HST 214 The Golden Age of the Netherlands: Politics, Culture and Society

Taught
Level 2: semester 1

email : Dr. Anthony Milton, Module Coordinator

Module Summary

The aim of this module is to enable students to achieve a detailed understanding of the social, political and cultural foundations of the remarkable success of the Dutch Republic in the century and a half after the beginning of the provinces' revolt against their Hapsburg rulers. This module will also seek to analyse the impact of the political and economic success of the United Provinces on Dutch culture and society, and the ways in which the Dutch themselves and their neighbours sought to explain and defend the wealth and influence which they came to enjoy. Students will be expected to gain detailed understanding of the interaction of political social and religious factors in shaping the character of the Netherlands in the early modern period. They will also be encouraged to use this knowledge in a comparative way, to reflect on how the Dutch success can identify the factors which may have inhibited the dawning of a similar 'golden age' in the other European countries of the period.

In pursuit of these aims, students will be expected to analyse a wide range of primary sources- both literary and the visual arts. Documents made available will include diplomatic papers, poltical, legal, and religious treatises, travel journals, pamphlet literature and newsbooks, and paintings and woodcuts.

Teaching

The module will be taught by an interlocking and complementary programme of seminars and lectures. Topics dealt with will include the Dutch Revolt, urban culture, social policy, the constitution, state finance, popular culture, science and philosophy, the religious settlement, the visual arts, trade and merchants, Dutch political thought, the Dutch overseas empire, foreign policy and relations with England.

Selected Reading

Jonathon I. Israel, The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, (1995)

Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, (1987)

Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt, (1977)

K. H. D. Haley, The Dutch in the Seventeenth Century, (1972)

Peter Limm, The Dutch Revolt 1559-1648, (1989)

Intended Learning Outcomes

Students completing this module will have developed:

• Their ability to engage critically with the existing secondary literature, with a clear sense of how broader assumptions of historical and cultural change may shape the form and content of historians arguments a broad understanding of the history of the Netherlands to engage in an informed and critical way with current debates about the historical.
  

• Interpretation of cultural artefacts, especially visual images their ability to research particular historical issues in depth while composing informed and cogent essays.
  

• To read and engage critically with a wide range of primary sources, with an awareness of how genre and rhetoric may shape their content their ability to construct, present and defend clear and concise arguments as part of formal presentations without the support of detailed notes.
  

• To produce short single-page summaries of arguments for prior distribution as part of a formal presentation their ability to engage in group discussions of primary documents and broader interpretative issues.