Overview
Various historiographers have portrayed the Eighty Years' War in different ways.
17th and 18th century
A group of 17th-century Dutch Protestant chroniclers such as Hooft, Bor, Meteren, Grotius, Aitzema and Baudartius could build on first-hand reports. As liberal historian Fruin and Catholic historian Nuyens would agree in the mid-19th century, 'before 1798, it was impossible for Catholics in the Northern Netherlands to describe the history of the revolution of the sixteenth century', because the Dutch Republic was dominated by the Dutch Reformed Church (although not formally a 'state church', it was publicly privileged), whose Calvinist preachers were able to influence the secular authorities (the States) to punish any Catholic inhabitant for mounting public criticism of the Protestant consensus on history. [2] Nuyens (1869) summarised the situation as follows:
Because of all this, only one part of the Dutch people was left to do the talking, as soon as there was talk of 'the revolt against the Spanish tyranny'; the other, however, might have its traditions, its views, its opinions, yet it could not express them. Bor, van Meteren, Reyd, Hooft, all remained very one-sided in their views. Their successors, the men who wrote about the Dutch Revolt in the eighteenth century, drew on them and worked out their material further. There was no longer the slightest doubt in their minds whether the revolt was lawful: Philip was a hideous tyrant; Orange to one side a man of God, to the other (the staatse) in all cases a great benefactor of his country; the Reformed fought for the true freedom of the children of God, for the pure Gospel light; they also fought for civil liberties against a most appalling despotism. The party papers of Jacob van Wesembeke , the Apology, the Defences of the States against Don Juan, etc., etc., were regarded as infallible truths: the "Romish folks," as one expressed themselves, they might well live in peace and tranquility, provided they behaved only quietly and did not claim the least of rights at all. [3]
Aside from them, there were a few Catholic historians who covered the Eighty Years' War, but either wrote in Latin, such as Floris Van der Haer and Michael ab Isselt, or were foreigners, such as Famiano Strada and Guido Bentivoglio, and as such were either inaccessible for Dutch Catholics, or could not speak on their behalf. [note 1]
De Bello Belgico by Strada
The Latin work De Bello Belgico (invoking Caesar's classic) of the Italian Jesuit historian Famiano Strada (1572–1649) became popular throughout Europe and was translated into many languages. [4] Strada first published it in Rome as De Bello Belgico decades duae between 1632 and 1647, the first 'decade' in 1632, the second in 1641. [4] [5] The first set of ten books (the first 'decade') covered the period from Charles V's abdication in 1555 to the death of Don Juan of Austria in October 1578. [4] [5] The second set of ten books (the second 'decade') covered the time from the start of Alexander Farnese's government in October 1578 to the conquest of Rheinberg (30 January 1590). [4] [5] A third volume is said to have been prevented from publication by Spanish authorities. [4] Strada's first volume was translated to Dutch as De thien eerste Boecken der Nederlandsche oorloge and published in Amsterdam in 1646, the second as De tweede thien boeken der Nederlandsche oorlogen in Amsterdam in 1649; both parts in Rotterdam in 1655 titled De thien eerste Boecken der Nederlandtsche oorloge and Het Tweede Deel der Nederlandtsche Oorlogen. [5] Pierre du Ryer published both volumes in French under the title Histoire de la guerre de Flandre (Paris 1650). [4] The first decade of the De Bello Belgico was translated into English by Sir Robert Stapylton under the title of The History of the Low-Countrey Warres (London 1650). There were many editions of the original Latin, and continuations were prepared by G. Dondini and A. Gallucci, [5] an Italian translation by C. Papini and P. Segneri (Rome 1638–49, 2 v.), and a Spanish edition by Melchior de Novar (Cologne 1681, 3 v.). Scifoni (1849) stated that 'Strada's work will hold a distinct place among the historical works of the 17th century', despite its 'useless digressions, the insignificant peculiarities and the abuse of comparisons, sentences and all the vain formulas marked by the oratory style'. [4] Strada made extensive use of the Farnese family archives (now destroyed), [5] [6] and was very critical of Alba's performance in fighting the rebels in the Netherlands. [6] According to Reijner (2020), Strada and Guido Bentivoglio were far from the only Italian historians writing about the Eighty Years' War: an unusually high number of them from across the peninsula, such as Florence and Genoa, used the revolt happening in the Habsburg Netherlands for their own purposes in arguing against the dominance of the Spanish Habsburgers in (northern) Italy. [6] In return, Netherlandish historiographers and opionmakers thankfully cited the works of Strada, Bentivoglio and other Italian authors in support of their arguments against Spain. [6]
Annales et Historiae de rebus Belgicis by Grotius
