Netherlands
Historie
The area that is now the Netherlands was inhabited by early humans at least 37.000 years ago, as attested by flint tools discovered
in Woerden in 2010. In 2009 a fragment of a 40.000-year-old Neanderthal skull was found in sand dredged from the North Sea floor off the
coast of Zeeland.
At the end of the Ice Age, the nomadic late Upper Palaeolithic Hamburg culture (13.000–10.000 BC) hunted reindeer in the
area, using spears. The later Ahrensburg culture (11.200–9.500 BC) used bow and arrow. From Mesolithic Maglemosian-like tribes
(9000-6000 BC), the world's oldest canoe was found in Drenthe.
Indigenous late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from the Swifterbant culture (5600-3400 BC), related to the southern Scandinavian
Ertebølle culture, were strongly linked to rivers and open water. Agriculture also arrived in areas near the Netherlands somewhere
around 5000 BC with the Linear Pottery culture, who were central European farmers with Mediterranean ancestry. Their farms were
restricted to southern Limburg and only temporarily established. However, there is some evidence that the coastal Swifterband people took
up pottery and animal husbandry in the rest of the country.
The Funnelbeaker culture (4300–2800 BC) was a farming culture extending from Denmark through northern Germany into the northern
Netherlands. In this period of Dutch prehistory the first notable remains were erected: the dolmens (in dutch Hunebed), large stone
grave monuments found in Drenthe.
There was a quick transition from the Funnelbeaker farming culture to the pan-European Corded Ware pastoralist culture (3000-2350 BC).
In the southwest, the Seine-Oise-Marne culture — related to the Vlaardingen culture (c. 2600 BC) — survived well into the Neolithic
period, until it too was succeeded by the Corded Ware culture.
The subsequent Bell Beaker culture (2700–2100 BC) introduced metalwork in copper, gold and later bronze and opened new international
trade routes, reflected in copper artifacts. Finds of rare bronze objects suggest that Drenthe was a trading centre in the Bronze Age
(2000–800 BC). The Bell Beaker culture developed locally into the Barbed-Wire Beaker culture (2100–1800 BC) and later the Elp
culture (1800–800 BC), a Middle Bronze Age culture marked by earthenware pottery. The southern region became dominated by the related
Hilversum culture (1800–800 BC).
From 800 BC onwards, the Iron Age Celtic Hallstatt culture became influential, replacing the Hilversum culture. Iron ore brought a
measure of prosperity and was available throughout the country. Smiths travelled from settlement to settlement with bronze and iron,
fabricating tools on demand.
The deteriorating climate in Scandinavia from 850 BC and 650 BC and might have triggered the migration of Germanic tribes from the North. By
the time this migration was complete, around 250 BC, a few general cultural and linguistic groups had emerged. The North Sea Germanic
Ingaevones inhabited the northern part of the Low Countries. They would later develop into the Frisii and the early Saxons.
The Weser-Rhine Germanic (Istvaeones) extended along the middle Rhine and Weser and inhabited the Low Countries south of the great
rivers. These tribes would eventually develop into the Salian Franks. Also the Celtic La Tène culture (450 BC to the Roman
conquest) expanded over a wide range, including the southern area of the Low Countries.
During the Gallic Wars, the area south of the Oude Rijn and west of the Rhine was conquered by Roman forces under Julius Caesar
in a series of campaigns from 57 BC to 53 BC. The approximately 450 years of Roman rule that followed would profoundly change the area that would
become the Netherlands. Very often this involved large-scale conflict with the free Germanic tribes over the Rhine.
After Roman government in the area collapsed, the Franks expanded their territories until there were numerous small Frankish kingdoms.
By the 490s, Clovis I had conquered and united all the Frankish territories to the west of the Meuse, including those in the southern
Netherlands and founded the Merovingian Kingdom (481–751).
As climatic conditions improved, there was another mass migration of Germanic peoples into the area from the east. This is known as the
"Migration Period". The northern Netherlands received an influx of new migrants and settlers, mostly Saxons, but also Angles and Jutes.
Many of these migrants did not stay in the northern Netherlands but moved on to England and are known today as the Anglo-Saxons. The newcomers
that stayed in the northern Netherlands would eventually be referred to as "Frisians". By the seventh century, a Frisian Kingdom
(650–734) under King Aldegisel and King Redbad emerged with Traiectum (Utrecht) as its centre of power.
In the early 8th century the Frisians came increasingly into conflict with the Franks to the south, resulting in a series of wars. In 734,
at the Battle of the Boarn, the Frisians in the Netherlands were defeated by the Franks. With the approval of the Franks, the
Anglo-Saxon missionary Willibrord converted the Frisian people to Christianity and established the Archdiocese of Utrecht. However,
his successor Boniface was murdered by the Frisians in 754.
In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Vikings raided the largely defenceless Frisian and Frankish towns lying on the coast and along the
rivers of the Low Countries. Although Vikings never settled in large numbers in those areas, they did set up long-term bases and were even
acknowledged as lords in a few cases. One of the most important Viking families in the Low Countries was that of Rorik of Dorestad,
who ruled over parts of Frisia between 841 and 873.
The Holy Roman Empire ruled much of the Low Countries in the 10th and 11th century, but was not able to maintain political unity. Powerful
local nobles turned their cities, counties and duchies into private kingdoms, that felt little sense of obligation to the emperor, who reigned
over large parts of the nation in name only.
