innocent pomposity, are, as it were, a reflection of seventeenth-century attitudes. As such, it seems to me, they have a certain dignity.


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