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Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture
Reframing the Past
By Jane Fenoulhet, Lesley Gilbert UCL Press
Copyright © 2016 Contributors
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-911307-00-6
CHAPTER 1
The uses of myth and history in the ideological politics of the Dutch Golden Age
Jonathan I. Israel
It is perhaps not surprising that the Dutch Republic with its numerous political assemblies and consultative style of government should have been, in some ways, a more pervasively ideological society than virtually any other in seventeenth-century Europe. It seems likely also that lack of religious unity and of a powerful state church, combined with the inevitable need to deflect some of the impetus of theological strife and confessional rivalry, added to the persistent tendency of the Dutch political scene to become an arena for contending secular political ideologies. The relative weakness of the public church, combined with the comparatively strong position of a variety of tolerated churches – Anabaptists, Lutherans, Remonstrants, Jews and in practice, if not in theory, Catholics – created a situation in which it was plainly impossible to follow the example of neighbouring countries and build political and social cohesion and stability by constantly parading the trappings and proclaiming the teachings of any one church. In the United Provinces, in contrast to the rest of Europe, confessionalization and confessional values could not be employed as the chief means of nourishing and buttressing political authority. Just how dangerous it could be, in the Dutch case, to permit theological preoccupations to dictate the political and ideological agenda was demonstrated for all to see by the strife between the Arminians and Gomarists and the theologico-political crisis of 1617–18 which brought the Republic to the verge of civil war.
Moreover, if the authority of the public church and its theological stance could not be used to justify and bolster political authority, neither did the United Provinces possess a tradition and mystique of kingship, the imposing glow of an illustrious court, capable of functioning as a unifying focus of loyalty and allegiance. This again constituted a fundamental difference between the Republic and most other European countries. For even in monarchies such as England after the Glorious Revolution, or Spain after the Bourbon Succession, where deep and bitter conflict ensued from conflicting loyalties to competing claimants to the throne, the dynastic factor, and claims in terms of hereditary right, remained so central to the ideological battle that everything else was overshadowed. No one would suppose it an accident that it was precisely after Charles I's head was cut off, during the Interregnum of the 1650s, that England suddenly became fertile ground for rival secular ideologies and a proliferation of new forms of political thought.
Political ideology in the Dutch Golden Age then was a pervasive factor, was predominantly secular in character albeit always tinged with theological concerns and tended to reduce dynastic claims and arguments to a secondary status. Compared to other European countries in the seventeenth century, the United Provinces, with its enviable prosperity and, by the standards of the time, elaborate welfare system, appeared serene, content and stable – and up to a point so it was, at any rate most of the time. And yet what other European country can be said to have experienced such a large number of major internal upsets and revolutions as did the Dutch provinces in 1566, 1572–4, 1580, 1586–7, 1617–18, 1650, 1672, 1702–4, 1747–8 and the Patriot upsurge of the early and mid-1780s?
A striking feature of any society strongly pervaded by ideological tensions is the way that not only the present but also the past becomes prey to being constantly used and abused in ideological terms. Wherever a particular dynasty or a particular church, or both, was firmly in control, the official view of the past may have been highly contentious, and probably was, but it was also rigorously enforced, largely unchallenged and essentially stable. In the Dutch Republic, by contrast, history was a perennial ideological battleground, more fervently fought over and disputed than anywhere else. Helped by the relative freedom of the press, it was also often more obviously, not to say provocatively, linked to current politics and political comment, and entwined with political thought, than virtually anywhere else.
At first, in the decades following the Revolt, ideologues, propagandists and political theorists chiefly confined their deliberations about the past to the history of the Low Countries themselves, rarely alluding to ancient history (apart from the Batavian Myth) or the medieval or modern history of other countries. One argued principally about the Burgundians and Habsburgs, the dynastic rulers of the Low Countries, here and there dragging in the Batavian Legend, the story of how the ancient Batavians, described by Tacitus as brave, virtuous and freedom-loving, had defended their freedom and their homeland against Roman oppression and avoided becoming subjects of the Roman emperor. After arising in humanist circles in the early sixteenth century, the Batavian Myth had quickly become a significant undercurrent in the culture of the northern Netherlands. However, it was not often employed as a tool of propaganda during the Revolt, in part, no doubt, because it had no broad application to the Netherlands north and south as a whole but applied more specifically to the territory north of the rivers and especially Holland.
Where the Batavian Myth was deployed as an instrument of propaganda after the Revolt this tended to be in a context of internecine strife between the provinces. Much of the resentment against Oldenbarnevelt and his leadership of the Republic which helped fuel the opposition of the inland provinces and of Zeeland to his policies during the years after the signing of the Twelve Years' Truce, in 1609, was directed against Holland's preponderance in the States General. In theory the Seven Provinces were of equal weight in Generality affairs but in practice Holland made nearly all the decisions and Holland refused to be overruled even when she had a majority of four or five provinces voting against her in the States General. Holland's pre-eminence was solidly based in that she possessed the lion's share of the Republic's population, wealth and resources. But it was hard to justify in theoretical terms, and this is where the mystique of the Batavian Myth proved useful. The Batavian Myth was, for example, central to Grotius's argument in his De Antiquitate Republicae Batavicae (1610), where he endeavoured to add lustre to the system of government by the regents and, by implication, justify the fact that Holland led the United Provinces as a whole.
