Introduction

Although it is easy to see retrospectively that the foundations for the state that came to be known as the Dutch Republic were laid during the late middle ages, as late as 1550 no one could have imagined its coming into being, let alone predicted its territorial composition and boundaries. Until the 1540s the driving force of state formation had been the conscious assemblage of principalities in the area of the Low Countries by the dukes of Burgundy and their successors, the Habsburg emperors of Germany. The process began with Philip the Bold entering into possession of the County of Flanders in 1384, and it ended with the submission of the duchy of Guelders to Charles V in 1543. The County of Holland that is the subject of this chapter was added to the Burgundian multiple state in 1428, when Duke Philip the Good successfully intervened in the protracted civil war between Jacqueline and John of Bavaria, the German house that had ruled Holland from 1349.

The focus on the County of Holland, which was only one of the seven provinces later to constitute the Dutch Republic, suffers to some extent from a retrospective bias. In the Republic's Golden Age, Holland's demographic, economic and political preponderance was overwhelming. In 1622 more than 40 per cent of the Republic's population lived in Holland alone. Regional patterns of urbanisation were even more skewed.