The Dutch Republic existed from 1579 to 1795 and was a confederation of seven provinces with their own independent provincial governments, and a number of so-called Generality Lands directly governed by the States-General (), the federal government. The States-General were seated in The Hague and consisted of representatives of each of the seven provinces.
Overview When several provinces and cities in rebellion against Philip II of Spain declared themselves independent in 1581 with the Act of Abjuration, they initially aspired to appoint another prince as head of state. The sovereignty of the provinces was first offered to Francis, Duke of Anjou, but his 1583 coup d'état was foiled and he was ousted. After the assassination of rebel leader William the Silent, it was offered in turn to and declined by Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England. Elizabeth did make the provinces an English protectorate and sent over the Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester as governor-general (Treaty of Nonsuch, 1585). For many reasons, it was not a success, and Leicester left in 1588. This left the provinces in rebellion without a head.
The provinces of the republic were, in official feudal order: the duchy of Guelders (Gelre in Dutch), the counties of Holland and Zeeland, the former bishopric of Utrecht, the lordship of Overijssel, and the free (i.e. never feudalised) provinces of Friesland and Groningen. In fact there was an eighth province, the lordship of Drenthe, but this area was so poor it was exempt from paying confederal taxes and, as a corollary, was denied representation in the States-General. The duchy of Brabant, the county of Flanders and the lordship of Mechelen were also among the rebelling provinces, but were later completely or largely reconquered by Spain. After the Peace of Westphalia, the parts of these provinces that remained in the Dutch Republic's hands, as well as several other border territories, became confederally governed Generality Lands (Generaliteitslanden). They were Staats-Brabant (present North Brabant), Staats-Vlaanderen (present Zeelandic Flanders), Staats-Overmaas (around Maastricht) and Staats-Opper-Gelre (around Venlo, after 1715).
The republican form of government was not democratic in the modern sense; in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, the "regents" or regenten formed the ruling class of the Dutch Republic, the leaders of the Dutch cities or the heads of organisations (e.g. "regent of an orphanage"). Since the late Middle Ages Dutch cities had been run by the richer merchant families. Although not formally a hereditary "class", they were de facto "patricians", comparable in some sense to that ancient Roman class. At first the lower-class citizens in the guilds and schutterijen could unite to form a certain counterbalance to the regenten, but in the course of the 16th, 17th and 18th century the administration of the cities and towns became oligarchical in character, and it became harder and harder to enter their caste. From the latter part of the 17th century the regent families were able to reserve government offices to themselves via quasi-formal contractual arrangements. Most offices were filled by co-option for life. Thus the regent class tended to perpetuate itself into a closed class. However, in practice they had to take into account the opinions of the man on the street (de gemeente Dutch), moreso than in the monarchies of the time, otherwise they ran the risk of being dislodged by political upheavals, like the Orangist revolutions of 1672 and 1747 and the Patriot revolt of 1785. It was, by the standards of the time, a country where men lived safely under the laws.
National government
Republic or Republics
The Union of Utrecht was more a defensive treaty against Spain and Phillip II than an actual constitution in the modern sense. It was a defensive alliance between sovereign states. Each province remained the master in their own "house" and only ceded those powers to the States General that were necessary for the maintenance of the collective peace and security. After the Act of Abjuration, the sovereignty in each province reverted to the States (see below) of that province, so that each was a separate republic in its own right.
This is how the contemporaries thought of themselves. The Dutch formulation of the official name of the Republic is the United Provinces or the Seven United Provinces, in plural, using in the Dutch the plural for the reference. Another formulation sometimes used is one that sounds familiar in the modern day, the United States of the Netherlands. This was repeated in Latin by Johan de Witt, the famous Raadpensionaris of Holland. The country was referred to in the plural as respublicae federate or unitae (in the plural), and not respublica (in the singular), which would be correct for a unitary state. The usual colloquial English formulation of the Dutch Republic is, then, strictly, incorrect.
Preponderance of Holland
Historically, Holland was by far the most populous and prosperous of the provinces north of the rivers. Even today people use the term Holland colloquially to refer to the provinces of North Holland and South Holland as well as the Kingdom of the Netherlands in general. This was true in the past also, and is due to the predominance of the province of Holland in population, resources and industry north of the great river estuaries of the Rhine and the Meuse ().
Holland's hegemony over the other provinces north of the Rhine and the Maas that would form the Dutch Republic is a culmination of trends reaching back to the thirteenth century. (see also Northwestern Regional Center and Amsterdam-region) The Dutch Revolt removed the counterweights that had historically kept Holland in check from the fifteenth century: the relatively more prosperous commerce of Flanders and Brabant/Antwerp and the centralising tendencies of the Burgundian and Habsburg rulers. Hollandish hegemony north of the Rhine/Maas delta was contested for a while by the Duchy of Gelderland (see Guelders Wars), but was unsuccessful due to the resources of Holland and their Habsburg rulers.
