Structures

INTRODUCING GEOGRAPHY

A description of the Dutch Republic's territory – the physical container of the Dutch economy, if you will – is not a straightforward task. This is evident from the terminological confusion that frustrates discussion about the Netherlands as a political entity and from the continual alterations that must be made to the physical map of the northwestern corner of Europe.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the territories that would later comprise the United Provinces of the Netherlands (i.e., the Dutch Republic) were not yet all under the control of the Habsburg emperor, Charles V, who had inherited the Netherlands provinces accumulated by the Dukes of Burgundy over the course of two centuries of dynastic politics. Only after 1543, when the Duchy of Gelderland came under Habsburg control, can one speak of a “Burgundian Netherlands” that embraced all of the modern Dutch state plus, of course, Belgium and parts of present-day France.

This assemblage of provinces was by no means centrally governed. Indeed, steps in that direction taken by Philip II after 1555 provoked a particularist resistance of such vehemence that it must count as a major precipitant of the Dutch Revolt. Much remained to be achieved in the way of legal or fiscal unification – not to mention economic unification – before the outbreak of the Revolt rent the Netherlands asunder.

In the course of the Revolt against Spain, the Republic arose – unanticipated and in an ad hoc manner – as a union of seven provinces.