[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold][FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]VII) Empires[/FONT][/FONT]
(1815-1900)
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]Constitution of the United Provinces[/FONT]
At the beginning of 1816, great and drastic changes hit the government of the United
Provinces. Upon hearing more details of the Brazilian Constitution, and the liberties it granted its
citizens1, the Dutch people began to demand change and reform within their own realm. After
suffering under the Batavian Republic, then under its Regency, the Dutch people were in no mood
to suffer injustice beneath its own king and parliament. If a bunch of colonists in Brazil were granted
vast liberties, then why should the Provinces not receive the same. It did not matter that Brazil was
its own nation, they were still colonists in
the eyes of the Dutch, and the United
Provinces were the mother country.
Where the mother country leads, the
colonies should follow, not the other way
around.
Borrowing from his experiences
in Recife, Maurice II, King of the United
Provinces of the Netherlands and
Emperor of Brazil, called forth a
constitutional convention for the
Netherlands. Rulers of each of the
Provinces, along with the most respected
of intellectuals across the nation, met in
the King’s Palace in Delft. They would
not suffer the months of summer heat that hit Philadelphia in 1787, but would rather wrap up the
convention within as many weeks. Again, the first written Constitution of the United Provinces
borrowed heavily from the Americans.
In contrast, the Dutch over-emphasized Provincial rights. The Provinces had governed
themselves for the past two hundred years, there was no way any of them planned to surrender
sovereignty to a stronger central government. However, where as before Napoleon the Netherlands
were confederated, Post-Napoleonic United Provinces grew into a tighter federated bond of
provinces. The Staaten-General was given slightly more power to regulate commerce between the
Provinces. At the time, it did not seem that big a change, but with the coming of the railroad, the
Staaten-General would soon make its voice heard in a wide range of standardizations under the
‘Commerce Clause’.
The greatest changed to the Staaten-General came to the Second Chamber, now called the
House of Electorates. For two centuries, the lower house of the Staaten-General consisted of many
members who essentially bought or bribed their way into power. After the convention, the
Electorates came into power by more legal and legitimate means, and were now chosen by a total
male suffrage above the age of twenty.2 No longer could wealthy merchants and powerful companies
decide the fate of the Dutch people.
The First Chamber, as in Brazil it too is called the Senaat, consisted of hereditary rulers of
the Provinces along with other peers of the realm. It was not open to election, nor to new members
without its own consent. As with the old Staaten-General, the Senaat handled matters concerning the
Provinces, and the House handled matters concerning the people. Sometimes such matters were at
odds, especially in the arena of taxation and tariffs.
As a Mercantile nation, the United Provinces earned between sixty and eighty percent of its
revenue from a series of tariffs and customs, all of which were designed to protect homegrown
business and domestic goods. Protectionism has always been a way of economic life in the
Netherlands. Any foreigner attempting to import their own goods into the Provinces would be forced
to pay a hefty fee. Various customs were imposed upon merchant ships trading through Dutch ports,
or even if they happened to be just passing through. Throughout the entire history of the United
Provinces, the average Netherlander never had to pay more than ten percent of his income to the
government, though companies faced higher taxation.
The 1816 Constitution gave the King more power. Before, the Kings of the United Provinces
served as an anchorage, a means to unite the Provinces. Now, the Kings and future Queens would
be executive monarchs, another concept borrowed from the United States. Where the Americans
would elect their chief executive on a four year basis, the Dutch would inherit their executives, each
groomed from birth to serve as head of state. Unlike other constitutional monarchies of Europe, the
Dutch King did not have the power to dissolve his parliament. The Staaten-General faced elections
every five years, and then only the people could dissolve it.
A third branch of government, introduced to the Netherlands for the first time, balanced the
power between Staaten-General and the new executive King, and would keep either from getting too
powerful. The Supreme Court of the United Provinces would insure constitutional law was not
violated. Independent courts were a new addition to Dutch judiciary system. The judges in the
Supreme Court were nominated by the King, but confirmed by the House of Electorates. Provincial
courts worked on a similar principle, though they were nominated by the lord of the Province, and
confirmed by the Provincial Assemblies.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]Industrialization[/FONT]
The United Provinces received a new government at the dawning of the Industrial
Revolution. Starting in Britain decades before, the steam engine finally made its way to the
Netherlands. For much of its history, mills were powered by winds blown off the North Sea or from
the currents of tidal estuaries. These limited industry to specific areas of specific Provinces. The first
steam engines were not introduced to Holland or any other coastal Provence, but to Luxembourg.
The Duke of Luxembourg smuggled two engines out of Great Britain. The British monopoly on
steam power ended and ushered in a new age in Luxembourg.
Industrialization greatly increased productivity within Luxembourg, but it came at a cost.
