Netherlands History — Rick Steves Amsterdam & the Netherlands (5th Ed, 2025)

Born from the mud of a river delta that spills into the North Sea, the Dutch provinces united to become a global force of hardy seafarers, clever merchants, and freethinkers.

ROMANS AND INVASIONS (AD 1-1300)

When Rome fell (c. 400), the Low Countries shattered into a patchwork of local dukedoms that were ravaged by Viking raids. It was a poor, agricultural, and feudal landscape ruled loosely by the Counts of Holland. Holland’s first major city was Utrecht—a former Roman fort that became a crossroads of trade and bulwark of Christianity.

Around 1250, fishermen in Amsterdam built a dike (dam) where the Amstel River flowed into the North Sea, creating a prime trading port. Soon the town gained independence and trading privileges from the local count and bishop.

Sights

• Amsterdam: Dam Square and Amsterdam Museum exhibits

• Haarlem: Grote Markt

• The Hague: Ridderzaal and Binnenhof (see photo)

BOOMING TRADE TOWNS (1300-1500)

Amsterdam became a bustling little port, trading its signature salt-cured herring for German beer, all financed with a budding capitalism: banking, loans, and speculation in stock and futures. The city attracted religious pilgrims when a communion wafer mysteriously survived a fire and subsequently caused a rash of miraculous healings. But Amsterdam was only one among several trade towns in this land of businessmen—Haarlem, Delft, Edam. By 1500, it was Leiden that was the region’s biggest city.

Netherlands Almanac

Official Name: Koninkrijk der Nederlanden (Kingdom of the Netherlands), or simply Nederland.

Size: The Netherlands covers 16,000 square miles—about twice the size of New Jersey. Its population is 17 million (1,200 people per square mile; 15 times the population density of the US).

Geography: The Netherlands is located at the delta where three major European rivers empty into the North Sea: the Rhine from Germany and Switzerland, the Maas (Meuse) from Belgium and France, and the Waal (a short but mighty distributary of the Rhine). It shares borders with Belgium and Germany. The Dutch have been beating back the North Sea for centuries, forming polders—flat, low-lying reclaimed lands. The Netherlands has a mild marine climate; even hot, clear, and sunny days can come with surprise rain showers.

Latitude and Longitude: 52°N and 5°E. The latitude is similar to Alberta, Canada.

Biggest Cities: Amsterdam is the largest city, with nearly 1 million people (850,000 in the core), followed by Rotterdam (993,000), The Hague (650,000), and Utrecht (334,000).

Economy: The Netherlands is prosperous, with the planet’s 28th-largest economy ($912 billion), a per-capita GDP in the world’s top 25 ($53,600), and one of Europe’s lowest unemployment rates. Its port at Rotterdam is Europe’s largest, and the country relies heavily on foreign trade. The nation’s highly mechanized farms produce huge quantities of flowers, bulbs, and produce for export. The economy has also benefited from its many natural-gas fields—including the huge Groningen field, one of the world’s biggest.

Government: The Netherlands is a parliamentary democracy, with its seat of government at The Hague, although the country’s official capital is Amsterdam. The ceremonial head of state is King Willem-Alexander, whose ascension to the throne in 2013 is celebrated each spring on King’s Day—his birthday, April 27. The Dutch parliament consists of two houses: the 150-member, directly elected Second Chamber (or Lower House); and the 75-member First Chamber (or Upper House), elected by provincial assemblies. The government is led by a prime minister, currently Dick Schoof, a former intelligence chief with no party affiliation.

Flag: The Netherlands’ flag is composed of three horizontal bands of red (top), white, and blue.

The Dutch: About 80 percent of those in the Netherlands are native Dutch, who are among the world’s tallest people—the average height for a man is 6’1” and for a woman, 5’6”. The average age for both men and women is around 42 years old, and they’ll live to be 81. They ride their bikes about 1.5 miles a day and smoke half as much marijuana as their American friends. Among the 20 percent of the population who were born elsewhere, 5 percent hail from other EU countries, and the rest are mostly Indonesian, Turkish, Surinamese, or Moroccan. Over 40 percent of the Dutch have no religious affiliation; less than a third are Catholic, under 20 percent are Protestant, and 5 percent are Muslim.

Politically, the Netherlands was ruled by the cultured empire of the Dukes of Burgundy (centered in the southern provinces—today’s Belgium).

Tiny Holland’s future changed forever in the year 1492, when Columbus’ voyage hinted at the potential wealth awaiting hardy seafarers...like the Dutch.

