The Paradox of “A High Standard of Public Honesty”

Author(s):  
James Kennedy ◽  
Ronald Kroeze

This chapter takes as its starting point the contemporary idea that the Netherlands is one of the least corrupt countries in the world; an idea that it dates back to the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In this chapter, the authors explain how corruption was controlled in the Netherlands against the background of the rise and fall of the Dutch Republic, modern statebuilding and liberal politics. However, the Dutch case also presents some complexities: first, the decrease in some forms of corruption was due not to early democratization or bureaucratization, but was rather a side-effect of elite patronage-politics; second, although some early modern forms of corruption disappeared around this period, new forms have emerged in more recent times.

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Kurowiak

AbstractAs a work of propaganda, graphics Austroseraphicum Coelum Paulus Pontius should create a new reality, make appearances. The main impression while seeing the graphics is the admiration for the power of Habsburgs, which interacts with the power of the Mother of God. She, in turn, refers the viewer to God, as well as Franciscans placed on the graphic, they become a symbol of the Church. This is a starting point for further interpretation of the drawing. By the presence of certain characters, allegories, symbols, we can see references to a particular political situation in the Netherlands - the war with the northern provinces of Spain. The message of the graphic is: the Spanish Habsburgs, commissioned by the mission of God, they are able to fight all of the enemies, especially Protestants, with the help of Immaculate and the Franciscans. The main aim of the graphic is to convince the viewer that this will happen and to create in his mind a vision of the new reality. But Spain was in the seventeenth century nothing but a shadow of former itself (in the time of Philip IV the general condition of Spain get worse). That was the reason why they wanted to hold the belief that the empire continues unwavering. The form of this work (graphics), also allowed to export them around the world, and the ambiguity of the symbolic system, its contents relate to different contexts, and as a result, the Habsburgs, not only Spanish, they could promote their strength everywhere. Therefore it was used very well as a single work of propaganda, as well as a part of a broader campaign


2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Lucassen ◽  
Leo Lucassen

AbstractHistorians of migration have increasingly criticized the idea of a ‘mobility transition’, which assumed that pre-modern societies in Europe were geographically fairly immobile, and that people only started to move in unprecedented ways with the onset of modernization in the nineteenth century. In line with this critique, this article attempts to apply thorough quantitative tests to the available data. The focus is on ‘cross-community migration’, following Patrick Manning's argument that migrants moving over a cultural border are most likely to accelerate the rate of innovation. Six forms of migration are considered: emigration out of Europe, immigration from other continents, rural colonization of ‘empty spaces’, movements to large cities, seasonal migration, and the movement of sailors and soldiers. To illustrate regional variations, the examples of the Netherlands and Russia are contrasted. The reconstruction presented here is partial and preliminary, but it unequivocally shows that early modern Europe was much more mobile than modernization scholars allowed for. There was indeed a sharp increase in the level of migration after 1850, but it was due to improvements in transport rather than to modernization in a more general sense. This model has been elaborated for Europe but it can also be applied to other parts of the world and can hopefully contribute to the debate on the ‘Great Divergence’ between Europe and Asia.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 226-236
Author(s):  
MARLOES VREUGDENHIL

‘Dat dit Nederlant is’. The Netherlands described in six world atlases (1571-1664) Despite vast research on early modern atlases and their maps, little is known about texts in atlases. This study focusses on these texts in verso about the Netherlands in six early modern Dutch world atlases (1571- 1664). Through their comprehensive descriptions and characterization of the Netherlands, these texts confirm and shape an image of the Netherlands and especially of the Dutch Republic. The study found that the atlases used the same sources and copy or paraphrase each other. This causes a delay in information, but also establishes a vast and repeated image of the Dutch Republic, with emphasis on the continuation of the Seventeen Netherlands into the Republic, the freedom and independence of the Provinces, and the trade and prosperity of the young Republic.


Itinerario ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Rosa Ribeiro

In the introduction to her work on ‘colonial practice’ in the Ne Indies, the Dutch-American historian Frances Gouda quotes from sation in Harvard between Christopher Hitchens and Simon Schama the latter a renowned historian of the Dutch past. Hitchens posed a to Schama: how was it possible that Dutch culture, though reprc a ‘model of highly evolved religious tolerance and political plurali rently gave birth to a diaspora (he has Indonesia, Surinam and So1 in mind) that is ‘so disfigured by violence and bigotry’? Schama pointed out that Dutch political and religious tolerance was actually predicated on the need to foster profitable trade: it was a practical consideration rather than an idealism. We could add here that so much is almostcommon-sense in the Netherlands. However, Schama pointed out a tendencyof Dutch ‘self-invention’ that first expressed itself in the rise of the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century and then in the rise of Afrikanerdom Africa. As Gouda rightly points out, following Schama's own work, the Dutch Republic rose from a ‘Protean feat of self-creation’ out ofan ‘amorphous assemblage of towns and villages’, in an act resembling parthenogenesis. She then adds that this ‘unique Dutch habit of self-invention may have also taken place elsewhere in the world.


