Holland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about a region in the Netherlands, not the country itself. For the country of the
Netherlands as a whole, see Netherlands. For other uses of the word Holland, see Holland
(disambiguation).
Holland

North and South Holland (in orange) shown together within the
Netherlands
Country Netherlands
Largest settlements List[show]
Area
Total 5,488 km
2
(2,119 sq mi)
Population (October 2013)
[1]

Total 6,314,483
Density 1,200/km
2
(3,000/sq mi)
Demonym Hollander
Time zone CET (UTC+1)
Summer (DST) CEST (UTC+2)
Holland is a region and former province located on the western coast of the Netherlands. The
name Holland is also frequently used as a pars pro toto to refer to the whole of the country of the
Netherlands. This usage is generally accepted, but some individuals, particularly from the other
parts of the Netherlands, dislike the use of "Holland" as a substitute for "the Netherlands".
[2]

From the 10th to the 16th century, Holland proper was a unified political region within the Holy
Roman Empire as a county ruled by the Counts of Holland. By the 17th century, Holland had
risen to become a maritime and economic power, dominating the other provinces of the newly
independent Dutch Republic.
Today, the former County of Holland roughly consists of the two Dutch provinces of North
Holland and South Holland, which together include the Netherlands' three largest cities: the
capital city of Amsterdam; the seat of government of The Hague; and Rotterdam, home of
Europe's largest port.
Contents
1 Etymology and terminology
2 History
o 2.1 County of Holland
o 2.2 Dutch Republic
o 2.3 Under French rule
o 2.4 Kingdom of the Netherlands
3 Geography
o 3.1 Reclamation of the land
4 Culture
o 4.1 Language
5 New Holland
6 References
7 External links
Etymology and terminology
The name Holland first appeared in sources in 866 for the region around Haarlem, and by 1064
was being used as the name of the entire county. By this time, the inhabitants of Holland were
referring to themselves as "Hollanders".
[3]
Holland is derived from the Middle Dutch term
holtland ("wooded land").
[4]
This spelling variation remained in use until around the 14th
century, at which time the name stabilised as Holland (alternative spellings at the time were
Hollant and Hollandt). A popular folk etymology holds that Holland is derived from hol land
("hollow land") and was inspired by the low-lying geography of Holland.
[4]

The proper name of the area in both Dutch and English is "Holland". "Holland" is a part of the
Netherlands. "Holland" is informally used in English and other languages, including sometimes
the Dutch language itself, to mean the whole of the modern country of the Netherlands.
[2]
(This
example of pars pro toto or synecdoche is similar to the tendency to refer to the United Kingdom
as "England".).
[5][6]

The people of Holland are referred to as "Hollanders" in both Dutch and English. Today this
refers specifically to people from the current provinces of North Holland and South Holland.
Strictly speaking, the term "Hollanders" does not refer to people from the other provinces in the
Netherlands, but colloquially "Hollanders" is sometimes mistakenly used in this wider sense.
In Dutch, the Dutch word "Hollands" is the adjectival form for "Holland". The Dutch word
"Hollands" is also colloquially and occasionally used by some Dutch people in the sense of
"Nederlands" (Dutch), but then often with the intention of contrasting with other types of Dutch
people or language, for example Limburgish, the Belgian form of the Dutch language
("Flemish"), or even any southern variety of Dutch within the Netherlands itself.
However, in English there is no commonly used adjective for "Holland". "Dutch" refers to the
Netherlands as a whole, not just the region of Holland. "Hollands" is ordinarily expressed in
English in two ways:
a possessive construction (e.g. "Holland's economic power"); or
an "of Holland" or "from Holland" construction (e.g. "the Maid of Holland"; "a girl from
Holland").
The following usages apply in certain limited situations but do not ordinarily serve as the English
equivalent of the commonly used Dutch adjective "Hollands".
Occasionally, the noun "Holland" is used in apposition (e.g. "the Holland Society").
The adjective "Hollandic" is occasionally used by some historians and other academic
writers as an adjective for Holland. Historians who use the word tend to reserve it to pre-
Napoleonic Holland. Hollandic is also the name linguists give to the dialect spoken in
Holland.
The adjective "Hollandish" is a word in English but is no longer in use.
History
Each of the provinces in the Netherlands has a history that deserves full attention on its own.
However, to a certain extent at least, the history of Holland is the history of the Netherlands, and
vice versa. See the article on "History of the Netherlands" for a more detailed history. The article
here focuses on those points that are specific to Holland itself or that highlight the nature of the
role played by Holland in the Netherlands as a whole.
County of Holland
Further information: County of Holland


