Prehistory (before 800 BC) The oldest human (
Neanderthal) traces in the Netherlands, believed to be about 250,000 years old, were found near
Maastricht. 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 (c. 8000 BC), the world's
oldest canoe was found in
Drenthe. Indigenous late Mesolithic
hunter-gatherers from the
Swifterbant culture (c. 5600 BC), related to the southern Scandinavian
Ertebølle culture, were strongly linked to rivers and open water. Between 4800 and 4500 BC, the Swifterbant people started to adopt from the neighbouring
Linear Pottery culture the practice of
animal husbandry, and between 4300 and 4000 BC agriculture. The
Funnelbeaker culture (4300–2800 BC) erected the
dolmens, 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 (c. 2950 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 artefacts. 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).
Celts, Germanic tribes and Romans (800 BC–410 AD) 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
King's grave of Oss (700 BC) was found in a burial mound, the largest of its kind in Western Europe. The deteriorating climate in Scandinavia from 850 BC and 650 BC 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 first author to describe the coast of
Holland and
Flanders was the geographer
Pytheas, who noted in c. 325 BC that in these regions, "more people died in the struggle against water than in the struggle against men." During the
Gallic Wars, the area south and west of the
Rhine was conquered by
Roman forces under
Julius Caesar from 57 BC to 53 BC. The Batavi rose against the Romans in the
Batavian rebellion of AD 69 and were defeated. The Batavi later merged with other tribes into the confederation of the Salian Franks, whose identity emerged in the first half of the third century. Salian Franks appear in Roman texts as both allies and enemies. They were forced by the confederation of the Saxons from the east to move over the Rhine into Roman territory in the fourth century. From their new base in
West Flanders and the Southwest Netherlands, they were raiding the
English Channel. Roman forces
pacified the region but did not expel the Franks, who continued to be feared at least until the time of
Julian the Apostate (358) when Salian Franks were allowed to settle as
foederati in
Texandria. the Franks expanded their territories into numerous kingdoms. By the 490s,
Clovis I had conquered and united all these territories in the southern Netherlands in one
Frankish kingdom, and from there continued his conquests into
Gaul. During this expansion, Franks migrating to the south (modern territory of France and Walloon part of Belgium) eventually adopted the
Vulgar Latin of the local population. To the north of the Franks, climatic conditions improved, and during the
Migration Period Saxons, the closely related
Angles,
Jutes, and
Frisii settled the coast. Many moved on to England and came to be known as
Anglo-Saxons, but those who stayed would be referred to as
Frisians and their language as
Frisian. while
Dorestad was a flourishing trading place. Between 600 and around 719 the cities were often fought over between the Frisians and the Franks. In 734, at the
Battle of the Boarn, the Frisians were defeated after a
series of wars. 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. The Frankish
Carolingian empire controlled much of Western Europe. In 843, it was divided into three parts—
East,
Middle, and
West Francia. Most of present-day Netherlands became part of Middle Francia, which was a weak kingdom and subject to numerous partitions and annexation attempts by its stronger neighbours. It comprised territories from
Frisia in the north to the
Kingdom of Italy in the south. Around 850,
Lothair I of Middle Francia acknowledged the Viking
Rorik of Dorestad as ruler of most of Frisia. When the kingdom of Middle Francia was partitioned in 855, the lands north of the
Alps passed to
Lothair II and subsequently were named
Lotharingia. After he died in 869, Lotharingia was partitioned, into
Upper and
Lower Lotharingia, the latter comprising the Low Countries that became part of East Francia in 870. Around 879, another Viking expedition led by
Godfrid, Duke of Frisia, raided the Frisian lands. Resistance to the Vikings, if any, came from local nobles, who gained in stature as a result, and that laid the basis for the disintegration of Lower Lotharingia into semi-independent states. One of these local nobles was
Gerolf of Holland, who assumed lordship in Frisia, and Viking rule came to an end.
High Middle Ages (1000–1384) 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.
Holland,
Hainaut,
Flanders,
Gelre,
Brabant, and
Utrecht were in a state of almost continual war or paradoxically formed personal unions. As Frankish settlement progressed from Flanders and Brabant, the area quickly became Old Low Franconian (or Old Dutch). Around 1000 AD, agrarian conditions started to improve, which led to increase in population, reclamation of wasteland by farmers, and steady growth of trade and industry.
Burgundian, Habsburg and Spanish Habsburg Netherlands (1384–1581) 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 in 1433. The
House of Valois-Burgundy and their
Habsburg heirs would rule the Low Countries from 1384 to 1581. The new rulers defended Dutch trading interests. The fleets of the
County of Holland defeated the fleets of the
Hanseatic League several times.