Sights

• Amsterdam: Old Church (Oude Kerk) and New Church (Nieuwe Kerk)

• Amsterdam: Mint Tower (from the original city wall) and wooden house at Begijnhof 34

• Haarlem: Grote Kerk

• Delft: New Church (Nieuwe Kerk)

PROTESTANTS VS. CATHOLICS, FREEDOM FIGHTERS VS. SPANISH RULERS (1500s)

Thanks to royal marriages, the Low Countries were ruled from afar by the very Catholic Habsburg family in Spain. Meanwhile, Protestantism was spreading. In 1566, angry Protestants rose up against Spain and Catholicism, vandalizing Catholic churches (“iconoclasm”) and deposing Spanish governors. William of Orange rallied the Dutch, becoming the father of his country and establishing his family—and their heraldic color—as national institutions. (The current king is distantly descended from William.) When Spain sent troops to restore order and brutally punish the rebel-heretics, it kicked off the Eighty Years’ War, also known as the Dutch War of Independence (1568-1648).

William of Orange (1533-1584)

A wealthy noble who was the confidant of the Holy Roman Emperor; a sensual aristocrat who had four wives and many mistresses; a religious chameleon who was born a Lutheran, became a Catholic, and ended up a Calvinist—William of Orange sounds like the hero of a romantic novel. But to the Dutch, he will always be the George Washington of the Netherlands—the leader of their war of independence against Spain. They call him De Vader des Vaderlands, “Father of the Fatherland,” and when they sing the Dutch national anthem (the Wilhelmus, the oldest national anthem in the world), the text is actual 16th-century propaganda justifying William’s stand.

Born into Lutheran German nobility, as a teenager William inherited the French principality of Orange and several domains in the Low Countries. He was invited to serve in the court of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V—provided he become a Catholic, which he did. Mixing with the ruling elite of his era, William was set to live a life of ease. But he embraced religious tolerance in an era when people were often murdered for their beliefs, setting up a clash with Spanish King Philip II, who began a crusade against Protestants after inheriting the Low Countries from his father.

William, a stadholder (sort of a governor-general) of two Dutch provinces, became a leader of the resistance against the Spanish. When summoned before the Spanish governor, he fled to Germany, and from 1568 onward, led several military campaigns against Spanish forces in the Low Countries. William eventually became a Calvinist, and in 1576 seven Dutch provinces signed a treaty to become the United Provinces of the Netherlands—the forerunner to the Dutch Republic.

Philip detested William, calling him a religious opportunist, bigamist, and drunkard. To stop the rebellion, he put a price of 25,000 guilders on William’s head. In 1582, an assassin almost succeeded in killing William in Antwerp, but he eventually recovered. William’s final days were spent in Delft’s Prinsenhof. A French assassin managed to sneak in and shoot William at close range with two pistols—the first head of state in the world to be assassinated by handguns.

When he died the rebellion was still in doubt, but fewer than 25 years later, the Dutch provinces had become a thriving republic—with William of Orange as its founding father.

During the war, the Dutch stood strong in the brave Alamo-like stand in the siege of Haarlem (1572-1573). In 1574, they flooded South Holland and sailed flat-bottomed ships against the Spanish to save Leiden. When the thriving (Belgian) city of Antwerp fell to Spanish troops (1585), Antwerp’s best and brightest fled to the Netherlands. Other refugees of religious persecution, including Calvinists and Anabaptists, found a home in tolerant Amsterdam. The influx of talented immigrants would spur the coming “golden age.”

Within a few years, most Spanish troops were driven south into Belgium. Belgium remained under Spanish control while Holland’s towns and nobles formed a Protestant military alliance (the United Provinces) to keep the Spaniards at bay.

Sights

• Amsterdam and Delft: “New” churches stripped bare of decoration during the iconoclasm

• Amsterdam: Civic Guard portraits at Amsterdam Museum

• Haarlem: Mementos of the Siege of Haarlem at Grote Kerk

• Delft: Prinsenhof (see photo, earlier) and Tomb of William of Orange

HOLLAND’S GOLDEN AGE. . . AND FALL (1600s)

By 1600, Holland gained its independence from the Habsburgs (officially in 1648) and emerged stronger and more energized than ever. When England defeated the Spanish Armada (navy, in 1588), Spain’s monopoly on overseas trade was broken and Holland was poised to leap in.

Amsterdam invented the global economy, as its sailors plied the open seas and established trade routes to the far reaches of the planet. (Henry Hudson sailed up America’s Hudson River to what would become New Amsterdam.) The government-subsidized Dutch East and West India Companies employed brute force to establish colonies all over the world. The Dutch people’s nautical and capitalist skills—and their knack for exploiting the resources and human labor of faraway lands—made Amsterdam, with a population of 100,000, the world’s wealthiest city. It was home to the painter Rembrandt, philosopher René (“I think, therefore I am”) Descartes, plus many different religious sects and a bustling Jewish Quarter.