Coat of arms of the County of Holland.
Until the 9th century, the inhabitants of the area that became Holland were Frisians. The area
was part of Frisia. At the end of the 9th century, Holland became a separate county in the Holy
Roman Empire. The first Count of Holland known about with certainty was Dirk I, who ruled
from 896 to 931. He was succeeded by a long line of counts in the House of Holland (who were
in fact known as counts of Frisia until 1101). When John I, count of Holland, died childless in
1299, the county was inherited by John II of Avesnes, count of Hainaut. By the time of William
V (House of Wittelsbach; 13541388) the count of Holland was also the count of Hainaut and
Zealand.
At the time part of Frisia, West Friesland, was conquered (as a result, most provincial
institutions, including the States of Holland and West Frisia, would for centuries refer to
"Holland and West Frisia" as a unit). The Hook and Cod wars started around this time and ended
when the countess of Holland, Jacoba or Jacqueline was forced to give up Holland to the
Burgundian Philip III, known as Philip the Good, in 1432.
In 1432, Holland became part of the Burgundian Netherlands and since 1477 of the Habsburg
Seventeen Provinces. In the 16th century the county became the most densely urbanised region
in Europe, with the majority of the population living in cities. Within the Burgundian
Netherlands, Holland was the dominant province in the north; the political influence of Holland
largely determined the extent of Burgundian dominion in that area. The last count of Holland
was Philip III, better known as Philip II king of Spain. He was deposed in 1581 by the so-called
Act of Abjuration, although the kings of Spain continued to carry the titular appellation of Count
of Holland until the Peace of Mnster signed in 1648.
Dutch Republic


A map of Holland from 1682.
In the Dutch Rebellion against the Habsburgs during the Eighty Years' War, the naval forces of
the rebels, the Watergeuzen, established their first permanent base in 1572 in the town of Brill.
In this way, Holland, now a sovereign state in a larger Dutch confederation, became the centre of
the rebellion. It became the cultural, political and economic centre of the United Provinces, in the
17th century, the Dutch Golden Age, the wealthiest nation in the world. After the King of Spain
was deposed as the count of Holland, the executive and legislative power rested with the States
of Holland, which was led by a political figure who held the office of Grand Pensionary.
The largest cities in the Dutch Republic were in the province of Holland, such as Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, Leiden, Alkmaar, The Hague, Delft, Dordrecht and Haarlem. From the great ports of
Holland, Hollandic merchants sailed to and from destinations all over Europe, and merchants
from all over Europe gathered to trade in the warehouses of Amsterdam and other trading cities
of Holland.
Many Europeans thought of the United Provinces first as Holland rather than as the Republic of
the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands. A strong impression of Holland was planted in
the minds of other Europeans, which then was projected back onto the Republic as a whole.
Within the provinces themselves, a gradual slow process of cultural expansion took place,
leading to a "Hollandification" of the other provinces and a more uniform culture for the whole
of the Republic. The dialect of urban Holland became the standard language.
Under French rule
Further information: Kingdom of Holland
The formation of the Batavian Republic, inspired by the French revolution, led to a more
centralised government. Holland became a province of a unitary state. Its independence was
further reduced by an administrative reform in 1798, in which its territory was divided into
several departments called Amstel, Delf, Texel, and part of Schelde en Maas.
From 1806 to 1810 Napoleon styled his vassal state, governed by his brother Louis Napoleon
and shortly by the son of Louis, Napoleon Louis Bonaparte, as the "Kingdom of Holland". This
kingdom encompassed much of what would become the modern Netherlands. The name reflects
how natural at the time it had become to equate Holland with the non-Belgian Netherlands as a
whole.
[7]

During the period the Low Countries were annexed by the French Empire and actually
incorporated into France (from 1810 to 1813), Holland was divided into the dpartements
Zuyderze and Bouches-de-la-Meuse.
Kingdom of the Netherlands
After 1813, Holland was restored as a province of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Holland was divided into the present provinces North Holland and South Holland in 1840, after
the Belgian Revolution of 1830. This reflected a historical division of Holland along the IJ into a
Southern Quarter (Zuiderkwartier) and a Northern Quarter (Noorderkwartier),
[citation needed]
but the
actual division is different from the old division. From 1850, a strong process of nation
formation took place, the Netherlands being culturally unified and economically integrated by a
modernisation process, with the cities of Holland as its centre.
[8]

