Although comparatively small in numbers, the Dutch have definitely made their mark on the world, as we know it today. The Dutch Republic was an economic and military power during much of the 17th century, and involved in many conflicts of the time, such as the Anglo-Dutch Wars.The economy was carried by private enterprises, for the first time on that scale and the Dutch East India Company issued the first freely tradable stock, one of the cornerstones of modern economy.
Dutch colonialism still influences the lives of many today. Beginning in the sixteenth century, Europeans such as the Dutch began to establish trading posts and forts along the coasts of western and southern Africa. Eventually, a large number of Dutch, augmented by French Huguenots and Germans, settled in the Cape Colony. Their descendants in South Africa, the Afrikaners and the Coloureds, are the largest European-descended groups in Africa today, see Demographics of Africa. The Dutch also controlled what is now known as Indonesia, and waged various wars against its native inhabitants in a series conflicts raging from the early 16th to the late 20th century. The area surrounding New York was a Dutch colony and in fact many street names and geographical locations still bear Dutch (though Anglicised) names, see Legacy of the Dutch in New York for more information.
Contribution to humanity
A significant number of painters and philosophers are Dutch, despite its small population. Remarkable persons include painters like Van Gogh, Rembrandt and Vermeer, and philosophers like Spinoza (though not of Dutch heritage),[71] Erasmus of Rotterdam and Hugo Grotius as well as various poets and writers such as Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, Joost van den Vondel and Anne Frank[71] and scientists like Christiaan Huygens also made their mark on how we today view the world. The Netherlands were arguably the first nation state of the world and the first republic in modern Europe. During the early 17th century, the economic reforms, empire and ideas made the Netherlands one of the world’s richest countries and the first thoroughly capitalist country.[72]
Culture and society
Dutch culture
Dutch culture is diverse, reflecting regional differences as well as foreign influences thanks to the merchant and exploring spirit of the Dutch.[73] The Netherlands and Dutch people have played an important role for centuries as a cultural center, with the Dutch Golden Age regarded as the zenith. During the 20th century Dutch architects played a leading role in the development of modern architecture, and Dutch painters like Rembrandt and Van Gogh are world renowned.[74]
The Dutch people and their culture were historically influenced by the culture of neighbouring regions. France played a substantial role in the history of the Netherlands in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, and there are resulting cultural influences. Cultural contacts with Scandinavia were, and are, much less influential. English-speaking cultural influences are predominant since the Second World war. The Dutch also were influenced by their colonies, most notably Indonesia.
The Dutch and the Flemish share the same language. The present state border between the Netherlands and the Flemish part of Belgium does not coincide with any linguistic or dialectal boundary. In the Province of Limburg, the Dutch border with Wallonia coincides, in places, with the Dutch-French linguistic boundary.
After the Peace of Westphalia, the Dutch and people now known as Flemings (who live in Northern Belgium) began to slowly diverge, this diverging would prove to be a contributing factor to the dissolving of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.[75] Nevertheless they share a sense of being closely related, as the only two Dutch-speaking societies in Europe. They share a language and have a similar culture. There are some differences: although Calvinism was originally strongest in Flanders, it remained under Spanish control after the Dutch Revolt, and remained overwhelmingly Catholic. (So did the southern part of the modern Netherlands, which was incorporated later into the Dutch Republic, but its culture was not dominant within the Netherlands).
The Frisian people, who speak their own language and today live mainly in Friesland (a province of the Netherlands), have had some influence on Dutch culture, especially in the northern parts of the province of North Holland proper; also named West Frisia.
