Dutch Republic

History

The Dutch Republic was formed in 1581 when seven northern provinces joined together in refusing the rule of the King of Spain. It had no king: an assembly of delegates from the provinces governed instead, which was a rare arrangement for the time.

Much of the land lay below sea level, so the Dutch built dykes and pumped water out with windmills to win new fields, and they called the reclaimed land a polder. What made this small country strong were ships and money.

It built cheap, capacious merchant ships in great numbers and came to carry much of Europe's trade, and it created the world's first joint-stock company and stock exchange — a way of gathering the money for huge ventures from many people at once. That is how a country of barely two million people held out for eighty years against the vast Spanish monarchy - The realm ruled by the Habsburg family, which led Europe for over a century on the strength of American silver and its famed tercio infantry..

The 17th century is called the Dutch Golden Age. Painters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer worked in these years, and so did the 'tulip mania', when a single tulip bulb could cost as much as a house before prices collapsed overnight.

The much-loved story of the boy who found a leak in a dyke and plugged it with his arm all night to save his village says a great deal about a people who have always lived at war with the water. Throughout the Thirty Years' War the Dutch Republic fought Spain and worked alongside France and Sweden, and at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 its independence was formally recognised at last.