Misplaced Pages

#447552

79-708: Fort Komenda was a British fort on the Gold Coast , currently preserved as a ruin. Because of its testimony to the Atlantic slave trade and European economic and colonial influence in West Africa, the fort was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979, along with several other castles and forts in Ghana . Fort Komenda was established between 1695 and 1698 at Komenda , in contemporary Ghana . The fort had

158-465: A 1970 inquiry, West Frisians identified themselves more with the Dutch than with East Frisians or North Frisians . A study in 1984 found that 39% of the inhabitants of Friesland considered themselves "primarily Frisian," although without precluding also being Dutch. A further 36 per cent claimed they were Dutch, but also Frisian, the remaining 25% saw themselves as only Dutch. A 2013 study showed that 45% of

237-413: A Dutch navy ship entered the harbour of Komenda , however, the local population resisted the transfer of the fort to the Dutch. Through the use of force, Dutch rule was eventually established. Between December 1869 and January 1870, a military expedition was sent to the local capital of Kwassie-Krom. A deadly battle ensued, but the Dutch managed to emerge as victors. It was a Pyrrhic victory , however, as

316-606: A Dutch surname is never capitalised (e.g. V an d en Berg ). The first affix in a Dutch surname is only capitalised if it is not preceded by a first name, initial or other surname. For example Vincent v an Gogh , V. v an Gogh, mr. V an Gogh, V an Gogh and V. v an Gogh- v an d en Berg are all correct, but Vincent V an Gogh is wrong. Many surnames of Dutch diaspora (mainly in the English-speaking world and Francophonie ) are adapted, not only in pronunciation but also in spelling. For example, by merging and capitalising

395-601: A brief period during the 13th or 14th century it lay more towards the east, when various eastern towns and cities aligned themselves with the emerging Hanseatic League . The entire Northern Dutch cultural area is located in the Netherlands , its ethnically Dutch population is estimated to be just under 10,000,000. Northern Dutch culture has been less under French influence than the Southern Dutch culture area. Frisians, specifically West Frisians , are an ethnic group present in

474-474: A congregation, Protestant-(influenced) values and customs are present. Generally, it can be said that the Northern Dutch are more pragmatic , favor a direct approach, and display a less-exuberant lifestyle when compared to Southerners. On a global scale, the Northern Dutch have formed the dominant vanguard of the Dutch language and culture since the fall of Antwerp , exemplified by the use of "Dutch" itself as

553-508: A dialect still closely resembling Common Germanic . Following the end of the migration period in the West around 500, with large federations (such as the Franks , Vandals , Alamanni and Saxons ) settling the decaying Roman Empire , a series of monumental changes took place within these Germanic societies. Among the most important of these are their conversion from Germanic paganism to Christianity ,

632-458: A difference in religious situations. Contemporary Dutch, according to a 2017 study conducted by Statistics Netherlands, are mostly irreligious with 51% of the population professing no religion. The largest Christian denomination with 24% are the Roman Catholics , followed by 15% Protestants . Furthermore, there are 5% Muslims and 6% others (among others Buddhists). People of Dutch ancestry in

711-558: A lengthy and complex process. Though the majority of the defining characteristics (such as language, religion, architecture or cuisine) of the Dutch ethnic group have accumulated over the ages, it is difficult (if not impossible) to clearly pinpoint the exact emergence of the Dutch people. In the first centuries CE, the Germanic tribes formed tribal societies with no apparent form of autocracy (chiefs only being elected in times of war), had religious beliefs based on Germanic paganism and spoke

790-455: A majority of Catholics. Linguistic (dialectal) differences (positioned along the Rhine/Meuse rivers) and to a lesser extent, historical economic development of both regions are also important elements in any dissimilarity. On a smaller scale cultural pluriformity can also be found; be it in local architecture or (perceived) character. This wide array of regional identities positioned within such

869-583: A national level. This is partly caused by the popular stereotypes in the Netherlands as well as Flanders, which are mostly based on the "cultural extremes" of both Northern and Southern culture, including in religious identity. Though these stereotypes tend to ignore the transitional area formed by the Southern provinces of the Netherlands and most Northern reaches of Belgium, resulting in overgeneralisations. This self-perceived split between Flemings and Dutch, despite