Amsterdam grew and in the 15th century became the primary trading port in Europe for grain from the
Baltic region. Amsterdam distributed grain to the major cities of Belgium, Northern France and England. This trade was vital because Holland could no longer produce enough grain to feed itself. Land drainage had caused the
peat of the former
wetlands to reduce to a level that was too low for drainage to be maintained. Under Habsburg
Charles V, all fiefs in the current Netherlands region were united into the
Seventeen Provinces, which included most of present-day Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of France and Germany. In 1568, under
Phillip II, the
Eighty Years' War between the Provinces and their
Spanish ruler began. The level of ferocity exhibited by both sides can be gleaned from a Dutch chronicler's report: On more than one occasion men were seen hanging their own brothers, who had been taken prisoners in the enemy's ranks... A Spaniard had ceased to be human in their eyes. On one occasion, a surgeon at Veer cut the heart from a Spanish prisoner, nailed it on a vessel's prow, and invited the townsmen to come and fasten their teeth in it, which many did with savage satisfaction. The
Duke of Alba attempted to suppress the Protestant movement in the Netherlands. Netherlanders were "burned, strangled, beheaded, or buried alive" by his "
Blood Council" and Spanish soldiers. Bodies were displayed along roads to terrorise the population into submission. Alba boasted of having executed 18,600; this figure does not include those who perished by war and famine. The first great siege was Alba's effort to capture
Haarlem and thereby cut Holland in half. It dragged on from December 1572 to the next summer, when Haarlemers finally surrendered on 13 July upon the promise that the city would be spared from being sacked. It was a stipulation
Don Fadrique was unable to honour, when his soldiers mutinied, angered over pay owed and the miserable conditions of the campaign. On 4 November 1576, Spanish
tercios seized
Antwerp and subjected it to the worst pillage in the Netherlands' history. The citizens resisted but were overcome; seven thousand were killed and a thousand buildings were torched. reproaches William of Orange in
Vlissingen upon his departure from the Netherlands in 1559. After the
sack of Antwerp, delegates from Catholic Brabant, Protestant Holland and Zeeland agreed to join Utrecht and
William the Silent in driving out Spanish troops and forming a new government for the Netherlands.
Don Juan of Austria, the new Spanish governor, was forced to concede initially, but within months returned to active hostilities. The Dutch looked for help from the Protestant
Elizabeth I of England, but she initially stood by her commitments to the Spanish in the
Treaty of Bristol of 1574. When the next large-scale battle occurred at
Gembloux in 1578, the Spanish forces won easily. In light of the
defeat at Gembloux, the southern states of the Seventeen Provinces distanced themselves from the rebels in the north with the 1579
Union of Arras. Opposing them, the northern half of the Seventeen Provinces forged the
Union of Utrecht in which they committed to support each other against the Spanish. The Union of Utrecht is seen as the foundation of the modern Netherlands. Spanish troops sacked
Maastricht in 1579, killing over 10,000 civilians. In 1581, the northern provinces adopted the
Act of Abjuration, the declaration of independence in which the provinces officially deposed Philip II. Against the rebels Philip could draw on the resources of the
Spanish Empire. Elizabeth I sympathised with the Dutch struggle and sent an army of 7,600 soldiers to aid them. English forces faced the Spanish in the Netherlands under the
Duke of Parma in a series of largely indecisive actions that tied down significant numbers of Spanish troops and bought time for the Dutch to reorganise their defences. The war continued until 1648, when Spain under King
Philip IV recognised the independence of the seven north-western provinces in the
Peace of Münster.
Dutch Republic (1581–1795) '' by
Hendrick Avercamp (1620s) After the declaration of independence, the provinces of
Holland,
Zeeland,
Groningen,
Friesland,
Utrecht,
Overijssel, and
Gelderland entered into a
confederation. All these duchies, lordships and counties enjoyed a significant degree of autonomy and were governed by their own administrative bodies known as the
States-Provincial. The confederal government, known as the
States General, was headquartered in
The Hague and comprised representatives from each of the seven provinces. The sparsely populated region of
Drenthe was part of the republic, albeit not considered a province in its own right. Moreover, during the
Eighty Years' War, the Republic came to occupy a number of
Generality Lands in
Flanders,
Brabant and
Limburg. These areas were primarily inhabited by Roman Catholics and lacked a distinct governmental structure of their own. They were used as a buffer zone between the Republic and the Spanish-controlled
Southern Netherlands. 's
Dam Square in 1656 by
Johannes Lingelbach 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 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 a presence in
India, the
Dutch East Indies (now
Indonesia),
Formosa (now
Taiwan), and the only western trading post in Japan,
Dejima. During the period of
Proto-industrialisation, the empire received 50% of textiles and 80% of silks import from the India's
Mughal Empire. during the
Second Anglo-Dutch War, 1–4 June 1666 Many economic historians regard the Netherlands as the first thoroughly
capitalist country. In early modern Europe, it had the wealthiest trading city in
Amsterdam, and the first full-time
stock exchange. The inventiveness of the traders led to insurance and retirement funds as well as phenomena such as the
boom-bust cycle, the world's first
asset-inflation bubble, the
tulip mania of 1636–1637, and the world's first
bear raider,
Isaac le Maire. In 1672 – known in Dutch history as the
Rampjaar (Disaster Year) – the Dutch Republic was attacked by France, England and two German bishoprics simultaneously, in what would become known as the
Franco-Dutch War.
