Netherlands

Major Cities of Netherlands in the continent of Europe

Amsterdam • Rotterdam • The Hague • Utrecht • Eindhoven • Tilburg • Almere • Groningen • Breda • Nijmegen • Apeldoorn • Enschede • s-Hertogenbosch • Haarlem • Arnhem •

Netherlands Photo Gallery

Netherlands Realty

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THE NETHERLANDS COAT OF ARMS

Location of Netherlands within the continent of Europe

Map of Netherlands

Flag Description of Netherlands:The Netherlands flag was officially adopted on February 19, 1937. At one time this tricolor flag was orange, white and blue, as those were the livery colors of William of Orange, a Dutch prince. In the 17th century, red replaced the orange as a flag color, because the orange dye used on the flag was unstable, and turned red after exposure to the sun.

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Official name Koninkrijk der Nederlanden (Kingdom of the Netherlands)
Form of government constitutional monarchy with a parliament (States General) comprising two chambers (Senate [75]; House of Representatives [150])
Head of state Monarch: King Willem-Alexander
Head of government Prime Minister: Mark Rutte
Capital Amsterdam
Seat of government The Hague
Official language Dutch1
Official religion none
Monetary unit euro (€)
Population (2013 est.) 16,802,000COLLAPSE
Total area (sq mi) 16,158
Total area (sq km) 41,850
Urban-rural population

Urban: (2010) 82.9%

Rural: (2010) 17.1%

Life expectancy at birth

Male: (2012) 79.2 years

Female: (2012) 82.8 years

Literacy: percentage of population age 15 and over literate

Male: (2009) 100%

Female: (2009) 100%

GNI per capita (U.S.$) (2013) 47,440

1Frisian is officially recognized in Friesland but not legally codified by the national government.

Background of Netherlands

The Dutch United Provinces declared their independence from Spain in 1579; during the 17th century, they became a leading seafaring and commercial power, with settlements and colonies around the world. After a 20-year French occupation, a Kingdom of the Netherlands was formed in 1815. In 1830 Belgium seceded and formed a separate kingdom. The Netherlands remained neutral in World War I, but suffered invasion and occupation by Germany in World War II. A modern, industrialized nation, the Netherlands is also a large exporter of agricultural products. The country was a founding member of NATO and the EEC (now the EU) and participated in the introduction of the euro in 1999. In October 2010, the former Netherlands Antilles was dissolved and the three smallest islands - Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba - became special municipalities in the Netherlands administrative structure. The larger islands of Sint Maarten and Curacao joined the Netherlands and Aruba as constituent countries forming the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Netherlands, country located in northwestern Europe, also known as Holland. “Netherlands” means low-lying country; the name Holland (from Houtland, or “Wooded Land”) was originally given to one of the medieval cores of what later became the modern state and is still used for 2 of its 12 provinces (Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland). A parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarch, the kingdom includes its former colonies in the Lesser Antilles: Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten. The capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government The Hague.

The country is indeed low-lying and remarkably flat, with large expanses of lakes, rivers, and canals. Some 2,500 square miles (6,500 square km) of the Netherlands consist of reclaimed land, the result of a process of careful water management dating back to medieval times. Along the coasts, land was reclaimed from the sea, and, in the interior, lakes and marshes were drained, especially alongside the many rivers. All this new land was turned into polders, usually surrounded by dikes. Initially, man power and horsepower were used to drain the land, but they were later replaced by windmills, such as the mill network at Kinderdijk-Elshout, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The largest water-control schemes were carried out in the second half of the 19th century and in the 20th century, when steam pumps and, later, electric or diesel pumps came into use.

Despite government-encouraged emigration after World War II, which prompted some 500,000 persons to leave the country, the Netherlands is today one of the world’s most densely populated countries. Although the population as a whole is “graying” rapidly, with a high percentage over age 65, Amsterdam has remained one of the liveliest centres of international youth culture. There, perhaps more than anywhere else in the country, the Dutch tradition of social tolerance is readily encountered. Prostitution, “soft-drug” (marijuana and hashish) use, and euthanasia are all legal but carefully regulated in the Netherlands, which was also the first country to legalize same-sex marriage.

This relative independence of outlook was evident as early as the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Dutch rejected monarchical controls and took a relatively enlightened view of other cultures, especially when they brought wealth and capital to the country’s trading centres. In that period Dutch merchant ships sailed the world and helped lay the foundations of a great trading country characterized by a vigorous spirit of enterprise. In later centuries, the Netherlands continued to have one of the most advanced economies in the world, despite the country’s modest size. The Dutch economy is open and generally internationalist in outlook. With Belgium and Luxembourg, the Netherlands is a member of the Benelux economic union, which in the 1950s and 1960s served as a model for the larger European Economic Community (EEC; now embedded in the European Union [EU]), of which the Benelux countries are members. The Netherlands is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and it plays host to a number of international organizations, especially in the legal sector, such as the International Court of Justice.

The Dutch reputation for tolerance was tested in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, when an increase in immigration from non-European Union countries and a populist turn in politics resulted in growing nationalism and even xenophobia, marked by two race-related political assassinations, in 2002 and 2004, and the government’s requirement that immigrants pass an expensive ‘‘integration’’ test before they enter the country.

Geography of Netherlands

The Land

Relief

The Netherlands is bounded by the North Sea to the north and west, Germany to the east, and Belgium to the south. If the Netherlands were to lose the protection of its dunes and dikes, the most densely populated part of the country would be inundated (largely by the sea but also in part by the rivers). This highly developed part of the Netherlands, which generally does not lie higher than about three feet (one metre) above sea level, covers more than half the total area of the country. About half of this area (more than one-fourth of the total area of the country) actually lies below sea level.

The lower area consists mainly of polders, where the landscape not only lies at a very low elevation but is also very flat in appearance. On such land, building is possible only on “rafts,” or after concrete piles, sometimes as long as 65 feet (20 metres), have been driven into the silt layer.

