Several politicians shouted during the General Reflections that the Dutch identity is under attack. But what is that, the Dutch identity? According to Maxima, she doesn't even exist. NEMO Kennislink surveys historical literary scholar Lotte Jensen, who recently completed her research on this subject.
Research project 'Proud to be Dutch', that sounds quite wrong. Too nationalistic and since the Second World War we know where that can lead. So today we are hesitant to glorify the homeland, our shared past and the heroes, but in the past the opposite was the case. This national veneration only goes a lot further back in time than thought, just like still well-known Dutch stereotypes. This is apparent from the research into Dutch identity that Lotte Jensen (Radboud University) has done for this project.
To get straight to the point:according to your research, what is a real Dutch person? “That depends on the period:a real Dutchman in the Republic of the United Netherlands in 1648 is very different from that under King William I of Orange in 1815. Those ideal images are determined by the era. There are continuous images and a kind of collective identity can be distinguished from things that keep coming back. But the identity itself is permanently under discussion.”
What kind of images do you mean? “Images that you still see today, such as the lion, the Golden Age with prosperity, trade and art at the highest level, the commercial spirit, tolerance, hard work, the Protestant nation and of course the color orange as a binding element. These images appear to be found in sources as early as the sixteenth century, when the Dutch provinces revolted against their Spanish king. The centuries that followed were a time of permanent conflict with foreign enemies, with recognizable images creating unity among the people. In addition, the Netherlands was looking for its own identity to legitimize itself as a young state. To strengthen one's own identity, national heroes were revered and the enemy dismissed as inferior. Even if we had actually lost a war, such as after the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784). It was all victory rhetoric that struck the clock, without an ounce of perspective.”
In which images do the Dutch no longer recognize themselves? “That hero worship has disappeared and today we are a people of perspective. The Netherlands has remarkably few statues compared to other European countries. The tipping point occurs around 1870, when we begin to look critically at our colonial past. Sobriety and even aversion to hero worship prevail, especially after the Second World War with its National Socialism. Just act normal is the new credo and anyone who reverts too much to a heroic past, such as Balkenende and his VOC mentality, will immediately receive a whole load of criticism.”
What came out of your research? “For the project, we looked for the roots of the Dutch identity. When did that identity originate and what did it look like? The prevailing opinion is that Dutch citizenship arises in the nineteenth century, when political nationalism rises. But in order to understand why the Golden Age as the most important period in Dutch history was also reverted back then, we had to look beyond the nineteenth century.”
“This also applies to stereotypes such as the Dutch commercial spirit, the country full of fat cows and so on. Dutch qualities that we have been showing since the sixteenth century continue to have an impact, precisely because that image is so old. The Dutch collective identity therefore has deeper roots than we thought. This created unity but at the same time excluded people, such as, for example, people of other faiths. However, this exclusion mechanism leads to conflict. You saw this in the nineteenth century, when the nationalist states arose, and you can see it now in our society.”
What kind of sources have you studied? “To see what happened at that time, for context, I looked at newspapers and furthermore at literary sources from 1648 to 1815. An identity is formed by, among other things, the repetition of images and metaphors, and literature is a good source there. in front of. Writers copy each other and create an ideal world. I also studied pamphlets, which, because of their poetic form, also fall under literature. They were occasional writings, for example written during a war, which were quickly forgotten afterwards. Pamphlets were full of propaganda, opinion and news. The writers were not only elitist intellectuals but reflected a large part of society.”
“Certainly from the nineteenth century onwards, many ordinary citizens, including women, wrote pamphlets. It was the most effective means of persuasion of your opinion of the time, a real political barometer of the zeitgeist. The venom and satire that you now find on Twitter, you have already come across in pamphlets.”
“A good example of early literature in which we already recognize Dutch stereotypes is the play Leeuwendalers van Vondel, written on the occasion of the Peace of Munster in 1648. Leeuwendal stands for the Republic of the United Netherlands and Vondel described it as an ideal country with fat cows, peace, prosperity and trade.”
“When studying identity formation, scientists mainly looked at periods of war, when the people fought unitedly against the enemy. Looking at expressions about one's own identity during peacetime is new, but no less relevant. When the common enemy disappears, people look inward, looking for the internal balance and for things that bind all Dutch people together. And there are no easy answers to that, as you can see from the heated debates today.”
About the scientist
Lotte Jensen is a historical literary scholar at Radboud University. Her research into Dutch identity in literary texts was part of the research project Proud to be Dutch of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).
You can read more about this research in Lotte Jensen's recently published book, Celebrate Peace. The origin of the Dutch identity, 1648-1815 at Vantilt Publishers.