The 18 e century was the century of the Enlightenment:new ideas about the freedom of the individual and the equality of all citizens arose. In the Netherlands, these ideals suddenly became very concrete when the Batavian Revolution broke out in 1795. In contrast to other countries, equality was a greater ideal than freedom in the Netherlands. Most political reforms of the late 18 e century were inspired by the ideal of equality.
The Netherlands is not known for its revolutionary past, but in 1795 it was hit. In this year the Batavian Revolution broke out, initiated by disaffected Dutch citizens. With the help of a French army, they drove out the incumbent rulers – the stadtholder and the regents – and established a new republic. During this Batavian Republic (1795-1806) a constitution (the Constitution of 1798) and a representative democracy were introduced in the Netherlands for the first time. With this, the Batavian Revolution laid the foundation for the development of modern Dutch politics.
The go-ahead for these political reforms was given on January 31, when the temporary administration of the province of Holland proclaimed a declaration of human and citizen rights. Within a few weeks the other regions followed with their own rights declarations, so that everywhere in the new republic it was determined that Dutch society was based on a number of natural and inalienable rights.
The most important right was stated in the first article:“All men are born with equal rights and these natural rights cannot be taken away from them”. This was the first practical implementation in the Netherlands of an idea that was developed during the 18 e century, the Age of Enlightenment, had become increasingly popular. This idea that people are equal and should be treated equally, according to many enlightened Europeans, contradicted the way early modern society was organized. After all, that was a class society in which people were not equal in legal and political terms, but in which rights and privileges depended on the group or family to which someone belonged.
The importance of equality
According to the revolutionaries, this situation had to come to an end. The various revolutions of that period, the American of 1776, the French of 1789 and the Batavian of 1795, all had declarations of rights in which human equality was the underlying ideal. This ideal permeated the parlance and political debates of the late 18 e century in the Netherlands. The principle of equality was enshrined not only in the declaration of 1795, but also in the various constitutions and constitutions from this period.
Around 1800, 'equality' was even a more important word than the concept that was considered most important before and after that time:'freedom'. The Dutch revolutionaries, however, believed that freedom could not exist without equality, and therefore placed the word in front of the Dutch version of the French slogan 'liberté, egalité, fraternité', i.e. equality, liberty, brotherhood. The primacy of equality was also expressed in the order of human rights listed in the second article of the Declaration of Rights:"equality, liberty, security, property and resistance to oppression".
Equality may have suddenly become the most important political ideal – and an ideal with far-reaching consequences – but what did this ideal mean in practice? What did 'being equal' mean, and to what extent did people want to organize politics on the basis of this (again) so influential ideal today? There was much disagreement about this among the revolutionaries who had to design a new political system after 1795, certainly with regard to the granting of political rights.
Equal in nature, also in law
That humans are equal by nature has been an idea that has been around since the late 17 e century has gained ground. This was due to the Enlightenment, the philosophical and cultural movement that placed the autonomous, critical individual on a pedestal. According to most Enlightenment philosophers, all humans were basically rational beings who could develop into autonomous individuals. According to these philosophers, if all people were essentially the same, they should be treated equally.
In addition, thinkers such as Spinoza, Locke, Hume, and Rousseau believed that individuals possessed certain natural rights. These belonged to them as free individuals, and made it possible for them to develop into enlightened citizens. Human equality with the associated equal rights played a major role in the international intellectual debate of the late 18 e century.
The theme was also raised in the Dutch Republic. A pamphlet by the Dutch revolutionary Pieter Paulus, The Treatise on the Question:In what sense can people be said to be alike? And what are the rights and duties that flow therefrom?, made a big impression in the Republic. The pamphlet was first published in 1793 and was an immediate success:it was reprinted several times in a short time.
Paulus, who became one of the authors of the Dutch Declaration of Rights in 1795, based his argument that all people are equal and have equal rights on the one hand on the international intellectual debate, but also argued for equality by referring to the Bible and a fundamental principle from the Christian teaching:“Do not to one another, what thou wilt not have done unto thee.”
When the revolution broke out in 1795, there was a broad consensus among reformists that human equality should be the basis for the new political system. Nor was there any discussion about the granting of a number of human rights to all inhabitants of the Netherlands. Security and possession of property had to be guaranteed for everyone, and everyone was free to do what he or she wanted as long as it did not violate the rights of another. Freedom of speech and the press was for all residents, as was the right to serve God in his or her own way.
In the Batavian Republic this freedom of religion was linked to a separation between church and state:all (Christian) beliefs were equal, so one church was not allowed to be favored over the other. Until 1795, the Reformed Church had possessed a number of privileges (for example, the pensions for its servants were paid from the state treasury), but this was ended on the basis of the principle of equality.
Which rights for whom?
