E.M. Rummage’s excellent podcast The Age of Napoleon includes an introductory series of episodes where the status of the countries surrounding France is explained. Bonaparte is soon to inflict massive transformation on sclerotic and even ancient power structures all over Europe. But even dynamic countries like the Netherlands will soon feel the continent-bestriding power of the “Little Corporal.”
At the start of the Napoleonic Era, Rummage explains, the Netherlands was developed, liberal, and had devolved power to local officials. It had thrown off the yoke of a foreign power (Spain, in the Eighty Years’ War) that had taxed it without offering it much in return. The country was not immune to elitism, and perhaps a certain social conservatism, but it was making use of its diffuse human ingenuity far better than, say, the Austrian Habsburgs. The robust civil society of the Netherlands circa 1800 reminded me of the USA, or at least England.
The similarity of the Dutch experience to English-speaking countries makes appreciating the Netherlands harder from our vantage. They are like “Continental Britain,” or like a stew of the ingredients that would become New York City.
I raise this point about the accessible-but-obscure aspects of the region in commemoration of the one year anniversary of Fiat Benelux. After one year I’ve got a clearer idea of why I started this blog. It began with a hunch: that the Benelux countries are underexamined because so many of their qualities are prevalent in other places, and that this lack of uniqueness may be the secret sauce of the region. Bounded by great powers France, Germany and England, Benelux appears inessential, and that’s why this space is dedicated to correcting that misapprehension.
I’ve looked at political personages like Eurocrat Sicco Mansholt and Crown Princess Amalia, and the truths that they illustrate about their eras. Frans Hals’s gently critical military portraits show differing conceptions of homeland defense. Tintin’s trip to the moon tells us about the giddiness of the mid-century Belgians for cutting edge technology, a mood also reflected in the 1958 World’s Fair. I have identified emanations of Benelux in France and in Virginia and even in a movie starring Willie Nelson.
Most recently I discussed the region’s experiment with legalized euthanasia. Rather than a “hot take” or a strong, inflexible opinion for or against, I tried to sympathize with suffering people and react as honestly as I could to a policy shift. Belgium and the Netherlands have a form of social tolerance that is inspiring as well as frustrating, and the paradoxes inherent in state-supported suicide are a lot to chew on.
More adventures to come, my friends, if you’re generous enough to expand your definition of adventures to include reading and thinking about a soggy, bourgeois region and its overlooked qualities.