Large quantities of coal were mined from the once pristine province, and the woods were replaced
by forests of smokestacks. Endless streams of black smoke blotted out the sun, and filled the lungs
of the citizens. Industrialization also improved efficiency at the cost of employment. Thousands of
Luxembourgers found themselves in a situation that was seldom known in the Provinces;
unemployed.
Shifts in supply and demand allowed for the owner, the company to lower its own wages.
Though wages were never cut, they seldom rose, and when they did it was at below inflation levels.
The price of living in Luxembourg was rising, but relatively speaking, income shrank. Textile mills,
once few in Luxembourg, now dominated the landscape. Close proximity to iron mines and coal
deposits allowed for Luxembourg, and later Liege and Limburg to become the steel production
center of the United Provinces, and a territory coveted by both France and later the German Empire.
The steam engines were put to use in Holland and Zeeland not as engines of industry, but
rather to power a system of pumps to both regulate water levels in the maritime Provinces and to
pump large quantities of water out of new closed off areas. Steam increased the size of several
Provincial economies (at a great cost to its people) but it literally increased the sizes of Holland and
Zeeland. For centuries, the Dutch reclaimed land from the sea, but at small parcels at a time. With
steam, large strips of land were risen from the shallow depths.
In some cases being at the bottom of a salt water sea, these new plots of land were not the
best places to build new farms. Instead, they were used for urban expansion. As industry stripped
jobs from other Provinces, Limburgers, Luxembourgers and various others from the southern
Provinces made their way north. Though factories started to run on constant steam as opposed to
sporadic winds, there was a shortage of menial laborers in Holland. Long since the commercial
capital of Europe, Amsterdammers, and Hollanders in general, avoided the dangers of factory work.
And dangers were plentiful. Machines powered by steam could move twenty-four hours a
day, and often did. Seldom did the early machines need to stop, and only when something broke. The
Industrial Revolution created a sort of community rush. Owners of factories were only interested in
producing more, and outproducing their rivals across the North Sea. Though the United Provinces
were protected by tariffs, Dutch businessmen soon discovered other nations followed suit. In order
to export their merchandise to Britain, which at the time was equally protective, factories had to cut
cost.
Life was not pleasant in the United Provinces during industrialization. It was the lowest point
in respect to quality of life since and after 1609. In Holland, such a demand for labor existed that
anyone available over the age of eight were employed in the textile mills of Holland, almost all
economic refugees from the southern Provinces. The work was long, twelve hours shifts, and
exceptionally hazardous, especially for the youngest of workers. The children were made to crawl
beneath the looms and mechanical weavers to retrieve scraps of wool, cotton and even silk. Working
in the mills gave little and took much, including fingers and whole limbs.
The Industrial Revolution produced more than mechanical monsters, and replaced more than
just human workers. In 1822, the first railroad was constructed from Amsterdam to the Hague, not
only replacing horse-drawn carts, but threatening both canal and shipping interests across the nation.
Unlike the mangling behemoths of the dimly lit factories, Netherlanders did lobby again the
railroads. The shipping giants of the Netherlands, and owners of its various canals lobbied heavily
against the railroad, claiming it would not only wreck the national and Provincial economies, but
threatened the very tradition most sacred to the Dutch people; seafaring. With railroads, who would
need ships? To some extent it was a success. Brabant’s Provincial Assembly passed legislation
limiting both size and speed of the railroad engines.
One byproduct of steam power literally lit the roads to Amsterdam. IN the 1870s, the first
electricity producing engines were operation in Holland. With the invention of the lightbulb, the
demand for electricity soon increased. For decades, coal-fired power plants gave the Netherlands its
power and choked its skies with soot. It was not until the beginning of the Twentieth Century that
hydroelectric plants began to appear. For a nation that spent much of its existence building dams and
dikes, hydroelectricity was a logical jump. Unlike many nations, including Brazil, the United
Provinces did not need to dam rivers. More than enough water flowed between the North Sea and
English Channel to permit tidal-generated power.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]New Amsterdam Referendum[/FONT]
While industrialization began to strangle the lives of Netherlanders, New Amsterdammers
were looking for revolutionary change of their own. In 1824, eight years after the official
independence of Brazil, New Amsterdammers began to decide it was time for their own selfdetermination.
For the past two hundred years, the colony was ruled by the Hague and by New
Amsterdam’s own nobility. Town halls were the extent of self-rule in the colony, and those could
easily be overruled by the Marquis.
In the eight years following Brazilian nationhood, New Amsterdammers organized and
lobbied the Hague for the right to decide its own fate. By 1824, Maurice II agreed that if any Dutch
colony3 wanted self-rule, then it should be subject to referendum. While addressing the Staaten-
General, the United Provinces faced its first constitutional crisis; which chamber would decide if
referendums would happen? The Senaat was in charge of Provincial affairs, and the possible
independence of a colony fell into that category. However, it would be the people who voted in the
referendum, so the House of Electorates claimed jurisdiction.