The good times were not confined to Amsterdam. Delft was a thriving market town of textiles and export beer, and home to painter Vermeer and microscope-maker Van Leeuwenhoek. In Haarlem, Frans Hals painted humanist portraits. Leiden’s prestigious university welcomed scholars, and the tolerant town welcomed the persecuted Pilgrims (Protestants from England), who would eventually leave (in 1620) for the New World.

The Netherlands’ Colonial Legacy

Observing the 17th-century opulence of Amsterdam, it’s easy to miss an important aspect of Dutch history: its legacy as an aggressive colonizer and slave trader.

Motivated by wealth, Dutch overseas holdings were focused on strategic ports, factories, and plantations rather than vast tracts of land. (A map of the Dutch empire seems paltry compared to Britain’s. But the profits were substantial.) Places as far apart as New Zealand and New Amsterdam (today’s New York)—both named for places in the Netherlands—demonstrate the mind-boggling range of Dutch traders.

The Dutch colonized land in Oceania (especially Indonesia, then called the “Dutch East Indies”); parts of India and Sri Lanka; Africa (the “Dutch Cape Colony,” later part of South Africa; and the “Dutch Gold Coast,” now part of Ghana); and South America and the Caribbean (including Suriname, parts of Brazil, and many islands).

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was established in 1602 to exploit trade routes to the Indian Ocean: spices from Indonesia, cinnamon from Sri Lanka, porcelain and silk from China, and sugar from Taiwan. The Dutch West India Company (WIC) had a similar purpose in the Caribbean and South America. Fabrics, coffee, tea, tobacco, cotton—if it was lucrative, the Dutch would trade it.

The VOC had its own army, which it wielded to seize power and expel rivals (including Portuguese, Chinese, and Indian traders), and to put down local rebellions in the places they colonized. In a notorious 1621 massacre, the VOC army murdered thousands of Indonesian inhabitants of Banda Island who rebelled against Dutch monopoly of the nutmeg trade.

While the Dutch called present-day Indonesia the “Spice Islands”—thrilled with the fabulous wealth generated by hard-to-find spices such as nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon—the locals called nutmeg a “cursed tree.” Ultimately, millions died as the direct result of Dutch trade and colonization, through warfare, famine, disease, and other hardships.

The wealth and grandeur of 17th-century Amsterdam was also funded by profits from the slave trade (some 600,000 Africans were sent to the American South alone over a 200-year period, in addition to the VOC uprooting and transplanting between 600,000 and 1.1 million enslaved people, mainly from Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and South Africa). The journey itself was treacherous: An estimated one-quarter of all enslaved Africans did not survive the voyage to the Americas.

This constant movement brought together people from disparate backgrounds. Present-day Suriname, on the northern coast of South America, was a melting pot of Dutch holdings: Its population grew to include people of Indonesian, Chinese, Indian, and African descent, along with, of course, the Dutch. This was one of many places where a creole language evolved (called Sranan Tongo), allowing an eclectic cross-section of humanity to communicate.

The end of Dutch colonialism was also turbulent. As the world map was being redrawn after World War II, Indonesia sought its independence. The Netherlands—still recovering from its Nazi occupation—pushed back. A four-year war (1945-1949) saw Indonesia emerge triumphant. Over the next two decades, some 330,000 Indonesians emigrated to the Netherlands. Suriname gained its independence (through diplomatic means) in 1975, prompting another wave of an estimated 100,000 migrants to the Netherlands. In each case, many of the new arrivals lived in ramshackle boarding houses, or as squatters, on the outskirts of Dutch cities: It turned out, the people of Indonesia and Suriname weren’t as welcome in person as their resources and labor had been at a distance.

More recently, the global Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 awakened many Dutch to the extent of their nation’s culpability in marginalizing formerly colonized people. Then-Prime Minister Mark Rutte (in 2022) and King Willem-Alexander (in 2023) both formally apologized for the Dutch role in the slave trade. Meanwhile, the legacy of Dutch influence persists in pockets around the globe. For example, in South Africa, more than 7 million people still speak Afrikaans—closely related to Dutch—as their native language.

The Dutch have much to be proud of in their illustrious history. But the more we learn about the hidden cost of a nation’s “greatness,” the more we’re confronted with the hard truths and the ethical obligations of being a post-colonial power.

Of course, this was a “golden age” only for a privileged few. Much of the Netherlands’ wealth came from its overseas holdings, where Dutch traders exerted control over human lives and natural resources with an iron fist. The Dutch were also key players in the transatlantic trade of enslaved people (see the sidebar, above).

