Seventeen Provinces
Originally the term
Netherlands referred to a much larger entity than the current Kingdom of the
Netherlands.
Charles V of
Habsburg was the lord of
seventeen provinces roughly covering the current Netherlands,
Belgium,
Luxembourg and a good part of the North of
France (
Artois). Most of these were fiefs under the
Holy Roman Empire, of which Charles became Emperor himself. Two, Flanders and Artois, were French fiefs. The French king and the Holy Roman Emperor agreed to release all seventeen from the largely nominal and by then anachronistic ties to both realms. This was called the
Pragmatic Sanction of 1548. Seven northern provinces claimed their independence in
1581 as a republic called the
United Provinces:
Three others were divided between north and south (which later became Belgium):
Of the remaining territories:\n*Luxembourg remained part of the south but half of it became an independent entity after the
Napoleonic wars\n*
Hainaut,
Namur and
Mechelen remained part of the south\n*Artois,
Tournai and
Douai became French later.
In addition, there were a number of fiefdoms in this region that were not part of the Netherlands, the largest one is
Liege. In the north, there were also a few smaller entities like the island of
Ameland, that would retain their own lords until the
French revolution.
In the days of Charles V, there is no doubt that the economic, political and cultural center was the south, although Holland was gradually gaining importance in the 15th and 16th centuries. In fact, the south was one of the leading economic regions of Europe at the time.
However after the
independence of the seven
northern provinces and the resulting closure of the
Scheldt river to navigation, a large number of people from the southern provinces emigrated north to the new republic. The center of prosperity moved from cities in the south such as
Bruges,
Antwerp,
Ghent, and
Brussels to cities in the north including
Amsterdam,
the Hague, and
Rotterdam.
To distinguish between the older, larger Netherlands from the current country, Dutch speakers usually drop the plural for the latter. They speak of
Nederland for the current country and
de Nederlanden for the domains of Charles V. In other languages, this has not been adopted, though the larger area is sometimes in English as
the Low Countries.
The fact that the same term
Netherlands has such different historical meanings can sometimes lead to difficulties in expressing oneself correctly. For example, composers from the 16th century are often said to belong to the
Nederlandse School. Although they themselves would not have objected to that term, today it may wrongly create the impression that they were from the north. In fact, they were almost exclusively from the south.
After Charles' V abdication in
1556, his realms became divided between his son,
Philip II and his brother,
Ferdinand I. The part of the Netherlands under his control went to his son, the king of Spain. Hence, it became known as the
Spanish Netherlands. Under the
Treaty of Utrecht (
1713), after Spain's defeat in the
War of the Spanish Succession, this was ceded to the Holy Roman Empire and thus became known as the
Austrian Netherlands, which rebelled against Austria in
1788.
External link
\n* Map of the Seventeen Provinces
Category:Benelux countries
