III) The United Provinces of the Netherlands
(1609-1648)
The Dutch State: Kingdom or Republic?
By the start of 1610, the Staaten-General faced its first post-war crisis; just what sort of government would govern the United Provinces. Many opted for the more traditional approach, declaring that no nation could exist without a King, Duke or any other Princely figure. The idea of a kingless state was not unheard of; many of the mercantile republics of Italy, such as Venice and Genoa, did find without any king. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth even elected its monarch. However, the Netherlands won their independence without any sort of monarch, or singular Head of State. Many in the Protestant north called for the United Provinces to be a republic, governed by the Staaten-General itself.
It was a sound plan, and the perfect way to preserve provincial rights. However, those same rights threatened to tear the newly freed nation apart. Some sought such a loose confederation, that a neighboring province was not even obliged to help another if that one was invaded. The thought of a kingdom without a king did not set well with the Catholic south. They opened up the case once again for kingship, and sought out suitable candidates across Europe.
A foreign king was enough to repel most Provinces from the idea. One too many foreigners ruled the Netherlands. In the end, the Staaten-General did something unprecedented in most European nations. They voted on the matter. Seven Provinces were for Republicanism, seven were for Monarchy, while three abstained from voting. Liege was holding out for which side would respect the Bishop’s position, while Limburg and Brabant remained undecided.
They could be brought to vote for Monarchy, but not for a foreign king. If one would assume the as-of-yet unbuilt throne, he must be through-and-through Dutch. All voters knew the issue must be settled quickly. With Spain out of the Netherlands, there was no longer an outside force holding the Provinces together. Without a common goal, the Netherlands would splinter and decay into civil war. The Duke of Brabant stood up before the Staaten-General at the height of the crisis, and declared that the Provinces needed a symbol of unity, and only a king could bring that. Who would be king, his fellow nobles asked. ‘Would you pick James of England and Scotland?’ ‘Or perhaps the Prince of Hesse?’ ‘Maybe the Tsar of Russia?’ ‘Or just maybe you want the crown for yourself.’ In his heart, the Duke might have been tempted, but he stood before the jeers and spoke. ‘Not I. There is only one man I can think of who all of the Provinces would stand behind.’
King Maurice I
The classic definition of compromise; a decision that nobody likes, but everyone could live with, though Maurice van Oranje did not fully fall into this category. He had his supporters in the Staaten-General, as well as his opponents. One of those opponents was in fact, the Duke of Brabant. Why did the Duke nominate a rival? For starters, he knew all the Dutch would never accept himself as king. Maurice was popular with the people. He was the one leader that the Dutch press claimed single-handedly drove the Spanish from the Netherlands.
His opponents agreed to make Maurice king simply because Maurice did not want the job. His apparent lack of ambition sat well with Provinces looking to preserve their rights. Maurice would be king, but a constitutional one, answerable before the Dutch parliament. In most ways, he would have even less power than the King of England, James I. However, the nobles did not take Maurice’s wishes into account. Had his father lived long enough, the assembly would have insisted William become king. As their heir to his lands and titles, not to mention his legacy in creating a free Netherlands, Maurice was the natural choice.
At first, like his father, Maurice refused the offer. Commanding a combined Dutch army, with the Spanish breathing down their necks, was hard enough. Ruling an entire nation of Dutch, each with their own opinion, and without outside threats, struck him as an impossible task. Throughout the year 1610, the United Provinces remained without a king, a grew increasingly divided. Hollanders wondered why they should listen to Luxembourgers. Zeelanders refused to speak with Flanders. And the Calvinists were lighting fires under everyone who was not a Calvinist.
By 1611, seeing the disunity of the nation he fought so hard to create, Maurice relented and accepted the crown. Though the United Provinces would have a secular government, it was the Bishop of Liege who crowned Maurice on March 14, 1611. When asked by what name he would be known, Maurice contemplated taking up the name of his father. In a sense, William the Silent is the patron saint of the Dutch state, and Maurice decided he was not worry of the name William I.
The Coronation was an attempt by one of Maurice’s enemies to curry favor with the new king. And true to his word, Maurice never interfered in the spiritual affairs of Liege or its Bishop. Maurice was crowned Maurice I, King of the United Provinces of the Netherlands before he had a palace from where to reign, or the country as a whole even had a permanent capital.
The Capital
Much debate raged about where the Staaten-General should convene. Naturally, each Province decided it was the best place to from where to manage affairs of state. The Staaten-General failed to agree upon anything, how could they possibly decide which Province would have the honor of hosting them. Some called for a rotational schedule, each year the assembly would meet in a new Province. The cost of shipping the government from city to city exceeded the noble’s plans.
As his first act as king, Maurice I was asked to decide where the assembly should met. After all, he was king, and would preside over the Staaten-General, and how could he be expected to lead a nation if he could not decide from where to lead. Amsterdam was his first choice, given the importance of the trading center, especially after the damage sustained to Antwerp. Maurice struck down the idea quickly, not wanting to give too much power to the city.
Throughout 1611, he sent commissions to various cities across the Provinces. They would scout the city, determine its suitability to house a growing governing bureaucracy. Several cities were on his first list, and systematically Maurice crossed each one off his list. After months of investigation and study, Maurice settled upon a town just north of Delft, his own home. The new capital of the United Provinces. By 1618, all the institutions of government would move into its new home in the Hague. The Hague turned out to be an agreeable location, a place the Staaten-General convened many times, dating back to 1584.
The New Staaten-General
In 1612, the Staaten-General itself received an overhaul. Established during the Fifteenth Century, the Staaten-General was supposedly a tricameral establishment. After the Pacification of Ghent, the clergy lost all its political power, though its chamber continued to exist despite secularism. Clergy combined with nobility easily outvoted the Third Estate, despite the fact the former represented about one percent of the population.
Even after the United Provinces became a Monarchy, Republicanism would not die. In various parts of the Provinces, the people took it upon themselves to elect mayors, militias elected commanders, and even Maurice was elected, same as his father before. The concept of democracy terrified the Stadtholders. The very idea of the ‘ignorant masses’ having their say on subjects beyond their comprehension was appalling.
Upon abolishing the clergy’s Estate, the Staaten-General was reorganized into two Chambers. The First Chamber, or to use an English term, ‘House of Lords’, would consist of the Stadtholders and Lords of the Provinces. They would control affairs of State and the Provinces. Declaring war, ratifying treaties, setting tariffs and budgeting for the year, none of these the nobility would trust to the commoners. However, what was the point in gaining freedom, if the populace lacked self-determination. The Second Chamber, a house of the people, would consist of electorates, whom would serve for five years, from the Provinces and cities represented within the Staaten-General. They would decide upon laws concerning the daily lives of the people.
Elections
The first elections for the Second Chamber occurred in April of 1613. Unlike today’s elections, these early elections ranged from bribery to drunken brawls. The average Netherlander was hardly qualified to run for office, nor did they have the resources to compete with the merchants who would naturally fill the niche as community leader in the Seventeenth Century United Provinces. Out of the two hundred Chambermen, only a handful were farmers, fishermen and artisans. Thirty lawyers and doctors grabbed seats in middle-sized cities.
The big cities, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Antwerp and so on, fell into the hands of wealthy merchants and shareholders of overseas trading companies. Campaigning in the early days was a rather straightforward affair, and seldom involved candidates explaining why they were the right choice to represent the people. More often than not, those running for office would enter a pub and buy everyone a round of beer, and reminded the constituents of their name as they down their mugs.
Most of the time, many of the merchants won by default. In the case of Rotterdam, Frederick van Haarlem was both well known and respected, a natural born leader. The average Netherlander looked up these merchants as living symbols of success. The wealthy merchant is considered pinnacle of a mercantile society, a goal that every man who spoke Dutch strove. In contrast, most merchants wanted a say in government, especially laws passed concerning tariffs and taxation.
Not every city had a clear cut leader. Amsterdam was renown for some of the most violent election campaigns in Dutch history. Two of the largest companies in the world headquartered in Amsterdam; the Dutch East India Company, and the South Atlantic Company. Both were formed during the twilight days of the Forty Years War, in order to better manage the new colonies the United Provinces would acquire.
In most elections during the Seventeenth Century, both companies expended large amounts of capital to buy votes. In the beginning of the United Provinces, suffrage only extended to land-owning men over the age of twenty-five. If anybody attempted to buy every vote in the Twenty-first Century, an era of universal suffrage, would bankrupt even the mighty East India Company. Candidates competed in pubs, markets and churches for the attention of the voters. Supporters flocked to their favorite, and the elections became so divisive that it wore away at lifelong friendships.
One of the bloodiest elections was the Election of 1628. Supporters of both East India and South Atlantic Companies’ representatives were so divided that they no longer ate at the same inns, or drank at the same pubs. On the night of February 29, the two crowds spilled out into the street at the same time. Each group spent the evening drinking in pubs on opposite sides of the street, and by nightfall were far from sober. At first, the confrontation was nothing more that an exchange of taunts and insults, until somebody in the South Atlantic camp fired into the opposing crowd.
More than a few Dutch were armed when near the docks in Amsterdam. It was a rough neighborhood, prone to mugging, theft and impressment. After the initial exchange, three of the East India supporters lay dead, and four more wounded. That did not stop the South Atlantic camp from descending upon them with fist and foot. After beating the opposition, the South Atlantic voters moved on to set fire to East India pubs. The confrontation soon turned to a riot, with non-voters entering the fray, looting shops that either side already trashed. Some South Atlantic supporters even approached East India ships, threatening the cargo. The ship’s captain called out his marines to drive off the mob. In those days, the Dutch East India Company was not the world power it is today, but their soldiers were well trained and many veterans of the Forty Year’s War.
The riot died down by morning, but by nightfall, enough alcohol filled the voters to ignite the riot once again. The Count of Holland called forth his militia to put down the riot. Out of the numerous issues dividing the Dutch; religion, class and regional pride, nobody ever expected the election of two company’s candidates came close to sparking civil war. Holland’s own provincial assembly passed numerous laws to control elections, including establishing of a city constabulary for Amsterdam. Constables tripled their patrols during election time, and had authority to break up any night-time meeting exceeding more than three persons. The law is still technically on the books, but need for police monitoring of elections long since grew obsolete.
The Spice Trade
Spices such as cinnamon, ginger and especially pepper, where known to the peoples of the Far East for millennia and used as staples in their diet. In Europe, however, spices were a luxury item and much sought after. Since the time of Rome, a trade in spices existed. However, with the fall of Rome and the coming of the Dark Ages, the trade slowed to a trickle in the Far West. In the coming centuries, Italian city-states, such as Venice, dominated the trade in Europe, going through the Byzantines, the Arabs and later the Ottomans, acting as their middle men. However, the Ottomans controlled contact with India and the Far East, and imposed heavy taxes on European traders.
During the middle of the 15th Century, an alternative route to the Indies was sought after. The Portuguese made several attempts to circumnavigate Africa, succeeding in 1488. In 1497, Portuguese traders sailed as far as India, loaded their hulls with spices, and returned to Europe. The Castillian and Argonese monarchs were convinced that by sailing west, an expedition could make it to India. They allocated three ships for Columbus to use, figuring that if he was truly mad, then they would only be out three ships. If he were correct– He did reach land, however it was not the spice-rich lands he desired. This voyage opened the New World to the Old.
In 1509, at the Battle of Diu, the Portuguese defeated an Ottoman-Venetian force, securing their own place in India. Over the next thirty years, the Ottoman navy was forced from India, leaving Portugal in control of the spice trade. Further Portuguese control over Ceylon and the East Indies gave them unsurmountable control of the trade in spices. Some voyages brought back wealth rivaling the annual revenue of some European states. This wealth, and attempts to block trade with the Indies is what turned the United Provinces’ struggle for independence into a conquest of the Portuguese colonial empire. Portugal’s attempts to cut out Dutch traders from the wealth of spices is believed to have lead to Portugal’s downfall and eventual absorption by Spain.
The first exclusively Dutch venture into the Far East in search of spices started in 1595, when a group of Dutch merchants attempted to bypass Portuguese control of the spice lanes. In 1596, a four-ship flotilla, commanded by Cornelius de Houtman made contact with the spice islands in present day Indonesia. At Java, the fleet battled both hostile natives, and Portuguese sailors, losing half the crew in their time around Java. However, they returned to the Netherlands with sufficient loads of pepper to declare the voyage profitable.
