A Tiny Spot on the Earth

A Tiny Spot on the Earth A Tiny Spot on the Earth The Political Culture of the Netherlands in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Piet de Rooy Amsterdam University Press Cover illustration: Nationaal Archief/Spaarnestad. Photo/Wilh. L. Stuifbergen Translated by Vivien Collingwood Cover design: Suzan Beijer Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 704 7 e-isbn 978 90 4852 415 0 (pdf) e-isbn 978 90 4852 416 7 (ePub) nur 686 © Piet de Rooy/ Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2015 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Table of Contents Introduction 7 1. Long Live the Republic! 17 1798: The Constitution 2. A New Society is Being Created Here 43 1813: The Nation State 3. Everything is a Motley 73 1848: Parliamentary Democracy 4. Following the American Example 111 1879: The Political Party 5. Justice and Love 147 Fin de siècle: Ideology 6. The Nation is Divided into Parties 185 1930: The Pillarized-Corporate Order 7. Fundamental Changes in Mentality 229 1966: The Cultural Revolution 8. That’s Not Politics! 265 2002: Populism 9. A Tiny Spot 289 Political culture Acknowledgements 299 Notes 301 Bibliography 371 Index of persons 403 All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others; and, we choose rather to be happy citizens, than subtle disputants. As we must give away some natural liberty, to enjoy civil advantages –, so we must sacrifice some civil liberties, for the advantages to be derived from the communion and fellowship of a great empire. But in all fair dealings the thing bought, must bear some proportion to the purchase paid. – Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliution with Americu, 1775 Introduction In 1795 a coup d’état, supported by military assistance from the French revolutionary army, brought an end to the existence of the seven indepen- dent provinces, and led to the founding of the ‘one and indivisible’ Batavian Republic. From that moment, the Netherlands became a nation state with a ‘modern’ political culture. This fundamental transformation formed part of an ‘Atlantic Revolution’; the new state was carried on the waves of a global development, one that had become particularly manifest in the United States and France. At the same time, it became clear that the Netherlands was profoundly dependent upon power relationships over which it had little influence: the Kingdom of Prussia had managed to prop up the revolution in the Netherlands by military means between 1787 and 1795; and Napoleon would subsequently bring the country under French influence and even annex it in 1806, after which independence was restored in 1813 in large part thanks to Russian soldiers and British politics. The Netherlands had about two million inhabitants at this time, and thus had limited opportunities to gather large sums by taxation or raise a formidable army through conscription. As a result, the country could no longer play a meaningful role in international ‘Great Power politics’. This had already become clear in the course of the eighteenth century, but now it was undeniable: the Netherlands was a small country, described in parliament in 1796 by the representative Schimmelpenninck as ‘our tiny spot on the earth’.1 That ‘tiny spot’ would sigh many a time in realization of its smallness, but with some regularity it would transform this awareness into the notion that it had a task in the world: whilst it was no longer the great power that it had been in the Golden Age, it was an exemplary nation, a guide that would show other countries the way to a world in which power and interests no longer played a decisive role, where law and justice dominated, and where the climate was determined by tolerance. Such a manoeuvre, for example, was expressed in 1864 in incomparable fashion by the popular historian, W.J. Hofdijk: Once we commanded the sea, and proclaimed the law to the peoples; we were the talk of Europe and the world, they would bow to the Lion of the Netherlands, fluttering on his tricolour standard. That belongs to the past; it will never come back –; and it also need not come back. A different future lies before us; a more glorious one – and one that is achievable. 8 A TINY SPOT ON THE EARTH And if you, as I, remain true to the old Lion of the Netherlands – you shall also preserve him for the future: you will be able to see him, rejuvenated by the glory of conquest, with his old standard, the clear ‘Orange, white, blue’ blazing out above his rippling mane, but with his proud paw resting on a new blazon, which shall bear the motto: it is more splendid to be the most virtuous than the most powerful people on earth.2 In the course of the nineteenth century, this theme would be extended to the idea that the Netherlands was an exemplary country in a general sense.3 It felt justified in assuming this position of moral superiority on the grounds that it had bridged deep religious differences through the generally endorsed principle of freedom of religion, resolved the class struggle by a system of negotiation and consultation, and generally suppressed conflicts of power and interest through reasonableness and democratic conviction. According to this line of argument, the result was a deeply egalitarian society of citizens (burgers), as described in 1934 by the much-quoted historian, Huizinga: Whether we like it or not, we Dutch are all bourgeois [burgerlijk]: from the notary to the poet, and from the baron to the proletarian. Our national culture is bourgeois in every sense of the word.4 According to him, this explained the ‘evenness [effenheid] of national life’. Whilst this may have been somewhat boring, it simultaneously allowed much trouble to be avoided, and thus bred contentment. On this basis, Dutch history retrospectively gained not only a tradition, but also an identity. It has been said, somewhat blasphemously, that while God created the world, the Dutch made their own country. They fought against the water, and in the course of this fight a ‘polder mentality’ devel- oped in which power was replaced by consultation. As a form of enlightened self-interest, a democratic mentality lay at the heart of Dutch culture, and had done so since ancient times. In this respect political scientists pointed to the political culture that had been created by the regents in the Republic of the United Netherlands, which was said to be characterized by ‘compromise and accommodation’ and ‘persuasion’ – and thus also by multiple, protracted meetings.5 At the end of the twentieth century, this INTRODUCTION 9 analysis even gained something of an international reputation, when in the form of the ‘polder model’ it was held up to the world as a method for cutting back the welfare state without too much ado.6 The past of the Netherlands was thereby presented as too ‘flat,’ however, with too great an emphasis on continuity and too little focus on the far- reaching changes that occurred, often with numerous conflicts, in the structure and conduct of politics. It is often forgotten, for instance, that the Netherlands as a unitary state embarked on a real revolution in 1795, including a phase of terror, though one that claimed few lives in comparison with France.7 This phase tends to be passed over silently in the national culture of remembrance, as is the fact that the first real constitution was drafted in 1798, not 1848, and that the monarchy did not begin with the restoration of independence in 1813 but was imposed by France (1806-1810). This one-sidedness is not limited to the inception of the nation state, but also implies a mediocre grasp of the huge problems with which people subsequently struggled in the creation of modern politics. Indeed, it was not a matter of a kind of natural growth of institutions and customs; it was not a question of a gradual ‘transformation’ (a much misused word) of the political culture. Here, perhaps, it is useful to draw a comparison with evolutionary theory. Evolution is hardly a peaceful process; it does not entail voluntary adaptation, but displacement, battles and extinction. Neither is it a gradual process of steady change: long periods of more or less great stability are interspersed with periods of sudden, rapid change (‘critical junctures’).8 In a comparable way, the development of politics can be analysed as a process in which institutions and customs change relatively slowly, alternating with moments in which circumstances are uncertain and the future unpredictable. In these relatively short moments the real power relations are exposed, individual politicians exercise decisive influence, and, moreover, chance plays a role. The choices that are made in what are relatively short period periods of time determine opportunities and the future course of events.9 Such ‘moments’ determine the structure of this book. We shall look successively at how the Netherlands became a unitary state with a representative political order, how the parliament laboriously rose to become the ‘Acropolis of our Fatherland’,10 how the development of ideology crystallized into political parties, how the first contours of the welfare state were drawn, how the mutual penetration of state and society resulted in a ‘pillarized’ corporate order, how modern conservatism bound itself to economic growth and thereby to Europe; and finally, how pessimism and populism united in ‘declinism’, the notion that the Netherlands had 10 A TINY SPOT ON THE EARTH fallen from grace and into decline.

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