Between 1601 and 1612, Hugo Grotius wrote in Latin the Annales et Historiae de rebus Belgicis for the 1559–1588 period. Grotius adopted the style of Tacitus, and following his sine ira et studio principle, excluded gruesome details of pillaging and battles. [7] The book was commissioned by the States of Holland, but they didn't publish it. [7] It was not until 1681 that a Dutch translation was published, and half a century later it was forgotten again until 2014, when Jan Waszink published a modern Dutch translation. [7] It remains unclear why the States of Holland apparently blocked the Latin publication in 1612, but Waszink concluded they probably found Grotius too critical. [7] Rather than presenting the war as 'a united fight for faith and the old freedoms', Grotius wrote that it was 'a difficult struggle with powerful Spain on the one hand, and with divisions, political self-interest and religious fanaticism on the Dutch side on the other.' [7] Meanwhile, the Catholic Church, though initially positive about a Latin version of the book published in 1657, concluded it had anti-Catholic contents and put it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1659. [7]
Another work by Grotius that did see publication in 1610 was his Treatise of the Antiquity of the Batavian now Hollandish Republic, a rehashing of the Batavian myth from the 1517 Divisiekroniek, an invented tradition which asserted that the inhabitants of the County of Holland were descended from the ancient tribe of the Batavi. [8] During the 69–70 Revolt of the Batavi, this people allegedly freed itself from the Roman Empire and had supposedly been independent ever since, but just changed its name to "Hollanders", and evolved the States of Holland and West Friesland as its political organisation. [9] Although various nominal counts or kings who had ruled over them in the intervening centuries, they 'never really mattered', and the supposed Batavi-turned-Hollanders had always remained republican at heart, and free in practice. [9] The Dutch Revolt against Spain was therefore a confirmation of a very old, long-established freedom rather than a rebellion against a legitimate and widely recognised monarch. [9] This Batavian myth continued to have large influence, reaching its zenith during the late-18th-century Batavian Revolution, but was scrutinised and refuted by historians in the early 19th century. [9]
Nederlandsche Historien by Hooft
One of the first Dutch authors was P.C. Hooft with his Nederlandsche Historien (1642–1647), which covered the 1555–1587 period. Hooft was a Renaissance humanist who took no sides in religious matters, nor was he a member of any church, [10] but he was educated with an admiration for Tacitus (whose style he adopted, just like Grotius before him) and a staatse republican perspective on justifying the revolt against Spain based on the sovereignty of the States, regarding Orange as their servant. [11] In 1609, 28-year-old Hooft wrote several poems to commemorate the Twelve Years' Truce, in which he compared the Dutch revolt against Spain to the Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, and Orange to Moses as the Israelites' liberator from slavery. [11] : 15–16 However, in the last 20 years of his life (1626–1647), he became more balanced and nuanced, and at that time he wrote his historical book about the war (which was still ongoing, and only concluded a year after Hooft died). [11] : 29, 38 Imitating Tacitus' style, Hooft's work was didactic, trying to teach his readers lessons by using events from the war as examples, but he often struggled to construct a coherent narrative to explain certain chains of events, especially the actions of Don Juan of Austria. [11] : 38–39 Again Hooft attempted to justify the revolt against Spain as a fight against tyranny, because the Burgundians and their Habsburg successors had supposedly violated the inalienable sovereignty of the States, even though his arguments were 'unhistorical' according to Groenveld (1981). [11] : 39–40 On the other hand, he tried to present a nuanced view of Spanish adversaries such as Philip II, Alba, and Requesens, mentioning their positive and negative sides, although the emphasis would still be on the latter. [11] : 40 Towards the end of his book, Orange became the main character, the story's hero who was killed too soon, and never sought power for himself but only served the States. [11] : 42–43 As his health deteriorated, Hooft's coverage of the period in which the Earl of Leicester acted as Elizabeth I's Governor-General of the budding Dutch Republic became increasingly incoherent. Hooft got as far as describing 1587 when he died in 1647, unable to realise his ambition of catching up to his own time. [11] : 43–44
18th century
In the eighteenth century, the collection of sources from the time of the Eighty Years' War became more important. [12] In particular, the compilation of Jan Wagenaar from the mid-eighteenth century became a standard work for that time and as a result, contemporary writers receded more into the background. [12]
19th century
Early 19th century
In the nineteenth century, the Eighty Years' War was again extensively researched. [13]
According to the Calvinist anti-revolutionary politician Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, the Revolt was about how through God's guidance the Dutch people under the House of Orange-Nassau had achieved its liberty. This view was most clearly expounded in his Handbook of the History of the Fatherland (1846). [14] VU historian H. Smitskamp (1940) judged that Groen was all too often limiting himself to ideals as a factor in history, and had an overreliance on 'God's hand in history', which was increasingly seen as scholarly problematic. [15]