By 1598, several more of these small trading fleets reached the East Indies, and most returned with significant profit. In March of 1599, a twenty-two ship fleet commanded by Jacob van Neck set sail for the spice islands. Though eight ships were lost in the course of two years, the remaining ships returned to Europe with a profit margin of over four hundred percent. Furthermore, the traders allied themselves with anti-Portuguese elements, and cleared the island of Hitu for exclusive trading rights with the United Provinces.
In these years, a company was formed for the duration of a single expedition. Given the amount of capital invested, and the dangers in making the voyage, investors were keen to receive their own share of the profits. After the voyage ended, the spices, other cargo, and ships themselves were liquidated and the cash split between the investors. These early investments were hit or miss. The ships could return with huge profits, or they could not return at all, falling prey to the weather, pirates, disease or enemies of the Dutch state.
The Dutch East India Company
In 1600, the English government established the English East India Company as a monopoly over English trade in the Far East. This one company was seen as a major threat to Dutch trade. Despite the fact that both countries were allied against Spain and Portugal in the ongoing Forty Years War did not jump from the political realm into the business one. While the English would have a united front in the spice trade, the Dutch were still forming their own corporations and funding numerous trade missions to the Spice Islands.
In 1603, the Staaten-General sponsored the creation of a single company, a United East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie). The company charter was created and signed by a coalition of investors and politicians in Amsterdam. In order to counter the Portuguese stranglehold on trade, and rival Companies, the VOC Charter granted the company the right to raise armies, build forts and conclude treaties with the Princes of India and the Indies in the name of the Staaten-General. The Dutch government went further and granted the VOC a twenty-one year monopoly on all trade with East Asia. The Charter was granted on March 20, 1602.
The VOC was ran by a council of seventeen gentlemen from offices in the city of Amsterdam, eight of which were elected by the Provinces. These gentlemen owned the largest share of the company. Despite the fact that any Netherlander could own shares in the VOC, a vast majority were owned by just a handful of investors. In theory, this allowed the whole public to take part in the VOC, to profit from its business ventures. In reality, the power of the company rested in the hand the Dutch trade cartel and the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Delft, Hoorn and Middleburg. The Counts of Holland and Zeeland both own their shares of the company, as would the Staaten-General in 1612.
Normally, the voyage home would be the end. The investors would liquidate the company and take their profits. At the time, trade routes were constantly threatened, and investors were not willing to risk their gains by pressing their luck on another expedition. In the case of the VOC, the profit was so much, the investors decided to not liquidate, but rather fund another, larger expedition in 1598. Again expeditions were funded for 1599, and 1600, though eight ships were lost, the expedition earned a four hundred percent profit for the lucky investors. The Company was here to stay.
The Dutch East India Company is organized into two separate types of shareholder; the participanten, which are non-managing partners, and the bewindhebbers, which are the managing partners. This is an early form of a board of directors, and is still in place today, albeit with 60 managing partners instead of the original 76. All investors’ paid-in capital included liability for the early voyages. Given that the VOC was facing not only Portugal, but rivals across the North Sea, and pirates around the world, the insurance premiums for an early spice voyage were rather high. What made the VOC different from most companies at the time, is that its capital was permanent. Instead of dissolving the company after the ships returned, liquidating all the assets, and splitting the wealth, the VOC continued right on operating, with 18% dividends paid out to all its shareholder. Since the company was to be permanent, the only way an investor can liquidate their interest is to sell their shares on the Amsterdam Stock Market.
The VOC is also unique for its time in that anybody of means can buy into the company through the stock market. The early shares in the company went for an outrageous sum of 3,000 guilders, making it difficult for the common man to own a piece of the company, but within the means of many merchants. The company was formed with only 558 shareholders, most non-managing, but it also started out with capital far greater than its rival, the English East India Company. Most of the startup capital came from Amsterdam. The Chamber of Amsterdam provided some 3.679 million guilders, more than Middleburg, Enkhuizen, Delft, Hoorn and Rotterdam combined. The initial capital of the VOC was marked at 6.424 million guilders, a royal sum for its day.
Seventeen of the original seventy-six managers of the VOC came from the Chambers of the above mentioned cities. Amsterdam had the largest number at eight, just one short of a majority. Four more came from Middelburg, and one each from the other four cities, with the final seat rotated between the smaller partners. These were called the Lords Seventeen, and met alternately six years in Amsterdam and two years in Middelburg. They defined the general policy of the company for the duration and divided the tasks among their chambers, such as building ships, warehouses and trading the goods. They also sent expeditions to map the winds, currents, shoals and landmarks along the trade route. These VOC-produced charts were of the highest quality money could buy.
In 1603, the first Dutch trading post in Indonesia was established in Banten. By 1605, the Portuguese were driven from the East Indies by superior Dutch firepower. Another post was established in 1611, at Jayakarta, named Batavia after the legendary founders of the Dutch nation. The trading post thrives and grew, fortified by 1619, and eventually transforming into the modern day Javanese capital of Jakarta. A year earlier, the VOC established their own Governor-General to enable firmer control of their Asian affairs.
Though the modern VOC is the most powerful and wealthiest corporation in the world, its first incarnation’s power exceeded it. The monopoly granted to it by the Dutch government gave the VOC the right to not only establish its own navy, but to mint its own coins, sign its own treaties and even form its own military alliance. Over the span nearly two hundred years, up to the American Revolution, the VOC competed, and occasionally engaged in open warfare, with the British East India Company. Only after Chittagong fell in 1782, did the VOC dominate India. Ironically, after its greatest victory, the VOC faced bankruptcy and an uncertain future.
Guilders
In 1602, the most influential currency in the history of humanity came into existence; the Dutch Guilder. At its inception, one Guilder divided into twenty Stuiver, which divided into eight Duit, and again into sixteen Penning. The complex arrangement of fractions still gives accountants nightmares. In today’s world, with decimalization virtually everywhere, it is difficult to contemplate just what the Staaten-General and the Dutch banks were thinking when the Guilder was first introduced. The only non-decimal system widely used is the clock, and that came out of twenty-four was divided by twelve, six, four, three, two and one, and easily understood system that even the Ancient Egyptians understood.
However, King Maurice was not an Egyptian, and he did not have time to waste on complex numerical equations pertaining to financial transactions. The fractions had to go, and as his first edict, he commanded the Staaten-General do something about it. Maurice proposed the decimalization of currency well over a century before the metric system came into use. Instead of twenty, eight and sixteen, the new currency would be divided into either; ten Decs, one hundred Cens, and one thousand Mils. For the new names, the average Netherlands simply supplanted to old name, fore example, a Dec was called a Stuiver.
An issue this big required both Chambers to vote. The First Chamber insisted currency was the domain of the state, while the Second Chamber insisted it was the people who must suffer any changes. The chancellor of the Second Chamber demanded that his King have the issue voted on by both chambers. In England, if anyone from the House of Commons made demands from James I, they likely ended up in more trouble than they dreamed possible. Maurice I might not have been pleased by his chancellor’s tone, but he did see the legitimacy in his argument.
The nobility passed the law swiftly through the First Chamber, with only a few opposing. In the Second Chamber, the Act of Standardization of the Guilder hit a roadblock. Both the Banks and the Companies owned many members of the elected government. Changing from tradition denominations into this radical decimal system would take years and cost both parties a fortune. The banks would suffer the most. They already minted coins of carefully measured quantities of silver and gold. TO have a Stuiver all of a sudden worth twice what it was, made no sense, neither did the sharp drop in value of the Penning. The same chancellor who demanded the vote, also opposed it. He was a well known for living deep in the Bank of Amsterdam’s pockets.
By April of 1613, the King forced the issue before the Second Chamber. He called for a vote, where a simply majority of fifty percent plus one would pass the bill. He pleaded for the representatives to vote yes, if for no other reason than a future standardization would cost far more than on now. Three days passed in which each representative took the floor and gave his reason that his colleagues should vote either yes or no. In the end, the yes vote won by fifteen votes, though it would be many years before the new currency completely phased out the last.
King Frederick I
On April 23, 1625, the United Provinces lost their King. Maurice’s death was sudden and shocking, when on a horse ride early in the morning, his horse was spooked and threw him to the ground, breaking his neck. For his day, Maurice lived a long life, and for his times, it was indeed a very eventful one, but his death threw the United Provinces into somewhat of a constitutional crisis. Who would succeed Maurice to the throne?
Maurice had two children, both to mistresses and both illegitimate. By law, only an offspring born to a wife was permitted to inherit their father’s holdings. Maurice had no such heir. Some in the Staaten-General called for the Provinces to become an elected monarchy, such as the Vatican or Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. That begged the question, who would be nominated, and by whom. After various votes in the Second Chamber, especially the Act of Standardization, none of the members of the First Chamber wanted a king who was owned by either the Bank of Amsterdam or the VOC.
The search for an heir did not last long. The Staaten-General approached one of Maurice’s still living half-brothers, Frederick Henry van Oranje. Born to the fourth wife of William the Silent, about six months before his untimely death, the younger Prince of Orange happened to be the protégée of Maurice. Trained in arms by his older brother, Frederick Henry proved himself nearly as good a general as his brother, commanding elements of the rebel army during the Dunkirk campaign and again at Brussels and Mons. While in the First Chamber, he proved himself a superior politician and statesman. Best of all, Frederick Henry was married, to Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, just months before his brother’s death. He would provide what Maurice could not, a legitimate heir to the throne and the start of a royal dynasty that prevails even today.
After Maurice was entombed at the family mausoleum in Delft, Frederick Henry was crowned King Frederick I by the Bishop of Liege. What started out as a way to curry favor soon turned into a tradition spanning the history of the United Provinces. Every monarch, with the exception Maurice II, would be crowned by the Bishop in the cathedral at Liege.
Land Reclamation
One of Frederick I’s acts happens to be the one with the longest ranging consequence. Centuries before, Hollanders, Zeelanders and various Dutch cities across the Netherlands battled against great rivers and swamps. Over the course of decades, marshes were drained, rivers dammed and the mighty North Sea held back. By the time of Frederick I, all the land above the sea was dry and utilized. Frederick I decided to go farther.
The County of Holland decided to go farther than simply holding the sea back. They would push the North Sea outwards. In the first act of land reclamation, less than a square kilometer of the sea was blocked off by sea walls and dikes, then systematically drained. Their attempt to claim more living space cost years worth of effort and funding. The Netherlands would grow over the centuries, one of the few countries to literally expand its boundaries.
The Thirty Years War
In 1618, war boiled over in the Holy Roman Empire. Protestants in the Kingdom of Bohemia, concerned their religious rights would be revoked in the face of their new king, took up arms in support of the Protestant contender Frederick V, elector of the Palatinate. Normally, a conflict within the bordering, and disunited Empire would cause the Hague no grief. However, by 1636, France invaded the Empire in its quest to destroy the Protestant Reformation. A hundred years too late to make a difference in the spiritual future of Central Europe, all the invasion did was disrupt trade along the Rhine River.
The United Provinces would not go to war over another nation’s religious turmoil, but it would wage war in defense of trade. When French, along with a contingent of Spanish mercenaries invaded Luxembourg, and laid siege to the city, the Staaten-General declared war upon France. Frederick I, learned much from his brother in the art of war, and broke the siege within two weeks, driving the French across the Rhine. The United Provinces were not in the most secure of situations. Without a doubt, the French Navy was simply no match for the Dutch Navy. With its budding colonial empire, the navy received priority.
Despite the Provinces’ early form of secularism, the border with Catholic France was one of the most fortified in Europe. Even when the fires of the Dutch Revolution still faintly glowed, fortifications along their souther frontier grew at an astonishing rate. The border with Protestant Germany was less fortified. This was not so much that the Protestants were considered less dangerous. Far from it; Calvinists still caused their fair share of trouble in the Staaten-General. During the Seventeenth Century, there simply was no Germany in the modern sense. Dozens of small states were easier to defend against that one juggernaut.
France lacked the resources for a direct assault against the Dutch. Instead, their plans were lain on attacking the United Provinces from its soft Eastern frontier. Thus simply expelling the French was not enough to satisfy the Provinces. As long as France remained poised along the Rhine, it would threaten inland Dutch trade. It was feared that Spain, recovered after its defeat decades earlier, may use some of the Habsburg holdings in Germany as springboards of invasion. In 1641, Frederick lead the Dutch army across the Rhine, attacking the Spanish and French at their stronghold in Koln.
After three months, Frederick forces Koln to surrender. With other cities along the Rhein out of enemy control, the Dutch Navy had little trouble in patrolling the river. The French Army might still cross, but resupply would be problematic on the best of days. As part of the conditions of surrender at Koln, the Spanish were expelled from Germany, and the French were forced back across the Rhine. The future king, Louis XIV would be content at the Rhine, for he would declare that same river the natural boundary of France, and launch several invasions of the southern Provinces. The Thirty Years War ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. The United Provinces received no territorial gain, but their trade along the Rhine remained secure until England passed the Act of Navigation in the 1660s.