In the other, higher area, the layers of sand and gravel in the eastern part of the country were pushed sideways and upward in some places by ice tongues of the Saale Glacial Stage, forming elongated ridges that may reach a height of more than 330 feet (100 metres) and are the principal feature of the Hoge Park Veluwe National Park. The only part of the country where elevations exceed 350 feet (105 metres) is the border zone of the Ardennes. The Netherlands’ highest point, the Vaalserberg, in the extreme southeastern corner, rises to 1,053 feet (321 metres).

Drainage and dikes

The Zuiderzee was originally an estuary of the Rhine River. By natural action it then became a shallow inland sea, biting deep into the land, and eventually it was hollowed into an almost circular shape by the action of winds and tides. In 1920 work was begun on the Zuiderzee project, of which the IJsselmeer Dam (Afsluitdijk), begun in 1927, was a part. This 19-mile- (30-km-) long dam was completed in 1932 to finally seal off the Zuiderzee from the Waddenzee and the North Sea. In the IJsselmeer, or IJssel Lake, formed from the southern part of the Zuiderzee, four large polders, the IJsselmeer Polders, with a total area of about 650 square miles (1,700 square km), were constructed around a freshwater basin fed by the IJssel and other rivers and linked with the sea by sluices and locks in the barrier dam.

The first two polders created there—Wieringermeer and North East (Noordoost) Polder, drained before and during World War II—are used mostly for agriculture. The two polders reclaimed in the 1950s and ’60s—South Flevoland Polder (Zuidelijk) and East Flevoland Polder (Oostelijk)—are used for residential, industrial, and recreational purposes. Among the cities that have developed there are Lelystad and Almere.

In the southwest, the disastrous gales and spring tide of Feb. 1, 1953, which flooded some 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) of land and killed 1,800 people, accelerated the implementation of the Delta Project, which aimed to close off most of the sea inlets of the southwestern delta. These delta works were designed to shorten the coastline by 450 miles (725 km), combat the salination of the soil, and allow the development of the area through roads that were constructed over 10 dams and 2 bridges built between 1960 and 1987. The largest of these dams, crossing the five-mile- (eight-km-) wide Eastern Schelde (Oosterschelde) estuary, has been built in the form of a storm-surge barrier incorporating dozens of openings that can be closed in the event of flood. The barrier is normally open, allowing salt water to enter the estuary and about three-fourths of the tidal movement to be maintained, limiting damage to the natural environment in the Eastern Schelde. In the interest of the commerce of the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp, no dams were constructed in the New Waterway, which links Rotterdam to the North Sea, or the West Schelde, an approach to Antwerp, Belg. The dikes along these waterways consequently had to be strengthened.

A region with a very specific character has been formed by the great rivers—Rhine, Lek, Waal, and Maas (Meuse)—that flow from east to west through the central part of the country. The landscape in this area is characterized by high dikes along wide rivers, orchards along the levees formed by the rivers, and numerous large bridges over which pass the roads and railways that connect the central Netherlands with the southern provinces.

Soils

In the late Pleistocene Epoch (from about 126,000 to 11,700 years ago), the Scandinavian ice sheet covered the northern half of the Netherlands. After this period, a large area in the north of what is now the Netherlands was left covered by moraine (glacial accumulation of earth and rock debris). In the centre and south, the Rhine and Maas rivers unloaded thick layers of silt and gravel transported from the European mountain chains. Later, during the Holocene Epoch (i.e., the past 11,700 years), clay was deposited in the sheltered lagoons behind the coastal dunes, and peat soil often subsequently developed in these areas. If the peat soil was washed away by the sea or dug away by humans (for the production of fuel and salt), lakes were created. Many of these were reclaimed in later centuries (as mentioned above), while others now form highly valued outdoor recreational areas.

Climate

The climate of the Netherlands is temperate, with gentle winters, cool summers, and rainfall in every season. Southerly and westerly winds predominate, and the sea moderates the climate through onshore winds and the effect of the Gulf Stream.

The position of the country—between the area of high-pressure air masses centred on the Azores and the low-pressure region centred on Iceland—makes the Netherlands an area of collision between warm and polar air masses, thus creating unsettled weather. Winds meet with little resistance over the flat country, though the hills in the south significantly diminish the velocity of the potent wind that prevails along the coast. On average, frost occurs 60 days per year. July temperatures average about 63 °F (17 °C), and those of January average 35 °F (2 °C). Annual rainfall averages about 31 inches (790 mm), with only about 25 clear days per year. The average rainfall is highest in summer (August) and autumn and lowest in springtime. The country is known—not least through the magnificent landscapes of Dutch painters—for its heavy clouds, and on an average day three-fifths of the sky is clouded.

Plant and animal life

Most wild Dutch plant species are of the Atlantic district within the Euro-Siberian phytogeographic region. Gradients of salt and winter temperature variations cause relatively minor zonal differences in both wild and garden plants from the coast to more continental regions. The effects of elevation are negligible. Vegetation from coastal sand dunes, muddy coastal areas, slightly brackish lakes, and river deltas is especially scarce in the surrounding countries. Lakes, marshes, peatland, woods, heaths, and agricultural areas determine the general floral species. Clay, peat, and sand are important soil factors for the inland vegetation regions.

Animal life is relegated by region according to vegetation. Seabirds and other sea life, such as mollusks, are found especially in the muddy Waddenzee area and in the extreme southwest. Migrating birds pass in huge numbers through the Netherlands or remain for a summer or winter stay. Species of waterbirds and marsh and pasture birds are numerous. Larger mammals, such as roe deer, red deer, foxes, and badgers, are mostly restricted to nature reserves. Some species, such as boars, beavers, fallow deer, mouflons, and muskrats, have been introduced locally or reintroduced. Some reptiles and amphibians are endangered. Numerous species of river fish and river lobsters have become scarce because of water pollution. There is a diversity of brackish and freshwater animals inhabiting the many lakes, canals, and drainage ditches, but the vulnerable species of the nutritionally deficient waters have become rare.

