Those from outside the Netherlands generally know very little about the country's history between the time of Napoleon and the Second World War. The Revolt of the Netherlands and the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic are familiar territory, but to most foreigners there is a veil of mystery – even nonentity – drawn over the country towards the end of the eighteenth century, marked perhaps by the resounding defeat of the Dutch and their economic pretensions in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–84). Since the Second World War the Netherlands has become better known again, as a formidable if small economic force in an integrating Europe, and as a reputed haven of permissiveness and licentiousness: everyone knows Amsterdam.

That Dutch history has been obscure in the nineteenth and early twentieth century is hardly remarkable: it was not the cradle of industrial revolution, there were no violent political revolutions, nor any nationalist uprising for unification. Other countries have suffered similar historiographical fates: what do most of us know of the once-great Spain, or Portugal in the same period, to say nothing of Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia? Nonetheless, this book sets out to bring the Dutch back into the limelight in this internationally rather forgotten period, and to show to the non-Dutch-speaking world that the Netherlands had a fascinating and instructive history at this time, just as much as it did in the heady days of the Republic, or has done in the economic boom since the Second World War.