In 1648, the Eighty Years’ War officially ended, and the United Provinces (today’s Netherlands) was now an independent and prosperous republic.

Even at Holland’s golden age peak (c. 1650), forces were at work that would eventually drag it down. In 1637, after several years of insanely lucrative trade in tulip bulbs (“tulip mania”), the market crashed. As the century progressed, the harbors of Edam and Marken began silting up.

Holland was overtaken by the rise of the new superpowers on the block—England and France. In 1652, Holland went to war with England over control of the seas, the first of three wars that would sap Holland’s wealth. In 1689, Holland’s stadholder—William III of Orange—was invited by England’s Parliament to rule (with his wife Mary) as King William III of England. Meanwhile, Louis XIV of France invaded Holland, getting within 15 miles of Amsterdam before being stopped when the citizens opened the Amstel locks and flooded the city. By century’s end, France and England controlled the seas and Holland was drained by costly wars.

Sights

• Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum (Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer, Steen)

• Amsterdam: Old townhouses and gables in Jordaan neighborhood and Red Light District

• Amsterdam: Begijnhof, Royal Palace, Westerkerk, and Rembrandt’s House

• Amsterdam: World Museum (for a thoughtful look at Dutch colonialism)

• Haarlem: Frans Hals Museum

• Edam: Grote Kerk

• Hoorn: Period rooms at Westfries Museum

• Leiden: American Pilgrim and Lakenhal museums

• The Hague: Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery (Vermeer, Rembrandt, Rubens)

ELEGANT DECLINE (1700s)

The Dutch survived as bankers, small manufacturers, and craftsmen in luxury goods—but on a small scale fitting their geographical size. They cruised along on exploited wealth from their colonies in the East Indies and Suriname. Delft continued to crank out Delftware, but the quality declined.

The Netherlands hit rock bottom in 1795, when French troops occupied the Low Countries (1795-1815) and Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed his brother, Louis Napoleon, to be King of Holland.

Sights

• Amsterdam: Our Lord in the Attic Museum (hidden church), Willet-Holthuysen House, and Jewish Museum synagogue

• Amsterdam: Royal Palace

• Amsterdam and Haarlem: Indonesian foods from the colonial era

• Delft: Royal Delft Museum

REVIVAL (1800s)

After Napoleon’s defeat, Europe’s nobles decided that the Low Countries should be a monarchy, ruled jointly by a Dutch prince, who became King William I. (Today’s King Willem-Alexander is descended from him.) When Belgian patriots revolted against the Dutch-born king and formed their own nation, the two countries—the Netherlands and Belgium—officially split. The Netherlands soon became a constitutional monarchy with a parliament.

Though slow to join the Industrial Revolution, Holland picked up speed by century’s end. In 1876, the North Sea Canal opened after 52 years of construction, revitalizing Amsterdam’s port. In the next decade, the city built Centraal station, the Rijksmuseum, and Concertgebouw, and hosted a World Exhibition (1883) that attracted three million visitors. Progressive thinkers questioned the country’s repressive colonial tradition in the East Indies.

Sights

• Amsterdam: Centraal station (see photo), Rijksmuseum, Stadsschouwburg theater, Concertgebouw music hall, and Magna Plaza

• Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum

WAVES OF GERMANS, HIPPIES, AND IMMIGRANTS (1900s)

The 20th century started off badly, with World War I, though neutral Holland was spared the worst of it.

In 1932, the Dutch Zuiderzee dike was completed, creating many square miles of reclaimed land (including today’s Flevoland). On the downside, the project closed off access to the North Sea, reducing once-thriving harbor towns like Enkhuizen and Marken to cutesy time-passed villages.

In World War II, Holland suffered a brutal occupation by Nazi Germany. Queen Wilhelmina (1880-1962) fled to England and Anne Frank went into hiding. Of the 140,000 Dutch Jews, 102,000 were killed. Rotterdam was utterly destroyed by German bombs. After the war, the city was ultimately rebuilt in a modern style and became Europe’s busiest port.

In Amsterdam, postwar prosperity and a tolerant atmosphere in the 1960s and 1970s made it a global magnet for hippies...and your co-authors.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of new arrivals from former colonies (especially Indonesia and Suriname) increased Amsterdam’s population and changed its demographics, in some cases causing friction with established residents.

Holland continued its eternal battle with the sea. Major floods killed almost 2,000 people (in 1953) and caused a billion dollars in damage (in 1995), prompting more dams and storm barriers. Facing global warming, the “Low Countries”—with much of their territory below sea level—kept a close watch on rising seas.

