Abstract
This contribution sketches the emergence of democratic self-definitions in the Netherlands, from the end of the 18th century until the post-war period, when it had become commonplace to define the country as democratic. Its point of departure is the use of the word and concept of democracy by contemporaries and Dutch and foreign historians, and it argues that the history of Dutch ‘democracy’ has been characterized by an emphasis on freedom, self-government by a broadly defined elite and a strong civil society, rather than by participation of the population at large. Democracy only became really popular after the Second World War when it could be defined as protection against dictatorship. The Dutch case shows that we should be careful about equating a strong civil society or even the rule of law with democracy in the sense of the power of the people at large. Democracy was definitely accepted as a label to characterize the Netherlands after it had been redefined as in essence the opposite of dictatorship instead of the opposite of aristocracy. The Dutch case also shows that a highly developed, civil society can even confine rather than promote the need for political democracy and for a vibrant independent political sphere.
Highlights
This contribution sketches the emergence of democratic self-definitions in the Netherlands, from the end of the 18th century until the post-war period, when it had become commonplace to define the country as democratic
The story of the Dutch Revolt against foreign domination and the ensuing self-government by ordinary, that is to say, non-noble citizens has often been told. It has always attracted attention from authors everywhere. This story was certainly not framed as a history of democracy from the start, but it helped that the fighters for American independence of the late 18th century looked back at the Dutch Revolt as ‘our great example’ and ‘a proper and seasonable mirror for the Americans’ (Benjamin Franklin).[1]
With his international best-seller The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856), American historian John Lothrop Motley firmly established the place of the Dutch Revolt in the prehistory of the American struggle for independence and democracy
Summary
If you look at the daily use of the term, the Netherlands is revealed as not a early user. The fight against the ‘aristocracy’ – in the Netherlands for the most part a bourgeois elite – was the real issue and at first democracy figured mainly as the opposite of aristocracy This did not necessarily mean that democracy was radical: even one of Palmer’s examples, the radical periodical De Democraten, advocated a balanced middle course between the two extremes of ‘Absence of Government’ or anarchy, on one hand, and ‘Aristocracy’ on the other.[16] In the revolutionary Dutch National Assembly that was founded after the French army had invaded the Netherlands, not democracy as such but ‘people’s government by representation’ (Volks-Regeering by Representatie) was the catch phrase. They considered democracy as something that belonged to the past or to foreign countries
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