Another consequence of religious freedom and the separation of church and state had to do with political rights. In the Republic of the Seven Provinces someone had to be from a Reformed family to be able to exercise a public function. After 1795, politics should therefore be opened up to adherents of every faith. This proved little problem for non-Reformed Protestants and for Catholics:they were given active and passive voting rights almost immediately after the revolution and were admitted to public office almost everywhere. Of the 126 members of the first Dutch parliament elected in 1796, the National Assembly, thirty-five were Catholics and thirteen were non-Reformed Protestants.
The limits of equality were tested more seriously when, in the course of 1796, a discussion arose about whether Jews too were completely equal to other citizens. The parliament had received complaints from Jewish citizens who reported that they were not allowed to vote in various places and were not allowed to participate in associations and public functions. They asked the Assembly to declare itself outright in favor of the civil rights of Jews.
In the debate that followed, opponents of this right argued that although Jews were human beings and as such equal to other Dutch people, Jews could not be seen as Dutch citizens. They had to be seen as aliens, as had been the official status of Jews in the old Republic, who were not only legally, but also culturally, not part of the 'Nederlandsche Natie'. Jews had their own customs, rules and customs and, so these politicians believed, formed a "nation within the nation." That is why they had no right to influence the administration of the Batavian Republic.
Proponents of Jewish citizenship brushed aside these arguments by stating that Dutch Jews had been residents of the Republic for a long time and therefore also Dutch citizens. To the extent that they had different views and customs, this was irrelevant for civil rights, because (religious) views simply were no ground for denying people their rights.
This explanation of the concept of equality proved sufficient:on September 2, 1796, the National Assembly declared that Jews were also entitled to all civil rights. Later that year, two Jews were elected as members of parliament in the parliamentary elections – the first in Europe. This certainly did not end the social deprivation of Jews and Catholics in the Netherlands, but the legal equality did enable the start of an emancipation process.
Voting rights only for independent citizens
However, the principle of equality was certainly not fully implemented, especially with regard to political rights, especially active and passive voting rights. The introduction of a representative democracy after 1795 was closely linked to the concept of equality. After all, if people were equal, they all had the right to help determine how they wanted to be governed and by whom. An impressive start has been made with this equality-based democratic ideal. After 1795, men over the age of twenty who did not receive state aid were entitled to vote. That was about forty percent of the adult population, a staggering figure compared to the period before 1795, when less than one percent of the population had direct influence over the composition of government. After the fall of the Batavian Republic it lasted well into the 19 e century before this percentage was reached again.
But forty percent was and is not a hundred percent:children, women and people who had to claim state aid had no voting rights. Although they were of course different groups, they were excluded from voting on the basis of the same argument. A majority of politicians believed that only independent citizens could participate in politics, because they should be able to make political choices independently of others. Children were under the authority of their parents, women under the authority of their husbands and the poor were dependent on church and state for their income, with which they were no longer independent, and therefore not 'equal' enough for the right to vote.
Not everyone agreed with this. For example, proponents of women's suffrage argued that women, given the equality of all people, deserved the right to vote just like men. Women, contrary to popular belief, had the same capacities as men, the same mental faculties, and thus the same right to decide who they wanted to be ruled by. The exclusion of the 'bettered', people who received benefits, also sparked debate. Radical revolutionaries such as the Leiden cloth manufacturer Pieter Vreede believed that the poor were no less dependent than people who did have a job and were thus also dependent, but then on, for example, their boss or their customers. In an equal society, everyone was dependent on everyone, and certain groups could not be excluded from the right to vote on the basis of this mutual dependence.
Despite these objections, socioeconomic inequality remained a criterion for perpetuating political inequality. This inequality did not decrease much during the Batavian Republic. Admittedly, a progressive tax system was introduced for the first time after 1800, and the Constitution of 1798 required the government to promote employment and supervise poor relief. But reducing economic differences had not been the main goal of the Batavian Revolution, although there were politicians who believed that legal and political equality could not exist without this form of equality. The main goal had been to ensure that Dutch citizens enjoyed the same social rights and obligations on the basis of their natural equality.
Equal, unless…
The ideal of equality was the driving force behind the political reforms of the Batavian Republic. It was the main argument for replacing an old political system defined by origin, class and privilege with one in which citizens were equal before the law and possessed certain natural rights. However, this did not mean that in practice everyone was given the same amount of rights. Certainly political rights were not granted to all citizens.
Despite the fact that the equality ideal partly failed in political practice, it was a rupture in Dutch (political) history for two reasons:firstly because of the introduction of the principle of equal rights for citizens, and secondly because the reversal of the applicable standard. Before 1795, inequality had been the norm. However, the Declaration of Rights and the Constitution made natural equality the absolute and self-evident norm for the first time, even if it was regularly deviated from. At that moment, people had to answer for the view that people are unequal instead of the other way around.