The Netherlands was an active participant in the international community. In 1957, it helped found the Common Market and joined the Benelux economic union (in 1960). In 1992, it joined 11 other countries in signing the Treaty of Maastricht (in southern Holland) to become founding members of the European Union. The Hague became home to the world court.

Sights

• Amsterdam: Beurs (Stock Exchange), Tuschinski Theater, and National Monument on Dam Square

• Amsterdam: Anne Frank House, Jewish Museum, and Dutch Resistance Museum

• Amsterdam: Heineken Experience, rock-and-roll clubs Paradiso and Melkweg, and the “Stopera” opera house

• Haarlem: Corrie ten Boom House

• Enkhuizen: Zuiderzee Museum

• Flevoland: Schokland Museum

• The Hague: Peace Palace

• Rotterdam: Striking modern architecture (Centraal station, Cube Houses, skyscraper zone)

THE NETHERLANDS TODAY (2000-present)

In the early 2000s, the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh caused a backlash against immigration from Muslim countries and a move to the right (see sidebar). The country is still feeling varied pressures from its growing and diversifying population, including housing shortages.

Overtourism is a concern, especially where sex work and soft drugs are an issue. The mayor of Amsterdam has proposed a plan to move sex workers out of the Red Light District and has threatened to ban foreign tourists from cannabis cafés. Maastricht and other southern Dutch cities have restricted marijuana purchases to Dutch citizens only. In an effort to tamp down illicit-drug activity, the national government is experimenting with the legal production and supply of cannabis—just as some US states have.

Islam and the Netherlands Today

One important issue in the Netherlands today is the culture clash between the secular, multicultural Netherlands and its recent Muslim immigrants. Many Muslims arrived in the last half of the 20th century after Indonesia (a Dutch colony) gained independence. Guest workers from Turkey and Morocco—drawn by economic incentives—swelled the ranks. Today, one in ten Amsterdammers is Muslim. But Muslim cultures have not meshed seamlessly with the Netherlands’ Western, secular, and liberal traditions.

Several events have colored the discussion of Islam in the Netherlands:

During the Bosnian War, 400 Dutch soldiers were serving as UN Peacekeepers in Srebrenica when the town was overrun by Bosnian Serbs in July 1995. While the outnumbered Dutch soldiers huddled in their compound, the Serbs massacred more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys. To this day, many Dutch people are haunted by why the troops didn’t do more to help.

In spring 2002, a charismatic Dutch politician named Pim Fortuyn—socially liberal but strongly anti-immigration—campaigned for Parliament on a platform that Islam posed a threat to Dutch values. On May 6, he was gunned down in a parking lot by a man whose motives remain unclear. Dutch people were stunned by the violence.

On November 2, 2004, Theo van Gogh, a well-known filmmaker and the great-grandnephew of Vincent van Gogh, was shot by a Muslim Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent. The assailant, angered by Van Gogh’s controversial film about women and Islam, stabbed a letter into the filmmaker’s dead body with threats against the film’s female screenwriter, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Ali, a Somali Muslim and former Dutch Parliamentarian, is an outspoken critic of Islam and its treatment of women, and currently lives (under a 24-hour security watch) and teaches in the US.

Lately, Dutch politician Geert Wilders has taken up Fortuyn’s mantle, advocating the banning of the Quran and an end to Muslim immigration. His right-wing, nativist, populist Party for Freedom (PVV) has made a strong showing in recent elections—especially in 2023, when they won the largest share of seats in the Dutch House of Representatives.

These issues have forced the Dutch to confront a difficult paradox—how to be tolerant of what some perceive to be an intolerant culture...while dealing with knee-jerk anti-Islam sentiment seeping into the Netherlands from elsewhere in Europe.

In 2013, King Willem-Alexander (b. 1967) became ruler of the Netherlands, the first male on the Dutch throne in 123 years (and likely be the last, for a while: His heir apparent is his daughter, Catharina-Amalia). Increasingly, general-election results are revealing a growing nationalist sentiment and challenging assumptions about the famous “progressivism” of the Dutch. The rise of the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) has been eclipsed by the far-right, populist Party for Freedom (PVV)—which held the most seats in the House of Representatives as of the 2023 elections.

Even as the political pendulum swings, the Netherlands remains peaceful, prosperous, and largely forward-thinking—waiting for you to arrive and make your own history.

Sights

• Amsterdam: Metro, EYE Filmmuseum, A’DAM Tower, and Muziekgebouw performance hall

• Rotterdam: Centraal station and Market Hall

For more on Dutch history, consider Europe 101: History & Art for the Traveler, written by Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw (available at www.ricksteves.com).