SECTION 10

#1732873611448

948-588: A part of their respective peripheries and the various territories of which they consisted had become virtually autonomous by the 13th century. Under the Habsburgs , the Netherlands were organised into a single administrative unit, and in the 16th and 17th centuries the Northern Netherlands gained independence from Spain as the Dutch Republic . The high degree of urbanisation characteristic of Dutch society

1027-474: A relatively small area, has often been attributed to the fact that many of the current Dutch provinces were de facto independent states for much of their history, as well as the importance of local Dutch dialects (which often largely correspond with the provinces themselves) to the people who speak them. Northern Dutch culture is marked by Protestantism , especially Calvinism . Though today many do not adhere to Protestantism anymore, or are only nominally part of

1106-532: A series of sound shifts. The Anglo-Frisian nasal spirant law and Anglo-Frisian brightening resulted in certain early Germanic languages evolving into what are now English and West Frisian, while the Second Germanic sound shift resulted in what would become (High) German. Dutch underwent none of these sound changes and thus occupies a central position in the West Germanic languages group. Standard Dutch has

1185-518: A set of demands. The subsequently issued Great Privilege met many of these demands, which included that Dutch, not French, should be the administrative language in the Dutch-speaking provinces under Burgundian rule (i.e. Flanders, Brabant and Holland) and that the States-General had the right to hold meetings without the monarch's permission or presence. The overall tenor of the document (which

1264-644: A sound inventory of thirteen vowels, six diphthongs and twenty-three consonants, of which the voiceless velar fricative ( hard ch ) is considered a well known sound, perceived as typical for the language. Other relatively well known features of the Dutch language and usage are the frequent use of digraphs like Oo , Ee , Uu and Aa , the ability to form long compounds and the use of slang, including profanity . The Dutch language has many dialects. These dialects are usually grouped into six main categories; Hollandic , West-Flemish / Zeelandic , East Flemish , Brabantic and Limburgish . The Dutch part of Low Saxon

1343-486: A very peculiar architecture, as this four-bastioned structure was built around an earlier four-bastioned English trading post, built in 1633. Fort Komenda was within cannon-shot distance to the Dutch Fort Vredenburgh . It was abandoned in 1816, after the abolition of slave trade. The ruin of the fort was transferred to the Dutch as part of a large trade of forts between Britain and the Netherlands in 1868. When

1422-538: Is a West Germanic language spoken by around 29 million people. Old Frankish, a precursor of the Dutch standard language, was first attested around 500, in a Frankish legal text, the Lex salica , and has a written record of more than 1500 years, although the material before around 1200 is fragmentary and discontinuous. As a West Germanic language, Dutch is related to other languages in that group such as West Frisian , English and German . Many West Germanic dialects underwent

1501-514: Is also referred to by the colloquialism " below/above the great rivers " as the rivers Rhine and Meuse roughly form a natural boundary between the Northern Dutch (those Dutch living North of these rivers), and the Southern Dutch (those living South of them). The division is partially caused by (traditional) religious differences, with the North used to be predominantly Protestant and the South still having

1580-450: Is now known as the country Ghana . The Gold Coast, Slave Coast , Pepper Coast (or Grain Coast) and Ivory Coast were named after the main export resources found there, respectively. Early uses of the term Gold Coast refer strictly to the coast and not the interior. It was not until the 19th century that the term came to refer to areas that are far from the coast. The Gold Coast was to

1659-422: Is often referred to with the terms autochtoon and allochtoon . These legal concepts refer to place of birth and citizenship rather than cultural background and do not coincide with the more fluid concepts of ethnicity used by cultural anthropologists. As did many European ethnicities during the 19th century, the Dutch also saw the emerging of various Greater Netherlands - and pan -movements seeking to unite

SECTION 20

#1732873611448

1738-553: Is sometimes also viewed as a dialect of Dutch as it falls in the area of the Dutch standard language. Of these dialects, Hollandic and Dutch Low Saxon are solely spoken by Northerners. Brabantic, East Flemish, West-Flemish / Zeelandic and Limburgish are cross border dialects in this respect. Lastly, the dialectal situation is characterised by the major distinction between 'Hard G' and 'Soft G' speaking areas (see also Dutch phonology ). Some linguists subdivide these into approximately 28 distinct dialects. Dutch immigrants also exported