The Colonies
At the same time Holland was expending so much effort to capture a small piece of the sea floor, the rest of the Dutch people spread across the globe. Colonies taken from the defunct Portuguese Empire were immediately put to use by enterprising Netherlanders. Sugar from the New World, spices from the Indies, and grain from North America and South Africa, were soon flooding into ports such as Amsterdam.
All the imports were not so beneficial. With the acquisition of Brazil, and Angola, the so-called Dutch Empire inherited one of humanity’s greatest banes; slavery. During the Seventeenth Century, Amsterdam had the dishonor of being the biggest port of slavery in Europe. More slaver ships were registered in the United Provinces than any other nation. The same Dutch who fought forty years for their freedom were quick to subjugate and exploit others.
Brazil
In 1605, following the successful invasion of Brazil, merchants in Amsterdam formed the Dutch South Atlantic Company. The initial goal of this company was to ship massive quantities of sugar, white gold, into Dutch ports. In the following year, the Staaten-General granted the South Atlantic Company a twenty-year monopoly on all trade in Brazil, along with the responsibility of administrating the colony in Brazil and Angola.
An ocean apart, both colonies share a common thread. Though Angola was not fully exploited until the Nineteenth Century, its people were already victim to profit-seeking companies. The largest, and most lucrative crop in Brazil, sugar, required an enormous amount of manpower to cultivate. Indentured servants from the Provinces, which served farms and plantations in New Amsterdam well, did not flourish in the tropical climate. Too many would-be colonist from Northern Europe fell victim to the Brazilian jungle.
Logic dictated that the only people who could survive jungle climate, were jungle men. Most of the natives in coastal Brazil were already dead, or severely depleted due to diseases brought in from Europe. Like the Europeans had little defense to Yellow Fever, the natives had no defense to Small Pox. In an event that would repeat itself across the Americas, more than half the native population would die with each outbreak.
Portuguese plantations solved the problem by importing workers from Portuguese possessions along the western African coast. After the Treaty of Calais, the largest producers of slaves fell into English control. In order to expand newly established Dutch sugar, tobacco, and later cocoa, coffee and cotton, plantations, the South Atlantic Company, as well as transporting their goods to market for a reasonable profit, were more than happy to import labor.
Slavery made the South Atlantic Company very wealthy, and eventually lead to its downfall. The life of a slave, began in tribal Africa. When tribes waged war, they, like the Romans, Greeks and various ancient Mediterranean societies, would enslave the defeated foe. As such, battles tended to be fierce, since the loser, assuming they were not lucky and killed outright, were in for a long and painful life.
After conquest and enslavement, the victorious tribe would march their captives down to the coast, to one of the various trading posts. Luanda served as the South Atlantic Company’s trading hub for Angola. Thousands of slaves encountered the first day of the rest of their lives here. In exchanged for their own brethren, the slavers would receive fabrics, iron tools, weapons and luxuries found nowhere in southern Africa. In today’s world it is impossible to fathom trading one’s fellow man for a simple iron hatchet.
To maximize profits, and with no consideration to their cargo, the Company crammed as many slaves into cargo holds. Often there was just enough room for a slave to lay down. No more than five hundred millimeters would exist between one bunk and the next. Each morning, handlers would enter the foul holds, filled with the stench of death, and check on the cargo. Often slaves did not survive the night. Those were unshackled and unceremoniously tossed overboard, into the waiting jaws of shark. There was always sharks.
With the dead disposed of, the live were kept living. When a slave refused to eat, handlers would go as far as knocking out their teeth and forcing gruel down a tube and into their stomachs. For over a month, slaves endured the inhuman conditions. The lucky died, the rest arrived at port, where the true suffering began. Paraded before auctions, with as much consideration as a prize horse or bovine, slaves were bid upon. Female slaves faced an especially miserable life, subject to the whims of their new owners, and worse yet, their overseers.
The Dutch populace where blind to this suffering before monks exposed it during the early Eighteenth Century. Before the Enlightenment, it was doubtful any of them would care about the suffering across the ocean. As long as their houses were filled with previously unknown luxuries, coffee, chocolate and sugar, they were content. As long as the population was content, the Second Chamber felt little motivation to change.
A more pressing matter was what to do with thousands of Portuguese colonists. For the most part, the European population consisted of mostly men, who would marry native woman. It was roughly the same proportion as Spain in Mexico and Inca. Portuguese did not venture to Brazil to start over or raise families, they did so to grow rich, return home then settle down. The United Provinces, under the command of Governor-General van Bohr, Count of Natal, left a sizable army in the colony.
The question as to what to do about so many men who were hostile towards Dutch rule remained at the top of the Count’s list of concerns. The Dutch came to Brazil, not only to grow rich, but to start their lives over. Many were displaced by the Spanish during the Dutch revolution, and later by the Thirty Years War. Most found their ports of call in Natal, Recife, Salvador and Mauristadt. The opened shops, started farms, and brought with them comforts from home, including tulips.
Over the course of decades, the Portuguese Question essentially solved itself. With years, the Dutch-speaking population outnumbered the Portuguese. In order to do business, the Portuguese had little choice but to learn Dutch (or hire a translator). Even then, some Dutch refused to deal with the translators. Their attitude was simply that if anything worth hearing was to be said, then it could be said in their language. When Dutch woman arrived, the Portuguese quickly remembered some of the comforts of home. They intermarried with the newcomers, and were subsequently assimilated.
New Amsterdam
In 1609, under contract with VOC, Henry Hudson set sail to the New World in search of a shortcut to the Indies. Whomever could find the fabled Northwest Passage would have a decisive advantage in the spice trade. Sailing the Halve Maen (Half-moon) past Manhattan Island, what Hudson found was not a passage across the continent, but many tribes of natives along with a wealth of fur. Hudson named the waterway the Mauritius River, in honor of the hero of the Forty Years Wars.
Upon arriving home, Hudson did not return with new of a passage, but rather a land wealthy in beavers. At the time, beaver pelts were prized in Europe, because the fur could be ‘felted’ to make waterproof hats. In following the following year, 1611 to 1614, expeditions surveyed and charted the region between the thirty-eighth and forty-fifth parallel. These expeditions entitled the charters to a five year monopoly as per the rules set down by the Staaten-General. Several trading posts were established, the furthest one Fort Orange, now the city of Albany, near the modern day state borders of New Amsterdam and the Iroquois Confederacy.
Fort Amsterdam, established in 1615, quickly grew into the city of New Amsterdam. According to legend, the Dutch purchased Manhattan Island from the natives for sixty guilders worth of beads. At the mouth of Mauritius River, there was a normally ice-free harbor throughout the year. As well as hordes of trappers, the New Amsterdam Company soon opened land on Manhattan to settlers from back home. The first families arrived at Fort Amsterdam in 1624, followed by a second wave of families the following year.
The early years of the colony, trade with the natives dominated the economy. As they would in Angola, the Dutch would trade common items of the United Provinces for the goods they sought. In this case, instead of enslaving hundreds of thousands of humans, business led to the extermination of the beaver throughout the region, followed by other species later. By 1626, the colony elected its first governor, Peter Minuit. During the building of New Amsterdam, the Mohawk-Mahican war further north forced many settlers in Upper New Amsterdam down to the easily defensible island. With the threat of Indian wars spreading to the city, New Amsterdammers built a wall of stone and clay. In the process, they failed to predict expanding population. Within a decade, built up area appeared north of the wall. The wall was hence demolished, but its existence gave name to one of the wealthiest streets in the world; Wall Street.
By the 1640s, the beaver population in the Mauritius River Valley thinned to the point where profits of the colony became threatened. A timber mill was built upon Governor’s Island, in hope that lumber could supplement some of the lost income. By 1648, settlers expanded beyond New Amsterdam to found neighboring settlements of Haarlem, Staaten Island, and vast orchards sprout along the banks of the river.
Wheat from Long Island and apples and pears from Nassau poured through the port of New Amsterdam and were soon shipped eastward across the sea. In the case of the fruit, it was quickly fermented and transformed into brandy, the only practical way to transport fruit in the day. With the devastation waged across Germany during the Thirty Years War, where nearly thirty percent of the population was wiped out, the Netherlands were desperate for food. Brazilian colonists were more interested in cash crops than foodstuffs. New Amsterdam profited greatly by Brazil’s greed. By the First Anglo-Dutch War, New Amsterdam spread its borders to encompass all the lands between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers, right smack between two English Colonies; Plymouth and Virginia.
Ceylon
The first of the VOC ships to arrive on the island of Ceylon arrived in 1607 at the trailing days of the Forty Years War. Upon arrival, the Kandyan Kings of Ceylon found themselves under the heels of the Portuguese. Portugal attempted to impose its own culture upon the native. Portuguese advisors were in the royal court; Kandyan nobles had a Portuguese education and the missionaries were everywhere. When the VOC ships full of mercenaries and adventures arrived in Kandy, and a proposal of alliance against the Portuguese was offered to King Rajasinghe, the King jumped at the offer, for the Ceylonese were very unhappy about losing their lands to the Portuguese. Portugal’s navy was much diminished from the Forty Years War, and its colonial empire was teetering on oblivion. By 1609, the Portuguese were out, and the VOC had in their hands a treaty with the Kandyan King, paving the way for trade and eventual colonization. The VOC annexed former Portuguese lands on the west coast of Ceylon, including the port of Colombo, in the name of the United Provinces.
The treaty between the VOC and Kandy stated that in return for Dutch protection against other foreigners, Kandy would grant the VOC a trade monopoly on the island’s spices. As long as the spice flowed, the Dutch were utterly indifferent to the native’s customs and religion. Attempts by Calvinist missions from the United Provinces to infiltrate the island was defeated by the VOC. The Company was not about to let any religious sect from the motherland endanger their trading rights. When British ships attempted to trade with the Kandyans, the VOC captured the ships and imprisoned the crews. The VOC further extended its hold on Ceylon and the cinnamon trade by waging war against the Kingdom of Jaffna between 1632 and 1634. The war was largely fought by Kandyan soldiers, and both the Company and Kandy besieged the city of Jaffna for thirteen months. The war ended with the VOC annexing the former Kingdom of Jaffna.
The VOC did open the island to limited colonization by Netherlanders. Many colonists took up lands in Jaffna, and were under contract with the VOC to grow spices in high demand back in Europe. Dutch plantations spread across the Company lands in the decades of the 1630s and 1640s. By 1645, some ten thousand Netherlanders had settled the island. Along side the Dutch settlers, the VOC also contracted with native land owners in Kandy to supply additional spices. Unlike many of the other Company territories across the East Indies, Ceylon began as a true partnership between Europe and India. By 1640, the VOC had extended its influence over Kandy to the point that it was The natives preferred the Dutch infinitely over the Portuguese. Where the Portuguese came to impose their ways, the Dutch were simply interested in trade. As per the Treaty of Kandy, the VOC would defend the Kandyan people from foreign invasions, in return for exclusive rights to export native spices. The influx of many Netherlanders concerned the natives at first, but once it was made known the Dutch would respect the native ways, the newcomers were tolerated.
Most of these newcomers, totaling two thousands, hailed from Antwerp. During the Thirty Years War, the French never gained a foothold in the Netherlands, but they managed to raid repeatedly. Their favorite target was Antwerp. Thousand of Netherlanders died in the raids, and thousands more fled, some to Brazil, some to New Amsterdam, and some to the East. The sad saga of the Antwerp Diaspora would continue until the Seven Years War, in the middle of the Eighteenth Century.
From the port of Columbo, the VOC not only administered Ceylon, but also various posts on the Indian Mainland taken from the Portuguese. Chiefly among these was the Port of Goa. The Dutch would do little to India until the following century, the settlers preferring Ceylon and Formosa over the crowded subcontinent. Trade did bloom, and with the space of two decades, the VOC gained a monopoly over all trade in southern India.
Java
The first permanent Dutch trading post was established in the East Indies before the Forty Years War even drew to a close. Like with most Europeans, there were not drawn by veins of gold or silver, but by the prospect of cinnamon. The post was established by the VOC at Banten on the western coast of Java. The VOC wasted little time in trading for spices and hunting down competition. In 1605, the VOC captured the Portuguese fort in the Moluccas. By 1607, the VOC had driven the Portugese from the island of Sumatra and virtually locked them out of the East Indies. With Brazil and its other possessions under attack, the Portuguese were hopelessly divided, and easily conquered. With the end of the Forty Years War, the Portuguese Empire was in Dutch hands, removing them as competition for keeps. In 1611, the VOC established another trading post, this time in Jayakarta. The post was allowed after the VOC subverted the local prince to their way of thinking.