Nature reserves have been formed by governmental and private organizations. Well-known reserves include the Naardermeer of Amsterdam, the Hoge Veluwe National Park, and the Oostvaardersplassen in the centre of the country. Some endangered species are protected by law.

Landforms & Major Cities of the Netherlands

More than a quarter of the Netherlands lies below the sea level, formed of reclaimed land protected from the onslaught of the waves by dikes and dunes. No wonder the Netherlands is flat, and even the highest point of the country only just exceeds 1,000 feet. The interplay of the sea, reclaimed land -- called polder -- and rivers largely defines the form of the land. It's the most densely populated country in Europe; for comparison, only New Jersey in the mainland U.S. gets close to the Dutch figures of 1,240 people per square mile.

• The Lowlands

More than half of the land area of the Netherlands lies less than three feet above sea level, and majority of that lowland is actually below sea level. The lowest point of the country is at Zuidplaspolder, at 23 feet below sea level. The West Frisian Islands stretch along the northern sea border of the Netherlands, providing some shelter from the wrath of the North Sea. Inland from the polders, the Delta -- encompassing the outflows of the rivers Rhine, Mass, Scheldt and Waal -- creates the quintessential landscape of flat fields and pale, big skies, made familiar by countless landscape paintings of the Dutch School.

• The Uplands

Further inland, the Netherlands rise to as high as 300 feet, the land formed in elevated ridges that are partially protected by the Hoge Park Veluwe National Park (hogeveluwe.nl). The land rises further towards the foothills of the Ardennes Mountains in the south, with the country's highest point, Vaalserberg, at just over 1,000 feet.

• Urban Areas

Most of the 17 million Dutch live in urban centers, with less than 20 percent of the population in rural areas. No single city dominates the urban landscape though, with the main cities making up the aggregation of the so-called Randstad, or Rim City, curving through the western and central Netherlands. This area includes the Dutch capital, Amsterdam; the port of Rotterdam, with more than a million residents in its metro area; The Hague, which is the seat of the government and has a population of 700,000; as well as Leiden, Haarlem, Hilversum and Utrecht. This area extends as far east as Arnhem and Nijmegen and as far south as Breda, Tilburg and Eindhoven. Groningen is the main city in the northeast, while Maastricht dominates the southeast.

• Amsterdam

The largest city, with a population of more than a million and the capital of the Netherlands, Amsterdam is also the biggest draw for the tourists. The old city core attracts travelers with its tall-gabled townhouses reflected in slowly flowing rivers and canals, the rich collections of old and modern art at the museums, including the Rijksmuseum (rijksmuseum.nl), Vincent Van Gogh Museum (vangoghmuseum.nl) and Stedlijk (stedelijk.nl). Amsterdam's renowned nightlife is also a draw, from traditional pubs serving numerous varieties of beer to nightclubs that cover the range from bohemian bars and coffee shops to the red light district.

Demography of Netherlands

The People

• Ethnic groups

Popular belief holds that the Dutch are a mixture of Frisians, Saxons, and Franks. In fact, research has made plausible the contention that the autochthonous inhabitants of the region were a mixture of pre-Germanic and Germanic population groups who in the course of time had converged on the main deltaic region of western Europe. There emerged from these groups in the 7th and 8th centuries some major polities based on certain ethnic and cultural unities that then came to be identified as Frisians, Saxons, and Franks.

The Dutch Republic originated from medieval statelets, and its legal successor, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, has attracted countless immigrants through the centuries. A strong impetus was the principle of freedom of thought, which engendered the relative tolerance that developed in the 16th and 17th centuries. These sentiments were—and are—most manifest in the prosperous commercial and industrial centres in the western provinces, which attracted many members of persecuted religious or political minorities. Among these were southern lowlanders, French Huguenots, and Portuguese Jews, along with many people who sought to improve their economic situation, such as Germans and non-Iberian Jews. In the 20th century, immigrants from the former Dutch overseas colonies added to the influx; they included Indonesians and peoples from the Moluccas and from Suriname on the northeast coast of South America. In recent decades, however, as Muslims from Turkey and Morocco arrived in large numbers, Dutch embracement of diversity has been more tenuous. At the beginning of the 21st century, not only did a virulent anti-immigrant movement emerge, but also the government required that immigrants pass a test in their country of origin relating to Dutch language and culture before they were allowed to enter the Netherlands.

• Languages

The language in the whole of the country is Dutch, sometimes referred to as Netherlandic, a Germanic language that is also spoken by the inhabitants of northern Belgium (where it is called Flemish). Afrikaans, an official language of South Africa, is a variant of the Dutch spoken by 17th-century emigrants from the Holland and Zeeland regions. Apart from Dutch, the inhabitants of the northern province of Friesland also speak their own language (called Frisian in English), which is closer to English than to either Dutch or German. In the major cities especially, many people are fluent in several languages, reflecting the country’s geographic position, its history of occupation, and its attraction for tourists. English, French, and German are among the languages commonly heard.

In terms of formal allegiance, the present Dutch population can be divided into three almost equal groups relative to religion: Roman Catholics (the southern provinces of Limburg and Noord-Brabant are traditionally almost monolithically Catholic, but in terms of absolute numbers more Catholics live north of the great rivers than in Noord-Brabant and Limburg), Protestants (particularly the adherents to the Netherlands Reformed Church), and the nonreligious. The adherents of Islam have developed a wide range of institutions in the Netherlands and constituted about 6 percent of the population at the turn of the 21st century.

Secularization has made its mark in the Netherlands; the Christian Democrat parties of the centre, whose political platform included planks such as public funding for religious education, had attracted more than 50 percent of the vote up to the 1960s, but in the 1990s they were ejected from government for the first time in the 20th century. Nonetheless, the educational institutions and political parties that evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries along denominational lines remain as potent as the more or less secularized parties and institutions that sprang from socialist and liberal movements. The “pillarization” of Dutch society—that is, the founding of separate institutions such as hospitals, schools, and periodicals by various groups—commands much less religiosity and devotion now, but these organizations are still central to education, political life, and public service.