Geography
Further information: Geography of the Netherlands


North Holland


South Holland
Holland is situated in the west of the Netherlands. A maritime region, Holland lies on the North
Sea at the mouths of the Rhine and the Meuse (Maas). It has numerous rivers and lakes and an
extensive inland canal and waterway system. To the south is Zealand. The region is bordered on
the east by the IJsselmeer and four different provinces of the Netherlands.
Holland is protected from the sea by a long line of coastal dunes. Most of the land area behind
the dunes consists of polder landscape lying well below sea level. At present the lowest point in
Holland is a polder near Rotterdam, which is about seven meters below sea level. Continuous
drainage is necessary to keep Holland from flooding. In earlier centuries windmills were used for
this task. The landscape was (and in places still is) dotted with windmills, which have become a
symbol of Holland.
Holland is 7,494 square kilometres (land and water included), making it roughly 13% of the area
of the Netherlands. Looking at land alone, it is 5,488 square kilometres in size. The combined
population is 6.1 million.
The main cities in Holland are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. Amsterdam is formally
the capital of the Netherlands and its largest city. The Port of Rotterdam is Europe's largest and
most important harbour and port. The Hague is the seat of government of the Netherlands. These
cities, combined with Utrecht and other smaller municipalities, effectively form a single citya
conurbation called Randstad.
The Randstad area is one of the most densely populated regions of Europe, but still relatively
free of urban sprawl. There are strict zoning laws. Population pressures are enormous, property
values are high, and new housing is constantly under development on the edges of the built-up
areas. Surprisingly, much of the province still has a rural character. The remaining agricultural
land and natural areas are highly valued and protected. Most of the arable land is used for
intensive agriculture, including horticulture and greenhouse agri-businesses.
Reclamation of the land


Benthuizen polder, as seen from a dike.
The land that is now Holland had never been stable. Over the millennia the geography of the
region had been dynamic. The western coastline shifted up to thirty kilometres to the east and
storm surges regularly broke through the row of coastal dunes. The Frisian Isles, originally
joined to the mainland, became detached islands in the north. The main rivers, the Rhine and the
Meuse (Maas), flooded regularly and changed course repeatedly and dramatically.
The people of Holland found themselves living in an unstable, watery environment. Behind the
dunes on the coast of the Netherlands a high peat plateau had grown, forming a natural
protection against the sea. Much of the area was marsh and bog. By the tenth century the
inhabitants set about cultivating this land by draining it. However, the drainage resulted in
extreme soil shrinkage, lowering the surface of the land by up to fifteen metres.
To the south of Holland, in Zeeland, and to the north, in Frisia, this development led to
catastrophic storm floods literally washing away entire regions, as the peat layer disintegrated or
became detached and was carried away by the flood water. From the Frisian side the sea even
flooded the area to the east, gradually hollowing Holland out from behind and forming the
Zuiderzee (the present IJsselmeer). This inland sea threatened to link up with the "drowned
lands" of Zealand in the south, reducing Holland to a series of narrow dune barrier islands in
front of a lagoon. Only drastic administrative intervention saved the county from utter
destruction. The counts and large monasteries took the lead in these efforts, building the first
heavy emergency dikes to bolster critical points. Later special autonomous administrative bodies
were formed, the waterschappen ("water control boards"), which had the legal power to enforce
their regulations and decisions on water management. As the centuries went by, they eventually
constructed an extensive dike system that covered the coastline and the polders, thus protecting
the land from further incursions by the sea.
However, the Hollanders did not stop there. Starting around the 16th century, they took the
offensive and began land reclamation projects, converting lakes, marshy areas and adjoining
mudflats into polders. This continued right into the 20th century. As a result, historical maps of
mediaeval and early modern Holland bear little resemblance to the maps of today.
This ongoing struggle to master the water played an important role in the development of
Holland as a maritime and economic power and in the development of the character of the people
of Holland.
Culture
Holland tends to be associated with a particular image. The stereotypical image of Holland is an
artificial amalgam of tulips, windmills, clogs, cheese and traditional dress (klederdracht). As is
the case with many stereotypes, this is far from the truth and reality of life in Holland. This can
at least in part be explained by the active exploitation of these stereotypes in promotions of
Holland and the Netherlands. In fact only in a few of the more traditional villages, such as
Volendam and locations in the Zaan area, are the different costumes with wooden shoes still
worn by some inhabitants.
The predominance of Holland in the Netherlands has resulted in regionalism on the part of the
other provinces. This is a reaction to the perceived threat that Holland poses to the identities and
local cultures of the other provinces. The other provinces have a strong, and often negative,
[9]

image of Holland and the Hollanders, to whom certain qualities are ascribed within a mental
geography, a conceptual mapping of spaces and their inhabitants.
[10]
On the other hand, some
Hollanders take Holland's cultural dominance for granted and treat the concepts of "Holland" and
the "Netherlands" as coincidental. Consequently, they see themselves not primarily as
"Hollanders", but simply as "Dutch" (Nederlanders).
[11]
This phenomenon has been called
"hollandocentrism".
[12]