1817-455: The Roelantslied and Van den vos Reynaerde (1200) were widely enjoyed. The various city guilds as well as the necessity of water boards (in charge of dikes, canals, etc.) in the Dutch delta and coastal regions resulted in an exceptionally high degree of communal organisation. It is also around this time, that ethnonyms such as Diets and Nederlands emerge. In the second half of

1896-580: The Dutch Revolt . The Dutch provinces, though fighting alone now, for the first time in their history found themselves fighting a common enemy. This, together with the growing number of Dutch intelligentsia and the Dutch Golden Age in which Dutch culture , as a whole, gained international prestige, consolidated the Dutch as an ethnic group. By the middle of the 16th century an overarching, 'national' (rather than 'ethnic') identity seemed in development in

1975-602: The European Union , and the Union of South American Nations (due to Suriname being a member). In South Africa and Namibia , Afrikaans is spoken, a daughter language of Dutch, which itself was an official language of South Africa until 1983. The Dutch, Flemish and Surinamese governments coordinate their language activities in the Nederlandse Taalunie (' Dutch Language Union '), an institution also responsible for governing

2054-836: The Frankish Empire of Charlemagne . However, the population make-up of the Frankish Empire, or even early Frankish kingdoms such as Neustria and Austrasia , was not dominated by Franks. Though the Frankish leaders controlled most of Western Europe, the Franks themselves were confined to the Northwestern part (i.e. the Rhineland , the Low Countries and Northern France ) of the Empire. Eventually,

2133-564: The Franks , themselves a union of multiple smaller tribes (many of them, such as the Batavi , Chauci , Chamavi and Chattuarii , were already living in the Low Countries prior to the forming of the Frankish confederation), began to incur the northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire . Eventually, in 358, the Salian Franks , one of the three main subdivisions among the Frankish alliance, settled

2212-637: The Netherlands . They share a common ancestry and culture and speak the Dutch language . Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Aruba , Suriname , Guyana , Curaçao , Argentina , Brazil , Canada , Australia , South Africa , New Zealand and the United States . The Low Countries were situated around the border of France and the Holy Roman Empire , forming

2291-646: The Southern Netherlands . Apart from a brief reunification from 1815 until 1830, within the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (which included the Francophones / Walloons ) the Dutch have been separated from the "Flemings" to this day. The border between the Netherlands and Belgium is purely contingent, simply reflecting the 1648 cease-fire line. There is a perfect dialect continuum. The Dutch colonial empire ( Dutch : Het Nederlandse Koloniale Rijk ) comprised

2370-665: The Union of Utrecht , which roughly corresponded to the Dutch-speaking part of the Spanish Netherlands, was unreachable. The Northern provinces were free, but during the 1580s the South was recaptured by Spain, and, despite various attempts, the armies of the Republic were unable to expel them. In 1648, the Peace of Münster , ending the Eighty Years' War , acknowledged the independence of the Dutch Republic , but maintained Spanish control of

2449-574: The demonym for the country in which they form a majority; the Netherlands . Linguistically, Northerners speak any of the Hollandic , Zeelandic , and Dutch Low Saxon dialects natively, or are influenced by them when they speak the Standard form of Dutch. Economically and culturally, the traditional centre of the region have been the provinces of North and South Holland , or today; the Randstad , although for

Fort Komenda - Misplaced Pages Continue

2528-470: The 11th and 12th centuries, were instrumental in breaking down the already relatively loose local form of feudalism. As they became increasingly powerful, they used their economic strength to influence the politics of their nobility. During the early 14th century, beginning in and inspired by the County of Flanders, the cities in the Low Countries gained huge autonomy and generally dominated or greatly influenced

2607-594: The 14th century, the dukes of Burgundy gained a foothold in the Low Countries through the marriage in 1369 of Philip the Bold of Burgundy to the heiress of the Count of Flanders. This was followed by a series of marriages, wars, and inheritances among the other Dutch fiefs and around 1450 the most important fiefs were under Burgundian rule, while complete control was achieved after the end of the Guelders Wars in 1543, thereby unifying