The center of power in these emerging independent territories was in the County of Holland. Originally granted as a fief to the Danish
chieftain Rorik in return for loyalty to the emperor in 862, the region of Kennemara (the region around modern Haarlem) rapidly grew under
Rorik's descendants in size and importance. By the early 11th century, Dirk III, Count of Holland was levying tolls on the Meuse
estuary and was able to resist military intervention from his overlord, the Duke of Lower Lorraine. The counts of Holland conquered most
of Zeeland but it was not until 1289 that Count Floris V was able to subjugate the Frisians in West Friesland.
The Hook and Cod Wars (Dutch: "Hoekse en Kabeljauwse twisten") were a series of wars and battles in the County of Holland
between 1350 and 1490. Most of these wars were fought over the title of count of Holland, but some have argued that the underlying reason was
because of the power struggle of the traders in the cities against the ruling nobility.
Most of the Imperial and French fiefs in what is now the Netherlands and Belgium were united in a personal union by Philip the Good,
duke of Burgundy in 1433. The House of Valois-Burgundy and their Habsburg heirs would rule the Low Countries in the period from 1384 to 1581.
Under Habsburg, Charles V, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Spain, all fiefs in the current Netherlands region were united into
the Seventeen Provinces, which also included most of present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, and some adjacent land in what is now France and
Germany.
In 1568, the Eighty Years' War between the Provinces and their Spanish ruler began. Under the leadership of William of Orange
(1533 – 1584), the founder of the Dutch royal family, the northern provinces eventually were able to oust the Habsburg armies, and in 1581
they established the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.
The Dutch Republic was recognised by Spain and the major European powers in 1609 at the start of the Twelve Years' Truce. Hostilities
broke out again around 1619, as part of the broader Thirty Years' War.
An end was reached in 1648 with the Peace of Münster, when the Dutch Republic was definitively recognised as an independent country no
longer part of the Holy Roman Empire.
In the Dutch Golden Age, spanning much of the 17th century, the Dutch Empire grew to become one of the major seafaring and economic powers.
Science, military, and art (especially painting) were among the most acclaimed in the world. By 1650, the Dutch owned 16.000 merchant ships. The
Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company established colonies and trading posts all over the world. The Dutch
settlement in North America began with the founding of New Amsterdam on the southern part of Manhattan in 1614. In South Africa, the Dutch
settled the Cape Colony in 1652. Dutch colonies in South America were established along the many rivers in the fertile Guyana plains, among
them Colony of Surinam (now Suriname). In Asia, the Dutch established the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and the only western
trading post in Japan, Dejima.
In the 18th century the Dutch Republic had seen a state of a general decline, with economic competition from England and long-standing rivalries
between the two main factions in Dutch society, the republican Staatsgezinden and the supporters of the stadtholder the Prinsgezinden
as main political factions. With the armed support of revolutionary France, Dutch republicans proclaimed the Batavian Republic, modelled
after the French Republic and rendering the Netherlands a unitary state in 19 January 1795. The stadtholder William V of Orange had
fled to England.
But from 1806 to 1810, Kingdom of Holland was set up by Napoleon Bonaparte as a puppet kingdom governed by his brother Louis Bonaparte
to control the Netherlands more effectively. However, King Louis Bonaparte tried to serve Dutch interests instead of his brother's, and he was
forced to abdicate on 1 July 1810. The Emperor sent in an army and the Netherlands became part of the French Empire until the autumn of 1813,
when Napoleon was defeated in the Battle of Leipzig.
William Frederick, son of the last stadtholder, returned to the Netherlands in 1813 and proclaimed himself Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands.
Two years later, the Congress of Vienna added the southern Netherlands to the north to create a strong country on the northern border of France.
William Frederick raised this United Netherlands to the status of a kingdom and proclaimed himself King William I in 1815. In addition,
William became hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg in exchange for his German possessions.
However, the Southern Netherlands had been culturally separate from the north since 1581, and rebelled. The south gained independence in 1830 as
Belgium, while the personal union between Luxembourg and the Netherlands was severed in 1890, when William III died with no surviving
male heirs. Ascendancy laws prevented his daughter Queen Wilhelmina from becoming the next Grand Duchess.
The Netherlands were able to remain neutral during World War I. In part, because the import of goods through the Netherlands proved essential to
German survival, until the blockade by the British Royal Navy in 1916. That changed in World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on
10 May 1940.
In 1954, the Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands reformed the political structure of the Netherlands, which was a result of
international pressure to carry out decolonisation. The Dutch colonies of Surinam and Curaçao and Dependencies and the European country became all
constituent countries within the Kingdom, on a basis of equality. Indonesia had declared its independence in August 1945 (recognised in 1949), and
thus was never part of the reformed Kingdom. Suriname followed in 1975.
The Netherlands was one of the founding members of the Benelux, the NATO, Euratom and the European Coal and Steel Community, which
would evolve into the EEC (Common Market) and later the European Union.
In 2002 the euro was introduced, and in 2010 the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved. Referendums were held on each island. As a result,
Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba (the BES islands) were incorporated as special municipalities upon the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles.
The special municipalities are collectively known as the Caribbean Netherlands.
I have visited The Netherlands several times.
The pictures of these trips, are not yet available; i have to digatalize them first.
Please let me know when you're having questions.
i would be pleased to help you.
Things to do and other tips