As the struggle between Oldenbarnevelt and Prince Maurits for control of the Dutch state approached its climax in 1617 and the early months of 1618, Grotius showed no hesitation in restating the Batavian Legend as a means of defending the embattled primacy of the States of Holland. The English ambassador to the United Provinces at that time, Sir Dudley Carleton, an envoy who was not only under orders from his master to back Maurits but also displayed a marked personal preference for the Counter-Remonstrants against the Remonstrants, reported rather acidly, in April 1618, that 'there is a discourse presented to the States of Holland by Mons. Barnevelt but penned by Grotius to the towns of Holland to puff up their spirits, telling them how the ancient Batavi were socii Imperii Romani, with such like pedantical stuff, concluding, because that Holland is more ancient, greater and richer than the rest of the United Provinces, ergo they must have no National Synod'. This discourse circulated at a time when the States of Holland were insisting that they were not obliged to agree to the calling of the National Synod for which Maurits was pressing, to settle the conflict between the Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants, even though five provinces were now supporting the proposal and Maurits's policy.
After 1618 the Batavian Myth rapidly receded as a tool of political argument though not of ideological strife in a wider sense. It was too vague and open to dispute to serve as the spearhead of a political argument but continued to play a significant supporting role as a potent symbol of Holland's glorious and freedom-loving past. The most celebrated deployment of the myth in the arts was, of course, the Amsterdam regents' decision, in 1659, to commission a series of large paintings illustrating the stages of the Batavian Revolt against the Romans for the burgerzaal, or public gallery, in the city's splendid new town hall. The choice of theme was known about and discussed, among others by Vondel, some years before the actual commission for twelve paintings – two per year to be remunerated at the rate of a thousand guilders each – was assigned, in November 1659, to Govaert Flinck. Flinck had for years been the artistic adviser to, as well as a friend of, Cornelis and Andries de Graeff, then two of the most powerful members of the Amsterdam city government and two of the most prominent figures in the States party-faction, the anti-Orangist block, in the States of Holland. The choice of subject for paintings to adorn what was the largest and most public space in what was the largest and most public building in Amsterdam was undoubtedly recognized by everyone at the time to embody a powerful contemporary political message. What these regent friends of Johan de Witt were proclaiming to the entire world was that Amsterdam, however great and influential, was no city-republic but rather part of Holland, a political entity which with its sovereign claims and freedom-loving traditions, guaranteed the city's freedom and had an ancient, proven right, tested by the vicissitudes of history, to preside over and defend the freedom of the United Provinces as a whole. It was an inherent part of the message that no hereditary figure-head was needed to assist Holland in performing this task, the choice of theme having been decided on only a few years after Prince William II's fateful attempt, in 1650, to seize control of the city by military force.
Flinck died shortly after receiving his commission, and responsibility for the series was then divided up among several artists. One of the commissions, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, was assigned to Rembrandt, who, having painted the picture, duly delivered it to the town hall in August 1662. It was hung in the public gallery but failed to please members of the city government and, after a few months, it was taken down and returned to the artist, who remained unpaid. One can only speculate as to the reasons why the picture was scorned by the authorities but it seems likely that the reasons have to do with the unheroic appearance of Rembrandt's strange Batavians and the rather large crown which, somewhat perversely in so republican a context, Rembrandt set upon Claudius Civilis' head. Altogether more heroic and in tune with the burgomasters' wishes, and therefore more acceptable, was the, for us, conventional and rather uninteresting contribution of Rembrandt's old rival, Jan Lievens.
The ideological battle which characterized Dutch politics during the First Stadholderless Period (1650–72) was particularly intense during the 1660s, when there was a proliferation of important works of political thought and also a notable shift towards debating the past of ancient states and of neighbouring lands in addition to the Dutch past. As is well known, the rise of a fully-fledged Dutch republican political thought tradition in the 1660s, in the works of Jan and Pieter de la Court and of Spinoza, was accompanied by intense preoccupation with the ideas and writings of Machiavelli and an avid interest in the history of republics in general, including the republics of the ancient world. Machiavelli had been the first European writer to put forward a vision of politics in which neither theological sanction nor the hereditary, dynastic principle plays any part in providing political legitimacy and stability and also the first who had presented an essentially political, secular vision of history. The Dutch now likewise became accustomed – much as had some English writers in the 1650s – to analyse and assess the fate of states, including their own republic, in terms of political composition and structures. In this way history became both a guide and the stockpile of ideological ammunition. The Brothers de la Court had much to say about the Italian republics and even the German city-states. Spinoza in his Tractatus Theologico Politicus (1670) largely confines his attention to the ancient Jewish state but here too the influence of Machiavelli is strongly evident and chapters 17 and 18 are, as one commentator aptly put it, 'but the application to Hebrew history of the principles and maxims which Machiavelli had already deduced from Roman history and the history of the Italian states'.
In recent years scholars have gradually become aware that even though the Dutch republican tradition of political thought, with its secular historical approach, was chiefly a phenomenon of the 1660s and 1670s, it was a tradition which was rather wider in scope and also more enduring in its influence than was previously thought. A number of writers and writings, earlier largely ignored, have come to be recognized as compelling instances of the new approach to politics and political history, among them that remarkable book – quite uncompromising in its republicanism – the Vrije Politieke Stellingen (1665), which is now known to have been written by Spinoza's friend and Latin master, Franciscus van den Enden (1602–74). But what has not yet been sufficiently stressed, in my view, is that alongside this batch of theoretical writings, including the works of Ulrik Huber, there was a broader, more popular discussion, to be found in pamphlets as well as books, of a more specifically historical character, debating the nature and characteristics of the ancient and medieval republics of Europe, as well as the Dutch past, in a style which shows a definite affinity to the republican trend in political theory. This new type of historical debate, typical of the second half of the seventeenth century, thus reflects many of the same ideological concerns as the theoretical writings of the new Dutch political thinkers.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Narratives of Low Countries History and Culture by Jane Fenoulhet, Lesley Gilbert. Copyright © 2016 Contributors. Excerpted by permission of UCL Press.
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