The Low Countries and The Dutch Revolt - 1. Jane de Iongh: Mary of Hungary, Second Regent of the Netherlands. Translated by M. D. Herter Norton. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1958. Pp. 304. $5.95.) - 2. Pieter Geyl: The Revolt of the Netherlands (1555–1609). (New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1958. Pp. 310. $6.00.)

The Low Countries have a special place in Reformation history, both because of the great diversity of the religious landscape and because they experienced a genuine Reformation “from below,” as well as fierce repression of Protestant heresies. Protests against the latter helped to trigger the revolt that resulted in the split of the Habsburg Netherlands. In the northern Netherlands, the Dutch Republic gave the Reformed Church a monopoly of worship but also guaranteed freedom of conscience to dissidents. The southern Netherlands, once “reconciled” with the Habsburgs and having expelled its Protestant inhabitants, became a bulwark of the Counter-Reformation. For more on the revolt, see the Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation article “The Netherlands (Dutch Revolt/Dutch Republic)” by Henk van Nierop.

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Historical Fiction, Cultural Transfer and the Recycling of the Black Legend between the Low Countries and Britain: A Nineteenth-Century Case Study

Literary Hispanophobia and Hispanophilia in Britain and the Low Countries (1550-1850) ◽

10.5117/9789462989375_ch12 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Raphaël Ingelbien

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

The Netherlands ◽

Historical Novels ◽

Low Countries ◽

Cultural Transfer ◽

Liberal Politics ◽

Dutch Revolt ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Black Legend

This chapter compares Henri Moke’s Le Gueux de Mer (1827) and Thomas Colley Grattan’s The Heiress of Bruges (1830), two historical novels set at the time of the Dutch Revolt and written in the final years of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The comparison provides insights into the respective priorities of British and ‘Netherlandic’ writers who dealt in images of Spain in the early nineteenth century. Beyond some clear differences in the ideological urgency of their work, the authors’ liberal politics, their sympathy towards Catholicism and the influence of Romantic Orientalism create important nuances in their versions of the Black Legend, which are ultimately denunciations of bigotry and tyranny rather than expressions of wholesale Hispanophobia.

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Amsterdam

Renaissance and Reformation ◽

10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0106 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Henk van Nierop

Keyword(s):

The Netherlands ◽

17Th Century ◽

Town Planning ◽

City Government ◽

Protestant Reformation ◽

Dutch Republic ◽

Low Countries ◽

Dutch Art ◽

Dutch Revolt ◽

The Baltic

Amsterdam was the biggest and the most important commercial metropolis of 17th-century Europe. Its wealthy merchants provided a booming market for luxury industries, making Amsterdam a European-wide production center and market for art and other luxury products, as well as books, prints, maps, and atlases. The largest, richest, and most powerful city in the Dutch Republic by far, it often played an independent role in international politics and diplomacy. Promotion of trade interests prompted Amsterdam’s burgomasters to tolerant policies toward Catholics, Jews, Mennonites, and other religious minorities. Originating as a modest settlement near a dam built in the river Amstel (hence its name), Amsterdam soon became the most important port in the Low Countries for trade with the Baltic, importing mainly grain and timber. The Reformation gave rise to fierce controversies. Anabaptist and Reformed risings in 1535 and 1566 provoked brutal repression by the Catholic city government. During the Dutch Revolt, Amsterdam initially remained loyal to church and king but switched allegiance in 1578 and adopted the Protestant Reformation. The capture of Antwerp by the Spanish army in 1585 heralded Amsterdam’s age of greatness. With Antwerp’s harbor closed and the southern provinces wracked by warfare, Amsterdam took over Antwerp’s function as the center of the highly integrated economy of the Low Countries. Amsterdam enlarged its one-sided mercantile economy with new trade routes to Russia, the Mediterranean and the Levant, the Atlantic world, and the Indies. Its newly found wealth led to an unprecedented wave of immigration, increasing its population from about 30,000 in 1578 to over 200,000 by the end of the 17th century. The urban government facilitated trade by the institution of an exchange bank and a commodity exchange, the construction of dockyards, and two bold and ambitious town-planning projects, including Amsterdam’s celebrated ring of canals. This article contains only works specifically dedicated to the history of the city of Amsterdam. Only a few of them are in English. Since Amsterdam was by far the biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful city of the Dutch Republic, much valuable information about Amsterdam is to be found in general works about the Dutch Republic listed in the Oxford Bibliographies articles on The Netherlands (Dutch Revolt / Dutch Republic) and Reformations and Revolt in the Netherlands, 1500–1621. For studies on artists working in Amsterdam and the Amsterdam art market, see the Oxford Bibliographies article on 17th-Century Dutch Art.

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Book Reviews

Kurdish Studies ◽

10.33182/ks.v8i1.559 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 209-228

Author(s):

Martin Van Bruinessen ◽

Michael M. Gunter ◽

Joost Jongerden ◽

Michiel Leezenberg ◽

Stanley Thangaraj

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

New York ◽

The Netherlands ◽

Academic Publishing ◽

Ethnic Cleansing ◽

Cambridge University ◽

City College ◽

Tennessee Technological University ◽

Technological University

Michael M. Gunter (ed.), Routledge Handbook on the Kurds, London and New York: Routledge, 2019, 483 pp., (ISBN: 9781138646643). Reviewed by Martin van Bruinessen, Utrecht University, The Netherlands Kardo Bokani, Social Communication and Kurdish Political Mobilisation in Turkey, Balti, Republic of Moldova: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2017, 252 pp., (ISBN: 978-3-330-33239-3) Reviewed by Michael M. Gunter, Tennessee Technological University, United States Emel Elif Tugdar & Serhun Al, eds., Comparative Kurdish Politics in the Middle East: Actors, Ideas, and Interests, Cham: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2018, pp. 235, (ISBN: 978-3319537146) Reviewed by Joost Jongerden, Wageningen University, The Netherlands Christoph Markiewicz, The Crisis of Kingship in Late Medieval Islam: Persian Emigres and the Making of Ottoman Sovereignty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, 364 pp, (9781108684842). Reviewed by Michiel Leezenberg, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Thomas Schmidinger, The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in the Afrin Region of Rojava, Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2019, 192 pp. (ISBN: 978-1629636511). Reviewed by Stanley Thangaraj, City College of New York, United States

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