Distinctive within the Global Fold?

Abstract

“When the world ends, I’ll go to the Netherlands, because there everything happens fifty years later.” These apocryphal words are attributed to the German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). In the first half of the nineteenth century, there were grounds for such a view. After the spectacular prosperity of the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, the Netherlands found itself in a long period of economic, social, and cultural stagnation, which was mourned by its contemporaries. Even today, one frequently encounters references to the days of the Dutch East India Company and “the Golden Age.” Meanwhile, the Netherlands has transformed into a modern, internationally oriented Western country that is, in many respects, equal or at least comparable to its neighboring countries.