The five justices of the Supreme Court heard the cases of both chambers, and ruled that both
did have jurisdiction in the case of referendum. In such a case, the King’s plan must pass both First
and Second Chambers of the Staaten-General. It passed the House with a large margin, but stalled
in the Senaat, whose concern was the loss of the colony could upset their own Provincial economies,
since products from New Amsterdam would now be subject to tariffs. Also, with the loss of
Denmark in the Congress of Vienna, the United Provinces consisted of eighteen Provinces, an even
number. When the vote came up, it was divided nine to nine, and under the Constitution, it was up
to the head of the Senaat, the King, to break the tie. Thus referendum passed, barely.4
In May of 1824, New Amsterdam was presented with three choices; 1) they could stay a
crown colony of the United Provinces, with all the privileges bestowed upon Dutch citizens,
including the right to elect its own assembly; 2) it could become a realm within the empire, sharing
the same status as Brazil, in personal union with the United Provinces; or 3) it would be granted
complete independence, and would face the world alone, sink or swim.
The third option was least popular. In 1824, New Amsterdam’s economy and trading sectors
were far closer tied to the markets of Boston and Philadelphia than Amsterdam and Recife. It shared
common interests with the Americans and its economies so closely tied, that any tariffs levied by the
Hague would cause much harm to New Amsterdam’s livelihood. The colonists lived a mixture of
new urban and frontier lifestyle known throughout the United States. Though the entire Mauritius
River valley was now farmland, along with lands along the Delaware and Connecticut rivers, much
interior land remained forested, however it too was under the control of logging interests. For their
own interests, they harvest only sectors of the forest at a time.
Because most of the New Amsterdammer’s livelihood came from surrounding states, a writein
option appeared on the referendum, one the Staaten-General did not authorize; 4) Full political
union with the United States and statehood. According to the United States Constitution, any new
state simply required a constitution of its own and a republican form of government. The fourth
option took fifty-three percent of the vote in the 1824 Referendum, more than a simple majority, thus
eliminating any run-off vote.
Before the results even reached the Hague, New Amsterdammers went about constructing
their future state government. The government was indeed republican, but the Dutch in general had
no long-term experience in anything resembling a presidential republic, and up until 1816, were
ruled mostly by a parliament with the blessing of the King. Thus New Amsterdam’s constitution
constructed the only parliamentary republic within the United States, with only the most minimal
of separations of power required by law. Thus the ‘governor’ position was filled by a First Minister,
who was both head of state and head of government, and by a unicameral parliament, which both
made and enforced laws. The courts were kept separate.
Word reached Washington long before it reached the Hague. In a way, this accelerated the
process; since shortly after the Staaten-General learned of the unauthorized results, negotiators from
the United States, an important trading partner of all the Dutch, arrived. There was little to negotiate;
New Amsterdam made its choice, and the King swore to honor the results of the election. To go back
on the King’s word, the Staaten-General would bring shame to the House of Orange, not to mention
damage Dutch credibility around the world. Some in the Staaten-General wondered if statehood was
not the whole plan all along. History has shown that the United States would not hesitate to send its
own citizens to colonize another nation, then shortly after annex that nation; such as was with the
case of Texas– and New Amsterdam was a far more strategic gem than Texas could ever hope to be.
On October 18, 1824, the rule of New Amsterdam changed from King Maurice II to President
John Adams II5. On that date, the newly minted Parliament of New Amsterdam took over power ,
and was admitted as the 24th state. As a result from admission into the Union, one of New
Amsterdam’s most famous offices was abolished. Federal law prohibited any title of nobility, and
since the days of Michiel de Ruyter, New Amsterdam’s Provincial head was the Marquis of New
Amsterdam. The de Ruyter family held that position until admission, where Marquis Edwin was
given the choice of either renouncing his title or leaving the state. Titles were but a concept, but the
business ventures the de Ruyter family ran in New Amsterdam were not. Edwin chose profit over
title, and renounced his Marquisette, but was still the head of what is now known as Ruyter
Enterprises.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]Fall and Rise of the VOC[/FONT]
Due to its war of conquest in Bengal, by 1800, the VOC was in deep debt and forced to
declare bankruptcy. As a result, in order to pay for the debt, the company was forced to cede all of
its colonies to the United Provinces, thus making Kapenstaat, Ceylon, India, Java, Formosa, Hainan,
Mozambique and the other Indonesian holdings, Crown Colonies of the United Provinces of the
Netherlands. With bankruptcy, shareholders began to sell their shares, forcing the VOC to auction
off its fleet and salvage whatever of value that could be used to payoff the investors. Trading posts
were closed, shipping lanes dried up, and before the year was out, its royal monopoly revoked. The
VOC looked on the verge of vanishing into the ashes of history.