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Belgian scholars Louis-Prosper Gachard and Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove also carried out a thorough source research into the Eighty Years' War, especially in the Brussels and Spanish archives. [13]
The Rise of the Dutch Republic by Motley/Bakhuizen
The liberal Reinier Cornelis Bakhuizen van den Brink (born 1810) made important contributions to Eighty Years' War studies starting in 1844, and as the National Archivist from 1854 to 1865. [16] According to Winkler Prins (2002), Bakhuizen 'renewed and raised historical scholarship together with Robert Fruin as historian and unsurpassed master of historical criticism.' [16] In 1857, he translated The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856) from the American puritan historian John Lothrop Motley. [17] Bakhuizen was very positive about the book: "The work of Motley seems to me to represent such a proper foundation for the history of the formation of the Commonwealth of United Netherlands, that it almost becomes a duty to contribute everything that one himself possesses to continue building on that foundation." [18] Fellow liberal historian Robert Fruin published an almost equally positive review of the book in 1859, admiring Motley's talents as a writer, agreeing with Bakhuizen's "favourable judgement wholeheartedly", although the book required some "addition and correction". [19]
On the other hand, the freethinker historian Johannes van Vloten was utterly critical, and addressed Fruin (and indirectly Bakhuizen) in the preface to his book The Netherlands' Revolt Against Spain. Volume 4 (1575–1577) (1860): "...regarding the appropriate valuation of Motley's efforts (...), I rather less agree with your overly favourable judgement. (...) One cannot continue building on Motley['s "foundation"]; to that end – save for the few bits and pieces he copied here and there from Groen's Archives and Gachard's Correspondances – to that end his representations are generally too outdated." [20] Van Vloten appreciated Motley's attempt to generate attention to the history of the Netherlands amongst an English-speaking audience, but his lack of Dutch-language knowledge prevented him from reviewing the latest insights from Dutch historiographers, and made him prone to partiality in favour of the Protestants and against the Catholics. [20] Van Vloten therefore rejected Bakhuizen's assertion that Motley had laid a "proper foundation" for further research, and Fruin's suggestion of merely doing some "addition and correction" wouldn't be enough to save it. [20] Fruin published a new two-part review of the book in De Gids in 1862, which was a lot more critical of Motley's tendency to make up "facts", or emphasise less relevant events and downplay more relevant events, if they made for a more interesting or picturesque narrative. [note 2]
Finally, in his Nederlandsche Beroerten (1867), Catholic historiographer Wilhelmus Nuyens had nothing positive to say about Motley, whom Nuyens accused of writing a novel rather than a history book. He shared the criticism of Fruin and especially Van Vloten that Motley had 'distorted' and 'twisted' facts, and 'painted them according to his fantasy' whenever that would make Philip II, the Spaniards or the Catholics look worse, or the Dutch rebels or Protestants look better. [22] For example, Nuyens (1869) pointed out that the baseless rumour that the heads of Egmont and Horne (decapitated on 5 June 1568 in Brussels) had been shipped to Madrid, had already been refuted in 1801 when the Egmont's crypt containing Egmont's skull and bones had been found in the church of Zottegem. [23] This was a well-known fact by the time Motley visited Belgium, and Nuyens suggested he could easily have falsified the story if he wanted to, but instead Motley repeated the already-refuted rumour by claiming it was generally assumed to be true (whereas his predecessors never presumed the story's veracity), and even exaggerated it by adding details that made Philip II look even more despicable. [23]
After Fruin had read Nuyens's critique of The Rise of the Dutch Republic, he stated in 1867: 'I must now confess that the tone in which the eloquent American has written must be offensive to Catholics, and what is much worse, that he has not spoken the pure truth everywhere. When reading the moving book, I hadn't noticed that as much. I did note many inaccuracies in it, and called them out in my review; but non-Catholic as I am, it hadn't occurred to me that many of those falsehoods and exaggerations came from a bias in Protestant and liberal understandings, and for that reason had to be doubly insulting to strict Catholics. Dr Nuyens was the first to make this clear to me.' [24]
Fruin and Nuyens
"No wonder our people have only incomplete knowledge of the history of the revolt against Spain. Our Protestant historiographers do not consider themselves called upon to elaborate on the outrages perpetrated by the rebels: they pass over such scenes with a general description and a word of disapproval. And a Catholic historiographer worthy of being read by everyone has not yet arisen. Where, then, will the public, from whom one surely cannot require a study of the sources, learn the full truth?"