2686-428: The 19th and 20th centuries never really caught on in the Netherlands. The (re)definition of Dutch cultural identity has become a subject of public debate following the increasing influence of the European Union and the influx of non-Western immigrants in the post- World War II period. In this debate typically Dutch traditions have been put to the foreground. In sociological studies and governmental reports, ethnicity

2765-460: The Dutch Standard language, for example in matters of orthography . The origins of the word Dutch go back to Proto-Germanic, the ancestor of all Germanic languages, * theudo (meaning "national/popular"); akin to Old Dutch dietsc , Old High German diutsch , Old English þeodisc and Gothic þiuda all meaning "(of) the common ( Germanic ) people". As the tribes among

2844-402: The Dutch is Christianity , encompassing both Catholicism and Protestantism . However, in contemporary times, the majority no longer adhere to a particular Christian denomination. Significant percentages of the Dutch are adherents of humanism , agnosticism , atheism or individual spirituality . As with all ethnic groups, the ethnogenesis of the Dutch (and their predecessors) has been

2923-555: The Dutch language. Dutch was spoken by some settlers in the United States as a native language from the arrival of the first permanent Dutch settlers in 1615, surviving in isolated ethnic pockets until about 1900, when it ceased to be spoken except by first generation Dutch immigrants. The Dutch language nevertheless had a significant impact on the region around New York . For example, the first language of U.S. president Martin Van Buren

3002-548: The Dutch people. However, the centralist policies of Burgundy in the 14th and 15th centuries, at first violently opposed by the cities of the Low Countries, had a profound impact and changed this. During Charles the Bold 's many wars, which were a major economic burden for the Burgundian Netherlands, tensions slowly increased. In 1477, the year of Charles' sudden death at Nancy , the Low Countries rebelled against their new liege, Mary of Burgundy , and presented her with

3081-404: The Dutch-speaking peoples across the continent, while trying to counteract Pan-Germanic tendencies. During the first half of the 20th century, there was a prolific surge in writings concerning the subject. One of its most active proponents was the historian Pieter Geyl , who wrote De Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche stam ('The History of the Dutch tribe/people') as well as numerous essays on

3160-611: The English language used (the contemporary form of) Dutch to refer to any or all of the Germanic speakers on the European mainland (e.g. the Dutch, the Frisians and the Germans). Gradually its meaning shifted to the Germanic people they had most contact with, both because of their geographical proximity, but also because of the rivalry in trade and overseas territories: the people from the Republic of

3239-689: The Franks in Northern France were assimilated by the general Gallo-Roman population, and took over their dialects (which became French ), whereas the Franks in the Low Countries retained their language, which would evolve into Dutch. The current Dutch-French language border has (with the exception of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais in France and Brussels and the surrounding municipalities in Belgium) remained virtually identical ever since, and could be seen as marking

Fort Komenda - Misplaced Pages Continue

3318-419: The Germanic peoples began to differentiate its meaning began to change. The Anglo-Saxons of England for example gradually stopped referring to themselves as þeodisc and instead started to use Englisc , after their tribe. On the continent * theudo evolved into two meanings: Diets or Duuts meaning "Dutch (people)" (archaic) and Deutsch ( German , meaning "German (people)"). At first

3397-479: The Habsburg Netherlands, when inhabitants began to refer to it as their 'fatherland' and were beginning to be seen as a collective entity abroad; however, the persistence of language barriers, traditional strife between towns, and provincial particularism continued to form an impediment to more thorough unification. Following excessive taxation together with attempts at diminishing the traditional autonomy of

3476-503: The Netherlands and Belgium have a number of common characteristics, with a mostly shared language , some generally similar or identical customs , and with no clearly separate ancestral origin or origin myth . However, the popular perception of being a single group varies greatly, depending on subject matter, locality, and personal background. Generally, the Flemish will seldom identify themselves as being Dutch and vice versa, especially on

3555-700: The Netherlands were now part of the Habsburg lands. Further centralised policies of the Habsburgs (like their Burgundian predecessors) again met with resistance, but, peaking with the formation of the collateral councils of 1531 and the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 creating the Seventeen Provinces , were still implemented. The rule of Philip II of Spain sought even further centralist reforms, which, accompanied by religious dictates and excessive taxation, resulted in