To enable more effective control of its East Asian affairs, the VOC created the office of Governor-General. Along with the Governor-Generalship came the Council of the Indies, an advisory body that also served to prevent the Governor-General from getting ideas of personal empire in his head, and to remind him that his true loyalty is to the company. To gain its monopoly and keep it, the VOC did more than simply subvert local leaders. The VOC fought its own share of skirmishes with England’s East India Company. When the English attempted to subvert the chiefs and princes of Ambon into their camp, the agents, some who were VOC employees, were discovered. The VOC employees were executed on charges of treason. The English simply executed. The event became known by the English as the Amboyan Massacre.
In 1619, the VOC appointed a ruthless and single-minded son of a Hoorn investor to the office of Governor-General. Jan Pieterszoon Coen was almost single handedly responsible for creating the Dutch spice monopoly. In the same year as he was appointed, the English and their native allies had the Dutch post at Jayakarta under siege. On May 30, Coen arrived with 19 ships, saved the post and stormed the city. Atop of the ruins, the VOC constructed the city of Batavia, named after the ancient tribe that once roamed the Netherlands. Batavia quickly becomes a center of the spice trade and the VOC’s capital in the East Indies.
In response to English meddlings on Banda, Coen ordered an invasion of the island in order to maintain the VOC’s monopoly on Clove. Coen responded so heavy-handedly, that the natives ended up driven from the island. The natives were either deported, starved out or just plained killed to make way for Dutch plantation owners, and their slaves. Some of those slaves were hapless natives of Banda that survived Coen’s furry. The justification of the invasion was that Coen claimed the English were attempting to subvert the island. So tight was competition between England’s and the Netherlands’ companies, that many of the natives were stepped on during the fight.
Coen was more than a butcher. He was also an able administrator. One of his plans for the East Indies was to bring in Netherlanders to colonize the islands. This plan was shot down by the VOC shareholders as cost prohibited. A more successful plan was a system of intra-Asian trade Coen established. Though Europe had great demands for spices, the natives had little demand for European goods. Aside from textiles, which the United Provinces had plenty, the natives would only accept gold or silver in trade. Japan was a known source of silver, but they had even less interest in European goods. However, they had a demand for Chinese goods. China, in turn, had a demand for sandalwood, which the VOC had relatively easy access. The intra-Asian system aided the VOC in gaining control over the spice trade on Java, and in 1629, Coen retired a modestly wealthy man. Java was never a popular destination for settlers during the Seventeenth Century. Its tormenting heat and endemic disease kept all but the merchants away. The VOC established posts all along the Javanese coast, using these to dominate trade. They saw little reason to conquer the interior, when they could just control the access ports for trade. The VOC gained its cinnamon trade and soon carried the spice to Dutch ports and beyond.
Formosa
The first Europeans to land on Formosa did so in 1624, on the sandy Tayouan Peninsula. It was here that the VOC erected its first trading post on the island. The VOC planned to use it to strengthen their trade in China and with Japan. The Japanese in particular; the hide of the Sitka Deer was sought after by samurai for use in constructing their armor. The VOC would pay the natives for the deer hides and trade them to Japanese warlords in return for silver. VOC operations on the island expanded with the establishment of Fort Zeelandia in 1635. Before then, the Company saw the island and its operations important enough to appoint a Governor-General in 1627; one Gerald de With, who carried out this office until 1636. VOC control of the island was not uncontested; during the 1630s, Spanish attempts to establish trading posts and missions on the island failed, usually by means of the VOC attacking the Spanish, slaughtering them and burning down their post.
Twenty years after first establishing themselves on the island, the VOC soon found the Sitka Deer population in decline, and were forced to pay more and more for the hides. With this trade venture turning unprofitable, the company introduced both sugar cane and mulberry trees to the island for cultivation. Over a hundred colonists from Liege arrived in Fort Zeelandia in 1644, and each had lots of land parceled out to them to establish plantations of sugar and orchards of mulberry. The mulberry alone was of little commercial value; however, the silk worm thrived upon it. Labors were brought in from China to work these plantations, and even their own rice paddies. Some specialist silk cultivators were lured from their ancestral lands by high paying Company contracts.
Not all the locals were so pleased by the Dutch presence on the island. Pirates plied the China Sea, and in 1641, made the mistake of preying upon a VOC ship. The VOC, over the next three years and at great expense, combed the Sparely Islands, and rooted out every single pirate nest they found. It has been estimated that over thirty thousand pirates were killed during this period. Even the natives of Formosa were not always as cooperative as the Company would like. Opposition to VOC attempts to unite the tribes of the island under their rule lead to a punitive expedition against Bakloan and Mattau, near Tayouan, which ended in both villages being razed to the ground.
Finding themselves effectively governing the island, the VOC levied a head tax on all the natives six years of age and older. This hit the natives hard, for they never had to pay taxes before the Dutch arrived. The VOC used this tax to finance the building of roads to improve the island’s non-existent infrastructure and in harbor improvements. The tax also paid for Company schools that sprang up across the island, where the natives learned to speak Dutch, the only language the VOC would do business with the natives.
The largest threat to VOC rule on the island came in 1660, when Ming Loyalist, Koxinga, lead an army on four hundred ships to invade the island. Thousands of Chinese soldiers besieged Fort Zeelandia. Defending the city was Governor-General Frederick Coyett, several hundred Company men along with a thousand natives. Such a threat was Koxinga, VOC forces were drawn from Java and even as far as Ceylon, to combat the Ming. From Ceylon, the King of Kandy sent four thousand soldiers to aid his allies in their fight. The Siege of Fort Zeelandia was lifted by the arrivals from Ceylon and Java. For two years, the VOC fought Koxinga for control of the island, finally cornering the General on Formosa’s western coast, where he was executed by the VOC, along with the survivors of his army.
Dutch culture influenced the natives, but native cultures from Capestaat to Formosa influenced the United Provinces. The VOC valued merit over any family connections in the Netherlands. VOC ships hired sailors from their colonies, sometimes for lifelong employment, sometimes just for the voyage to the next port. Over the course of three decades, Buddhist monks from Ceylon worked their way across the Dutch Empire. Upon arriving in the United Provinces, the first Buddhist temples were built just outside of Amsterdam. Their monasteries would soon expend from the fjords of Norway to the mountains of Sardinia, though not totally without trouble from their more theists neighbors.
Hainan
Hainan was the last of the “Big Four” in the VOC’s possession (Ceylon, Java, Formosa and Hainan) to be colonized. The VOC captured the island from the China in 1664, following the generalized chaos caused when the Manchu invaded and overthrew the Ming. Unlike the Ming, the Qing Dynasty had no overseas ambition. After half a century of operating in the Orient, the VOC had the leverage to cut off China from trade. In the brief war, lasting only a matter of months (in fact, it was fought and over with a treaty signed before word even reached the United Provinces) the VOC forced the Qing to cede the island of Hainan and grant the Dutch trade concessions, such as a monopoly in China’s tea trade. This was partly business and partly a slap in the face of the English and the humiliating peace they imposed upon the United Provinces following the First Anglo-Dutch War. Since the English restricted trade in England, the Company had no qualms in taking over the tea trade.
Hainan was used as the VOC’s primary trading center in the South China Sea, where commerce between the island, southern China, and Vietnam was moderately prosperous. Colonists from the Provinces arrived on the island just as the Second Anglo-Dutch War erupted. These colonists, like those on the other three of the Big Four, were interested in making their fortune on plantations. Sugar plantations were started on Hainan, but the company decided to limit the amount of sugar it produced to keep the prices from bottoming out. Instead, the Company started tea plantations on Hainan, overseen by Dutch colonists and worked by laborers brought over from the mainland of China. The higher pay of the VOC over that of feudal lords of the Qing caused a flood of immigration. This threatened to precipitate another war in China, for which the VOC was not equipped to fight while fighting the English. The Company negotiated another treaty with China establishing tight quotas for the flow of labor.
Following the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the VOC had a stranglehold on the tea market. After losing the war, the English were forced to buy much of their tea from their former enemies and now new allies, the Dutch. This arrangement continued until the English, and later British, began to operate their own tea plantations out of the Philippines and Malaysia. By the start of the 18thCentury, the VOC had expanded its operations on Hainan beyond tea into mulberry plantations and even mining. Deposits of silver on Hainan were tapped by the Company and used to further finance the VOC’s expansion in the East Indies. Though there was ample room for colonization, most Netherlanders preferred Ceylon, followed by Java, then Formosa, over this fourth island.
Kings of the Seas
The tactics that the VOC used to keep on the top of their business varied during the 17th and 18th Centuries. Their size permitted them to simply undercut their smaller competition, buy paying more for spices in the East and selling it for less. This means of competing with what we would now call “the little guy” tend to cut into profits. Instead of lowering their prices, the VOC preferred to simply sink independent and small traders. The VOC’s private navy was also used to clean out pirates, which indirectly benefitted the small business ventures, as well as do battle with rival national monopolies, most notably the English (and later British) East India Company.
The VOC was a quasi-nation in its own rights. The monopoly granted by the Staaten-General allowed the VOC to sign its own treaties. The VOC signed exclusive trading treaties with states such as Kandy and Sultanates across the East Indies. In other cases, such as western Ceylon and Java, the VOC simply marched in and conquered their sources of spices and trading partners. Many of the independent states soon found themselves dependent upon the VOC. With the Company lending credit and minting coin, all of which the VOC forced its trading partners to accept. Back home, the VOC bankrolled many members of the Second Chamber of the Staaten-General, and flat out bribed those in the First Chamber. With this, and national interest, the VOC insured its exclusive trade monopoly was renewed time and again.
Their biggest threat came from other national monopolies. To battle these, the VOC and its navy took control over entire trading lanes. In the Indian Ocean, the Dutch discovered that sailing eastward across the Indian Ocean from around Forty Degrees allowed them to bypass the mercies of the seasonal monsoon patterns; flowing southwest during one part of the year and northeast during another. By taking control of the best route and currents directly across the Indian Ocean, along with the Cape of Good Hope, the VOC was able to trade year round. Those who either did not know about the currents, or were banned from them, had to wait months in India until the monsoon winds shifted and allowed for a return trip to India.
Rising Power in Europe
With control over a large portion of trade between Europe and the outside world, the United Provinces were soon on the rise. Their army was still no match for the full might of France of Sweden, but their wealth gave them influence over many princely courts. The Netherlands preferred to expand through trade and negotiating. During the course of the 1640s, Frederick I opened up a series of negotiating with Christian IV and the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway.
Union of Kopenhagen
A treaty of alliance between Denmark-Norway was Frederick I’s goal near the end of his life. The growing power of Sweden threatened Dutch trade in the Baltic. Sweden’s navy was no match for the United Provinces, at least not for the time being. By allying with Denmark-Sweden, Frederick hoped to contain Sweden. With bases in the Danish Isles, the Dutch could strike at Swedish positions across the Baltic Sea.
Just weeks before the death of Frederick I, his only son, William, was wed to the daughter of the Danish King, Christina of Denmark. The ceremony was a happy one, soon followed by a sorrow. In August of 1647, Frederick I died of natural causes. He worked most of his later life away, often before sunrise until after sunset. Frederick is known as the hardest working king in Dutch history. Since William was legitimate, he immediately ascended the throne.
When asked which name he would take, he chose his own, but he refused the addition of The First. William hailed his grandfather, William the Silent, as the spiritual first king of the United Provinces. The new king was crowned King William II. His reign was short with little to distinguish himself. He opposed the Treaty of Münster, only to be overruled by the Staaten-General. In 1650, a smallpox outbreak spread across Holland, eventually working its way into the Hague. William II died of smallpox, just one week before the birth of his only son, also named William.
Smallpox infections spread across Europe, infecting Kopenhagen as well. Princes Frederick and George were killed by the epidemic. Though some nationalistic groups in modern Denmark claim that it was Dutch assassins that in fact killed George, using the outbreak as a cover. With Christian IV’s other son, Christian killed in another war with Sweden, all of the princes were dead without heirs. The only candidate available according to Danish law was Christian’s grandson, William. Upon his death, William was crowned King William I of Denmark-Norway, along with his previous title, William III of the United Provinces. With his mother as regent, the United Provinces and Denmark-Norway entered a state of personal union.
