Amsterdam – capital of the Netherlands; The Hague – seat of government

• Introduction
• A tale of two cities
• The Hague as a centre of government
• The Revolt against Spanish rule
• The Golden Age of Amsterdam
• French rule
• The new Kingdom of the Netherlands

Introduction

“Upon assuming the royal prerogative the King shall be sworn in and inaugurated as soon as possible in the capital city, Amsterdam, at a public and joint session of the two Houses of the States General”, says the Constitution of the Netherlands. Ever since the inauguration of King Willem II in 1840, this ceremony has been held in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk. Although Amsterdam is the capital, both the monarch’s residence and the seat of government lie elsewhere. The current head of state, Queen Beatrix, lives in The Hague, which is also where the government and States General (the Dutch parliament) are based. The Netherlands is one of a mere handful of countries with a split of this kind, together with Bolivia, where the capital is Sucre and the seat of government La Paz, and until recently Germany, whose government was until 1999 based in Bonn instead of in the capital, Berlin. To discover why the government of the Netherlands does not have its seat in the capital, we must make an excursion into the country’s history.

Amsterdam looms large in Dutch history. Its favourable geographical location helped the city become in many ways the heart of the Netherlands, and in the seventeenth century, the Dutch “Golden Age”, it was in effect the economic and cultural heart of the known world. Amsterdam was then and still is the country’s most influential city. Intellectually (with its two universities), culturally (with the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk Museum and the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh as well as the renowned Concertgebouw orchestra), and economically (with the stock exchange and De Nederlandsche Bank) Amsterdam plays its rightful role as the largest city in the Netherlands.

The history of The Hague was made by the successive leaders and administrators who took up residence there. The Hague was where monarchs, stadholders and counts lived and where the representatives of the cities and provinces met, just as the members of parliament do today. The town itself did not have a charter and counted for little either politically or in relation to Dutch society as a whole. It had no representation at provincial or national level. But this very lack of political influence made it the ideal seat of government. The Hague is still the heart of political power in the Netherlands. Over the years it has also acquired importance as an international political centre. Aside from the residence of the Queen, the government and the foreign embassies, it also boasts several international institutions, such as the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Justice, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the Yugoslavia Tribunal (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court. The Hague is therefore rightly known as the legal capital of the world.

A tale of two cities

Between 1230 and 1280, a castle was built where the Binnenhof now stands in The Hague. Though it started off as a small hunting lodge, it was extended under successive counts, including Floris V. In the fourteenth century a settlement known as ‘s-Gravenhage (abbreviated to “Den Haag”) grew up around the castle. Because of the court’s presence, the settlement soon became a prosperous village and a modest centre of industry (textiles and beer brewing).

Amsterdam grew up at the mouth of the river Amstel, likewise in the thirteenth century. It took its name from the dam with sluices (completed in 1275) that was erected to protect the surrounding area from the Zuyder Zee (now the IJsselmeer). Initially a small fishing village, Amsterdam rapidly evolved into a trading centre, a development fostered by Floris V’s decision in 1275 to give the people of Amsterdam toll-free access to all the rivers of Holland. Between 1300 and 1306 it was granted a charter. Its seaborne trade with Hamburg and the Baltic dates from the same time, a trade that gradually extended to other parts of Europe. In the fifteenth century Amsterdam became the largest mercantile city in the province of Holland.

“Holland” is often used as a synonym for the Netherlands. The Netherlands is divided into twelve provinces, and Holland in fact refers to two of its western provinces, North and South Holland, which were undivided until 1840. This region dominated the history of the Netherlands for centuries. The medieval county of Holland comprised the present provinces of North and South Holland as well as part of present-day North Brabant. Amsterdam and The Hague lie in North and South Holland respectively.

The Hague as a centre of government

In the fourteenth century, Holland developed a permanent administrative centre of its own. No longer would clerks and other administrative staff have to travel about with the count. Furthermore, Holland was united with the county of Hainault (in what is now Belgium) and the counts could not spend all their time in Holland. So the government and the dispensation of justice were both reorganised. The Binnenhof in The Hague presented itself as an excellent location for the new centre of government; centrally placed in the elongated county, the hunting lodge was a good site for the chancery. The foundations were thus laid for The Hague’s future as the seat of government.

Over the next few centuries, representative assemblies developed in the different parts of the Netherlands (which then meant most of what is now the Benelux region and part of northern France): these were the States, in which some or all of the three estates – nobles, clergy and towns – were represented. The Hague itself did not have a seat in the States of Holland, because it still lacked a charter. Amsterdam did, but it was not yet Holland’s principal town; this position was held by Dordrecht, as the town with the oldest charter. The duke of Burgundy, who by then ruled over most of the Netherlands, convened the representatives of all the States to deal with important matters, especially when he needed money. This assembly came to be known as the States General, which is still the official name of the Dutch parliament today. The States General first met in Bruges in 1464. At that time, the sovereign seldom resided in The Hague, where a stadholder (literally – “substitute”) acted on his behalf. Later rulers, such as the emperors Maximilian and Charles V and the latter’s son, Philip II of Spain, were preoccupied with European affairs, and had less time still to be in the Netherlands. As a result, the stadholders of the various provinces, nominally governed by a regent in Brussels, acquired increasing power. Since several of the provinces shared the same stadholder, they were governed from The Hague.

