The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall

Definitely an academic book. Not great for the casual historian like me. I’m very well read and read a lot of history, but found this pretty hard going and the first chapters assumed a lot of knowledge. But, that said, definitive and far, far less pretentious than ‘The Embarrassment of Riches’ - at least this reads normally, not like someone with a thesaurus and a dictionary and a large dose of ‘I’m considerably smarter than you!’.So, my quibbles aside, it does what it sets out to do, is detailed and plainly written.

All you ever wanted to learn about the Dutch Republic and clearly an indispensable addition to any serious book collection. I have to say that for such a substantial book the price is very good (not that the key factor is price per page).Arrived quickly and well packed.

Appreciate for your good handling.

When his book was published, Jonathan Israel was Professor of Dutch History at London University. His book has forty-four chapters, thirty-two monochrome plates, sixteen maps, and fifty-two tables. There are 1261 pages, of which the body of text occupies 1130. (It’s thus a heavy book to hold when reading!) Ignoring the fact that the narrative actually starts in the thirteenth century, the 1130 pages for the 330 years between 1477 (the death of Charles the Bold and the start of Habsburg rule) and 1806 (when Napoleon created the Kingdom of Holland) equates to 3.4 pages per year. (In fact Israel takes us to 1808 when Amsterdam’s town hall became Louis Napoleon’s royal palace and “The Dutch Republic was no more.” (Israel’s dramatic final six words.)But the core of the book covers the hundred years between 1572 and 1672, a period that takes up 627 of the 1130 pages. Indeed, in his preface Israel says his aims are to set the Dutch Revolt and the Golden Age in a wider context: they “only begin to make sense if we place them in their full setting. This means going back to the Burgundian period, on the one hand, and forward to Napoleonic times, on the other.”This is undoubtedly true, but gaps remain. For instance, while often demonstrating how the nation’s overseas trading system had shaped its “population distribution, urbanization, employment, prosperity, poverty, and urban vitality” Israel’s chronicle of the collapse of many Dutch industries in the eighteenth century leaves much unexplained. Whilst European rivals may have caught up, that would only explain relative not absolute decline. Israel gives hints – that investment and profits went abroad, into VOC shares and state bonds rather than into industry itself – but the collapse remains for me a mystery.Israel has no objections to the consensus that the Habsburg Netherlands were not automatically destined to split into two states: although north and south had separate political and economic aims, their culture was largely integrated. But the 1572 Revolt was a decisive breakpoint: “By introducing a Calvinist Reformation in the north whilst, in the south, the Catholic Counter-Reformation triumphed, the Revolt severed what had been one culture and replaced it with two warring, antagonistic cultures.”And yet reading his opening chapters the cultural differences between the lands above the delta and those of Flanders/Brabant below are quite evident: the often stark economic, social, and political differences must have resulted in an underlying difference of attitude. Israel himself writes, “the Revolt against Spain was to confirm the underlying separation of north and south”; and later “the needs and priorities of the Netherlands north of the rivers were fundamentally different from those of the south”; and again, “that the response to the Revolt of 1572 was so different in the north from the south resulted from basic differences in social structure, the religious situation, and economic life reaching back not just years or decades, but centuries.” So much for integrated cultures!This is not the only example of inner contradictions, but space precludes me from detailing those concerning the 1566 Petition of Compromise or of the Dutch not being bothered by theological controversies. I do not want to harp on the negative. One of the positives is that Israel has taught me that the Golden Age relied on migration from below the delta and on the trading policies of the Spanish just as much as on the Dutch genius in commerce and shipping. I also learned that the Revolt against Spain was not the heroic action of a united people but a messy chaotic affair with areas like Friesland and Over Ijssel often more concerned with pressing their own provincial independence from a Greater Holland.Indeed, a feature of the book is the provincialisation of life, Israel reviewing aspects of a wide range of issues that affected disparate parts of the country differently, so what might be acceptable in The Hague, might not be so in, say, Groningen or Maastricht. A corollary of this is that the Dutch reputation for tolerance in actual fact had severe and frequently testing limits; not just inter-provincial antagonisms, but also religious affiliations and republican-monarchist contentions were often virulent and led to state-sanctioned executions (Oldenbarnevelt) and murder (de Witt). The federal approach emphasised by Israel is quite alien to, say, English history. However, a downside is that it can also lead to a dry list-like structure taking over the narrative at times.And despite its attempt to be comprehensive, the book often lacks a strong human element. What I lamented was the lack of the quotidian, of changes in landscape and townscape. Moreover, the names of the great and of the not-so-great pass in front of the reader with no penetration: Oldenbarnevelt, de Witt, de Ruyter, even the leading members of the house of Orange are all rightfully treated as players in the game of history, but they come with no characterisation: instead, ideas and the intellectual life often take precedence. (Israel is no Schama.) Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that twice (at least) a union of England and the United Provinces was proposed. Another benefit is to read 1688 from a Dutch viewpoint and realise what an amazing – and lucky – achievement it was.And whilst the book’s subject is the Dutch Republic, Israel widens the frame to include pertinent events in the south and also the neighbouring German territories to the east. His chapters follow a broadly chronological course, with Israel inserting into the flow chapters that concentrate on particular themes, such as ‘The Early Dutch Reformation’ or ‘Society before the Revolt’. The former details the progress of the separate Protestant movements; the latter covering such topics as land use and civic institutions. There are also chapters on ‘Art & Architecture’ and on ‘Intellectual Life’.One downside of this broad chronological-cum-thematic approach is that it is easily possible to lose the larger thread. For example, the Habsburg war with France is treated separately from the inner Habsburg war of Dutch unification, and references to people and institutions in the general chronology are only later set in full context in chapters relevant to their specific themes. For instance, the chapter that sets out the development, composition and relationships between the Council of State and the States General appears long after these concepts are introduced to the reader. The book therefore needs to be read twice to gain full advantage of its comprehensive content.This is especially true when trying to come to grips with the secular ruling bodies and their elites: vroedscaps, regents, drosts, ridderschaps, the Gecommitteerde Raden are just some of these. In the religious sphere one must contend with Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants, Gomarists, Voetians, Cocceians, Anabaptists, Jansenists, Mennonites and Socinians (amongst others!)The book ends with fifty-eight pages of impressive bibliography. Alas, the index is deficient: for example, it lists ‘Max’ before ‘Maurits’ and references to Remonstrants occur only after 1619.

