‘The Others’ in the Netherlands: Shifting Notions of Us and Them since World War II

Abstract

An important ingredient of the invention of the Dutch nation has been the notion of religious pluralism culminating during the twentieth century in what Lijphart labelled a consociational democracy (Lijphart 1968). In effect, the nation contained parallel societies that existed next to each other, segregated to varying extents, without much interaction. Denominations (religious but also political, notably the social democrats) in this sense were self-contained; each with their own political representatives and other infrastructure like unions, hospitals, journals, newspapers and broadcasting media. In the case of the latter state funds were available on an equal footing for Roman Catholics, Protestants, the ‘socialist family’ and liberals. Education too was highly segregated, at least clearly demarcating the two dominant religions. Only relatively recently, the country’s two Catholic universities (in Nijmegen and Tilburg) were renamed to hide their religious origin. This era, in the Netherlands commonly referred to as ‘pillarisation’ or verzuiling came to its end with the assent of individualism in the 1960s and the 1970s. With few exceptions, the Dutch no longer consider it relevant whether their neighbours or colleagues are Socialist, Roman Catholic or Protestant, whereas earlier the social distances between these denominations had been virtually insurmountable, and so ‘the others’ that most Dutch people were most keenly aware of in those days of limited international travel were actually part of ‘us’ too.