The Dutch State: Kingdom or Republic?
By the start of 1610, the Staaten-General faced its first post-war crisis; just what sort of government would govern the United Provinces. Many opted for the more traditional approach, declaring that no nation could exist without a King, Duke or any other Princely figure. The idea of a kingless state was not unheard of; many of the mercantile republics of Italy, such as Venice and Genoa, did find without any king. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth even elected its monarch. However, the Netherlands won their independence without any sort of monarch, or singular Head of State. Many in the Protestant north called for the United Provinces to be a republic, governed by the Staaten-General itself.
It was a sound plan, and the perfect way to preserve provincial rights. However, those same rights threatened to tear the newly freed nation apart. Some sought such a loose confederation, that a neighboring province was not even obliged to help another if that one was invaded. The thought of a kingdom without a king did not set well with the Catholic south. They opened up the case once again for kingship, and sought out suitable candidates across Europe.
A foreign king was enough to repel most Provinces from the idea. One too many foreigners ruled the Netherlands. In the end, the Staaten-General did something unprecedented in most European nations. They voted on the matter. Seven Provinces were for Republicanism, seven were for Monarchy, while three abstained from voting. Liege was holding out for which side would respect the Bishop’s position, while Limburg and Brabant remained undecided.
They could be brought to vote for Monarchy, but not for a foreign king. If one would assume the as-of-yet unbuilt throne, he must be through-and-through Dutch. All voters knew the issue must be settled quickly. With Spain out of the Netherlands, there was no longer an outside force holding the Provinces together. Without a common goal, the Netherlands would splinter and decay into civil war. The Duke of Brabant stood up before the Staaten-General at the height of the crisis, and declared that the Provinces needed a symbol of unity, and only a king could bring that. Who would be king, his fellow nobles asked. ‘Would you pick James of England and Scotland?’ ‘Or perhaps the Prince of Hesse?’ ‘Maybe the Tsar of Russia?’ ‘Or just maybe you want the crown for yourself.’ In his heart, the Duke might have been tempted, but he stood before the jeers and spoke. ‘Not I. There is only one man I can think of who all of the Provinces would stand behind.’
King Maurice I
The classic definition of compromise; a decision that nobody likes, but everyone could live with, though Maurice van Oranje did not fully fall into this category. He had his supporters in the Staaten-General, as well as his opponents. One of those opponents was in fact, the Duke of Brabant. Why did the Duke nominate a rival? For starters, he knew all the Dutch would never accept himself as king. Maurice was popular with the people. He was the one leader that the Dutch press claimed single-handedly drove the Spanish from the Netherlands.
His opponents agreed to make Maurice king simply because Maurice did not want the job. His apparent lack of ambition sat well with Provinces looking to preserve their rights. Maurice would be king, but a constitutional one, answerable before the Dutch parliament. In most ways, he would have even less power than the King of England, James I. However, the nobles did not take Maurice’s wishes into account. Had his father lived long enough, the assembly would have insisted William become king. As their heir to his lands and titles, not to mention his legacy in creating a free Netherlands, Maurice was the natural choice.
At first, like his father, Maurice refused the offer. Commanding a combined Dutch army, with the Spanish breathing down their necks, was hard enough. Ruling an entire nation of Dutch, each with their own opinion, and without outside threats, struck him as an impossible task. Throughout the year 1610, the United Provinces remained without a king, a grew increasingly divided. Hollanders wondered why they should listen to Luxembourgers. Zeelanders refused to speak with Flanders. And the Calvinists were lighting fires under everyone who was not a Calvinist.
By 1611, seeing the disunity of the nation he fought so hard to create, Maurice relented and accepted the crown. Though the United Provinces would have a secular government, it was the Bishop of Liege who crowned Maurice on March 14, 1611. When asked by what name he would be known, Maurice contemplated taking up the name of his father. In a sense, William the Silent is the patron saint of the Dutch state, and Maurice decided he was not worry of the name William I.
The Coronation was an attempt by one of Maurice’s enemies to curry favor with the new king. And true to his word, Maurice never interfered in the spiritual affairs of Liege or its Bishop. Maurice was crowned Maurice I, King of the United Provinces of the Netherlands before he had a palace from where to reign, or the country as a whole even had a permanent capital.
The Capital
Much debate raged about where the Staaten-General should convene. Naturally, each Province decided it was the best place to from where to manage affairs of state. The Staaten-General failed to agree upon anything, how could they possibly decide which Province would have the honor of hosting them. Some called for a rotational schedule, each year the assembly would meet in a new Province. The cost of shipping the government from city to city exceeded the noble’s plans.
As his first act as king, Maurice I was asked to decide where the assembly should met. After all, he was king, and would preside over the Staaten-General, and how could he be expected to lead a nation if he could not decide from where to lead. Amsterdam was his first choice, given the importance of the trading center, especially after the damage sustained to Antwerp. Maurice struck down the idea quickly, not wanting to give too much power to the city.
Throughout 1611, he sent commissions to various cities across the Provinces. They would scout the city, determine its suitability to house a growing governing bureaucracy. Several cities were on his first list, and systematically Maurice crossed each one off his list. After months of investigation and study, Maurice settled upon a town just north of Delft, his own home. The new capital of the United Provinces. By 1618, all the institutions of government would move into its new home in the Hague. The Hague turned out to be an agreeable location, a place the Staaten-General convened many times, dating back to 1584.
The New Staaten-General
In 1612, the Staaten-General itself received an overhaul. Established during the Fifteenth Century, the Staaten-General was supposedly a tricameral establishment. After the Pacification of Ghent, the clergy lost all its political power, though its chamber continued to exist despite secularism. Clergy combined with nobility easily outvoted the Third Estate, despite the fact the former represented about one percent of the population.
Even after the United Provinces became a Monarchy, Republicanism would not die. In various parts of the Provinces, the people took it upon themselves to elect mayors, militias elected commanders, and even Maurice was elected, same as his father before. The concept of democracy terrified the Stadtholders. The very idea of the ‘ignorant masses’ having their say on subjects beyond their comprehension was appalling.
Upon abolishing the clergy’s Estate, the Staaten-General was reorganized into two Chambers. The First Chamber, or to use an English term, ‘House of Lords’, would consist of the Stadtholders and Lords of the Provinces. They would control affairs of State and the Provinces. Declaring war, ratifying treaties, setting tariffs and budgeting for the year, none of these the nobility would trust to the commoners. However, what was the point in gaining freedom, if the populace lacked self-determination. The Second Chamber, a house of the people, would consist of electorates, whom would serve for five years, from the Provinces and cities represented within the Staaten-General. They would decide upon laws concerning the daily lives of the people.
Elections
The first elections for the Second Chamber occurred in April of 1613. Unlike today’s elections, these early elections ranged from bribery to drunken brawls. The average Netherlander was hardly qualified to run for office, nor did they have the resources to compete with the merchants who would naturally fill the niche as community leader in the Seventeenth Century United Provinces. Out of the two hundred Chambermen, only a handful were farmers, fishermen and artisans. Thirty lawyers and doctors grabbed seats in middle-sized cities.
The big cities, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Antwerp and so on, fell into the hands of wealthy merchants and shareholders of overseas trading companies. Campaigning in the early days was a rather straightforward affair, and seldom involved candidates explaining why they were the right choice to represent the people. More often than not, those running for office would enter a pub and buy everyone a round of beer, and reminded the constituents of their name as they down their mugs.
Most of the time, many of the merchants won by default. In the case of Rotterdam, Frederick van Haarlem was both well known and respected, a natural born leader. The average Netherlander looked up these merchants as living symbols of success. The wealthy merchant is considered pinnacle of a mercantile society, a goal that every man who spoke Dutch strove. In contrast, most merchants wanted a say in government, especially laws passed concerning tariffs and taxation.
Not every city had a clear cut leader. Amsterdam was renown for some of the most violent election campaigns in Dutch history. Two of the largest companies in the world headquartered in Amsterdam; the Dutch East India Company, and the South Atlantic Company. Both were formed during the twilight days of the Forty Years War, in order to better manage the new colonies the United Provinces would acquire.
In most elections during the Seventeenth Century, both companies expended large amounts of capital to buy votes. In the beginning of the United Provinces, suffrage only extended to land-owning men over the age of twenty-five. If anybody attempted to buy every vote in the Twenty-first Century, an era of universal suffrage, would bankrupt even the mighty East India Company. Candidates competed in pubs, markets and churches for the attention of the voters. Supporters flocked to their favorite, and the elections became so divisive that it wore away at lifelong friendships.
One of the bloodiest elections was the Election of 1628. Supporters of both East India and South Atlantic Companies’ representatives were so divided that they no longer ate at the same inns, or drank at the same pubs. On the night of February 29, the two crowds spilled out into the street at the same time. Each group spent the evening drinking in pubs on opposite sides of the street, and by nightfall were far from sober. At first, the confrontation was nothing more that an exchange of taunts and insults, until somebody in the South Atlantic camp fired into the opposing crowd.
More than a few Dutch were armed when near the docks in Amsterdam. It was a rough neighborhood, prone to mugging, theft and impressment. After the initial exchange, three of the East India supporters lay dead, and four more wounded. That did not stop the South Atlantic camp from descending upon them with fist and foot. After beating the opposition, the South Atlantic voters moved on to set fire to East India pubs. The confrontation soon turned to a riot, with non-voters entering the fray, looting shops that either side already trashed. Some South Atlantic supporters even approached East India ships, threatening the cargo. The ship’s captain called out his marines to drive off the mob. In those days, the Dutch East India Company was not the world power it is today, but their soldiers were well trained and many veterans of the Forty Year’s War.
The riot died down by morning, but by nightfall, enough alcohol filled the voters to ignite the riot once again. The Count of Holland called forth his militia to put down the riot. Out of the numerous issues dividing the Dutch; religion, class and regional pride, nobody ever expected the election of two company’s candidates came close to sparking civil war. Holland’s own provincial assembly passed numerous laws to control elections, including establishing of a city constabulary for Amsterdam. Constables tripled their patrols during election time, and had authority to break up any night-time meeting exceeding more than three persons. The law is still technically on the books, but need for police monitoring of elections long since grew obsolete.
The Spice Trade
Spices such as cinnamon, ginger and especially pepper, where known to the peoples of the Far East for millennia and used as staples in their diet. In Europe, however, spices were a luxury item and much sought after. Since the time of Rome, a trade in spices existed. However, with the fall of Rome and the coming of the Dark Ages, the trade slowed to a trickle in the Far West. In the coming centuries, Italian city-states, such as Venice, dominated the trade in Europe, going through the Byzantines, the Arabs and later the Ottomans, acting as their middle men. However, the Ottomans controlled contact with India and the Far East, and imposed heavy taxes on European traders.
During the middle of the 15th Century, an alternative route to the Indies was sought after. The Portuguese made several attempts to circumnavigate Africa, succeeding in 1488. In 1497, Portuguese traders sailed as far as India, loaded their hulls with spices, and returned to Europe. The Castillian and Argonese monarchs were convinced that by sailing west, an expedition could make it to India. They allocated three ships for Columbus to use, figuring that if he was truly mad, then they would only be out three ships. If he were correct– He did reach land, however it was not the spice-rich lands he desired. This voyage opened the New World to the Old.
In 1509, at the Battle of Diu, the Portuguese defeated an Ottoman-Venetian force, securing their own place in India. Over the next thirty years, the Ottoman navy was forced from India, leaving Portugal in control of the spice trade. Further Portuguese control over Ceylon and the East Indies gave them unsurmountable control of the trade in spices. Some voyages brought back wealth rivaling the annual revenue of some European states. This wealth, and attempts to block trade with the Indies is what turned the United Provinces’ struggle for independence into a conquest of the Portuguese colonial empire. Portugal’s attempts to cut out Dutch traders from the wealth of spices is believed to have lead to Portugal’s downfall and eventual absorption by Spain.
The first exclusively Dutch venture into the Far East in search of spices started in 1595, when a group of Dutch merchants attempted to bypass Portuguese control of the spice lanes. In 1596, a four-ship flotilla, commanded by Cornelius de Houtman made contact with the spice islands in present day Indonesia. At Java, the fleet battled both hostile natives, and Portuguese sailors, losing half the crew in their time around Java. However, they returned to the Netherlands with sufficient loads of pepper to declare the voyage profitable.