These more or less converging societal groupings have not completely obliterated a range of age-old regional cultural distinctions. They are sometimes vividly preserved, as in the case of the northern province of Friesland, which proudly conserves the ancient Frisian culture. With more-recent immigration, new cultural groups are becoming significant.

• Settlement patterns

Modern urbanization in the Netherlands took place mainly in the 20th century. In 1900 more than half the population was still living in villages or towns of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants. A century later this proportion had decreased to about one-tenth. There has, nevertheless, been a decrease in the city-proper populations of the large metropolitan centres. These inner cities are now becoming economic and cultural centres, their populations having spread outward in search of newer housing and greater living space in suburbs, new residential quarters of rural settlements, and new towns. In the 1960s and ’70s the authorities stimulated this development by subsidizing house building in a number of so-called growth nuclei and by moving several groupings of public offices from the western core area of the country to more-rural areas in the north, east, and south. More recently, however, government planning policy has aimed at again concentrating the population in and around the existing cities, especially in the western portion of the country.

In this part of the Netherlands, the bulk of the population is concentrated in the horseshoe-shaped urban core known as the Randstad (“Rim City,” or “City on the Edge”), comprising such cities as Rotterdam, The Hague, Leiden, Haarlem, Amsterdam, Hilversum, and Utrecht. Extensions of the Randstad stretch toward the east (Arnhem, Nijmegen) and the south (Breda, Tilburg, Eindhoven), thus forming the so-called Central Netherlands Urban Ring. Other urban centres are Groningen in the northeast, Enschede and Hengelo in the east, and Maastricht and Heerlen in the southeast. It is government policy to keep traditional towns and cities separated by strips of agricultural or recreational land.

• Demographic trends

Exceptionally high fertility rates until the 1960s contributed to the Netherlands’ being one of the world’s most densely populated countries. Since then, trends have shifted, owing mainly to wider use of birth control pills (a consequence of growing secularization) and to the increased participation of women in higher education and the workforce. At the beginning of the 21st century, Dutch birth and death rates were both among the world’s lowest, resulting in a somewhat older society, with most population growth arising from immigration.

Emigrants exceeded immigrants by an average of almost 20,000 each year from 1947 to 1954. Thereafter the economy and labour potential of the more industrialized European countries attracted an increasing number of labour migrants from southern Europe, Turkey, and Morocco, so that the balance of in-migration and out-migration remained more or less static. From 1970 there was a continuous immigrant surplus, and in the early 21st century, one-fifth of the Netherlands’ population was made up of residents born abroad or with at least one foreign-born parent. In the late 1990s, with most other doors to immigration closed by government policy and the possibility of entry for family reunification largely expended, the numbers of applications for asylum were high. There was also an increase in the immigration of Dutch nationals from the Netherlands Antilles. Following legislation in 2001 that further tightened immigration restrictions, the annual number of asylum seekers fell, but the issue of immigration remained on the political forefront.

For many years prior to 1970, internal migration showed a constant flow from the more rural provinces in the north, east, and south toward the more strongly urbanized western part of the country. After 1970, however, the trend toward migration to the west was reversed. Subsequent emigration was mainly from Zuid-Holland and Noord-Holland (the most heavily populated provinces) toward Utrecht and the less densely populated provinces, where government regional policy stimulated industrial growth—Groningen, Friesland, Drenthe, Gelderland, and Zeeland.

Economy of Netherlands

Since World War II, the Netherlands has been a highly industrialized country occupying a central position in the economic life of western Europe. Although agriculture accounts for a small percentage of the national income and labour force, it remains a highly specialized contributor to Dutch exports. Because of the scarcity of mineral resources—with the important exception of natural gas—the country is dependent on large imports of basic materials.

The Netherlands has a market economy, but the state traditionally has been a significant participant in such fields as transportation, resource extraction, and heavy industry. The government also employs a substantial percentage of the total labour force and effects investment policy. Nonetheless, during the 1980s, when the ideological climate favoured market economics, considerable privatization was initiated, government economic intervention was reduced, and the welfare state was restructured. State-owned companies such as DSM (Dutch State Mines) and KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) were among those privatized. Nonetheless, the Netherlands has, relatively speaking, a highly regulated mixed economy.

Since World War II, economic development has been consciously stimulated by government policy, and state subsidies have been granted to attract industry and services toward the relatively underdeveloped north and certain other pockets of economic stagnation. Despite these subsidies, the western part of the country remains the centre of new activity, especially in the service sector.

• Agriculture

The country’s agricultural land is divided into grassland, arable farmland, and horticultural land. Dutch dairy farming is highly developed; the milk yield per acre of grassland and the yield per cow are among the highest in the world. A good percentage of the total milk production is exported after being processed into such dairy products as butter, cheese, and condensed milk. Meat and eggs are produced in intensively farmed livestock holdings, where enormous numbers of pigs, calves, and poultry are kept in large sheds and fed mainly on imported fodder. Most cereals for human consumption as well as fodder are imported.

Horticulture carried on under glass is of special importance. The export of hothouse tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, cut flowers, and houseplants has greatly increased, and the Netherlands now contains a substantial share of the total European horticultural area under glass. Open-air horticulture also produces fruit, vegetables, cut flowers, and bulbs, the latter from the world-famous colourful bulb fields. Only one-tenth of the land is forested. The Dutch fishing industry, while not large, is nevertheless significant. At the beginning of the 21st century, three-fourths of the fish consumed in the Netherlands was foreign-caught, yet about four-fifths of the total catch was exported. As a result, the country is unusual in exporting more fish than it imports.

