Public Opinion and National Identity in the Netherlands

Abstract

This chapter examines national identity and public opinion in the Netherlands in the period 1785–1815, covering the Patriot Revolution, Batavian Republic, Kingdom of Holland, Napoleonic annexation and finally the Orangist restoration. The chapter outlines the major themes of what the Dutch imagined to be their national identity, including feelings of shared territory, history, culture and language, and ideas of republicanism, Orangism and Protestantism that provided a bond for the conceptual nation. The chapter also discusses Dutch public opinion towards foreign affairs, especially regarding the country’s two major foreign bugbears, Britain and France, and offers a discussion of the concept of decline, which had begun to suffuse Dutch self-perception.