The center of the Dutch Revolt was initially in the southern Netherlands. The influence of William the Silent and Leicester also checked Holland. With Leicester's departure, and the reconquest of the southern Netherlands as well as large parts of the north by the Duke of Parma, there was no longer any countervailing influence. The wide river barriers formed by the confluence of the Rhine and Meuse rivers offered a formidable barrier to reconquest of the core of the Dutch Revolt, now in Holland, when defended by a determined army under a capable leader (Prince Maurice of Nassau, William III). Much of the commerce that had fueled the growth of Flanders and Brabant also fled north to Holland during the upheavals of the revolt. So, at the formative stages of the Dutch Republic's institutions, from 1588 through roughly the next 20 years there was no other power that had any leverage over Holland. Holland built the Republic and its institutions on the basis of sovereign provincial rights. However, only Holland could fully utilise them. It employed the lesser provinces, as they were reconquered, to bolster her defenses and economic resources. The States General had powers over foreign policy, and war and peace. It extended its decisions, especially after 1590, to inter-provincial matters such as regulation of shipping, administration of the conquered lands, church affairs, and colonial expansion. This framework was largely built and imposed by Holland, sometimes over the objections of the other provinces.
This is not to say that the institutions of the Republic were completely Holland-centric. In matters of form and ceremony the seven voting provinces were equal and sovereign in their own houses. The Union of Utrecht and the States General that gave it substance and form were not intended to function as a federal state. The provinces were supposed to take important decisions unanimously. So the intent of the Union of Utrecht was a confederacy of states. What emerged due to circumstances after 1579 was more a sovereign federation of sovereign states (a formulation borrowed by the United States of America). The rule of unanimity was largely unworkable: the decision to back William III's invasion of England in 1688 was a notable exception. Principal decisions, however, were seldom, if ever, taken over the objections of Holland. In the same way, Holland, in the interests of harmony, would not try, once the other provinces were reconstituted and rejoined to the Union, to take a decision over the strenuous objections of the other provinces, but would try to build a majority consensus on major decisions. Within these constraints, as seen below, a persuasive Councillor Pensionary of Holland and/or a Stadholder/Prince of Orange could move the provinces to a consensus.
States-General
The States-General (Staten-Generaal in Dutch) or the Generality (Generaliteiten) for short was a descendant of the medieval Burgundian and Habsburg States-Generals. In medieval times and under the Habsburgs, they met infrequently to discuss matters of common interest and to vote taxes for the benefit of the Dukes of Burgundy and their Habsburg heirs. At first the States-General was thought of as an extraordinary body. After the abjuration of the king in 1581 and the separation of the northern Netherlands from the Spanish dominions, the States-General replaced the king as the supreme authority and as the central government of the northern Netherlands, which then became known as the United Provinces. As alluded to above, this was an ad hoc arrangement since no prince would anger Spain by accepting sovereignty over the provinces. As the years went by, and the confidence of the governing regents and Princes of Orange grew, the desire to be ruled by a foreign prince diminished. From 1593, the States-General met daily, including on Sundays, usually between 11 and 1, and, after some variation in the earlier years, it came to sit in the Binnenhof, in The Hague, near the States of Holland.
The style of address to the States-General was codified by Johan de Witt in 1653 as "their High Mightinesses, the Lords States-General" or, in Dutch, De Heeren Hoog-Mogenden, De Heeren Staten-Generaal der Verenigde Provinciën der Nederlanden).
Each province was allowed one vote in the States-General, and the Republic continued this practice. Each province could send as many representatives as they chose. However, the size of the meeting room limited the size of the delegations. The representatives were appointed for a term by the provincial estates and were not directly elected. Neither were they usually empowered to vote on their own decision. Referrals back to the provincial estates for a decision on how to vote were frequent. The system only worked when a talented Councillor Pensionary or Stadtholder (Prince of Orange) was able to arrange a consensus ahead of time. Meetings were held around a large conference table in the Binnenhof (the former palace of the counts of Holland), in The Hague, which was a central location and allowed easy travel back and forth to the other provinces. Since the States of Holland met in the same palace, communication between them and their delegates to the States-General was frequent, thus increasing their influence. Each province served as presiding officer of the States-General in turn. Given this weak executive structure, and the necessity to refer business for detailed review, the proceedings were often dominated by the Councillor Pensionary of Holland as the representative of the largest province, as well as the most well informed and prepared official. Representatives of Holland as well as other provinces would often defer to his expertise.