By 1598, several more of these small trading fleets reached the East Indies, and most returned with significant profit. In March of 1599, a twenty-two ship fleet commanded by Jacob van Neck set sail for the spice islands. Though eight ships were lost in the course of two years, the remaining ships returned to Europe with a profit margin of over four hundred percent. Furthermore, the traders allied themselves with anti-Portuguese elements, and cleared the island of Hitu for exclusive trading rights with the United Provinces.
In these years, a company was formed for the duration of a single expedition. Given the amount of capital invested, and the dangers in making the voyage, investors were keen to receive their own share of the profits. After the voyage ended, the spices, other cargo, and ships themselves were liquidated and the cash split between the investors. These early investments were hit or miss. The ships could return with huge profits, or they could not return at all, falling prey to the weather, pirates, disease or enemies of the Dutch state.
The Dutch East India Company
In 1600, the English government established the English East India Company as a monopoly over English trade in the Far East. This one company was seen as a major threat to Dutch trade. Despite the fact that both countries were allied against Spain and Portugal in the ongoing Forty Years War did not jump from the political realm into the business one. While the English would have a united front in the spice trade, the Dutch were still forming their own corporations and funding numerous trade missions to the Spice Islands.
In 1603, the Staaten-General sponsored the creation of a single company, a United East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie). The company charter was created and signed by a coalition of investors and politicians in Amsterdam. In order to counter the Portuguese stranglehold on trade, and rival Companies, the VOC Charter granted the company the right to raise armies, build forts and conclude treaties with the Princes of India and the Indies in the name of the Staaten-General. The Dutch government went further and granted the VOC a twenty-one year monopoly on all trade with East Asia. The Charter was granted on March 20, 1602.
The VOC was ran by a council of seventeen gentlemen from offices in the city of Amsterdam, eight of which were elected by the Provinces. These gentlemen owned the largest share of the company. Despite the fact that any Netherlander could own shares in the VOC, a vast majority were owned by just a handful of investors. In theory, this allowed the whole public to take part in the VOC, to profit from its business ventures. In reality, the power of the company rested in the hand the Dutch trade cartel and the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Delft, Hoorn and Middleburg. The Counts of Holland and Zeeland both own their shares of the company, as would the Staaten-General in 1612.
Normally, the voyage home would be the end. The investors would liquidate the company and take their profits. At the time, trade routes were constantly threatened, and investors were not willing to risk their gains by pressing their luck on another expedition. In the case of the VOC, the profit was so much, the investors decided to not liquidate, but rather fund another, larger expedition in 1598. Again expeditions were funded for 1599, and 1600, though eight ships were lost, the expedition earned a four hundred percent profit for the lucky investors. The Company was here to stay.
The Dutch East India Company is organized into two separate types of shareholder; the participanten, which are non-managing partners, and the bewindhebbers, which are the managing partners. This is an early form of a board of directors, and is still in place today, albeit with 60 managing partners instead of the original 76. All investors’ paid-in capital included liability for the early voyages. Given that the VOC was facing not only Portugal, but rivals across the North Sea, and pirates around the world, the insurance premiums for an early spice voyage were rather high. What made the VOC different from most companies at the time, is that its capital was permanent. Instead of dissolving the company after the ships returned, liquidating all the assets, and splitting the wealth, the VOC continued right on operating, with 18% dividends paid out to all its shareholder. Since the company was to be permanent, the only way an investor can liquidate their interest is to sell their shares on the Amsterdam Stock Market.
The VOC is also unique for its time in that anybody of means can buy into the company through the stock market. The early shares in the company went for an outrageous sum of 3,000 guilders, making it difficult for the common man to own a piece of the company, but within the means of many merchants. The company was formed with only 558 shareholders, most non-managing, but it also started out with capital far greater than its rival, the English East India Company. Most of the startup capital came from Amsterdam. The Chamber of Amsterdam provided some 3.679 million guilders, more than Middleburg, Enkhuizen, Delft, Hoorn and Rotterdam combined. The initial capital of the VOC was marked at 6.424 million guilders, a royal sum for its day.
Seventeen of the original seventy-six managers of the VOC came from the Chambers of the above mentioned cities. Amsterdam had the largest number at eight, just one short of a majority. Four more came from Middelburg, and one each from the other four cities, with the final seat rotated between the smaller partners. These were called the Lords Seventeen, and met alternately six years in Amsterdam and two years in Middelburg. They defined the general policy of the company for the duration and divided the tasks among their chambers, such as building ships, warehouses and trading the goods. They also sent expeditions to map the winds, currents, shoals and landmarks along the trade route. These VOC-produced charts were of the highest quality money could buy.
In 1603, the first Dutch trading post in Indonesia was established in Banten. By 1605, the Portuguese were driven from the East Indies by superior Dutch firepower. Another post was established in 1611, at Jayakarta, named Batavia after the legendary founders of the Dutch nation. The trading post thrives and grew, fortified by 1619, and eventually transforming into the modern day Javanese capital of Jakarta. A year earlier, the VOC established their own Governor-General to enable firmer control of their Asian affairs.
Though the modern VOC is the most powerful and wealthiest corporation in the world, its first incarnation’s power exceeded it. The monopoly granted to it by the Dutch government gave the VOC the right to not only establish its own navy, but to mint its own coins, sign its own treaties and even form its own military alliance. Over the span nearly two hundred years, up to the American Revolution, the VOC competed, and occasionally engaged in open warfare, with the British East India Company. Only after Chittagong fell in 1782, did the VOC dominate India. Ironically, after its greatest victory, the VOC faced bankruptcy and an uncertain future.
Guilders
In 1602, the most influential currency in the history of humanity came into existence; the Dutch Guilder. At its inception, one Guilder divided into twenty Stuiver, which divided into eight Duit, and again into sixteen Penning. The complex arrangement of fractions still gives accountants nightmares. In today’s world, with decimalization virtually everywhere, it is difficult to contemplate just what the Staaten-General and the Dutch banks were thinking when the Guilder was first introduced. The only non-decimal system widely used is the clock, and that came out of twenty-four was divided by twelve, six, four, three, two and one, and easily understood system that even the Ancient Egyptians understood.
However, King Maurice was not an Egyptian, and he did not have time to waste on complex numerical equations pertaining to financial transactions. The fractions had to go, and as his first edict, he commanded the Staaten-General do something about it. Maurice proposed the decimalization of currency well over a century before the metric system came into use. Instead of twenty, eight and sixteen, the new currency would be divided into either; ten Decs, one hundred Cens, and one thousand Mils. For the new names, the average Netherlands simply supplanted to old name, fore example, a Dec was called a Stuiver.
An issue this big required both Chambers to vote. The First Chamber insisted currency was the domain of the state, while the Second Chamber insisted it was the people who must suffer any changes. The chancellor of the Second Chamber demanded that his King have the issue voted on by both chambers. In England, if anyone from the House of Commons made demands from James I, they likely ended up in more trouble than they dreamed possible. Maurice I might not have been pleased by his chancellor’s tone, but he did see the legitimacy in his argument.
The nobility passed the law swiftly through the First Chamber, with only a few opposing. In the Second Chamber, the Act of Standardization of the Guilder hit a roadblock. Both the Banks and the Companies owned many members of the elected government. Changing from tradition denominations into this radical decimal system would take years and cost both parties a fortune. The banks would suffer the most. They already minted coins of carefully measured quantities of silver and gold. TO have a Stuiver all of a sudden worth twice what it was, made no sense, neither did the sharp drop in value of the Penning. The same chancellor who demanded the vote, also opposed it. He was a well known for living deep in the Bank of Amsterdam’s pockets.
By April of 1613, the King forced the issue before the Second Chamber. He called for a vote, where a simply majority of fifty percent plus one would pass the bill. He pleaded for the representatives to vote yes, if for no other reason than a future standardization would cost far more than on now. Three days passed in which each representative took the floor and gave his reason that his colleagues should vote either yes or no. In the end, the yes vote won by fifteen votes, though it would be many years before the new currency completely phased out the last.
King Frederick I
On April 23, 1625, the United Provinces lost their King. Maurice’s death was sudden and shocking, when on a horse ride early in the morning, his horse was spooked and threw him to the ground, breaking his neck. For his day, Maurice lived a long life, and for his times, it was indeed a very eventful one, but his death threw the United Provinces into somewhat of a constitutional crisis. Who would succeed Maurice to the throne?
Maurice had two children, both to mistresses and both illegitimate. By law, only an offspring born to a wife was permitted to inherit their father’s holdings. Maurice had no such heir. Some in the Staaten-General called for the Provinces to become an elected monarchy, such as the Vatican or Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. That begged the question, who would be nominated, and by whom. After various votes in the Second Chamber, especially the Act of Standardization, none of the members of the First Chamber wanted a king who was owned by either the Bank of Amsterdam or the VOC.
The search for an heir did not last long. The Staaten-General approached one of Maurice’s still living half-brothers, Frederick Henry van Oranje. Born to the fourth wife of William the Silent, about six months before his untimely death, the younger Prince of Orange happened to be the protégée of Maurice. Trained in arms by his older brother, Frederick Henry proved himself nearly as good a general as his brother, commanding elements of the rebel army during the Dunkirk campaign and again at Brussels and Mons. While in the First Chamber, he proved himself a superior politician and statesman. Best of all, Frederick Henry was married, to Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, just months before his brother’s death. He would provide what Maurice could not, a legitimate heir to the throne and the start of a royal dynasty that prevails even today.
After Maurice was entombed at the family mausoleum in Delft, Frederick Henry was crowned King Frederick I by the Bishop of Liege. What started out as a way to curry favor soon turned into a tradition spanning the history of the United Provinces. Every monarch, with the exception Maurice II, would be crowned by the Bishop in the cathedral at Liege.
Land Reclamation
One of Frederick I’s acts happens to be the one with the longest ranging consequence. Centuries before, Hollanders, Zeelanders and various Dutch cities across the Netherlands battled against great rivers and swamps. Over the course of decades, marshes were drained, rivers dammed and the mighty North Sea held back. By the time of Frederick I, all the land above the sea was dry and utilized. Frederick I decided to go farther.
The County of Holland decided to go farther than simply holding the sea back. They would push the North Sea outwards. In the first act of land reclamation, less than a square kilometer of the sea was blocked off by sea walls and dikes, then systematically drained. Their attempt to claim more living space cost years worth of effort and funding. The Netherlands would grow over the centuries, one of the few countries to literally expand its boundaries.
The Thirty Years War
In 1618, war boiled over in the Holy Roman Empire. Protestants in the Kingdom of Bohemia, concerned their religious rights would be revoked in the face of their new king, took up arms in support of the Protestant contender Frederick V, elector of the Palatinate. Normally, a conflict within the bordering, and disunited Empire would cause the Hague no grief. However, by 1636, France invaded the Empire in its quest to destroy the Protestant Reformation. A hundred years too late to make a difference in the spiritual future of Central Europe, all the invasion did was disrupt trade along the Rhine River.
The United Provinces would not go to war over another nation’s religious turmoil, but it would wage war in defense of trade. When French, along with a contingent of Spanish mercenaries invaded Luxembourg, and laid siege to the city, the Staaten-General declared war upon France. Frederick I, learned much from his brother in the art of war, and broke the siege within two weeks, driving the French across the Rhine. The United Provinces were not in the most secure of situations. Without a doubt, the French Navy was simply no match for the Dutch Navy. With its budding colonial empire, the navy received priority.
Despite the Provinces’ early form of secularism, the border with Catholic France was one of the most fortified in Europe. Even when the fires of the Dutch Revolution still faintly glowed, fortifications along their souther frontier grew at an astonishing rate. The border with Protestant Germany was less fortified. This was not so much that the Protestants were considered less dangerous. Far from it; Calvinists still caused their fair share of trouble in the Staaten-General. During the Seventeenth Century, there simply was no Germany in the modern sense. Dozens of small states were easier to defend against that one juggernaut.
France lacked the resources for a direct assault against the Dutch. Instead, their plans were lain on attacking the United Provinces from its soft Eastern frontier. Thus simply expelling the French was not enough to satisfy the Provinces. As long as France remained poised along the Rhine, it would threaten inland Dutch trade. It was feared that Spain, recovered after its defeat decades earlier, may use some of the Habsburg holdings in Germany as springboards of invasion. In 1641, Frederick lead the Dutch army across the Rhine, attacking the Spanish and French at their stronghold in Koln.
After three months, Frederick forces Koln to surrender. With other cities along the Rhein out of enemy control, the Dutch Navy had little trouble in patrolling the river. The French Army might still cross, but resupply would be problematic on the best of days. As part of the conditions of surrender at Koln, the Spanish were expelled from Germany, and the French were forced back across the Rhine. The future king, Louis XIV would be content at the Rhine, for he would declare that same river the natural boundary of France, and launch several invasions of the southern Provinces. The Thirty Years War ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. The United Provinces received no territorial gain, but their trade along the Rhine remained secure until England passed the Act of Navigation in the 1660s.