• Resources and power

With the increasing use of oil and especially natural gas, coal mining (concentrated in the southeast) was discontinued in 1974 because of the rising cost of production. The Netherlands imports several million tons of coal annually to meet domestic and industrial needs, including those of such industrial installations as the steel works of IJmuiden at the mouth of the North Sea Canal.

The production of crude oil, of which there are minimal deposits, covers only a small part of Dutch requirements. The wells are located near Schoonebeek, in the northeast, and in the southwest. Large amounts of crude oil are imported for refining in the Netherlands, and much of the refined petroleum is exported.

The discovery of natural gas in 1959 had a tremendous influence on the development of the Dutch economy. The gas fields are in the northeastern Netherlands—with the largest field at Slochteren—and beneath the Dutch sector of the North Sea. Under the Geneva Convention of 1958, the Netherlands was allocated a 22,000-square-mile (57,000-square-km) block of the continental shelf of the North Sea, an area larger than the country itself. Technological advances led to an increase in offshore production in the last decades of the 20th century. One-third of the natural gas produced is exported, primarily to countries of the European Union (EU), helping to improve the balance of payments in the economic sector—in which the Netherlands has usually had its largest deficit. The natural gas discoveries began a trend in Dutch industries toward greater use of domestically produced fuel.

One of the results of the reliance on gas is that nuclear power is very limited in the Netherlands. On the other hand, the flat maritime landscape is well suited to the use of wind turbines, which are increasingly employed in agricultural areas. Among the country’s other resources are zinc, extracted at Budel, sodium at Delfzijl, and magnesium at Veendam.

• Manufacturing

Modern Dutch industrial development began relatively late, about 1870, and production rose even during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Further development became a priority after World War II, when ascending population figures and growing farm-labour surpluses necessitated the creation of tens of thousands of jobs each year. Manufacturing industries accounted for about one-fifth of the labour force in the early 21st century but only about one-eighth of production value. Important components of the manufacturing sector include food and beverages, metal, chemical, petroleum products, and electrical and electronics industries. Textile manufacturing, shipbuilding, and aircraft construction were important historically, but employment in those sectors has greatly declined. The government has encouraged new industrial development in the fields of microelectronics, biotechnology, and the so-called digital economy.

• Finance, trade, and services

Commercial banking in the Netherlands is in the hands of a few large concerns, and there has been a trend toward mergers of banks and insurance companies over several decades. The state-owned Netherlands Central Bank supervises the banking system. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, one of the oldest in the world, was founded in the early 1600s.

Trade is conducted mainly with Europe and North America. The member states of the EU are the Netherlands’ dominant trading partners, receiving three-fourths of Dutch exports and providing one-half of the country’s imports. In 1958 (just as the Common Market was established) some 40 percent of Dutch exports went to West Germany (now Germany), Belgium, Luxembourg, France, and Italy. By the beginning of the 21st century, the main trading partners were Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the United States, Russia, and China. In the same period, the service industry accounted for about seven-tenths of the labour force and about two-thirds of gross domestic product (GDP), with tourism playing a vital role. The most frequent foreign visitors are Germans, Britons, Americans, and Belgians.

• Labour and taxation

Dutch employers are organized mainly in separate but closely cooperating organizations: one Roman Catholic and Protestant and one nondenominational. The labour force had a tripartite organization before the Socialist and Roman Catholic unions merged as Netherlands Trade Union Federation (Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging; FNV), leaving the Protestant union, the National Federation of Christian Trade Unions (Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond; CNV), and a few small independent organizations far behind in membership. Employer organizations and labour unions are represented on the Joint Industrial Labour Council, established in 1945 for collective bargaining, and on the Social and Economic Council, which serves mainly to advise the government. These corporatist arrangements were substantially deregulated in the 1980s as neoliberal, market-oriented policies were carried out. Socioeconomic planning remains extremely important, however, and the Central Planning Bureau’s economic models are integral to all forms of economic policy.

The Dutch government uses both direct and indirect taxation to finance its extensive welfare programs. In 1969 it began levying a value-added tax (VAT). In addition to a graduated personal income tax, there is also a property tax, a motor vehicle tax, an excise tax on certain products, an energy tax, and a tax on legal transactions.

• Transportation and telecommunications

In the Netherlands transportation is of special importance because the country functions as a gateway for the traffic of goods between western Europe and the rest of the world. (Amsterdam, for example, has been the centre of diamond exchange for centuries.) Trade flows through Dutch harbours, continuing its passage by riverboat, train, truck, and pipeline. Maritime traffic accounts for more than half the total amount of goods loaded and unloaded in the Netherlands, and, indeed, the whole southern part of the North Sea may be likened to an immense traffic square, fed by the Thames, Rhine, Maas, and Schelde rivers, with links into the hinterland of the continent that make it one of the greatest commercial arteries of the world. Rotterdam has the country’s best-equipped modern harbour, the largest on the continent. Europoort, the region between Rotterdam and the North Sea, can easily be reached by the biggest oceangoing ships; it serves as an approach via the New Waterway Canal to Rotterdam harbour. For some 40 years, until it was eclipsed by busier Asian ports in the early 21st century, Rotterdam handled more tonnage than any other harbour in the world. In petroleum processing too, Rotterdam is one of the world’s leading centres, with facilities to receive the largest supertankers. The number of rivercraft is probably unsurpassed by any other country.

Other important ports, though dwarfed by Rotterdam-Europoort, are Amsterdam and, on the Western Schelde, Flushing and Terneuzen. KLM initiated scheduled service between Amsterdam and London in 1920 and became one of the world’s leading airlines, merging with Air France in 2004 to form Air France-KLM. Amsterdam Airport (Schiphol)—on the site of the former Haarlem Lake at about 13 feet (4 metres) below sea level—is among Europe’s largest airports. Smaller airports of international importance are Rotterdam (Zestienhoven), Eindhoven, and Maastricht.

