The success of the Dutch Revolt: an interpretation inspired by Norbert Elias

ABSTRACTThis essay argues that the traditional historiography of the Dutch Revolt (1566–1609/1648) falls short in explaining its success, which became manifest by the 1590s. Whereas religious zeal, geographical conditions, and tax protests play an undeniable role in understanding the outbreak and persistence of the rebellion, the tenacity of the northern provinces of the Netherlands should be understood at least in part as a response to a degree of violence on the part of the Spanish-Habsburg authorities that offended early modern sensibilities of this urbanized region, thereby attesting to the continued relevance of various aspects of Norbert Elias’ civilizing process.KEYWORDS: Dutch RevoltNorbert Eliascivilizing process AcknowledgmentHerewith I would like to express my gratitude to the journal’s editor Adrian O’Connor and the two anonymous reviewers for their critique of an earlier version of this essay. Their remarks have made this into a much better piece.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.Notes1 A good discussion remains Herbert H. Rowen, “The Dutch Revolt: What Kind of Revolution?” Renaissance Quarterly 3 (1990): 570–90. Rowen ignores to some degree the role of geography, but he looks more at the causes of its outbreak than of its success.2 As a monistic explanation, the issue of religion was already suggested by the American historian John Motley (1814–1877); see John Motley, History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year’s Truce, vol. 4 (New York: Harper and Brothers, c. 1860). For convincing criticism of this thesis, see Judith Pollmann, Catholic Identity and the Revolt of the Netherlands (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Pollmann suggests that instead moderation supported by leading lay people against Catholic or Calvinist fanaticism may have been crucial to Catholicism’s revival and survival in the southern Netherlands; as I suggest here below, this worked as well in the north, with Protestant moderates setting the tone. Moderate members of the elite on both sides of the frontlines were appalled by the violence of the zealots.3 Geoffrey Parker, “Why Did the Dutch Revolt Last Eighty Years?” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 26 (1976): 53–72, 55–7. Parker realized that, on its own, this explanation was too limited. Parker’s discussion remains outstanding, but he says little about the protests regarding paying taxes to aid Philip’s centralizing efforts (although he does raise the point about opposing any diminution of local privileges; see ibid., 61–2).4 Parker, “Why Did the Dutch Revolt,” 58–9.5 H. van Nierop, “Similar Problems, Different Outcomes: The Revolt of the Netherlands and the Wars of Religion in France,” in C.A. Davids and Jan Lucassen, eds., Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Revolt in European Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 26–56: 51.6 Rowen, “Dutch Revolt,” 575, 588.7 Anton van der Lem, The Revolt in the Netherlands: The Eighty Years War, 1568–1648 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 82–3. See, too, Jan Craeybeckx, “Alva’s Tiende Penning een mythe?” Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 76 (1962): 20–42.8 Van der Lem, The Revolt, 40. Although the overwhelming cost of the war did become a factor in driving the Dutch desire for peace at the end of the Eighty Years’ War in the 1640s (see Parker, “Why Did the Dutch Revolt,” 68).9 Craeybeckx, “Alva’s Tiende Penning,” 38.10 In other provinces, though, the “Spanish Fury” was unleashed at times (most notoriously at Antwerp in 1576; the previous year, Oudewater in Utrecht province – on the borders with Holland – was sacked, with a great number of its inhabitants slaughtered).11 Indeed, many benefitted economically from the conflict. See Marjolein ’t Hart, The Dutch Wars of Independence: Warfare and Commerce in the Netherlands, 1570–1680 (London: Routledge, 2014), 82–4; Roger Manning, “Prince Maurice’s School of War: British Swordsmen and the Dutch,” War and Society 1 (2006): 1–19, 5–6; Pepijn Brandon, War, Capital and the Dutch State (1588–1795) (Leyden: Brill, 2015), 1–3.12 See for example Parker, “Why Did the Dutch Revolt,” 54.13 The tenacity of popular or folk religion can even today be recognized in the persistent popularity of originally Catholic celebrations among both Protestants and agnostics or atheists in the Netherlands, including St. Martin’s Day (November 11) and St. Nicholas’ Eve (December 5). For more on the topic of traditional religion and its resistance to the “confessionalization” that set in by the mid-sixteenth century, see Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009).14 An observation made as well by Keith Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2018), 93.15 Van Nierop, “Similar Problems,” 45, 51. Apart from Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, rev. