UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) The Dutch, the French and Napoleon: historiographical reflections on a troubled relationship Velema, W.R.E. Publication date 2007 Published in Da Brumaio ai cento giorni: cultura di governo e dissenso politico nell'Europa di Bonaparte Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Velema, W. R. E. (2007). The Dutch, the French and Napoleon: historiographical reflections on a troubled relationship. In A. de Francesco (Ed.), Da Brumaio ai cento giorni: cultura di governo e dissenso politico nell'Europa di Bonaparte (pp. 39-51). (Storiografica; No. 11). Guerini. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:24 Sep 2021 Wyger R.E. Velema The Dutch, the French and Napoleon: Historiographical Reflections on a Troubled Relationship How does a small country with a heroic past retrospectively cope with its humiliating incorporation into an immense empire? The short and unsur- prising answer is: not with a great deal of enthusiasm. I am, of course, refer- ring here to the demise of the once so glorious Dutch Republic in the dec- ades around 1800, culminating in the entire loss of national independence during the full incorporation of the country into the Napoleonic Empire be- tween 1810 and 1813. It is no exaggeration to say that Dutch historians have found it exceedingly difficult to integrate the so-called «French period» – a designation to which I shall return – into the various grand narratives they have successively written and are still writing about their national past. They worship their Golden Age (a term significantly first used for the Dutch sev- enteenth century in 1808), they lavish attention upon the gradual growth of modern Dutch society, culture and politics during the nineteenth and twen- tieth centuries, but to many the period around 1800 remains a strangely gray and vaguely repugnant area1. The most recent synthesis of the period even – and be assured that this is not meant as a joke by its learned authors – de- scribes the whole late eighteenth-century revolution in the Netherlands as «a disastrous mistake»2. The tradition that originated in the nineteenth century, that of denying the decades around 1800, up to and including the period of incorporation into the Napoleonic Empire, any positive or even significant role in the history of the Dutch, therefore occasionally surfaces even today. It will be my aim in this article to investigate, albeit far from exhaustively, the ways in which Dutch commentators, often but not always historians, 1 On the first use of the term Golden Age see Evert M. WISKERKE, De waardering voor de zeventiende-eeuwse literatuur tussen 1780 en 1813, Hilversum 1995, p. 11. 2 Joost KLOEK - Wijnand MIJNHARDT, 1800. Blauwdrukken voor een samenleving, The Hague 2001, p. 570. 42 have dealt with this apparently traumatic episode in the history of their country, particularly during the nineteenth century. Before I proceed to do so, however, let me first remind you of some of the more salient aspects of the history of the Netherlands in the years around 18003. During the second half of the eighteenth century it became obvious to many Dutchmen that the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, the coun- try that had played a leading role in Europe during its so-called Golden Age of the seventeenth century, was gradually dwindling into insignificance. To most contemporary observers, unaware of the structural causes and dimen- sions of this development, Dutch decline appeared above all to be a problem of morals. It was, so they thought, simply to be blamed on the loss, partly caused by the increasing and regrettable imitation of French culture, of the virtues of the heroic forefathers who had founded the country and had sub- sequently brought it to greatness. The catalogue of these old Dutch virtues, now increasingly hard to discern in a climate of French frivolity and con- spicuous consumption, included sobriety, frugality, civic egalitarianism, hon- esty, economic initiative and love of liberty. During the 1750s and 1760s it was generally held by commentators critical of Dutch decline that a return to these virtues, preferably fortified with a dose of Enlightenment, would set the country back on the road to greatness4. When decades of moral exhorta- tion remained without noticeable effect, however, a more directly political approach to the problems of the Republic began to attract an ever larger fol- lowing. The total military impotence and humiliation of the country during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784), combined with the international growth of a radical discourse of liberty, produced the Dutch Patriot move- ment of the 1780s. Its ideology was an explosive mix of classical republican- ism, radical natural rights doctrine and outraged national pride. Its central message was that Dutch greatness could only be restored through political reforms that would increase popular participation in politics at the cost of the power of both the Orange Stadholder and the republican regents. Al- though the Patriot movement had a considerable following and succeeded in gaining power in significant parts of the country during what may be termed a quasi civil war, it ultimately failed. It certainly is true, as has been argued repeatedly, that the particularistic political structure of the United Provinces made concerted Patriot political action hard to achieve. Yet in the end it was foreign intervention – a full scale Prussian invasion in 1787, backed by Brit- ish diplomacy and Orangist planning – that proved to be the undoing of the 3 The most comprehensive introduction to this period remains Simon SCHAMA, Patriots and Liberators. Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813, New York 1977. Indi- spensable is also Nicolaas C.F. VAN SAS, De metamorfose van Nederland. Van oude orde naar moderniteit 1750-1900, Amsterdam 2004. 4 On Dutch Enlightenment thought see J. KLOEK - W. MIJNHARDT, 1800 cit. Wyger R.E. Velema 43 Patriot movement5. The years after 1787 saw the restoration of a vindictive Orangist regime. Many former Patriots were forced into exile in the Austrian Netherlands and in France. It was in this last country, so one influential the- ory goes, that they underwent a successful training in «the school of the French Revolution»6. Seven years after the Orangist restoration of 1787, the exiled Patriots, now backed by French military might, returned in triumph to their country, soon to become the Batavian Republic. The Orange Stadholder William V fled to England, while his supporters were banned from participation in public life. Meanwhile the revolutionaries energetically proceeded to build a new political order. The institutions of the Dutch old regime were disman- tled at a rapid pace, the rights of man and citizen were proclaimed and, from March 1796, a broadly elected national assembly met in The Hague. The hugely important task facing this assembly was the creation of a written con- stitution for the new and revolutionary Dutch state. This, however, proved to be immensely difficult. For even though the French left the deliberations over the new constitution largely to the Dutch themselves, they were unable to reach any agreement. So deep were the divisions between Federalists and Unitarians and liberal and radical republicans in the national assembly and in the various constitutional committees that a compromise acceptable to all was never reached. In the end, the matter had to be decided by a French backed radical coup d’état in January 1798. The constitution that was adopted soon after – by means of a heavily rigged election process – definitively de- cided one of the most contested issues: the Dutch would have a unitary state7. The year 1798 also constituted a turning point in another crucial re- spect. The endless struggle over the new constitution, combined with the ruthless way in which the issue was ultimately settled, led to a widespread disillusionment with revolutionary politics. This tendency was further rein- forced by a growing awareness that the French were not just disinterested and cosmopolitan liberators, but were above all out to dispense, in Simon Schama’s felicitous phrase, «fraternity on the terms of the biggest brother»8. The story of the fifteen years after 1798 may largely be told in terms of an 5 An excellent synthesis of recent research on the Patriot period is Stephan R.E. KLEIN, Patriots Republikanisme. Politieke cultuur in Nederland (1766-1787), Amsterdam 1995. 6 On the Patriot exile there is now Joost ROSENDAAL, Bataven! Nederlandse vluchte- lingen in Frankrijk, 1787-1795, Nijmegen 2003. 7 On the political and ideological developments in the Batavian Republic up to the adoption of the constitution of 1798 see N.C.F. VAN SAS, Metamorfose van Neder- land cit., pp. 277-292 and Wyger R.E. VELEMA, Revolutie, Republiek en Constitutie. De i- deologische context van de eerste Nederlandse grondwet in De eeuw van de Grondwet. Grondwet en politiek in Nederland, 1798-1917, hrsg.