The Low Countries [antikvár]

PREFACE In the 1930s the late Pieter Geyl started a work in many volumes on the history of the Dutch-speaking population in the Northern and the Southern Netherlands, in South Africa, and in the Dutch colonies: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse stam. His main innovation was that he included in his national history the Dutch-speaking provinces of what is now Belgium; of course he excluded the Walloon areas. His rightly famous work ends in 1798, roughI,y the time when my book begins, but I must emphasize that my work is in no sense intended as its continuation. It was not my task to propound and defend a specific thesis as Geyl did. I had to write about two states in their entirety, that is, in the case of Belgium, about a community which, during most of the period studied here, preferred to use French rather than Dutch for all matters considered to be of general interest. There is undeniably an element of arbitrariness in cutting the histories of these two nations out of the whole of Europe in the centre of which they have been living for centuries, and in studying them in one book as though they belong together. This is why I should like to present my work as primarily a study in comparative history, although in some chapters I have not described Belgian and Dutch affairs in separate sections and have tried to show, without neglecting the differences, that in many cases the two nations reacted to political and intellectual challenges in almost identical ways. I have been inconsistent in my treatment of cultural history. In fact, one single principle has guided me: I have totally omitted the history of art and music. As far as literature is concerned, I have not hesitated to touch the subject wherever I thought this might clarify the narrative but at no time has it been my ambition to write literary history. The same applies to such discipUnes as philosophy and theology which I took the Uberty of using for my purpose when I hoped that would be enUghtening. There are two terminological points which I must briefly