Littell's Living Age/Volume 179/Issue 2318/Dutch Independence

On November 17 Dutchmen are preparing to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands from French domination, and the re-establishment of national independence. There is no finality about seventy-five, except that it has some arithmetical relation to a hundred. But the event to be commemorated is sufficiently interesting to dispense with the invention of pretexts for recalling it. No nationality in the world has earned its liberty more worthily than the Dutch, or has more right to something of self-glorification on the score of it. The land on which it dwells is, if not its own creation, its salvage. Without indefatigable efforts the morsel of territory would have been a barren salt marsh. Human enterprise has reclaimed and guards it, and has converted the whole into one of the most productive regions in Europe. Not only has it turned an expanse of foggy, unwholesome fens into a vast model farm, but it has built prosperous cities, and filled them with the products of art and civilization. The Dutch race has stretched its hands everywhere, and the earth is full of evidences of its courage and foresight. The surprising history of its influence and affluence is essentially connected with its stubborn determination to be independent. It defied the frowns of nature, it compelled the Old World and the New to pay it tribute, it made itself learned and accomplished, because it felt that it was performing the work for and by itself. In the history of its rise and its fortunes the maintenance of its independence, with the briefest intervals, is a continual marvel. Swiss independence, with all its great deeds, cannot match the tale of the vitality of Dutch freedom. A highland people occupies defensible strongholds, and has little to provoke covetousness. The Dutch inhabit a country which can be overrun in a week, and perpetually has been overrun. By their industry they rendered it long since desirable. They accumulated within it long since incalculable riches. By their energy they endowed it with a network of valuable external dominions, apparent prizes for their conqueror. The maritime opportunities, which they had learnt how to improve, were so many additional temptations to powerful neighbors to plan annexation. In the midst of numberless dangers Dutch independence might seem to have borne a charmed life. Feudalism, instead of quenching it, invigorated it. While Europe was languishing under the burden of thousands of petty despots, Holland throve under its counts. Burgundian, Spanish, and French rule passed over it without stifling its free spirit. Under a variety of forms of government the essence of Dutch independence has gone on for many centuries pertinaciously immovable.

Only in 1795 was there any serious risk of an extinction of the separate Dutch nationality. Had France employed its armed authority over the country for the simple benefit of the Dutch people, the contagion of French democratic ideas might have ended by absorbing Holland permanently into the French republican confederation. Bonaparte’s dynastic ambition preserved it from that peril. For the aggrandisement, first of his family, and then of his empire, he abolished the Batavian republic, and, after the four years of his brother’s mock reign, incorporated its provinces in his own. Thenceforward it was a mere question of time when Dutch independence should reassert itself. Seventy-five years back the field of Leipsic gave the occasion. A month later the Dutch nation declared itself once more free, and summoned the Prince of Orange home from England. Circumstances then aided Holland in its deliverance. Had not the Napoleonic empire beaten out its brains against the wintry wastes of Russia, the Dutch people could not have shaken itself loose from a yoke which itself had originally co-operated in adjusting. Coincidences were equally favorable when its troops marched with those of Marlborough and Eugene. It profited by the great league William the Third constructed from the vantage ground of the English throne. Elizabeth and Valois and Bourbon kings of France had all helped in its struggle for existence against Philip the Second. But the nationality too was constantly on the alert and ready. Generally it has been the heart and soul of the international combinations for resistance to a crushing monopoly of power in Europe. European liberties owe yet more to the uncontrollable Dutch love of independence than Dutch independence owes to European succor. The Dutch race is not especially conciliatory, any more than is supposed to be the English. Frequently it has shown itself despotic and harsh, as Belgium found between 1814 and 1830. Englishmen have had cause to accuse it of commercial rapacity and exclusiveness. Yet no students of history will deny that it and its independence, even its egotism, have been necessary to European liberty and progress. In itself there seems no particular reason why such a thing as a specific Dutch nationality should ever have come into being, or have exercised any weight in European affairs. Geographically, Holland has no particular title to distinct existence. Many German politicians regard it as naturally part of their empire. The first Napoleon thought it as naturally part of his. Its own people confessed their doubts of its physical integrity by the bygone doctrine of their indefeasible property in Belgium. As a race it might have grown up with no more political individuality than the population of Wurtemberg or Saxony. For foreigners it might have been absolutely indistinguishable from the mass of the nationality of which it owns emphatically the name. In fact, it has been for five hundred years or more as wholly one and apart in the society of nations as if Holland had been Russia, or France, or Spain. Its handful of people and particle of territory have been throughout a palpable and visible unit, which it has been impossible for European councils to ignore, and entirely possible for them to obey.