3634-508: The Netherlands, an oft-used adage used for indicating this cultural boundary is the phrase boven/onder de rivieren (Dutch: above/below the rivers), in which 'the rivers' refer to the Rhine and the Meuse . Southern Dutch culture has been influenced more by French culture, as opposed to the Northern Dutch culture area. Within the field of ethnography , it is argued that the Dutch-speaking populations of

3713-497: The Netherlands, the Dutch. In the Dutch language , the Dutch refer to themselves as Nederlanders . Nederlanders derives from the Dutch word Neder , a cognate of English Nether both meaning " low ", and " near the sea " (same meaning in both English and Dutch), a reference to the geographical texture of the Dutch homeland; the western portion of the North European Plain . Although not as old as Diets ,

3792-708: The Swedish territory and incorporated it into the Danish Gold Coast . In 1850 all of the settlements became part of the British Gold Coast. In 1774 a London commercial expert references a witness that "the king of Guinea, the greatest city in all the countries of Negroland, has a mass of gold of thirty pounds weight as it was naturally produced in the mines which is completely pure, tough and malleable without having been smelted". The British had taken over all of Gold Coast by 1871. They captured more territory inland in

3871-636: The United States and South Africa are generally more religious than their European counterparts; for example, the numerous Dutch communities of western Michigan remain strongholds of the Reformed Church in America and the Christian Reformed Church , both descendants of the Dutch Reformed Church . One cultural division within Dutch culture is that between the formerly Protestant North and

3950-559: The affixes and main parts of the surnames (e.g. A. van der Bilt becomes A . Vanderbilt ). Dutch names can differ greatly in spelling. The surname Baks , for example is also recorded as Backs , Bacxs , Bax , Bakx , Baxs , Bacx , Backx , Bakxs and Baxcs . Though written differently, pronunciation remains identical. Dialectal variety also commonly occurs, with De Smet and De Smit both meaning Smith for example. There are several main types of surnames in Dutch: Prior to

4029-443: The area's Southern lands as foederati ; Roman allies in charge of border defense. Linguistically Old Frankish gradually evolved into Old Dutch , which was first attested in the 6th century, whereas religiously the Franks (beginning with the upper class ) converted to Christianity from around 500 to 700. On a political level, the Frankish warlords abandoned tribalism and founded a number of kingdoms, eventually culminating in

SECTION 50

#1732873611448

4108-423: The arrival of Christianity, the ancestors of the Dutch adhered to a form of Germanic paganism augmented with various Celtic elements . At the start of the 6th century, the first ( Hiberno-Scottish ) missionaries arrived. They were later replaced by Anglo-Saxon missionaries , who eventually succeeded in converting most of the inhabitants by the 8th century. Since then, Christianity has been the dominant religion in

4187-406: The cities and estates in the Low Countries, followed by the religious oppression after being transferred to Habsburg Spain , the Dutch revolted, in what would become the Eighty Years' War . For the first time in their history, the Dutch established their independence from foreign rule. However, during the war it became apparent that the goal of liberating all the provinces and cities that had signed

4266-493: The current CBS definition (both parents born in the Netherlands), resulting in an estimated 16,000,000 Dutch people, or by the sum of all people worldwide with both full and partial Dutch ancestry , which would result in a number around 33,000,000. Approximate distribution of native Dutch speakers worldwide. People of (partial) Dutch ancestry outside the Netherlands. Dutch is the main language spoken by most Dutch people. It

4345-713: The east of the Ivory Coast and to the west of the Slave Coast . Gold Coast region territorial entities were: Ghana is the legal name for the region loosely referred to as the Gold Coast comprising the following four separate parts, which immediately before independence had distinct constitutional positions: The United Kingdom government was responsible for shepherding through the Ghana Independence Act 1957 with Charles Arden-Clarke . Lord Listowel explained that

4424-514: The emergence of a new political system, centered on kings, and a continuing process of emerging mutual unintelligibility of their various dialects. The general situation described above is applicable to most if not all modern European ethnic groups with origins among the Germanic tribes , such as the Frisians, Germans, English and the Nordic (Scandinavian) peoples. In the Low Countries, this phase began when