Animal culture
Many Dutch people keep pets, in fact the Dutch have the most animals per capita in the world today; as of 2005, the number of dogs in the Netherlands was estimated at 1,760,000, the population of the Netherlands includes a large number of foreign nationals whose culture is not as dog-friendly, so the actual percentage of ethnic Dutch dog owners is likely higher than the national average. The number of domestic cats at almost twice that the amount of dogs present(3,300,000). While the Low Countries generally lack wild animals dangerous to humans – of the mere 3 snake species that are native to the Low Countries, only one is poisonous (the European viper) – nevertheless many Dutch are ophidiophobic. Arachnophobia plays as prominent a role as in any other modern, urbanized society. Other major animal-related phobias include apiphobia and spheksophobia.[80]
Religion
The Dutch population can be separated into two main religious groups: Roman Catholics and Protestants. During and after the Dutch revolt against Spain, Protestantism became the dominant religion in most of the country. The provinces of North Brabant and Limburg and the region of Twente, however, remained predominantly Catholic.
At 30 percent of the population, Catholics form the largest religious group today. Meanwhile, the Dutch belong to many separate Protestant churches, the largest of which are the Dutch Reformed Church (Nederlands Hervormd) and the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (Gereformeerd), although in 2004 these merged to form the Protestant Church in the Netherlands.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the different religious groups were living completely separately from each other, and from the newly emerging socialist labour movement. These sub-societies were a form of horizontal stratification: people lived and married within their own communities, and the pillars had their own schools and universities, media (newspapers, magazines and radio broadcasting associations), sport clubs, shops, hospitals, unions and political parties. This intense social fragmentation was called verzuiling and led to significant tension within Dutch political life. Pillarisation is described in detail in Arend Lijphart’s seminal work on consociationalism, The Politics of Accommodation.
After peaking in influence in the 1950s, the social system of pillarisation started to crumble in the early 1960s during the Dutch postmaterialist revolution, due to secularisation, individualism, consumerism, counter-culture, rising living standards, the emergence of mass media (especially television), increased social and geographical mobility, and agitation by movements such as Provo, D66 and Nieuw Links.
A 2004 study conducted by Statistics Netherlands shows that 50% of the population claim to belong to a Christian denomination, 9% to other denominations and 42% to none. In the same study 19% of the people claim go to church at least once a month, another 9% less than once a month, 72% hardly ever or never.[81][82] There is a small Jewish community of some 40,000 people, mostly in the larger cities.
People of Dutch ancestry in the United States are generally more religious than their European counterparts [11]; the numerous Dutch communities of western Michigan remain strongholds of the Reformed Church in America, a descendant of the Dutch Reformed Church.
Sports
There are a number of sports which the Dutch possibly invented or Dutch claim to have invented, which then spread worldwide, examples include ice hockey[83] and golf.[84] Apart from these worldwide sports there are also a number of local Dutch sports such as polsstokverspringen, kaatsen, klootschieten, kolven and korfbal.
The most popular sports, both for active participation and audience are Football (Soccer), Cycling, Speed skating, (Field, not ice) Hockey and Tennis.
Traditions of government
The earliest more or less exclusively Dutch politically entity, the Dutch republic, was a confederation of Dutch states and was led by their representatives, the Grand Pensionary (the de facto political leader of the Dutch Republic) and the Stadholder (a descendant of William of Orange) who acted as the Dutch supreme military commander. This system was eventually overthrown in the Batavian Revolution, inspired by the French revolution, in which the Stadholder fled to Britain and the revolutionaries established the Batavian Republic in 1795, which was a more centralised unitary state, not a loose confederation of (at least nominally) independent provinces. The Batavian Republic was actually a vassal state of France, which wanted to tighten its grip by establishing the Kingdom of Holland in 1806 with Napoleon’s brother Louis Bonaparte as head of state, and finally by annexation in 1810 for a period of 3 years, until Napoleon was defeated. An independent Dutch state was put back on the map at the Congress of Vienna, comprising of the northern and southern Netherlands for the first time ever, as an independent monarchy, with strong monarchial powers. When the revolutions of 1848 swept across Europe, the King conceded a constitutional monarchy with parliamentary control, which it has been until this day
Amundyeus's Blog 