The Colonies
At the same time Holland was expending so much effort to capture a small piece of the sea floor, the rest of the Dutch people spread across the globe. Colonies taken from the defunct Portuguese Empire were immediately put to use by enterprising Netherlanders. Sugar from the New World, spices from the Indies, and grain from North America and South Africa, were soon flooding into ports such as Amsterdam.
All the imports were not so beneficial. With the acquisition of Brazil, and Angola, the so-called Dutch Empire inherited one of humanity’s greatest banes; slavery. During the Seventeenth Century, Amsterdam had the dishonor of being the biggest port of slavery in Europe. More slaver ships were registered in the United Provinces than any other nation. The same Dutch who fought forty years for their freedom were quick to subjugate and exploit others.
Brazil
In 1605, following the successful invasion of Brazil, merchants in Amsterdam formed the Dutch South Atlantic Company. The initial goal of this company was to ship massive quantities of sugar, white gold, into Dutch ports. In the following year, the Staaten-General granted the South Atlantic Company a twenty-year monopoly on all trade in Brazil, along with the responsibility of administrating the colony in Brazil and Angola.
An ocean apart, both colonies share a common thread. Though Angola was not fully exploited until the Nineteenth Century, its people were already victim to profit-seeking companies. The largest, and most lucrative crop in Brazil, sugar, required an enormous amount of manpower to cultivate. Indentured servants from the Provinces, which served farms and plantations in New Amsterdam well, did not flourish in the tropical climate. Too many would-be colonist from Northern Europe fell victim to the Brazilian jungle.
Logic dictated that the only people who could survive jungle climate, were jungle men. Most of the natives in coastal Brazil were already dead, or severely depleted due to diseases brought in from Europe. Like the Europeans had little defense to Yellow Fever, the natives had no defense to Small Pox. In an event that would repeat itself across the Americas, more than half the native population would die with each outbreak.
Portuguese plantations solved the problem by importing workers from Portuguese possessions along the western African coast. After the Treaty of Calais, the largest producers of slaves fell into English control. In order to expand newly established Dutch sugar, tobacco, and later cocoa, coffee and cotton, plantations, the South Atlantic Company, as well as transporting their goods to market for a reasonable profit, were more than happy to import labor.
Slavery made the South Atlantic Company very wealthy, and eventually lead to its downfall. The life of a slave, began in tribal Africa. When tribes waged war, they, like the Romans, Greeks and various ancient Mediterranean societies, would enslave the defeated foe. As such, battles tended to be fierce, since the loser, assuming they were not lucky and killed outright, were in for a long and painful life.
After conquest and enslavement, the victorious tribe would march their captives down to the coast, to one of the various trading posts. Luanda served as the South Atlantic Company’s trading hub for Angola. Thousands of slaves encountered the first day of the rest of their lives here. In exchanged for their own brethren, the slavers would receive fabrics, iron tools, weapons and luxuries found nowhere in southern Africa. In today’s world it is impossible to fathom trading one’s fellow man for a simple iron hatchet.
To maximize profits, and with no consideration to their cargo, the Company crammed as many slaves into cargo holds. Often there was just enough room for a slave to lay down. No more than five hundred millimeters would exist between one bunk and the next. Each morning, handlers would enter the foul holds, filled with the stench of death, and check on the cargo. Often slaves did not survive the night. Those were unshackled and unceremoniously tossed overboard, into the waiting jaws of shark. There was always sharks.
With the dead disposed of, the live were kept living. When a slave refused to eat, handlers would go as far as knocking out their teeth and forcing gruel down a tube and into their stomachs. For over a month, slaves endured the inhuman conditions. The lucky died, the rest arrived at port, where the true suffering began. Paraded before auctions, with as much consideration as a prize horse or bovine, slaves were bid upon. Female slaves faced an especially miserable life, subject to the whims of their new owners, and worse yet, their overseers.
The Dutch populace where blind to this suffering before monks exposed it during the early Eighteenth Century. Before the Enlightenment, it was doubtful any of them would care about the suffering across the ocean. As long as their houses were filled with previously unknown luxuries, coffee, chocolate and sugar, they were content. As long as the population was content, the Second Chamber felt little motivation to change.
A more pressing matter was what to do with thousands of Portuguese colonists. For the most part, the European population consisted of mostly men, who would marry native woman. It was roughly the same proportion as Spain in Mexico and Inca. Portuguese did not venture to Brazil to start over or raise families, they did so to grow rich, return home then settle down. The United Provinces, under the command of Governor-General van Bohr, Count of Natal, left a sizable army in the colony.
The question as to what to do about so many men who were hostile towards Dutch rule remained at the top of the Count’s list of concerns. The Dutch came to Brazil, not only to grow rich, but to start their lives over. Many were displaced by the Spanish during the Dutch revolution, and later by the Thirty Years War. Most found their ports of call in Natal, Recife, Salvador and Mauristadt. The opened shops, started farms, and brought with them comforts from home, including tulips.
Over the course of decades, the Portuguese Question essentially solved itself. With years, the Dutch-speaking population outnumbered the Portuguese. In order to do business, the Portuguese had little choice but to learn Dutch (or hire a translator). Even then, some Dutch refused to deal with the translators. Their attitude was simply that if anything worth hearing was to be said, then it could be said in their language. When Dutch woman arrived, the Portuguese quickly remembered some of the comforts of home. They intermarried with the newcomers, and were subsequently assimilated.
New Amsterdam
In 1609, under contract with VOC, Henry Hudson set sail to the New World in search of a shortcut to the Indies. Whomever could find the fabled Northwest Passage would have a decisive advantage in the spice trade. Sailing the Halve Maen (Half-moon) past Manhattan Island, what Hudson found was not a passage across the continent, but many tribes of natives along with a wealth of fur. Hudson named the waterway the Mauritius River, in honor of the hero of the Forty Years Wars.
Upon arriving home, Hudson did not return with new of a passage, but rather a land wealthy in beavers. At the time, beaver pelts were prized in Europe, because the fur could be ‘felted’ to make waterproof hats. In following the following year, 1611 to 1614, expeditions surveyed and charted the region between the thirty-eighth and forty-fifth parallel. These expeditions entitled the charters to a five year monopoly as per the rules set down by the Staaten-General. Several trading posts were established, the furthest one Fort Orange, now the city of Albany, near the modern day state borders of New Amsterdam and the Iroquois Confederacy.
Fort Amsterdam, established in 1615, quickly grew into the city of New Amsterdam. According to legend, the Dutch purchased Manhattan Island from the natives for sixty guilders worth of beads. At the mouth of Mauritius River, there was a normally ice-free harbor throughout the year. As well as hordes of trappers, the New Amsterdam Company soon opened land on Manhattan to settlers from back home. The first families arrived at Fort Amsterdam in 1624, followed by a second wave of families the following year.
The early years of the colony, trade with the natives dominated the economy. As they would in Angola, the Dutch would trade common items of the United Provinces for the goods they sought. In this case, instead of enslaving hundreds of thousands of humans, business led to the extermination of the beaver throughout the region, followed by other species later. By 1626, the colony elected its first governor, Peter Minuit. During the building of New Amsterdam, the Mohawk-Mahican war further north forced many settlers in Upper New Amsterdam down to the easily defensible island. With the threat of Indian wars spreading to the city, New Amsterdammers built a wall of stone and clay. In the process, they failed to predict expanding population. Within a decade, built up area appeared north of the wall. The wall was hence demolished, but its existence gave name to one of the wealthiest streets in the world; Wall Street.
By the 1640s, the beaver population in the Mauritius River Valley thinned to the point where profits of the colony became threatened. A timber mill was built upon Governor’s Island, in hope that lumber could supplement some of the lost income. By 1648, settlers expanded beyond New Amsterdam to found neighboring settlements of Haarlem, Staaten Island, and vast orchards sprout along the banks of the river.
Wheat from Long Island and apples and pears from Nassau poured through the port of New Amsterdam and were soon shipped eastward across the sea. In the case of the fruit, it was quickly fermented and transformed into brandy, the only practical way to transport fruit in the day. With the devastation waged across Germany during the Thirty Years War, where nearly thirty percent of the population was wiped out, the Netherlands were desperate for food. Brazilian colonists were more interested in cash crops than foodstuffs. New Amsterdam profited greatly by Brazil’s greed. By the First Anglo-Dutch War, New Amsterdam spread its borders to encompass all the lands between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers, right smack between two English Colonies; Plymouth and Virginia.
Ceylon
The first of the VOC ships to arrive on the island of Ceylon arrived in 1607 at the trailing days of the Forty Years War. Upon arrival, the Kandyan Kings of Ceylon found themselves under the heels of the Portuguese. Portugal attempted to impose its own culture upon the native. Portuguese advisors were in the royal court; Kandyan nobles had a Portuguese education and the missionaries were everywhere. When the VOC ships full of mercenaries and adventures arrived in Kandy, and a proposal of alliance against the Portuguese was offered to King Rajasinghe, the King jumped at the offer, for the Ceylonese were very unhappy about losing their lands to the Portuguese. Portugal’s navy was much diminished from the Forty Years War, and its colonial empire was teetering on oblivion. By 1609, the Portuguese were out, and the VOC had in their hands a treaty with the Kandyan King, paving the way for trade and eventual colonization. The VOC annexed former Portuguese lands on the west coast of Ceylon, including the port of Colombo, in the name of the United Provinces.
The treaty between the VOC and Kandy stated that in return for Dutch protection against other foreigners, Kandy would grant the VOC a trade monopoly on the island’s spices. As long as the spice flowed, the Dutch were utterly indifferent to the native’s customs and religion. Attempts by Calvinist missions from the United Provinces to infiltrate the island was defeated by the VOC. The Company was not about to let any religious sect from the motherland endanger their trading rights. When British ships attempted to trade with the Kandyans, the VOC captured the ships and imprisoned the crews. The VOC further extended its hold on Ceylon and the cinnamon trade by waging war against the Kingdom of Jaffna between 1632 and 1634. The war was largely fought by Kandyan soldiers, and both the Company and Kandy besieged the city of Jaffna for thirteen months. The war ended with the VOC annexing the former Kingdom of Jaffna.
The VOC did open the island to limited colonization by Netherlanders. Many colonists took up lands in Jaffna, and were under contract with the VOC to grow spices in high demand back in Europe. Dutch plantations spread across the Company lands in the decades of the 1630s and 1640s. By 1645, some ten thousand Netherlanders had settled the island. Along side the Dutch settlers, the VOC also contracted with native land owners in Kandy to supply additional spices. Unlike many of the other Company territories across the East Indies, Ceylon began as a true partnership between Europe and India. By 1640, the VOC had extended its influence over Kandy to the point that it was The natives preferred the Dutch infinitely over the Portuguese. Where the Portuguese came to impose their ways, the Dutch were simply interested in trade. As per the Treaty of Kandy, the VOC would defend the Kandyan people from foreign invasions, in return for exclusive rights to export native spices. The influx of many Netherlanders concerned the natives at first, but once it was made known the Dutch would respect the native ways, the newcomers were tolerated.
Most of these newcomers, totaling two thousands, hailed from Antwerp. During the Thirty Years War, the French never gained a foothold in the Netherlands, but they managed to raid repeatedly. Their favorite target was Antwerp. Thousand of Netherlanders died in the raids, and thousands more fled, some to Brazil, some to New Amsterdam, and some to the East. The sad saga of the Antwerp Diaspora would continue until the Seven Years War, in the middle of the Eighteenth Century.
From the port of Columbo, the VOC not only administered Ceylon, but also various posts on the Indian Mainland taken from the Portuguese. Chiefly among these was the Port of Goa. The Dutch would do little to India until the following century, the settlers preferring Ceylon and Formosa over the crowded subcontinent. Trade did bloom, and with the space of two decades, the VOC gained a monopoly over all trade in southern India.
Java
The first permanent Dutch trading post was established in the East Indies before the Forty Years War even drew to a close. Like with most Europeans, there were not drawn by veins of gold or silver, but by the prospect of cinnamon. The post was established by the VOC at Banten on the western coast of Java. The VOC wasted little time in trading for spices and hunting down competition. In 1605, the VOC captured the Portuguese fort in the Moluccas. By 1607, the VOC had driven the Portugese from the island of Sumatra and virtually locked them out of the East Indies. With Brazil and its other possessions under attack, the Portuguese were hopelessly divided, and easily conquered. With the end of the Forty Years War, the Portuguese Empire was in Dutch hands, removing them as competition for keeps. In 1611, the VOC established another trading post, this time in Jayakarta. The post was allowed after the VOC subverted the local prince to their way of thinking.