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002 [1939]), see also Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility. “Spaniards” is a bit of a misnomer for a military force which consisted, besides Spanish officers and rank-and-file in the renowned tercios, of many mercenaries who hailed from other regions.16 Rowen, “Dutch Revolt,” 572.17 For example, see Elias, Civilizing Process, 47–52, 60–80, 130–48. See Johan Huizinga, Dutch Civilisation in the Seventeenth Century and Other Essays, ed. P. Geyl and J.W. Hugenholtz (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 49–50, 101. My thanks to one of the journal’s anonymous reviewers for this reference to Huizinga.18 See Elias, Civilizing Process, 49–182. For a counterpoint to Elias’ ideas, see Jeroen Duindam, Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995). For the complicated link between Erasmus’ humanism and the Low Countries, see James D. Tracy, Erasmus of the Low Countries (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1966).19 Explicitly, on Freud, Elias, Civilizing Process, 160, 410; on Marx, Elias, Civilizing Process, 458, 461, 466; and on Weber, Elias, Civilizing Process, xiii, 469, 472, 475, but Civilizing Process is replete with terms such as “super-ego,” “class,” or “monopoly of power.” The writings of these three thinkers are too numerous to list, of course. For the link between Elias and Freud, Marx, Weber, and others, see the essay collection Norbert Elias and Social Theory, ed. F. Dépelteau and T. Savoia Landini (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013). Elias’ dissertation supervisor in Frankfurt was the sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893–1947), who had studied with Georg Simmel (1858–1918) and Max Weber’s brother Alfred (1868–1958).20 Elias, Civilizing Process, 11, 333, 336, 340–4.21 Especially key was Desiderius Erasmus, De civilitate morum puerilium (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1532 [1530]).22 For an insightful recent overview of this process, see Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden, Pioneers of Capitalism: The Netherlands, 1000–1800 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023). On the significance of the Revolt within this development, see ibid., 58–117.23 Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility, xiv.24 Parker, “Why Did the Dutch Revolt,” 55.25 Indeed, Keith Thomas links the emergence of “civility” with the Italian “independent city-states” of the late Middle Ages, whose political autonomy and social organization resembled those of the Dutch towns. See Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility, 12.26 Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility, 12.27 Van Nierop, “Similar Problems,” 44.28 With town dwellers’ civility replacing noble courtesy, a process that began to take shape in sixteenth-century England as well (see Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility, 12). The standard Dutch equivalent for both terms are “beschaving” and “beleefdheid” respectively, but courtesy in this sense is better translated as “hoofs.” See Anna Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).29 Spierenburg, Violence, 21–2, 37, 53–4, 84–5.30 See as well his remarks regarding the judicial formalization of manslaughter cases (Ibid., 58).31 Elias, Civilizing Process, 117–19, 365–87. He calls this “interdependence.”32 For the persistence of such violence in a rural setting during a much later time period, see Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia, ed. David Ransel (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993).33 A superb overview remains P.C. Spierenburg, Judicial Violence in the Dutch Republic (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1978).34 The original German for these terms is, respectively, Fremdzwang and Selbstzwang (see Elias, Civilizing Process, 109, 133, 156–7, 3565–87, 415–21).35 Even when Spierenburg does not attach too much value to this anomaly, see Pieter Spierenburg, Violence and Punishment: Civilizing the Body Through Time (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013), 44–6, 55.36 Probably most cogently in S. Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Vienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1930), which was issued in English in the same year as Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1930).37 Weber lectured most lucidly on this monopoly of violence at the end of his life (see Max Weber, Politik als Beruf (Munich: Duncker and Humblot, 1919), 4). For Elias and the importance of the monopoly on violence, see for example Elias, Civilizing Process, 311–1238 See for a similar point regarding England, Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility, 76.39 See Peter J. Arnade, Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots: The Political Culture of the Dutch Revolt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 231–2; K.W. Swart, “The Black Legend during the Eighty Years War,” in J.S. Bromley and E.H. Kossmann, eds., Britain and the Netherlands vol. 5 (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1975), 36–57; Judith Pollmann, “Eine natürliche