In terms of internal traffic, motor vehicles, accommodated by a comprehensive road network, dominate both passenger and goods transport, despite the fact that there is a dense modern railway network. Dutch road haulage companies are market leaders and constitute a large slice of such business in the EU. Moreover, Dutch shipping companies handle about two-fifths of the EU’s freight transport by water. The Netherlands’ network of inland waterways, made up of some 3,000 miles (4,800 km) of rivers and canals, is linked with Belgian, French, and German systems. Besides such natural waterways as the Rhine, Lek, Waal, and Maas rivers, many artificial waterways—the Juliana Canal, the Amsterdam-Rhine River Canal (between Amsterdam and Tiel), the Maas-Waal Canal (west of Nijmegen), and others—connect the major ports on the coast with the hinterland.

The telecommunications system in the Netherlands is highly advanced, with extensive fibre-optic and mobile networks. Per capita cell phone usage in the Netherlands is comparable to that of most western European countries (though considerably less pervasive than in Scandinavia); per capita personal computer use is high by western European standards.

Government and Politics of Netherlands

The Netherlands was a republic from 1581 to 1806 and a kingdom between 1806 and 1810 (it was part of France between 1810 and 1813). It then became a constitutional monarchy until 1815. It has been a parliamentary democracy since 1848. The head of state is the monarch (at present King Willem-Alexander). The monarch currently has a mainly ceremonial function but the constitution allows for the exertion of real power, should the responsible ministers subordinate themselves; an open conflict between them and the monarch—whose signature is needed for any law or warrant to come into effect—would lead to a constitutional crisis.

Since the nineteenth century, Dutch governments have consisted of coalitions with no single political party being large enough to get the majority vote. Formally, the monarch appoints the members of the government. In practice, once the results of parliamentary elections are known a coalition government is formed (in a process of negotiations that has taken up to seven months), after which the government formed in this way is officially appointed by the monarch. The head of the government is the prime minister (in Dutch Minister President or Premier, a primus inter pares) who is usually also the leader of the largest party in the coalition.

The parliament consists of two houses. The bicameral States General (Staten Generaal) consists of the first chamber or Eerste Kamer (75 seats; members indirectly elected by the country's 12 provincial councils for four-year terms) and the second chamber or Tweede Kamer (150 seats; members directly elected by popular vote to serve four-year terms).

Political scientists consider the Netherlands to be a classic example of a consociational state, traditionally explained since the early Middle Ages by the necessity for different social groups to cooperate in order to fight the sea. This system of reaching an agreement despite differences is called the Polder Model in Dutch. The Dutch have a 'friendly' reputation in other countries, to the point that bearers of a Dutch passport often have relatively little difficulty getting into other countries for visits or even for emigration purposes.

The Netherlands has seen a political upheaval in the early years of the twenty-first century, most clearly illustrated by the quick rise and fall of the right wing anti-immigration political party Lijst Pim Fortuyn. Pim Fortuyn, its founder, gained massive support with his populist views. Just before the election of 2002 he was murdered by an environmentalist activist, the first political murder in the country in about four hundred years. The elections, which sent the Netherlands into a period of political chaos, were concluded with Peter Balkenede becoming prime minister in July 2002.

Administrative divisions

The Netherlands is divided into twelve administrative regions, called provinces, each under a governor, who is called Commissaris van de Koningin (Commissioner of the Queen), except for the province Limburg, where the commissioner is called Gouverneur (governor), underlining the more "non-Dutch" mentality.

The country is also subdivided in water districts, governed by a water board (waterschap or hoogheemraadschap), each having authority in matters concerning water management. The creation of water boards actually pre-dates that of the nation itself, the first appearing in 1196. Dutch water boards are one of the oldest democratic entities in the world today.

History of Netherlands

The Rise of the Netherlands

One of the Low Countries, the Netherlands did not have a unified history until the late 15th cent. The region west of the Rhine formed part of the Roman province of Lower Germany and was inhabited by the Batavi; to the east of the Rhine were the Frisians. Nearly the entire area was taken (4th–8th cent.) by the Franks, and with the breakup of the Carolingian empire, most of it passed (9th cent.) to the east Frankish (i.e., German) kingdom and thus to the Holy Roman Empire.

The counts of Holland emerged as the most powerful medieval lords of the region, next to their southern neighbors, the dukes of Brabant and the counts of Flanders. In the 14th and 15th cent., Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, Gelderland, and Brabant passed to the powerful dukes of Burgundy, who controlled virtually all the Low Countries. Though the Dutch towns and ports were slower in economic development than the flourishing commercial and industrial centers of Flanders and Brabant, they began to rival them in the 15th cent. They nearly all belonged to the Hanseatic League and enjoyed vast autonomous privileges.

In 1477, Mary of Burgundy by the Great Privilege restored all the liberties deprived by her predecessors. Her marriage to the Archduke Maximilian (later Emperor Maximilian I) brought the Low Countries into the house of Hapsburg. Emperor Charles V gave them (1555) to his son Philip II of Spain. By that time the northern provinces (i.e., the present Netherlands) had reached economic prosperity.

• Revolt in the Netherlands

The inroads of Calvinism were helping to distinguish the Low Countries from Catholic Spain; the nobles, supported by many of the people for economic and religious reasons, demanded greater autonomy for the provinces in addition to the removal of Spanish officials. Philip's attempt, first through Cardinal Granvelle and then through the duke of Alba, to introduce the Spanish Inquisition and reduce the Low Countries to a Spanish province met determined opposition from among all classes of the population—Catholics and Protestants alike.

The struggle for the Low Countries' independence began (1562–66) in Flanders and Brabant. The northern provinces, under the leadership of William the Silent, prince of Orange, succeeded (1572–74) in expelling the Spanish garrisons. The Low Countries united under William in their struggle against Spain in the Pacification of Ghent (1576).

Alessandro Farnese, who in 1578 succeeded John of Austria as Spanish governor, reconquered the southern provinces, which remained in Spanish possession (see Netherlands, Austrian and Spanish) and were gradually reconverted to Catholicism. The river barriers were crucial in protecting the rebellion and the Protestant religion of the north. The seven northern provinces—Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijssel, Friesland, and Groningen—formed (1579) the Union of Utrecht and declared (1581) their independence.

