Chairman’s remarks

Abstract

It was our plan that this meeting should consider some aspects of the changes in material civilization and intellectual life in Britain and the United Provinces resulting from the union of the two Crowns in 1688. A parallel meeting in Amsterdam will devote more attention to politics and the fine arts. In a short time it is impossible to cover many topics and we thought it right to pay some attention to the role of the Stadtholder while not omitting the two great scientific figures of this age, Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton. It is tempting to suppose that the replacement of James II on the throne of England by William and Mary, as it ensured the ascendancy of Protestantism, so also it introduced a strong Dutch influence to replace the Frenchification characteristic of the reigns of Charles and James. Did not William, in stemming the territorial expansion of France, also check its cultural hegemony? So far as Britain is concerned the proposition is dubious, for our cultural links with The Netherlands were already strong before 1688, not least because of earlier migrations and the relationships formed during the Civil Wars and their aftermath. In the scientific realm one thinks especially of van Schooten and the Dutch mathematical school, of De Graaf, Swammerdam, Leeuwenhoek and especially Christiaan Huygens.