2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 612-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Valkenburg ◽  
Harry Coenen

This contribution deals with the question of the existence of 'working poor' in the Netherlands. The rest of the world tends to see the Netherlands as a success story. It is against this background that we investigate whether there are people in the Netherlands that are in paid employment, but are nevertheless confronted with problems of poverty. The statistical data available at the macro-level give clear indications of the existence of 'working poor'. In the light of this fact, the issue of the 'working poor' should be given a more prominent place on the political and trade union agenda. The trade unions, in particular, should play a far more active role. They should make more detailed studies of the problem, taking as their starting point the day-to-day experience of those affected, and should design measures that are commensurate with the interests of these people.


Quaerendo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 15-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Pettegree ◽  
Arthur der Weduwen

Abstract In 2018, we published an article that provided a first attempt to survey the whole output of the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic. Our estimate was a minimum of 357,500 editions. This calculation did not yet include the world of ephemeral forms, handbills and posters. The survival of such commercial or private notices is microscopically small, compared to what must have been produced. It is nevertheless vital for our understanding of the print trade that we attempt to capture the complexities of this lost world: this was work that sustained printshops. It was also the form which most acutely influenced commerce, government and social life. Here we wish to offer an introduction to this most elusive genre of the early modern print world, document the myriad ways in which print infiltrated the daily life of people, and offer some hypotheses on the likely total output of certain forms of ephemeral print.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Erikson

Abstract The commercially and financially dynamic early modern Dutch Republic experienced a broad expansion of the public sphere and print industry. One topic was largely absent from this boom: trade, commerce and finance. This absence is particularly notable given that the Dutch Republic was widely considered to be the most accomplished site of expertise in those matters. Instead, a discourse attempting to understand the causes and consequences of market processes emerged in England. A comparison between the two emerging nations suggests that the tight integration between the commercial and political worlds in the Netherlands discouraged the development of a public discourse on economic matters. High levels of merchant representation in the offices of state depressed the need for the type of public debate that stimulated advances in the English context. The results suggest that there is an important relational component to the formation and development of economic thought.


2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
NATHANIËL KUNKELER

AbstractGeneric fascism scholarship, which has turned strongly towards cultural political history in recent years, has focused heavily on themes of rebirth in fascist culture, but rebirth's counterpart of decline remains under-researched. After emphasizing the existence of several distinct and even mutually exclusive ideological strands in the NSB, this article shows how ideological difference was marked by narratives of decline. But they were equally used to generate a coherent political message about the contemporary state of the Netherlands. Central to their functionality as a unifying tool was party newspaper Volk en Vaderland, which served to promote a patriotic, news-focused, and peculiarly Dutch narrative of decline that overarched ideological difference. Yet more than just tying ends together, one narrative in particular served as a crucial ideological constant in the Movement, namely the Leider Anton Mussert's narrative of decline since the early modern Golden Age of the Dutch Republic, which tied traditional liberal patriotic themes into fascist discourse. Where other historians have emphasized Mussert's lack of moral and ideological leadership, the article impresses how narratives of decline functioned as moral support, and rallied NSB loyalists throughout the German occupation of the Netherlands, until Mussert's own death.


1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Adams

The decline of Iberia in the sixteenth century shook the foundations of world trade and politics, undermining Spain's Asian and American trade monopolies and creating the international opening that spurred other European states and merchants in the contest for overseas markets. After the waves had subsided in the seventeenth century, the world system had been reconfigured. The United Provinces of the Netherlands had become the first truly global commercial power—the first hegemon. The rise of the Netherlands to the position of world hegemony is at first glance startling. The seven provinces had a relatively small population (some 1.5 million inhabitants in 1600, compared to 10 million in Spain and Portugal, and 16 to 20 million in neighboring France), and had formed part of the Low Countries, an uneasily aggregated group of seigneuries, cities, and provinces under Spanish rule until the 1570s.


2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
Boro Bronza

Arrival of Doctor Gerard van Swieten in Vienna, in 1745, as new personal physician of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa, was starting point of a huge wave of transformation in the scope of Austrian medicine. Scientific and methodological experience which doctor from Leiden brought in Habsburg capital was so overwhelming that whole structure of medical science was shattered and reconstructed in a much more efficient way. Impact of Van Swieten was a splendid example of dominance of scientific method in the Netherlands, where modern European science gained more ground than anywhere else during the classical era of baroque, throughout the 17th and first half of the 18th century. On the other hand, internal reforms and transformation of Austria, from the mid-18th century, helped a lot in the process of successful reception of new structural ideas. Through this kind of merging, inside of only several decades, Vienna managed to grow into one of leading centres of medical science in Europe and the world.


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