Language
The predominant language spoken in Holland is Dutch. Hollanders sometimes refer to the Dutch
language as "Hollands",
[citation needed]
instead of the standard term Nederlands. Inhabitants of
Belgium and other provinces of the Netherlands refer to "Hollands" to indicate someone
speaking in a Hollandic dialect, or strong accent.
Standard Dutch was historically largely based on the dialect of the County of Holland,
incorporating many traits derived from the dialects of the previously more powerful Duchy of
Brabant and County of Flanders. Strong dialectal variation still exists throughout the Low
Countries. Today, Holland-proper is the region where the original dialects are least spoken, in
many areas having been completely replaced by standard Dutch, and the Randstad has the largest
influence on the developments of the standard languagewith the exception of the Dutch
spoken in Belgium.
[13]

Despite this correspondence between standard Dutch and the Dutch spoken in the Randstad,
there are local variations within Holland itself that differ from standard Dutch. The main cities
each have their own modern urban dialect, that can be considered a sociolect.
[14]
A small number
of people, especially in the area north of Amsterdam, still speak the original dialect of the
county, Hollandic. The Hollandic dialect is present in the north: Volendam and Marken and the
area around there, West Friesland and the Zaanstreek; and in a south-eastern fringe bordering on
the provinces of North Brabant and Utrecht. In the south on the island of Goeree-Overflakkee,
Zealandic is spoken.
New Holland
The province of Holland gave its name to a number of colonial settlements and discovered
regions that were called Nieuw Holland or New Holland. The most extensive of these was the
island continent presently known as Australia: New Holland was first applied to Australia in
1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman as a Latin Nova Hollandia, and remained in
international use for 190 years. On the same voyage he named New Zealand after the Dutch
province of Zeeland. In the Netherlands Nieuw Holland would remain the usual name of the
continent until the end of the 19th century; it is now no longer in use there, the Dutch name today
being Australi.
References
1. (Dutch) [1] Statline CBS: Bevolkingsontwikkeling per maand
2. "Holland or the Netherlands?". Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Retrieved 15
December 2012.
3. Antheun Janse, "Een zichzelf verdeeld rijk" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.),
2003, Geschiedenis van Holland, Volume 1, p. 73
4. Oxford English Dictionary, "Holland, n.1," etymology.
5. "The majority of English people still behave as if 'English' and 'British' are synonymous",
historian Norman Davies quoted in The English: Europe's lost tribe, BBC News Story,
January 14, 1999
6. George Mikes, How to be an Alien, "When people say England, they sometimes mean
Great Britain, sometimes the United Kingdom, sometimes the British Isles - but never
England."
7. Willem Frijhoff, "Hollands hegemonie" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), 2002,
Geschiedenis van Holland, Volume 2, p. 468
8. Hans Knippenberg and Ben de Pater, "Brandpunt van macht en modernisering" in Thimo
de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), 2003, Geschiedenis van Holland, Volume 3, p. 548
9. Rob van Ginkel, "Hollandse Tonelen" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.),
Geschiedenis van Holland, Volume 3, p. 688
10. Hans Knippenberg and Ben de Pater, "Brandpunt van macht en modernisering" in Thimo
de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), 2003, Geschiedenis van Holland, Volume 3, p. 556
11. Thimo de Nijs, "Hollandse identiteit in perspectief" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers
(eds.), 2003, Geschiedenis van Holland, Volume 3, p. 700
12. Rob van Ginkel, "Hollandse Tonelen" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), 2003,
Geschiedenis van Holland, Volume 3, p. 647
13. Sijs, Nicoline van der, 2006, De geschiedenis van het Nederlands in een notendop,
Amsterdam, Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, pp. 127128
14. Sijs, Nicoline van der, 2006, De geschiedenis van het Nederlands in een notendop,
Amsterdam, Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, pp. 123