Amazon allows you to look inside the book, and you should do so. Look at the table of contents. Wow! You cannot get more comprehensive than that. At over 1,000 pages, I am surprised it is just one volume and was not split into two or three.Professor Israel does not leave any aspect of Dutch history uncovered. What impressed me was the level of detail, and the fact that he tackles many different subjects: politics, economics, religion, art, literature. I cannot imagine how many years it took him to collect that information and then put the book together.I had previously read his "The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World", which is also excellent.I also enjoyed the style, which is not as heavy as that of many academic books. However, this is not a book for everybody and is meant for the academic, precisely because it so detailed. This is not a book, this is an encyclopedia, and a very good one.The Dutch provinces were very different from one other, and throughout his book Professor Israel goes into a great deal of detail about each of them. He tells you what was happening in Holland, and then goes over Zeeland, Utrecht, and the others. Unless you are passionate about Dutch history, you will find it somewhat heavy going ... but who would buy a book of 1,000 pages if not passionate about the subject?It is unlikely that a layman will read all the chapters. In my case, I am interested mainly in political and military affairs, so read those chapters in detail and skipped a lot of the others. But everything I read was first class.Thoroughly recommended. And, I repeat, you will see why if you go into the book and look at the table of contents.

Nothing is overlooked by the author in this great book about the rise and fall of the Dutch republic. A must-read for every historian who wants to know where the seed of liberalism and tolerance, that was planted during the American and French revolutions, came from.

Whatever the Dutch are, they're not nationalists. At Dutch schools there is relatively little attention paid to Dutch history in the 16th to 17th century. The result is that few Dutchmen knows much about this period in which the Dutch won their indepence, and went on become, small as their new nation was, a major European power. It had the largest standing army after Spain, it several times beat the mighty British navy at sea, its commercial fleet was larger than all other European merchant fleets put together. Its culture flowered and -so says the author of this book- can only be compared with the bloom of classic Athens around 500 BC. You don't have to believe me. Just read this book. It is easily the best history of this period, including local Dutch efforts. It might help British readers to have another look at one of their closest neighbours. And it might learn Dutchman something about their roots.

This would be a full five star book if it weren’t for the distracting and plain ridiculous overuse of commas, making many sentences virtually unreadable. Otherwise I fully concur with all positive reviews.