4503-509: The end of the Dutch Revolt, it became clear the Habsburgs were unable to reconquer the North, while the North's military was too weak to conquer the South, which, under the influence of the Counter-Reformation , had started to develop a political and cultural identity of its own. The Southern Dutch, including Dutch Brabant and Limburg, remained Catholic or returned to Catholicism. The Dutch dialects spoken by this group are Brabantic , Kleverlandish , Limburgish and East and West Flemish . In

4582-448: The entire Nazi occupation, the Germans denied any assistance to Greater Dutch ethnic nationalism , and, by decree of Hitler himself, actively opposed it. The 1970s marked the beginning of formal cultural and linguistic cooperation between Belgium (Flanders) and the Netherlands on an international scale. The total number of Dutch can be defined in roughly two ways. By taking the total of all people with full Dutch ancestry, according to

4661-420: The fiefs of the Low Countries under one ruler. This process marked a new episode in the development of the Dutch ethnic group, as now political unity started to emerge, consolidating the strengthened cultural and linguistic unity. Despite their growing linguistic and cultural unity, and (in the case of Flanders , Brabant and Holland ) economic similarities, there was still little sense of political unity among

4740-516: The first claim. The Dutch arrived in 1598 and in 1642 incorporated the Portuguese territory into the Dutch Gold Coast . The Dutch stayed in the region until 1871, when the last of their settlements were taken over by the British Gold Coast . There was also the Brandenburger Gold Coast , which established a colony in the area in 1682. It later became the Prussian Gold Coast. In 1721 the Dutch purchased it. The Swedish Gold Coast settlements date to 1650. The Danes arrived in 1663 and later seized

4819-472: The furthest pale of gallicisation among the Franks. A dialect continuum remaining with more eastern Germanic populations, a distinct identity in relation to these only gradually developed, largely based on socio-economic and political factors. Large parts of the present Netherlands have populations using Saxon and Frisian dialects. The medieval cities of the Low Countries, especially those of Flanders, Brabant and Holland, which experienced major growth during

SECTION 60

#1732873611448

4898-400: The language or inhabitants of the Frisian part of the country. Historically the whole Dutch North Seacoast was known as Frisia. The Southern Dutch sphere generally consists of the areas in which the population was traditionally Catholic. During the early Middle Ages up until the Dutch Revolt , the Southern regions were more powerful, as well as more culturally and economically developed. At

4977-439: The late 19th century after the Anglo-Ashanti wars . In 1957, the territory comprising the Gold Coast Crown Colony, the Ashanti Crown Colony, the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast Protectorate and British Togoland were united as an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations under the name Ghana . Dutch people The Dutch ( Dutch : Nederlanders ) are an ethnic group native to

5056-400: The name was chosen "in accordance with the wishes of the Gold Coastian population". Europeans reached this region of Africa in 1482, and for centuries afterwards, various European empires and trading companies set up trading posts, known as factories there. They used these colonies to exploit the resources rather than to settle large numbers of subjects . The Portuguese Gold Coast was

5135-406: The north of the Netherlands, mainly concentrated in the province of Friesland . Culturally, modern Frisians and the (Northern) Dutch are rather similar; the main and generally most important difference being that Frisians speak West Frisian, one of the three sub-branches of the Frisian languages , alongside Dutch, and they find this to be a defining part of their identity as Frisians. According to

5214-552: The nowadays Catholic South, which encompasses various cultural differences between the Northern Dutch on one side and the Southern Dutch on the other. This subject has historically received attention from historians, notably Pieter Geyl (1887–1966) and Carel Gerretson (1884–1958). The historical pluriformity of the Dutch cultural landscape has given rise to several theories aimed at both identifying and explaining cultural divergences between different regions. One theory, proposed by A.J. Wichers in 1965, sees differences in mentality between

5293-400: The ongoing problems with the local population meant that on 6 April 1872, the entire Dutch Gold Coast , was again transferred to the United Kingdom, as per the Gold Coast treaty of 1871 . Gold Coast (region) The Gold Coast was the name for a region on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa that was rich in gold , petroleum , sweet crude oil and natural gas . This former region

5372-403: The overseas territories and trading posts controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies (mainly the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch United East India Company ) and subsequently by the Dutch Republic (1581–1795), and by the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1815. Many Dutch people ( Nederlanders ) will object to being called Hollanders as a national denominator on much