William the Silent, assassinated in 1584, was succeeded as stadtholder (chief of state) by his son, Maurice of Nassau, who was at first guided by Johan van Oldenbarneveldt. An English expedition under Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, to aid the Dutch against Farnese was ineffectual; later Maurice won important successes, and in 1609 a 12-year truce was concluded with Spinola, the Spanish commander.

• The United Provinces

Fighting with Spain was resumed in the Thirty Years War (1618–48), after which the independence of the United Provinces—as the independent Netherlands was then called—was recognized in the Peace of Westphalia (1648). Spain also ceded North Brabant, with Breda, and part of Limburg, with Maastricht. Still struggling for independence and involved in religious contention between Calvinists and Remonstrants, the Dutch laid the foundation of their commercial and colonial empire.

The Dutch East India Company (see East India Company, Dutch) was founded in 1602, the Dutch West India Company in 1621. The decline of Antwerp under Spanish rule and the right (awarded to the Dutch in the Peace of Westphalia) to control the Scheldt estuary gave supremacy to the Dutch ports, particularly Amsterdam. Dutch merchants traded in every continent (including exclusive privileges in Japan), and captured the major share of the world's carrying trade. The United Provinces opened their doors to religious refugees, notably to Portuguese and Spanish Jews and to French Huguenots, which contributed vastly to the prosperity of 17th-century Holland.

With material wealth came a cultural golden age. Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jacob van Ruisdael, Frans Hals, and others carried Dutch art to its peak. The Univ. of Leiden won world acclaim; the philosophers Descartes and Spinoza and the jurist Grotius were active in the United Provinces.

Prince Frederick Henry, who had succeeded his brother Maurice in 1625 as stadtholder, was in turn succeeded by his son, Prince William II, in 1647. His death in 1650 signaled the opponents of the house of Orange to reassert the rights of the provinces and the States-General. Jan de Witt, the political leader of the estates of Holland, was chosen (1652) grand pensionary and led the Dutch republic for the next 20 years. To prevent Prince William III of Orange (son of William II) from regaining the authority of his father, de Witt by the Eternal Edict (1667) abolished the office of stadtholder in Holland and secured the virtual exclusion of the house of Orange from state affairs.

• A Succession of Wars

De Witt's administration was largely encompassed by the Dutch Wars with England (1652–54, 1664–67), arising out of the first of the English Navigation Acts (1651) and the Dutch-English commercial rivalry. The Treaty of Breda (1667) was advantageous to the Netherlands; it gained trade privileges and had its possession of Suriname recognized. The Netherlands reached the peak of political power when, by forming (1668) the Triple Alliance with Sweden and England, it forced Louis XIV of France to halt the War of Devolution against Spain.

Louis XIV took revenge by starting (1672) the third of the Dutch Wars, in which the French overran the Netherlands. In defense, the Dutch opened their dikes and flooded the country, creating a watery barrier that was virtually impenetrable. De Witt sought to negotiate peace but was murdered (1672) by a mob of Orange followers. The stadtholderate was restored to William III (after 1689 also king of England). The war devastated the provinces, but in the Treaty of Nijmegen (1678–79) the Dutch obtained important concessions from France.

The Netherlands again fought Louis XIV in the War of the Grand Alliance (1688–97) and in the War of the Spanish Succession. On the death (1702) of William III the stadtholderate was again suspended and the States-General resumed control of the government, but in 1747 the republican party lost power, and William IV of Orange became hereditary stadtholder. In the 18th cent. the relative commercial, military, and cultural positions of the United Provinces in Europe declined as those of England and France ascended. The Netherlands sided against England in the American Revolution and as a result lost several colonies at the Treaty of Paris of 1783 (see Paris, Treaty of).

A patriotic movement by J. D. van der Capellen (1741–84) began to popularize the ideas of the Enlightenment; when in the French Revolutionary Wars the French overran (1794–95) the Netherlands, there was much popular approval. William V fled abroad, and the Batavian Republic was set up (1795) under French protection. In 1806, Napoleon I established the Kingdom of Holland and made his brother Louis Bonaparte (see under Bonaparte, family) its first king. Bonaparte was deposed in 1810, and the kingdom was annexed by France, whereby French legal, financial, and educational reforms pervaded the Netherlands.

• The Kingdom of the Netherlands

At the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) the former United Provinces and the former Austrian Netherlands were united under King William I, son of William V of Orange. In 1830, however, the former Austrian provinces (Belgium), whose language, religion, and culture differed from those of the Dutch, rebelled against Dutch rule and declared independence. An agreement between Belgium and the Netherlands was reached only in 1839 (see London Conference). William I was forced to abdicate in 1840 and was succeeded by William II, under whom Jan Thorbecke introduced important constitutional reforms in 1848.

Under William III (1849–90) the Netherlands enjoyed a period of commercial expansion and internal development. The Industrial Revolution progressed rapidly after 1860. Trade unionism grew in the late 19th cent., and considerable national social-welfare legislation was passed. At the same time the country's cultural life flourished, led by the painter Vincent van Gogh, the writer Louis Couperus, and others.

In 1890, Queen Wilhelmina began her reign of almost 60 years. The Netherlands was neutral in World War I. In 1932, a 19-mi (31-km) dam was completed; it enclosed the Zuider Zee and thus created the IJsselmeer, a large freshwater lake. A number of large polders, including the Northeast Polder and Eastern and Southern Flevoland, were later reclaimed from the IJsselmeer.

In World War II, Germany invaded (May, 1940) the Netherlands without warning, crushed Dutch resistance, and wantonly destroyed Rotterdam. The queen and her government fled abroad. German occupation authorities, headed by Arthur Seyss-Inquart, established a reign of terror; underground resistance led to mass executions and deportations. Of the approximately 112,000 Dutch Jews, about 104,000 were deported to Poland by the Germans and exterminated. Allied airborne landings (1944) at Arnhem and Eindhoven liberated Zeeland, North Brabant, and Limburg provinces.

