The Netherlands are a nation with a glorious past that has been left far behind.
From most of his 214 years existence (1581 to 1795) the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands enjoyed the status of great power, with many colonies all around the world and one of the most powerful fleet of its time the Republic was one of the greatest merchant empire in human history.
The end of the republic came with the rise of Napoleon, whom made short work of the Dutch army and set up a vassal state called the Batavian Republic, the Batavian Republic was replaced with the kingdom of Holland shortly after Napoleon declared himself Emperor and dissolved the French Republic, however this puppet state too was short lived as Napoleons brother, Louis Napoleon, failed to perform to Napoleon satisfaction and thus the Kingdom of Holland was Annexed to the French Empire.
After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Congress of Vienna created a kingdom for the House of Orange-Nassau, combining the United Provinces of the Netherlands with the former Austrian Netherlands, in order to create a strong buffer state north of France. Symptomatic of the tenor of diplomatic bargaining at Vienna was the early proposal to reward Prussia for its staunch fight against Napoleon with the former Habsburg territory. Then, when the British insisted on retaining formerly Dutch Ceylon and the Cape Colony, which they had seized while the Netherlands was ruled by Napoleon, the new kingdom of the Netherlands was compensated with these southern provinces. The union was called the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
In 1830 the Belgian revolution erupted, the Belgian Revolution had many causes; and mainly, the treatment of the French-speaking Catholic Walloons in the Dutch-dominated United Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the difference of religion between the Belgians and their Dutch king. The main cause of the Belgian Revolution was the domination of the Dutch over the economic, political, and social institutions of the United Provinces.
In the beginning it looked like the Dutch would crush this rebellion, however after major gains were made the French army under Marchal Gérard intervened and caused the Dutch to stop their advance. The Dutch then tried in vain to regain control of Belgium until 1839, when in the treaty of London they were forced to recognize the Belgian independence.
In 1873 the Dutch launched their first real attempt to expand their colonial empire by attacking the Aceh Sultanate, however the Sultan received Military aid from the Italians and Brittish whom rapidly modernized the Army of Aceh, causing the first expedition to end in disaster, in the end it would take over 30 years for to achieve victory, only in 1904 most of Aceh was under Dutch control. The Aceh war made it impossible for the Dutch to free up enough forces to attempt the colonizing ventures in Africa, unlike the French, german and brittish whom in less than 15 years gobbled up the huge continent.
During World War I the Netherlands remained neutral. A large army was mobilised to defend this neutrality, but it was not equipped by the new standards of the day, causing a structural equipment inferiority that would last until the middle of the century. After the war most of the defence budget was spent on the fleet to protect the East Indies. This however didn't allow the navy to be expanded, merely to be modernised.
During the second world war of all the major participants the Dutch were by far the most poorly equipped, not even attaining World War I standards. As however the German invaders in May 1940 adjusted their forces accordingly, the Dutch army in the Battle of the Netherlands was largely intact when it had to surrender after five days on 14 May to save the major cities from further bombardment. The Dutch empire continued the fight, but the Dutch Indies were invaded and largely conquered by Japan in 1942, after the Battle of the Java Sea in which the larger part of the Dutch navy was destroyed. Dutch contribution to the war effort was then limited to the merchant fleet (providing the bulk of allied merchant shipping in the Pacific war), several aircraft squadrons, some naval vessels and a motorized infantry brigade raised by enlisting Dutch emigrants.
Two days after the surrender of Japan, most of the Dutch East Indies declared its independence as Indonesia. A confusing phase followed, known as the Indonesian War of Independence, with the Netherlands recognizing the new country on the one hand, while fighting the Indonesian nationalists in two wars, named politionele acties ("police actions"). Increasing international pressure led the Netherlands to eventually withdraw and it formally recognized Indonesian independence on December 27, 1949. Part of the former Dutch East Indies, namely the western part of New Guinea, remained under Dutch control as Netherlands New Guinea until 1961, when the Netherlands transferred sovereignty to Indonesia, following Indonesian threats to invade the region.
About 300,000 Dutch colonists left the land where were most of them were born, and settled in the motherland; very few of the native population did. Although it was originally expected that the loss of the Indies would contribute to an economic downfall, nothing of the kind happened. The Dutch economy experienced an exceptional growth (partly because a disproportionate amount of Marshall Aid was received) in the 1950s and 60s. In fact, the demand for labor was so strong that immigration was actively encouraged, first from Italy and Spain then later on, in larger numbers, from Turkey and Morocco.