– Robert Fruin (May 1865) [25]
Robert Fruin (1823–1899) was described by Albert van der Zeijden (2012) as the first Dutch historian who strove to apply the historical-critical method to vaderlandse geschiedenis ("fatherland/national/patriotic history", that is, the history of the Netherlands). [26] Van der Zeijden circumscribed his method as 'a careful investigation of authentic historical sources (usually state documents as well as letters and memoirs of important statesmen)' and 'an impartial, positivist manner of historiography'. [27] Fruin is said to have laid the basis for this approach in his speech The impartiality of the historian (1860) on the occasion of his appointment as professor at Leiden University. [27] This made him comparable to the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), founder of the historism school. [28] Fruin did not always follow purely scholarly principles, however, but also pursued a nationalist-liberal agenda: history was to be viewed in national terms. [26] For the history of the Netherlands, this meant on the one hand that the staatse/Loevesteinian and prinsgezinde/Orangist traditions had to be reconciled with each other, and on the other hand that liberalism was supposed to function as an 'impartial' referee between Protestant and Catholic views. [26] Fruin focused on two periods: Tien jaren uit den Tachtigjarigen Oorlog (1857) for 1588–1598 and Het voorspel van de Tachtigjarigen Oorlog (1859) for 1555–1568. His early work showed a tendency towards staatse views, his later work had more Orangist undertones. [29]
Fruin's approach was a clear break from that of his contemporaries such as Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, who was promoting a Calvinist-Orangist nationalism. [28] He was hoping for a critical Catholic historian to arise and bring balance to the onesidedness of Dutch historiography of the war, that had been dominated by Protestants for centuries. [25] The Catholic answer to the Protestant and liberal historiography came from Willem Jan Frans Nuyens (1823–1894), who argued that Catholics could also be good patriots, and that many of them had fought on the Dutch side against the Spanish during the Revolt. Nuyens's main work Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Beroerten in de XVIe eeuw ("History of the Netherlandish Troubles in the 16th Century"; Amsterdam, 1865–70, 8 volumes) was important for finding/retrieving the role of Dutch Catholics in the Revolt, and contributed to their emancipation. [1] Contrasting his own situation to earlier times of Calvinist censorship against 'popish naughtiness', Nuyens (1869) expressed relief that he or fellow Catholic writers [note 1] would not be 'arrested or thrown out of the country, not even risk being reviled as a bastard-Dutchman or somesuch. In that respect, we happily acknowledge, we must commended our Protestant fellow citizens. They have made a lot of progress in tolerance in recent years. Nowadays, they feel that anyone in the Netherlands may write what he deems to be true, including those who are in large part convinced that the history of the 16th century has had a very one-sided representation.' [31]
Fruin's generally positive but critical review of Nuyens's Nederlandsche Beroerten in De Gids of August 1867 [32] has become a classic. [27] Fruin said the entire Dutch nation had a lot to learn from Nuyens's Catholic point of view, drawing attention to numerous issues he himself had missed, such as the Protestant biases of leading historiographers. [27] Moreover, Fruin admitted that he had been carried away by John Lothrop Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic: this Puritan American historian, whose work had been translated to Dutch by the liberal Bakhuizen van den Brink (who added an exciting introduction), had engaged in a systematic misrepresentation of a great deal of things, and that had to be corrected. [27] Nuyens thus made essential contributions to Fruin's project of having a complete and balanced 'national' perspective on the Eighty Years' War. [27] Fruin did object to four problematic aspects in the Nederlandsche Beroerten: Nuyens supposedly always contradicted whatever Protestant historians had said (deviating from literary convention); was overly harsh of Motley's book; had an undeservedly negative judgement of Orange's character and goal; and an incorrect view of causes of the Revolt. [32] Nuyens attempted to defend himself against Fruin's criticism in 1869, while thanking Fruin for his balanced review and praising him: '...no more talented, no more honest history writer will one find in the Netherlands but [Fruin], who would never knowingly twist the truth.' [25]