At sea, it could successfully prevent the English and French navies from blockading the western shores. On land the Republic was almost overrun by the advancing French and German armies from the east, but the Dutch managed to turn the tide by
inundating parts of Holland. , 11 September 1709. From 1672 to 1712, the Republic, led by
William III of Orange and
Anthonie Heinsius would regularly clash with France in what some historians have come to call the ''Forty Years' War''. In the
Nine Years' War and the
War of the Spanish Succession, the Republic was at the centre of anti-French coalitions. The Dutch ultimately successfully defended the
Spanish Netherlands, established a
barrier there, and their troops proved central to the alliance which halted French territorial expansion in Europe until a new cycle began in 1792 with the
French Revolutionary Wars. However, the wars left them effectively bankrupt, and inflicted permanent damage on the Dutch merchant navy; while they remained the dominant economic power in the Far East, Britain took over as the pre-eminent global commercial and maritime power. Between 1590 and 1713, the
Dutch army had been one of Europe's largest and most capable armies. However, after the
conclusion of the War of the Spanish Succession, other major powers, such as Prussia, Austria, Britain, and Russia, significantly expanded their military forces. The Republic struggled to match these developments, and gradually assumed the status of a mid-tier power. However, historians have sometimes overstated the extent of this decline, especially when considering the period up to the 1750s.
Batavian Republic and Kingdom (1795–1890) 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. . Light green: territories administered by or originating from territories administered by the
Dutch East India Company; dark green: the
Dutch West India Company. In yellow are the territories occupied later, during the 19th century.
William Frederick, son of the last stadtholder, returned to the Netherlands in 1813 and proclaimed himself
Sovereign Prince. 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 as King William I in 1815. 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 (recognised by the Northern Netherlands in 1839 as the Kingdom of the Netherlands was created by decree), while the
personal union between Luxembourg and the Netherlands was severed in 1890, when
William III died with no surviving male heirs.
Salic Law prevented his daughter
Queen Wilhelmina from becoming the next Grand Duchess. The Belgian Revolution and the
Java War in the Dutch East Indies brought the Netherlands to the brink of bankruptcy. However, the
Cultivation System was introduced in 1830; in the Dutch East Indies, 20% of village land had to be devoted to government crops for export. The policy brought the Dutch enormous wealth and made the colony self-sufficient. The Netherlands abolished slavery in its colonies in 1863. Enslaved people in
Suriname would be fully free only in 1873.
World wars and beyond (1890–present) at the end of
World War II on 7 May 1945 The Netherlands remained 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
Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940. The
Rotterdam Blitz forced most of the Dutch army to surrender. During the occupation, over 100,000
Dutch Jews were transported to Nazi
extermination camps; only a few survived. Dutch workers were conscripted for forced labour in Germany,
civilians who resisted were killed in reprisal for attacks on German soldiers, and the countryside was plundered for food. Although there were thousands of Dutch who risked their lives by hiding Jews from the Germans, over 20,000 Dutch fascists
joined the Waffen SS. Political
collaborators were members of the fascist
NSB, the only legal political party in the occupied Netherlands. On 8 December 1941, the
Dutch government-in-exile in London declared war on Japan, but could not prevent the
Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies. In 1944–45, the
First Canadian Army liberated much of the Netherlands. Soon after
VE Day, the Dutch fought a
colonial war against the new Republic of Indonesia.
Decolonisation In 1954, the
Charter for the Kingdom of the Netherlands reformed the political structure as a result of international pressure to carry out
decolonisation. The Dutch colonies of
Surinam and
Curaçao and Dependencies became constituent countries within the Kingdom, on the basis of an equal partnership with the European territories. Indonesia had declared its independence in August 1945.
Suriname followed in 1975. The Netherlands was one of the founding members of
Benelux and
NATO. In the 1950s, the Netherlands became one of the six founding countries of the
European Communities, after the 1952 establishment of the
European Coal and Steel Community, and subsequent 1958 creations of the
European Economic Community and
European Atomic Energy Community. In 1993, the former two were incorporated into the
European Union. The 1960s and 1970s were a time of great social and cultural change, such as rapid de-
pillarisation. Students and other youth rejected traditional mores and pushed for change in matters such as
women's rights,
sexuality,
disarmament and
environmental issues. In 2002 the
euro was introduced as
fiat money, 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. ==Geography==