In the early post-war years the Netherlands made continued attempts to expand its territory by annexing neighboring German territory. The larger annexation plans were continuously rejected by the U.S., but the London conference of 1949 permitted the Netherlands to perform a smaller scale annexation. Most of the annexed territory was returned to Germany on August 1, 1963.
Operation Black Tulip was a plan in 1945 by Dutch minister of Justice Kolfschoten to evict all Germans from the Netherlands. The operation lasted from 1946 to 1948 and in the end 3691 Germans (15% of Germans resident in the Netherlands) were deported.
The operation started on 10 September 1946 in Amsterdam, where Germans and their families were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and given one hour to collect 50 kg of luggage. They were allowed to take 100 Guilders. The rest of their possessions went to the state. They were taken to concentration camps near the German border, the biggest of which was Mariënbosch near Nijmegen.
The allied forces that occupied western Germany didn't like this operation because other countries might follow suit and western Germany was in too bad a state to receive all these newcomers. The British troops in Germany reacted by evicting 100 000 Dutch citizens in Germany to the Netherlands.
The last major flood in the Netherlands took place in early February 1953, when a huge storm caused the collapse of several dikes in the southwest of the Netherlands. More than 1,800 people drowned in the ensuing inundations. The Dutch government subsequently decided on a large-scale program of public works (the "Delta Works") to protect the country against future flooding. The project took more than thirty years to complete. According to Dutch government engineers, the odds of a major inundation anywhere in the Netherlands are now 1 in 10,000 per year. Following the disaster with hurricane Katrina in 2005, an American congressional delegation visited the Netherlands to inspect the Delta Works and Dutch government engineers were invited to a hearing of the U.S. Congress to explain the Netherlands' efforts to protect low-lying areas.
Surinam was decolonized in November 1975, this time encouraged by the Dutch government, partly because it wanted to stem the flow of immigrants from Surinam, partly because the very possession of colonies had become politically embarrassing; however, hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of Surinam voted with their feet against it, creating a Surinam community in the Netherlands, now roughly as large as the population of the motherland.
The 60s and 70s were a time of great social and cultural change, such as rapid ontzuiling (literally: depillarisation), a term that describes the decay of the old divisions along class and religious lines. Youths, and students in particular, rejected traditional mores, and pushed for change in matters like women's rights, sexuality, disarmament and environmental issues. Today, the Netherlands is regarded as a liberal country, considering its drugs policy and its legalization of euthanasia. Same-sex marriage has been permitted since 1 April 2001.
In 1952, the Netherlands were among the founders of the European Coal and Steel Community, which evolved into the European Union. The Netherlands is an industrialized nation but also a large exporter of agricultural products. The country was a founding member of NATO and participated in the introduction of the euro in 1999. In recent years the Dutch have often been a driving force behind the integration of European countries in the European Union.
In the Recent Years the Netherlands have been rocked by severe political and social turmoil. On 6 May 2002, the murder of a right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn, calling for a very strict policy on immigration, shocked the nation, not all used to political violence. His party (LPF) won a landslide election victory, partly because of his perceived martyrdom, However, internal party squabbles and blowing up the coalition government they had helped to create, resulted in the loss of 70% of their support in early general elections in 2003.
Another murder that caused great upheaval took place on 2 November 2004, when film director and publicist Theo van Gogh was assassinated by a Dutch-Moroccan youth with radical Islamic beliefs, because of Van Gogh's alleged blasphemy. One week later, several arrests were made of several would-be islamist terrorists, who have later been found guilty of conspiracy with terrorist intentions. All this sparked a debate on the position of radical Islam and of Islam generally in Dutch society, and on immigration and the lagely failing integration policies.
After the falling of the 2nd Balkenende cabinet early elections held on 22 November 2006 saw a landslide victory for the Socialist Party, which almost tripled in size and became the third largest party with 17% of the seats, while the moderate PvdA (Labour Party) lost a quarter of its seats. At the other end of the spectrum LPF lost all its seats, while the new anti immigration and far-right PVV went from nothing to 6% of the seats, becoming the fifth biggest party. This polarization of the Second Chamber, with an even distribution between left and right made the formation negotiations very difficult, in the end a weak centrist coalition was formed.