• The Postwar Years

The German collapse in May, 1945, was followed by the immediate return of the queen and the cabinet. The Netherlands became a charter member of the United Nations (1945) and in 1947 joined in a close alliance with Belgium and Luxembourg, which became (1958) the Benelux Economic Union. The country also participated actively in the development of the organizations that came to be the European Union, and in 1949 joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Queen Wilhelmina abdicated (1948) in favor of her daughter, Juliana, who continued to rule with a coalition cabinet dominated by the Catholic and Labor parties. In 1959 a new coalition excluding the Labor party was formed, and similar coalitions primarily held power into the 1970s.

The Netherlands gave Indonesia independence in 1949, and in 1962 relinquished Netherlands New Guinea (now Papua) to Indonesia. Despite the loss of the eastern empire and the catastrophic floodings in the North Sea storms of 1953, the Dutch economy expanded in the 1950s and 60s. Industry was enlarged significantly. After the 1953 floods, the 25-year Delta Project was begun. As a result of the project, Walcheren and North and South Beveland were joined to the mainland and ceased to be islands.

Considerable controversy surrounded the marriage (1966) of Crown Princess Beatrix to Claus von Amsberg, a former German diplomat who had served in the German army in World War II. In 1967, Princess Beatrix gave birth to a son, Willem-Alexander, the first male heir in line of succession since 1884.

In the early 1970s the Netherlands enjoyed material prosperity and considerable influence in European affairs. The country suffered, however, from a ban on the sale of petroleum imposed by Arab nations in the wake of the Arab-Israeli War of Oct., 1973, in retaliation for the Netherlands' traditional friendship with Israel. The embargo was lifted in mid-1974. Suriname was granted independence in 1975.

In 1980, Queen Juliana was succeeded by Queen Beatrix. In 1981, Prime Minister Van Agt's support for deploying U.S. cruise missiles on Dutch territory caused an intense public outcry. He was defeated in the 1982 elections, and Ruud Lubbers became the next prime minister, primarily through a coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals. The Netherlands population increasingly protested against the presence of foreign armaments on their soil, and in the late 1980s nearly 4 million Dutch citizens signed an antimissile petition.

Lubbers formed his third government in Nov., 1989. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War the Netherlands sent two marine frigates to aid the anti-Iraq coalition forces. In the 1994 elections the Christian Democrats and their coalition partner, the Labor party, lost seats. With some difficulty a new coalition government of left- and right-wing parties was formed and Labor party leader Wim Kok became prime minister. In early 1995 unusually heavy flooding along major rivers necessitated massive evacuations in the country.

Also in 1995, Dutch peacekeepers under UN auspices were overwhelmed by Serb forces in the Bosniak-held town of Srebrenica; the Serbs subsequently massacred Bosnia civilians. Several investigations were launched into the role played by the peacekeepers. An independent investigation that released its report in 2002 said that UN and Dutch political and military officials shared some of the blame for placing peacekeeping forces in an untenable position, and Prime Minister Kok's government resigned to accept responsibility.

In the subsequent election campaign (May, 2002), the right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn, who ran on an anti-immigrant platform, was assassinated, stunning the nation. Voters subsequently veered to the right, giving conservative and rightist parties a majority of the seats in the new parliament. A center-right government, headed by Christian Democrat Jan Peter Balkenende and including Fortuyn's party, was formed in July, but the coalition collapsed in October.

Elections in Jan., 2003, gave the Christian Democrats and Labor nearly the same number of seats (44 and 42, respectively) and resulted in significant losses for the Pim Fortuyn List (LPF). Balkenende remained prime minister, but the new center-right government excluded the LPF. Dutch voters strongly rejected a proposed new constitution for the European Union in 2005; voters appeared to resent a likely loss of Dutch influence under the new charter despite their country's sizable contributions to the EU.

Balkenende's government fell in June, 2006, when one of the member parties withdrew over a government minister's tough handling of a Somali-born Dutch politician's citizenship case. In November, the parliamentary elections resulted in some lost seats for the Christian Democrats as both far-right and far-left parties increased their seats. Although the Christian Democrats nonetheless remained the largest party, neither the governing coalition nor that aligned with Labor secured a majority in parliament. In Feb., 2007, Balkenende formed a new, centrist coalition government that included Labor.

Disagreement over whether to further extend the deployment of Dutch troops with NATO forces in Afghanistan led to the collapse of the government in Feb., 2010, and elections were scheduled for June. The elections were a major defeat for the Christian Democrats, who lost half their seats; the anti-Islamic and Eurosceptic Freedom party won more seats and placed third. The Liberals won, but secured only one more seat than Labor, and politically the new parliament was very fragmented. In October the Liberals and Christian Democrats agreed to form a minority conservative coalition government with the support of the Freedom party. Liberal Mark Rutte became prime minister. In Apr., 2012, the government collapsed after it could not get Freedom party support to pass an austerity budget; the budget ultimately was passed with the support of other parties. In the September elections, the Liberals and Labor won the largest blocs of seats, and subsequently formed a coalition government with Rutte as prime minister. Queen Beatrix abdicated in Mar., 2013; King Willem-Alexander succeeded her.

The Netherlands in 2004

Netherlands, The Area: 41,528 sq km (16,034 sq mi) Population (2004 est.): 16,275,000 Capital: Amsterdam; seat of government, The Hague Chief of state: Queen Beatrix Head of government: Prime ...>>>Read On<<<

Disclaimer

This is not the official site of this country. Most of the information in this site were taken from the U.S. Department of State, The Central Intelligence Agency, The United Nations, [1],[2], [3], [4], [5],[6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14],[15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24],[25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30],[31], [32], [33], [34], and the [35].

Other sources of information will be mentioned as they are posted.