To enable more effective control of its East Asian affairs, the VOC created the office of Governor-General. Along with the Governor-Generalship came the Council of the Indies, an advisory body that also served to prevent the Governor-General from getting ideas of personal empire in his head, and to remind him that his true loyalty is to the company. To gain its monopoly and keep it, the VOC did more than simply subvert local leaders. The VOC fought its own share of skirmishes with England’s East India Company. When the English attempted to subvert the chiefs and princes of Ambon into their camp, the agents, some who were VOC employees, were discovered. The VOC employees were executed on charges of treason. The English simply executed. The event became known by the English as the Amboyan Massacre.
In 1619, the VOC appointed a ruthless and single-minded son of a Hoorn investor to the office of Governor-General. Jan Pieterszoon Coen was almost single handedly responsible for creating the Dutch spice monopoly. In the same year as he was appointed, the English and their native allies had the Dutch post at Jayakarta under siege. On May 30, Coen arrived with 19 ships, saved the post and stormed the city. Atop of the ruins, the VOC constructed the city of Batavia, named after the ancient tribe that once roamed the Netherlands. Batavia quickly becomes a center of the spice trade and the VOC’s capital in the East Indies.
In response to English meddlings on Banda, Coen ordered an invasion of the island in order to maintain the VOC’s monopoly on Clove. Coen responded so heavy-handedly, that the natives ended up driven from the island. The natives were either deported, starved out or just plained killed to make way for Dutch plantation owners, and their slaves. Some of those slaves were hapless natives of Banda that survived Coen’s furry. The justification of the invasion was that Coen claimed the English were attempting to subvert the island. So tight was competition between England’s and the Netherlands’ companies, that many of the natives were stepped on during the fight.
Coen was more than a butcher. He was also an able administrator. One of his plans for the East Indies was to bring in Netherlanders to colonize the islands. This plan was shot down by the VOC shareholders as cost prohibited. A more successful plan was a system of intra-Asian trade Coen established. Though Europe had great demands for spices, the natives had little demand for European goods. Aside from textiles, which the United Provinces had plenty, the natives would only accept gold or silver in trade. Japan was a known source of silver, but they had even less interest in European goods. However, they had a demand for Chinese goods. China, in turn, had a demand for sandalwood, which the VOC had relatively easy access. The intra-Asian system aided the VOC in gaining control over the spice trade on Java, and in 1629, Coen retired a modestly wealthy man. Java was never a popular destination for settlers during the Seventeenth Century. Its tormenting heat and endemic disease kept all but the merchants away. The VOC established posts all along the Javanese coast, using these to dominate trade. They saw little reason to conquer the interior, when they could just control the access ports for trade. The VOC gained its cinnamon trade and soon carried the spice to Dutch ports and beyond.
Formosa
The first Europeans to land on Formosa did so in 1624, on the sandy Tayouan Peninsula. It was here that the VOC erected its first trading post on the island. The VOC planned to use it to strengthen their trade in China and with Japan. The Japanese in particular; the hide of the Sitka Deer was sought after by samurai for use in constructing their armor. The VOC would pay the natives for the deer hides and trade them to Japanese warlords in return for silver. VOC operations on the island expanded with the establishment of Fort Zeelandia in 1635. Before then, the Company saw the island and its operations important enough to appoint a Governor-General in 1627; one Gerald de With, who carried out this office until 1636. VOC control of the island was not uncontested; during the 1630s, Spanish attempts to establish trading posts and missions on the island failed, usually by means of the VOC attacking the Spanish, slaughtering them and burning down their post.
Twenty years after first establishing themselves on the island, the VOC soon found the Sitka Deer population in decline, and were forced to pay more and more for the hides. With this trade venture turning unprofitable, the company introduced both sugar cane and mulberry trees to the island for cultivation. Over a hundred colonists from Liege arrived in Fort Zeelandia in 1644, and each had lots of land parceled out to them to establish plantations of sugar and orchards of mulberry. The mulberry alone was of little commercial value; however, the silk worm thrived upon it. Labors were brought in from China to work these plantations, and even their own rice paddies. Some specialist silk cultivators were lured from their ancestral lands by high paying Company contracts.
Not all the locals were so pleased by the Dutch presence on the island. Pirates plied the China Sea, and in 1641, made the mistake of preying upon a VOC ship. The VOC, over the next three years and at great expense, combed the Sparely Islands, and rooted out every single pirate nest they found. It has been estimated that over thirty thousand pirates were killed during this period. Even the natives of Formosa were not always as cooperative as the Company would like. Opposition to VOC attempts to unite the tribes of the island under their rule lead to a punitive expedition against Bakloan and Mattau, near Tayouan, which ended in both villages being razed to the ground.
Finding themselves effectively governing the island, the VOC levied a head tax on all the natives six years of age and older. This hit the natives hard, for they never had to pay taxes before the Dutch arrived. The VOC used this tax to finance the building of roads to improve the island’s non-existent infrastructure and in harbor improvements. The tax also paid for Company schools that sprang up across the island, where the natives learned to speak Dutch, the only language the VOC would do business with the natives.
The largest threat to VOC rule on the island came in 1660, when Ming Loyalist, Koxinga, lead an army on four hundred ships to invade the island. Thousands of Chinese soldiers besieged Fort Zeelandia. Defending the city was Governor-General Frederick Coyett, several hundred Company men along with a thousand natives. Such a threat was Koxinga, VOC forces were drawn from Java and even as far as Ceylon, to combat the Ming. From Ceylon, the King of Kandy sent four thousand soldiers to aid his allies in their fight. The Siege of Fort Zeelandia was lifted by the arrivals from Ceylon and Java. For two years, the VOC fought Koxinga for control of the island, finally cornering the General on Formosa’s western coast, where he was executed by the VOC, along with the survivors of his army.
Dutch culture influenced the natives, but native cultures from Capestaat to Formosa influenced the United Provinces. The VOC valued merit over any family connections in the Netherlands. VOC ships hired sailors from their colonies, sometimes for lifelong employment, sometimes just for the voyage to the next port. Over the course of three decades, Buddhist monks from Ceylon worked their way across the Dutch Empire. Upon arriving in the United Provinces, the first Buddhist temples were built just outside of Amsterdam. Their monasteries would soon expend from the fjords of Norway to the mountains of Sardinia, though not totally without trouble from their more theists neighbors.
Hainan
Hainan was the last of the “Big Four” in the VOC’s possession (Ceylon, Java, Formosa and Hainan) to be colonized. The VOC captured the island from the China in 1664, following the generalized chaos caused when the Manchu invaded and overthrew the Ming. Unlike the Ming, the Qing Dynasty had no overseas ambition. After half a century of operating in the Orient, the VOC had the leverage to cut off China from trade. In the brief war, lasting only a matter of months (in fact, it was fought and over with a treaty signed before word even reached the United Provinces) the VOC forced the Qing to cede the island of Hainan and grant the Dutch trade concessions, such as a monopoly in China’s tea trade. This was partly business and partly a slap in the face of the English and the humiliating peace they imposed upon the United Provinces following the First Anglo-Dutch War. Since the English restricted trade in England, the Company had no qualms in taking over the tea trade.
Hainan was used as the VOC’s primary trading center in the South China Sea, where commerce between the island, southern China, and Vietnam was moderately prosperous. Colonists from the Provinces arrived on the island just as the Second Anglo-Dutch War erupted. These colonists, like those on the other three of the Big Four, were interested in making their fortune on plantations. Sugar plantations were started on Hainan, but the company decided to limit the amount of sugar it produced to keep the prices from bottoming out. Instead, the Company started tea plantations on Hainan, overseen by Dutch colonists and worked by laborers brought over from the mainland of China. The higher pay of the VOC over that of feudal lords of the Qing caused a flood of immigration. This threatened to precipitate another war in China, for which the VOC was not equipped to fight while fighting the English. The Company negotiated another treaty with China establishing tight quotas for the flow of labor.
Following the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the VOC had a stranglehold on the tea market. After losing the war, the English were forced to buy much of their tea from their former enemies and now new allies, the Dutch. This arrangement continued until the English, and later British, began to operate their own tea plantations out of the Philippines and Malaysia. By the start of the 18thCentury, the VOC had expanded its operations on Hainan beyond tea into mulberry plantations and even mining. Deposits of silver on Hainan were tapped by the Company and used to further finance the VOC’s expansion in the East Indies. Though there was ample room for colonization, most Netherlanders preferred Ceylon, followed by Java, then Formosa, over this fourth island.
Kings of the Seas
The tactics that the VOC used to keep on the top of their business varied during the 17th and 18th Centuries. Their size permitted them to simply undercut their smaller competition, buy paying more for spices in the East and selling it for less. This means of competing with what we would now call “the little guy” tend to cut into profits. Instead of lowering their prices, the VOC preferred to simply sink independent and small traders. The VOC’s private navy was also used to clean out pirates, which indirectly benefitted the small business ventures, as well as do battle with rival national monopolies, most notably the English (and later British) East India Company.
The VOC was a quasi-nation in its own rights. The monopoly granted by the Staaten-General allowed the VOC to sign its own treaties. The VOC signed exclusive trading treaties with states such as Kandy and Sultanates across the East Indies. In other cases, such as western Ceylon and Java, the VOC simply marched in and conquered their sources of spices and trading partners. Many of the independent states soon found themselves dependent upon the VOC. With the Company lending credit and minting coin, all of which the VOC forced its trading partners to accept. Back home, the VOC bankrolled many members of the Second Chamber of the Staaten-General, and flat out bribed those in the First Chamber. With this, and national interest, the VOC insured its exclusive trade monopoly was renewed time and again.
Their biggest threat came from other national monopolies. To battle these, the VOC and its navy took control over entire trading lanes. In the Indian Ocean, the Dutch discovered that sailing eastward across the Indian Ocean from around Forty Degrees allowed them to bypass the mercies of the seasonal monsoon patterns; flowing southwest during one part of the year and northeast during another. By taking control of the best route and currents directly across the Indian Ocean, along with the Cape of Good Hope, the VOC was able to trade year round. Those who either did not know about the currents, or were banned from them, had to wait months in India until the monsoon winds shifted and allowed for a return trip to India.
Rising Power in Europe
With control over a large portion of trade between Europe and the outside world, the United Provinces were soon on the rise. Their army was still no match for the full might of France of Sweden, but their wealth gave them influence over many princely courts. The Netherlands preferred to expand through trade and negotiating. During the course of the 1640s, Frederick I opened up a series of negotiating with Christian IV and the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway.
Union of Kopenhagen
A treaty of alliance between Denmark-Norway was Frederick I’s goal near the end of his life. The growing power of Sweden threatened Dutch trade in the Baltic. Sweden’s navy was no match for the United Provinces, at least not for the time being. By allying with Denmark-Sweden, Frederick hoped to contain Sweden. With bases in the Danish Isles, the Dutch could strike at Swedish positions across the Baltic Sea.
Just weeks before the death of Frederick I, his only son, William, was wed to the daughter of the Danish King, Christina of Denmark. The ceremony was a happy one, soon followed by a sorrow. In August of 1647, Frederick I died of natural causes. He worked most of his later life away, often before sunrise until after sunset. Frederick is known as the hardest working king in Dutch history. Since William was legitimate, he immediately ascended the throne.
When asked which name he would take, he chose his own, but he refused the addition of The First. William hailed his grandfather, William the Silent, as the spiritual first king of the United Provinces. The new king was crowned King William II. His reign was short with little to distinguish himself. He opposed the Treaty of Münster, only to be overruled by the Staaten-General. In 1650, a smallpox outbreak spread across Holland, eventually working its way into the Hague. William II died of smallpox, just one week before the birth of his only son, also named William.
Smallpox infections spread across Europe, infecting Kopenhagen as well. Princes Frederick and George were killed by the epidemic. Though some nationalistic groups in modern Denmark claim that it was Dutch assassins that in fact killed George, using the outbreak as a cover. With Christian IV’s other son, Christian killed in another war with Sweden, all of the princes were dead without heirs. The only candidate available according to Danish law was Christian’s grandson, William. Upon his death, William was crowned King William I of Denmark-Norway, along with his previous title, William III of the United Provinces. With his mother as regent, the United Provinces and Denmark-Norway entered a state of personal union.