The first modern political entity that emerged in the territory roughly corresponding to the present-day Netherlands was the United Provinces created by the Union of Utrecht in 1579. Via the Union, which was a treaty primarily on military cooperation, the seven northerly provinces of the lowlands – Friesland, Groningen, Holland, Utrecht, Overijssel, Zeeland and the northern parts of Guelders – formed a confederation in their rebellion against Spain and the Habsburg monarchy. The United Provinces are also known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. The southern provinces, which remained under Spanish rule, became known as the Southern Netherlands or the Spanish Netherlands. That area roughly corresponds with present-day Belgium.
In 1581, the United Provinces declared themselves independent from Habsburg. They were recognized as such in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended not only the larger Thirty Years’ War in Europe but also the Eighty Years’ War between the Dutch Provinces and Spain. The United Provinces functioned on confederal principles. Each province kept its own staten or ‘states’, more or less representative assemblies, along with a states-appointed stadholder. Union competences were exercised by the States-General composed of delegates from the provincial states, who acted on mandates from their home provinces rather than in personal capacity. The stadholder of the powerful province of Holland rose to Union-wide power in the 18th century as the Union’s fleet commander. Effectively the stadholdership of Holland became a hereditary office for the descendants of William of Orange, the nobleman who had started the rebellion against Spanish rule in the first place.
In spite of the relative weakness of their central institutions, the United Provinces became a major European naval and merchant power and they obtained numerous colonial possessions. The confederation remained intact until the 1795 invasion by French revolutionary armies. France established a new French-modelled unitary entity called the Batavian Republic (the name refers to the Germanic tribe that historically inhabited the Rhine delta region). In 1806, Napoleon transformed the Batavian Republic into the Kingdom of Holland, a French vassal state under the rule of Napoleon’s brother Louis. In 1810, after Louis had increasingly promoted the interests of his Dutch subjects rather than his brother’s, Napoleon annexed the Kingdom, incorporating its territory into France proper. After France’s defeat, a monarchy was restored as William I, who descended from the last stadholders of Holland, accepted sovereignty in 1813 and a new monarchical Constitution, the Grondwet, was adopted in 1814. The house of Orange-Nassau became a royal dynasty. The States-General were established as a unicameral representative assembly and were elected by the ‘states’, or assemblies, of the provinces.
Download the full pdf: constitutions prepared
Author(s): Aalt W. Heringa & Philipp Kiiver