In Foreign Eyes

Abstract

The Netherlands has evoked divergent images in the eyes of foreigners. Although one of the most densely populated countries in the world, it is cheerfully associated with windmills, tulips, wooden shoes, and green polders where black-and-white cows peacefully graze. In its picturesque inner cities people joyfully ride their bicycles along the canals. People speak their minds freely, are averse of authority and dogma, and tolerate different opinions and religions. This utopian image of free expression, independence, and open-mindedness, however, is easily turned into the dystopian picture of permissiveness and moral decay. For many years international media routinely associated the Netherlands with drugs, prostitution, euthanasia, and other controversial “ethical issues.” The term “Dutch disease” was coined in the 1980s to criticize an over-generous welfare state doling out earnings from natural resources to voluntarily unemployed citizens and recent immigrants instead of investing them in industry. At the same time, the Netherlands was also celebrated for its “poldermodel” of consensus-based cooperation between employers, workers, and the government, which was seen as a means of overcoming economic crises. To fully comprehend these apparent contradictions, it is necessary to delve into the history and function of the conflicting images of Dutchness. Often, these images reveal more about the writers who created them than about the subject itself.