20th century
Critical Catholic historians
Nevertheless, the style of Nuyens was later criticised as overly apologetical; his writings to promote the rights and equality of Dutch Catholics has been considered hardly self-critical nor source-critical compared to Fruin. [33] In the early 20th century, Catholic historians increasingly valued the historical-critical method; they criticised Nuyens for not supporting many of his claims, and they pointed to Fruin as the example to be followed. [33] In the mid-20th century, L.J. Rogier was the most influential Catholic historian; he vehemently rejected the apologetical Catholic historiography of the 19th century. Under the guise of 'Catholic emancipation', Rogier argued, Catholic historians had failed to be self-critical and to treat non-Catholics in the same way as they themselves wished to be treated as equal Dutch people. [34]
Geographic and linguistic perspectives
"You can't understand the period from the Dutch Revolt to the early 18th-century War of the Spanish Succession without insight into the Spanish sources. Those are very extensive. They are located in Madrid and Brussels. Therefore, a Dutch historian needs to cross the border if they want to learn about their past."
– Jonathan Israel (c. 2008) [35]
In the early 20th century, Pieter Geyl brought a new perspective on the Revolt by arguing that Belgian and Dutch historians such as Henri Pirenne had been led astray by hindsight bias: they assumed that the eventual modern state borders between Belgium and the Netherlands were the result of the logical course of history, whereas it made more sense to Geyl if the state borders had coincided with the Franco–Dutch language border. [36] Geyl managed to convince many of his colleagues that the major rivers were an important geographic barrier that allowed the Rebellion to sustain itself in Holland and Zeeland, that Luxemburg (on the Spanish Road) was the military basis of the Spanish forces, and that the eventual border between these northern and southern strongholds therefore fell somewhere in between at an arbitrary line 'where the generals had managed to advance for all sorts of reasons'. [1] His assumption that the Dutch-language area in the Habsburg Netherlands had constituted a cultural unit upon which it would have made more sense to found a state – the so-called Greater Netherlands – was not widely adopted and sometimes countered, but his other insights proved valuable for Eighty Years' War studies, such as the Protestantisation of the Northern Netherlands. [36] Unlike his staunch nationalist colleague Carel Gerretson, Geyl did not think one should still try to reunite modern Flanders and the Netherlands, and opposed a hypothetical partition of Belgium to achieve it, [37] but did favour federalisation of Belgium. [36]
In the late 20th century, British historians Geoffrey Parker and Jonathan Israel sought to demonstrate that many of the developments during the Dutch Revolt were impossible to understand but from an international perspective, and that one also needed to look at events through Spanish eyes. [1] [35]
C. Holland (2001) saw the Dutch Revolt as the seedbed of the major democratic revolutions from England, to America to France. [38]
Socio-economic analyses
In the 1950s and 1960s, new ways of interpreting the various socio-economic processes during the war came to the fore. [39] The driving forces behind the Revolt were variously identified as the role played by the Dutch Reformed Church in social organisation; [40] the allegedly impoverished lesser nobility which rebelled against the threats to their privileges; [41] or frustrations by the emerging middle classes that they were unable to obtain more political and economic power to match their increasing wealth, but instead faced heavier trade taxes. [41] Though the lesser nobility and merchant class would cooperate in their rebellion, the former would decline and the latter acquire a dominating position in the Republic. [41] Historians would eventually agree that a defining feature of arguments used by various rebel factions was that they invoked medieval privileges, regional autonomy and a freer market in support of their resistance to the Spanish government, championing a return to the old ways, but ended up non-deliberately creating 'an entirely new form of government' due to a consensus reached by the leaders of the Revolt. [42] Even though the Dutch Republic was thus a modern polity without a hereditary head of state, the Revolt was not a forward-looking modern revolution which sought to break with the past, but a classical revolution which idealised the past. [42]
