The history of the Netherlands extends back before the founding of the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 after the defeat of Napoleon. For thousands of years, people have been living together around the river deltas of this section of the North Sea coast. Written records begin in the first century BC when the region became a militarized border zone of the Roman Empire. As the Western Roman Empire collapsed and the Middle Ages began, three dominant Germanic peoples coalesced in the area – Frisians in the north and coastal areas, Low Saxons in the northeast, and the Franks to the south. By 800, the Frankish Carolingian dynasty had once again integrated the area into an empire covering a large part of Western Europe. The region was part of the duchy of Lower Lotharingia within the Holy Roman Empire, but neither the empire nor the duchy were governed in a centralized manner. For several centuries, medieval lordships such as Brabant, Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, Guelders and others held a changing patchwork of territories.
By 1433, the Duke of Burgundy had assumed control over most of Lower Lotharingia, creating the Burgundian Netherlands. This included what is now the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and a part of France. When their heirs the Catholic kings of Spain took measures against Protestantism, the subsequent Dutch revolt led to the splitting in 1581 of the Netherlands into southern and northern parts. The southern "Spanish Netherlands" corresponds approximately to modern Belgium and Luxembourg, and the northern "United Provinces" (or "Dutch Republic)", which spoke Dutch and was predominantly Protestant, was the predecessor of the modern Netherlands.
In the Dutch Golden Age, which had its zenith around 1667, there was a flowering of trade, industry, and the sciences. The Dutch Republic practiced religious toleration and Amsterdam attracted Portuguese Jews, many of whom were merchants, that practiced their religion and engaged in economic activity.Bodian, Miriam. Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1997Swetchinski, Daniel M. Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization 2000 A worldwide Dutch empire developed in Asia and the Americas. The Dutch East India Company became one of the earliest and most important of national mercantile companies of the time, based on invasion, colonialism, and extraction of outside resources, but not religious evangelization. During the eighteenth century, the power, wealth and influence of the Netherlands declined. A series of wars with the more powerful British and French neighbours weakened it. The English seized the North American colony of New Amsterdam, and renamed it "New York". There was growing unrest and conflict between the Orangists and the Patriots. The French Revolution spilled over after 1789, and a pro-French Batavian Republic was established in 1795–1806. Napoleon made it a satellite state, the Kingdom of Holland (1806–1810), and later simply a French imperial province.
After the defeat of Napoleon in 1813–1815, an expanded "United Kingdom of the Netherlands" was created with the House of Orange as monarchs, also ruling Belgium and Luxembourg. After the King imposed unpopular Protestant reforms on Belgium, it left the kingdom in 1830 and new borders were agreed in 1839. After an initially conservative period, following the introduction of the 1848 constitution, the country became a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch. Modern-day Luxembourg became officially independent of the Netherlands in 1839, but a personal union remained until 1890. Since 1890, it is ruled by another branch of the same dynasty.
The Netherlands was neutral during the First World War, but during the Second World War, it was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany. The Nazis, including many collaborators, rounded up and killed almost all of the country's Jewish population. When the Dutch resistance increased, the Nazis cut off food supplies to much of the country, causing severe starvation in 1944–1945. In 1942, the Dutch East Indies were conquered by Japan, but prior to this the Dutch destroyed the oil wells for which Japan was desperate. Indonesia proclaimed its independence from the Netherlands in 1945, followed by Suriname in 1975. The post-war years saw rapid economic recovery (helped by the American Marshall Plan), followed by the introduction of a welfare state during an era of peace and prosperity. The Netherlands formed a new economic alliance with Belgium and Luxembourg, the Benelux, and all three became founding members of the European Union and NATO. In recent decades, the Dutch economy has been closely linked to that of Germany and is highly prosperous. The four countries adopted the euro on 1 January 2002, along with eight other EU member states.
Prehistory (before 57 BC)
During the last ice age, the Netherlands had a tundra climate with scarce vegetation, and the inhabitants survived as hunter-gatherers. The Swifterbant culture, appearing around 5600 BCLouwe Kooijmans, L.P., "Trijntje van de Betuweroute, Jachtkampen uit de Steentijd te Hardinxveld-Giessendam", 1998, Spiegel Historiael 33, pp. 423–428 were hunter gatherers strongly linked to rivers and open water and related to the southern Scandinavian Ertebølle culture. Prior to 6500 BCE and the submerging of Doggerland, the area of the Netherlands was inland.