The Revolt against Spanish rule

In 1568 a revolt broke out in the Netherlands against Philip II, King of Spain and sovereign lord of the Netherlands, partly because Philip was using force to suppress the Calvinist faith to which a growing proportion of the Dutch population adhered, and partly because he wanted to exercise a more tightly knit, centralist rule, curbing the liberties enjoyed by the nobles and the towns. The revolt developed into the Eighty Years’ War with Spain (1568-1648), which also had many of the characteristics of a civil war. The rebel cause soon found a leader in Prince William of Orange, who had been stadholder of the provinces of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht. It was some time, however, before this revolt spread – first to Holland and Zeeland, and later to other parts of the Netherlands. Amsterdam, for instance, initially remained loyal to the king, not joining the rebels until 1578.

Having no walls to protect it, The Hague was conquered and retaken several times, causing great hardship for the population. In 1577 the Prince of Orange decided to re-establish the centre of government in The Hague. From 1585 onwards, the States General, the representatives of the insurgent provinces, met there on a permanent basis. The Hague owed its new status to the competition between rival towns. As The Hague was of little significance, given its lack of a charter, all the towns found it an acceptable choice as the seat of government; the point being that a village such as The Hague was not entitled to a seat in the States of Holland and so had no voice in the States General. The towns were therefore happy to let it become the centre of government, as there was no danger of all political power accumulating there. In this respect, the history of The Hague resembles that of capitals such as Washington DC, Ottawa and Canberra.

The Golden Age of Amsterdam

In 1585, Spanish troops captured Antwerp, the foremost trading centre of Western Europe. Many of its people moved north to Amsterdam, which underwent rapid growth and a boom in commerce. In due course Amsterdam superseded Antwerp altogether – which saw its outlet to the sea, the Western Scheldt, blocked by the forces of the Revolt.

Amsterdam hence became the leading trading city of Holland and of the Republic of the United Provinces, whose independence was finally confirmed by the Treaty of Münster (part of the Peace of Westphalia) in 1648. The Republic was first and foremost a trading nation and most of its seaborne trade became concentrated in the hands of Amsterdam as Dutch ships dominated the oceans. The Republic’s prosperity was largely based on Amsterdam’s trade with the Baltic, the Mediterranean and overseas territories, especially the colonies in the East Indies – present-day Indonesia. Numerous commercial and transshipment companies sprang up in Amsterdam, which became the distribution centre for the whole of Europe. Amsterdam entered what became known as its Golden Age, a century that saw it at the hub of world trade. In the train of this economic success came a flurry of cultural activity. Artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, who were to become world famous, made their finest paintings here, and architecture too soared to new heights, to which the city still bears witness. Partly because of Amsterdam’s reputation for tolerance – which evolved from the interests of trade – many foreigners too flocked there. Large numbers of Jews and Protestants took refuge in the Republic, having suffered persecution in their own country. Censorship too was laxer in the Netherlands, so that Amsterdam became a haven for writers, scholars, philosophers, scientists and artists. Descartes and Locke both took refuge in Amsterdam, having been unable to work and publish their writings in their own countries. The eighteenth century witnessed a relative decline in the goods trade, but Amsterdam remained the financial market of Europe and the economic and cultural centre of the Netherlands. It was not until the Napoleonic Wars brought seaborne trade to a standstill, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, that Amsterdam lost its leading position in world trade.

French rule

The Netherlands had been a republic since 1588. During the early years of French rule (1795-1813), it remained so; as the Batavian Republic, it was an ally of France. But in 1806 Napoleon proclaimed the Netherlands a kingdom, and designated his brother Louis Napoleon king of Holland. Napoleon wanted to make Amsterdam the capital of the new kingdom. In 1808, Louis Napoleon took up residence there, and the city on the Amstel became both capital and seat of government for the first and only time in its history. Louis initially planned to build a palace in Amsterdam, but the impoverished country could not pay for it, as the economy was in sharp decline, and the king’s revenue and his royal household involved enormous expense.

The Golden Age of Amsterdam and the Netherlands was now a thing of the past. Under pressure from the city’s authorities, the king therefore decided not to build the new royal residence, and instead had the town hall at Dam Square, built in the days of Amsterdam’s glory, turned into a palace. In 1806 The Hague was elevated to the status of “third city of the kingdom”, and finally acquired a charter. Only a few years later, in 1810, the Kingdom of Holland was annexed by France.

In 1813, when Napoleon was defeated, three prominent men from The Hague met to discuss how best to establish the country’s new government once the French had left the Netherlands. They assumed power, which meant that The Hague was again the country’s administrative centre. In 1813, Willem Frederik (the son of the last stadholder, Willem V), who had left the Republic in 1795, returned to the Netherlands as sovereign, the later King Willem I, and took up residence in The Hague.

The new Kingdom of the Netherlands

At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Netherlands and what is now Belgium were united by the great powers to form the Kingdom of the Netherlands under Willem I, who was hence the first king of the present kingdom. Amsterdam was designated the capital, while The Hague and Brussels were to be the royal residence and the seat of the king’s government in alternate years. In 1830 Belgium seceded from the Netherlands. From then on, the Dutch government and the king were permanently established in The Hague. Even now, however, Amsterdam remained the capital, where the king was inaugurated.

Since then, there have been only two periods in which The Hague was not the royal residence. Queen Wilhelmina (reigned 1890-1948) and her government moved to London during the German occupation of the Netherlands (1940-1945), returning to The Hague after the war. When Queen Juliana (reigned 1948-1980) ascended the throne, the court moved to Soestdijk Palace in Baarn, although Juliana maintained a second palace in The Hague, which remained the seat of government. Since 1980, when Queen Beatrix succeeded to the throne, the royal household has once again been based in The Hague.