5451-473: The population of Friesland saw themselves as "primarily Frisian", again without precluding the possibility of also identifying as Dutch. Frisians are not disambiguated from the Dutch people in Dutch official statistics . In the Netherlands itself "West-Frisian" refers to the Hollandic dialect, with a Frisian substrate, spoken in the northern part of the province of North-Holland known as West-Friesland, as well as "West-Frisians" referring to its speakers, not to

5530-424: The rebellion and make the Low Countries a Catholic region once more. The Protestants in the southern Low Countries fled North en masse . Most of the Dutch Protestants were now concentrated in the free Dutch provinces north of the river Rhine , while the Catholic Dutch were situated in the Spanish-occupied or -dominated South. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, Protestantism did not spread South, resulting in

5609-402: The region. In the early 16th century, the Protestant Reformation began to form and soon spread in the Westhoek and the County of Flanders, where secret open-air sermons were held, called hagenpreken (' hedgerow orations ') in Dutch. The ruler of the Dutch regions, Philip II of Spain , felt it was his duty to fight Protestantism and, after the wave of iconoclasm , sent troops to crush

5688-524: The same grounds as many Welsh or Scots would object to being called English instead of British , as the Holland region only comprises two of the twelve provinces, and 40% of the Dutch citizens. The same holds for the country being referred to as Holland instead of The Netherlands . In January 2020, the Dutch government officially dropped its support of the word Holland for the whole country. The ideologies associated with (Romantic) Nationalism of

5767-495: The southeastern, or 'higher', and northwestern, or 'lower' regions within the Netherlands, and seeks to explain these by referring to the different degrees to which these areas were feudalised during the Middle Ages. Another, more recent cultural divide is that between the Randstad , the urban agglomeration in the West of the country, and the other provinces of the Netherlands. In Dutch, the cultural division between North and South

5846-548: The subject. During World War II, when both Belgium and the Netherlands fell to German occupation , fascist elements (such as the NSB and Verdinaso ) tried to convince the Nazis into combining the Netherlands and Flanders . The Germans however refused to do so, as this conflicted with their ultimate goal, the Neuordnung ('New Order') of creating a single pan-Germanic racial state. During

5925-704: The term Nederlands has been in continuous use since 1250. Dutch surnames (and surnames of Dutch origin) are generally easily recognisable. Many Dutch surnames feature a tussenvoegsel ( lit.   ' between-joiner ' ), which is a family name affix positioned between a person's given name and the main part of their family name . The most common tussenvoegsels are van (e.g. A. van Gogh "from/of"), de / der / den / te / ter / ten (e.g. A. de Vries , "the"), het / ’t (e.g. A. ’t Hart , "the"), and van de / van der / van den (e.g. A. van den Berg , "from/of the"). These affixes are not merged, nor capitalised by default. The second affix in

6004-442: The various political affairs of the fief, including marriage succession. While the cities were of great political importance, they also formed catalysts for medieval Dutch culture. Trade flourished, population numbers increased dramatically, and (advanced) education was no longer limited to the clergy. Flanders, Brabant and Holland began to develop a common Dutch standard language . Dutch epic literature such as Elegast (1150),

6083-481: Was Dutch. Most of the Dutch immigrants of the 20th century quickly began to speak the language of their new country. For example, of the inhabitants of New Zealand, 0.7% say their home language is Dutch, despite the percentage of Dutch heritage being considerably higher. Dutch is currently an official language of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Netherlands, Aruba , Sint Maarten , and Curaçao ), Belgium, Suriname ,

6162-462: Was attained at a relatively early date. During the Republic the first series of large-scale Dutch migrations outside of Europe took place. The traditional arts and culture of the Dutch encompasses various forms of traditional music , dances , architectural styles and clothing, some of which are globally recognisable. Internationally, Dutch painters such as Rembrandt , Vermeer and Van Gogh are held in high regard. The predominant religion among

6241-485: Was declared void by Mary's son and successor, Philip IV ) aimed for more autonomy for the counties and duchies, but nevertheless all the fiefs presented their demands together, rather than separately. This is evidence that by this time a sense of common interest was emerging among the provinces of the Netherlands. The document itself clearly distinguishes between the Dutch speaking and French speaking provinces. Following Mary's marriage to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor ,

#447552