Agriculture also arrived in areas near the Netherlands somewhere around 5000 BC with the Linear Pottery culture, who were central European farmers with Mediterranean ancestry. Their farms were restricted to southern Limburg and only temporarily established. However, there is some evidence that the coastal Swifterband people took up pottery and animal husbandry in the rest of the country. Local groups made the switch to animal husbandry sometime between 4800 BC and 4500 BC.Leendert Louwe Kooijmans, "It is becoming increasingly clear that the agricultural transformation of prehistoric communities was a purely indigenous process that took place very gradually." Louwe Kooijmans, L.P., "Trijntje van de Betuweroute, Jachtkampen uit de Steentijd te Hardinxveld-Giessendam", 1998, Spiegel Historiael 33, pp. 423–428Volkskrant 24 August 2007, "Prehistoric agricultural field found in Swifterbant, 4300–4000 BC"Raemakers, Daan. "De spiegel van Swifterbant" , University of Groningen, 2006. By about 4000 BC the Funnelbeaker culture brought farming permanently into the region. This culture extended from Denmark through northern Germany into the northern Netherlands. The Vlaardingen culture continued the hunter-gatherer tradition in coastal areas.
By around 2950 BCE, there was a transition from the Funnelbeaker farming culture to the Corded Ware culture which extended across much of northern and central Europe. The expansion of this culture is believed to have involved the movement of people from the direction of Ukraine, bringing Indo-European languages and Copper Age technology. The earliest bronze tools were in the Wageningen horde, found in the grave of a Bronze Age metalworker. The Elp culture in the northAccording to "Het Archeologisch Basisregister" (ABR), version 1.0 November 1992, , Elp Kümmerkeramik is dated BRONSMA (early MBA) to BRONSL (LBA) and this has been standardized by "De Rijksdienst voor Archeologie, Cultuurlandschap en Monumenten" (RACM) as being at the period starting at 1800 BC and ending at 800 BC. and the Hilversum culture in the south developed during the Bronze Age, with the latter having cultural ties with Britain.
The Iron Age brought a measure of prosperity to the people living in the area of the present-day Netherlands with iron ore available throughout the country. Smiths travelled from small settlement to settlement with bronze and iron, fabricating tools on demand, including axes, knives, pins, arrowheads and swords. The Vorstengraf large burial mound contained a number of objects, including a curved iron sword. Leading up to the arrival of the Romans, arose in the north, which may have included speakers of Germanic languages.Mallory, J.P., In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language, Archaeology and Myth, London: Thames & Hudson, 1989, p. 87. Further to the south were peoples influenced by the Hallstatt culture who may have been Celtic speakers. As in other parts of Europe this was eventually replaced by the La Tène culture, which is more confidently associated with Celtic. Some scholars have speculated that a separate ethnic identity with its own language that was neither Germanic nor Celtic formed a Nordwestblock which stretched between the two, from the Somme to the Weser, possibly surviving until the early Roman period, by which time Celtic and Germanic languages were spreading into the region.Hachmann, Georg Kossack and Hans Kuhn, Völker zwischen Germanen und Kelten, 1986, pp. 183–212Lendering, Jona, "Germania Inferior" , Livius.org. Retrieved 6 October 2011.
Roman era (57 BC – 410 AD)
During his Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar conquered all of Gaul for Rome, and this included the Netherlands south of the Rhine. He also wrote about his experiences in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico, which is the first surviving written account of the region. Caesar mentioned the Menapii living in the river delta, and the Eburones to their southeast towards what is now Limburg. He called the land between the Rhine and Waal "the island of the Batavi" (insula batavorum). He portrayed the Rhine as a natural boundary between the Gauls and Germanic peoples on the other side but he understood that peoples such as the Eburones had a kinship with their neighbours over the river. Later Roman authors such as Tacitus and Pliny the Elder describe the region north of the Rhine being inhabited by the Frisii, Chamavi and Tubantes. Within the delta lived the Cananefates, Batavians, Sturii, Marsacii, and Frisiavones. The Texuandri, Baetasii and Tungri lived south of the delta.
The 450 years of Roman rule profoundly changed the region that would later become the Netherlands. The Rhine was a militarized border, frequently destabilized by violent incursions, and Rome recruited soldiers on both sides of it. The tribes of the region were esteemed soldiers in the empire, often serving in the Roman cavalry.Roymans, Nico, Ethnic Identity and Imperial Power: The Batavians in the Early Roman Empire, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005, pp. 226–227 The frontier culture was influenced by Roman, Germanic, and Gaulish elements, and trade flourished after Rome's conquest of Gaul. There were still grievances against Roman rule, including the taking of young Batavians as slaves. This led to the Batavian rebellion under Gaius Julius Civilis in 69 AD, which resulted in the burning of several Roman Castellum and the desertion of sections of the northern Roman army. In April 70 AD, legions led by Quintus Petillius Cerialis defeated the rebels.