A HISTORICAL OUTLINE OF THE NETHERLANDS

The Netherlands originated from a union of regions (Republic of Seven Provinces) led by the provinces of South-Holland and North-Holland, and with members of the House of Orange as military leaders. Under the Oranges the country gained independence in an Eighty Years War against Spain that ended in 1648. After the French revolution the Netherlands became a kingdom. Its present population is just over 16 million inhabitants, of whom approximately one-quarter is concentrated in the densely populated area around Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The Netherlands was one of the founding members of the European Union.

ECOLOGICAL FEATURES

The Netherlands is a small and densely populated area in northwest Europe, of which the history and ecological system is dominated by the sea and the large rivers. Large parts of the country, called polders, are below sea-level and have to be protected by dikes. The same goes for the substantial landwinnings from an inland sea made in the twentieth century. The cooperation needed to protect the land has become a token for the political model of constant communication in search of joint solutions, called the “poldermodel.” It may well be that this cooperation model has still deeper roots in the coexistence of approximately equal Protestant and Catholic religious groups and the strong merchant orientation of the provinces of Holland in the period that they dominated the world seas (first half of the seventeenth century).