Feindschaft: Ursprung und Funktion der schwarzen Legende über Spanien in den Niederlanden, 1566–1581,” in Franz Bosbach, ed., Feindbilder: Die Darstellung des Gegners in der politischen Publizistik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (Cologne: Bohlau Verlag, 1992), 73–93. Las Casas was published in the northern Netherlands in 1596, but the Spanish original of his dispute with Sepúlveda in which he made his case on behalf of the Native Americans dated from 1552 and its contents were widely known, not least through its Latin version (see Bartolomé de las Casas, Spieghel der Spaenscher Tyrannie in West-Indien (Amsterdam: Cornelis Claesz., 1596); Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Aqui se contiene una disputa o controversia … (Sevilla: Sebastiano Trugilla, 1552); Bartolomé de las Casas, Principia queda[m] ex quibus procedendum est in disputatione ad manifestandam et defendendam iusticia Yndorum (Sevilla: Trugilla, c. 1552).40 See Rowen, “Dutch Revolt,” 574–5. On the odd parallel of the history of France and of the Low Countries after the 1559 Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, see Van Nierop, “Similar Problems,” 45–51.41 Rowen, “Dutch Revolt,” 573–4.42 Arnade, Beggars, 218. Still, as Arnade notes, only forty-nine Catholic priests were killed within the first quarter century of the Revolt, most of them in Holland in 1572 (Ibid.). This is not of the scale of St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. For other discussions of excessive rebel or Protestant violence, see H. van Nierop, Treason in the Northern Quarter: War, Terror and the Rule of Law in the Dutch Revolt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009); and Raymond Fagel and Judith Pollmann, 1572. Burgeroorlog in de Nederlanden (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2022).43 D.V. Coornhert, Vande Ware Kercke of Ghemeynte Gods, Oprechte Godsdients, ende Uyterlyke Kerck-Oeffening, verscheyden Leeraren Schryven (Gouda: Jaspar Tournau, 1590). My translation from the original Dutch.44 See Elias, Civilizing Process, 370–5.45 Van Nierop, “Similar Problems,” 38–44.46 Ibid., 45.47 And such unruly violence reemerged in the Fronde, becoming the trigger for Louis XIV’s strategy to bridle once and for all such inclinations (see Elias, Civilizing Process, 340–4).48 Van Nierop, “Similar Problems,” 50–1. See for this point, Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility, 24.49 William Speck, “Britain and the Dutch Republic,” in C.A. Davids and Jan Lucassen, eds., Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Revolt in European Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 173–95, 175.50 Apart from Elias, Civilizing Process, 340–4, see N. Elias, The Court Society (New York: Pantheon, 1983).51 Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility, 63.52 Van Nierop, “Similar Problems,” 43.53 On the deft use of print matter and other means of propaganda on behalf of William of Orange, the leader of the Dutch resistance, see René van Stipriaan, De Zwijger: Het leven van Willem van Oranje (Amsterdam: Querido, 2021).54 Spierenburg, Violence, 129–50.55 See Pieter C. Spierenburg, “State Formation and Criminal Justice in Early Modern Europe: How Exceptional was the Dutch Model?” in R. Lévy and X. Rousseaux, eds., Le Pénal dans tous ses états: Justice, états et sociétés en Europe (xii-xix siècles) (Brussels: Presses de l’Université St. Louis, 1997), 18, 29, available at: https://books.openedition.org/pusl/19080, accessed 5 February 2023; and Spierenburg, Violence, 84.56 Spierenburg, Violence, 76.57 Spierenburg, Violence, 55; Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility, 97, 99.58 See as well Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility, 120, 178–9. As Thomas suggests, the concept of civility became in fact part of a justification of European overseas colonization (Thomas, In Pursuit of Civility, 163).59 Among those declining the honor was the wealthy arms trader Louis Trip (see Hans Bontemantel, De Regeeringe van Amsterdam, soo in’t civiel als in het crimineel en militaire [1653–1672], ed. G.W. Kernkamp (Den Haag: Nijhoff, 1897), 208).60 See “Elsje Christiaens Hanging on a Gibbet,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/343628, accessed 4 February 2023.61 She was garroted on the Dam square in the city center, but her body was displayed at the Volewijck. See Els Kloek, “Christiaens, Elsje (ca.1646–1664),” Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon, available at: https://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/christiaens, accessed 4 February 2023.62 The source has been archived on the Internet and is available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20110605212511/http://www.amsterdam.nl/?ActItmIdt=8986&ActLbl=galgenveld, accessed 4 February 2023. See also Spierenburg, “State Formation and Criminal Justice,” 23.Additional informationNotes on contributorsKees BoterbloemKees Boterbloem is Professor of History at the University of South Florida. He is the author of more than a dozen books.