• flag of the Netherlands
• Is "Holland" the Same Place as "the Netherlands"?
• Today in History—June 3

  / The Dutch West India Company Receives a Charter
• Netherlands

  / People of Netherlands
• same-sex marriage

  / International
• Why are people from the Netherlands called Dutch?

• Origins of agriculture

  / The Netherlands

• caricature and cartoon

  / Individual satire
• Floral decoration

  / Materials
• Floral decoration

  / Forms of floral decoration
• garden and landscape design

  / 17th- and 18th-century French
• glassware

  / Venice and the façon de Venise
• glassware

  / Belgium and the Netherlands
• Interior design

  / Northern Europe
• medal

  / The Netherlands
• metalwork

  / Renaissance to modern
• metalwork

  / Belgium and Holland
• stoneware
• pottery

  / Stoneware
• pottery

  / The Netherlands
• Printmaking

  / The Netherlands and Burgundy
• Printmaking

  / The Netherlands
• Western theatre

  / Spread of national theatres
• theatre

  / Developments in northern Europe

• international trade

  / The Benelux Economic Union
• European Coal and Steel Community
• European Community
• whaling

  / Early commercial whaling

• Het Vrije Volk
• history of publishing

  / The Netherlands
• history of publishing

  / Continental Europe

• business organization

  / Limited-liability companies, or corporations
• Conflict of laws

  / Diversity of legal systems
• Criminal law

  / Common law and code law
• euthanasia

  / Historical perspectives
• Roman-Dutch law

  / Development of Roman-Dutch law in the Netherlands
• Legal education

  / School examinations
• Marriage law
• same-sex marriage

  / Religious and secular expectations of marriage and sexuality
• conscientious objector
• Thesavalamai

• Dress

  / Europe, 1500–1800
• gastronomy

  / The Pacific and Southeast Asia
• restaurant

  / Other European restaurants

• Benelux
• economic planning

  / Origins of planning
• euro-zone debt crisis

  / Prelude to the crisis
• incomes policy
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

• adult education

  / Adult-education agencies and institutions
• education

  / Indonesia

• archives
• international agreement
• police

  / Centralized police organizations
• prime minister

  / Variations in the role and power of the office
• Volksraad

• insurance

  / Life insurance
• insurance

  / Government regulation
• medicine

  / Other developed countries
• social security

  / Pension schemes

• North Atlantic Treaty Organization
• rocket and missile system

  / The 19th century
• Western European Union

• Netherlands

  / Land
• European Plain

  / Physiography
• The Hague
• Holocene Epoch

  / Continental shelf and coastal regions
• Rhine River

• biblical literature

  / Dutch versions
• Mennonite

  / Europe
• Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands
• Reformed and Presbyterian churches

  / Reformed churches in Germany
• Reformed and Presbyterian churches

  / Reformed churches in the Netherlands and Switzerland
• history of Europe

  / Christian mystics

• canals and inland waterways

  / Europe
• canals and inland waterways

  / Major inland waterways of Europe
• typography

  / The private-press movement
• tunnels and underground excavations

  / Shaft sinking and drilling
• energy conversion

  / Windmills

• Baseball

  / European baseball
• football

  / Professionalism
• golf

• railroad

  / Western Europe

General works

An extensive source of information on all aspects of the country is The Kingdom of the Netherlands, a collection of 17 short booklets published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and updated frequently. Further resources (mainly in English) may be found in Peter King and Michael Wintle (compilers), The Netherlands (1988), an annotated bibliography.

Geography

Ronald H. Kranenburg and H. Meijer, Compact Geography of the Netherlands, 5th rev. ed. (2001), is a brief survey of geographic conditions. Informative atlases include R. Tamsma, The Netherlands in Fifty Maps (1988); and Pieter Hendrik Pellenbarg, The Netherlands in Maps: An Annotated Atlas of 25 Maps (1994), and Atlas of the Netherlands, 2nd ed. (1984–97). Audrey M. Lambert, The Making of the Dutch Landscape, 2nd ed. (1985), provides a historical geography. William Z. Shetter, The Netherlands in Perspective, 2nd rev. ed. (1997), is a general survey. Immigration and ethnic matters are considered in Jan Lucassen and Rinus Penninx, Newcomers: Immigrants and Their Descendants in the Netherlands (1997; originally published in Dutch, 1994). Dutch economic geography and conditions are addressed by Marc de Smidt and Egbert Wever (eds.), A Profile of Dutch Economic Geography (1984); recent economic developments are well covered in J.L. van Zanden, The Economic History of the Netherlands 1914–1995 (1998).

History

Ivo Schöffer, A Short History of the Netherlands, 2nd rev. ed. (1973), remains perhaps the best single-authored one-volume history of the northern Netherlands; a more recent one-volume history is Paul Arblaster, A History of the Low Countries (2006); and a multiauthor history is J.C.H. Blom and E. Lamberts (eds.), History of the Low Countries, 2nd rev. ed. (2006).

Of the more specialized works, modern scholarship in English on the Dutch Republic is best represented by Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall (1995), and other works by that author; as well as by Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen (eds.), A Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Republic in European Perspective (1995). Femme S. Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company (2003), deals with Dutch colonial history in the period before 1800. J.L. Price, Culture and Society in the Dutch Republic During the Seventeenth Century (1974), has become a modern classic, and his Dutch Society, 1588–1713 (2000), is also informative. Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987), is a brilliant, innovative, controversial study. E.H. Kossmann, The Low Countries, 1780–1940 (1978), offers a penetrating comparison between the politics and culture of the Netherlands and of Belgium. The economic and social aspects of modern Dutch history are covered by J. De Vries and A. Van Der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy 1500–1815 (1995); M.J. Wintle, An Economic and Social History of the Netherlands 1800–1920 (2000); and J.L. Van Zanden, The Economic History of the Netherlands 1914–1995 (1998). M. Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Imperialism (1991), deals with colonial exploits since the mid-19th century. Arend Lijphart, The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands, 2nd ed., rev. (1975), is the classic study of Dutch “pillarization”; and R. Andeweg, Governance and Politics in the Netherlands (2005), provides an overview of politics in recent years.