The company did not fold. While most investors pulled out, a few of the employees, most
notably the naval officers, bought many shares, now virtually worthless. The VOC was left with
these officers and life-long employees and seven seaworthy ships to rebound from it collapse. Most
in Amsterdam simply wrote off the VOC, declaring it would never rebound. With Napoleon ripping
up the continent at the time, it was an easy assumption. With Napoleon doing just that, few even
cared about the company that made Dutch domination of trade possible.
The new Board of Holders met in VOC headquarters in Amsterdam, one of the few VOC
assets still in company hands, to plan their future. With only seven ships, the VOC was now a small
fish in a large ocean. Where once the very mention of the VOC sent pirates running for their lives,
now the seven ships had to face both predation from pirates and vengeance from various other
companies the VOC once stepped upon. It was an uphill battle, and might have been a lost cause if
not for one man; Maarten Minuit, the head of the new VOC.
Minuit decided the company should return to its origin mission; the spice trade. Though it
could never hope to acquire a monopoly, there was plenty market to go around for cinnamon and
nutmeg, commodities that made the VOC powerful to begin with. For the first few years of the
Nineteenth Century, business was difficult. Former colonies were now flooded with a variety of
ships, ranging from trading companies to private merchants. No longer could the VOC buy spices
at their own prices. They were forced to bid the same as the rest of them, and compete over a limited
supply of spices.
However oppressive VOC practices were, the company did not lose at of its ‘friends’. A
number of old contacts in both Ceylon and India aided the rebounding VOC, managed to grant them
access to goods before other merchants, and, with the assistance of kick-backs, were able to cut some
corners for them. Bribery is a far cry from the practice of conquest the VOC once employed. The
bribes could only advance them so far. No longer could they expend large amounts of capital in
buying politicians and official, nor where they a pseudo-nation on to themselves.
When railroad made its first appearance in the United Provinces, the VOC was only up to
eight ships, the latest a derelict they discovered floating off the coast of Angola. They stood to lose
just as much as any shipping company. Bad enough to actually have to compete with other oceangoing
cartels, but now this new fangled railroad threatened to reduce their share of the market even
further. However, the VOC did not join those same shipping and canal interests in their lobbying
crusade against the rail.
In 1835, Minuit convinced the Board of Holders to put everything on the line, in effect put
the entire company up as collateral for a fifteen million guilder loan from the Bank of Amsterdam.
With that many guilders, Minuit convinced the rest of the shareholders that instead of lobbying
against the railroad, they should purchase the entire line. It was a gutsy move. During the 1830s, it
was not even known if the railroad would be a reliable means of transport or just some passing fad.
When word of the acquisition reached papers and markets across the United Provinces, the VOC’s
final days were predicted.
Much to everyone’s surprise, Minuit not only made the railroad work, but by 1840, had the
lines extended as far as Bruges and Arnhem. Within ten years, the company managed to pay off the
loan, and afterward climb its way back to the top of the financial world. By 1843, the VOC had
grown to the point where it was forced to reorganize. The maritime functions of the VOC would still
go by that name, however the railroad division was named VOC Rail.
VOC Rail expanded its operations to ever corner of the Dutch world. By 1850, thousands of
kilometers of railroad were laid across the Provinces, Brazil, South Africa, Ceylon, India, Java and
Formosa. The rail made it possible for the VOC to squeeze its small time and local competitors out
of the trade. In areas with little water access, the railroad allowed the VOC to exploit areas
impossible to reach by ship. Not only that, but as locomotive engines improved in efficiency and
performance, it rendered mule trains and horse caravans obsolete. With one engine pulling a dozen
cars, VOC Rail could ships the same amount of merchandise as a thousand horses.
The gamble to purchase a once unknown quantity paid off for the struggling VOC. By 1850,
the company rose back on to the Amsterdam Stock Market, and investors began to pour money into
the company. VOC’s success shifted the lobbying of other companies away from the railroads back
to the VOC. For merchants and traders around the world, their ultimate nightmare was coming true;
the VOC was returning from the dead.
With improvements of steam engines, it became possible by the 1850s to install the engines
on ships, producing the first self-propelled ocean-going vessels. As it was in the Seventeenth
Century, the VOC capitalized on any new invention or idea that could earn it profit. In 1854, the
VOC established a new division; VOC Cruise. VOC Cruise was built around two shipyards
purchased in the 1840s and the development of steamers. For decades afterward, VOC ships retained
their sails. The wind was free after all, however it was not always convenient. When the winds
failed, steam could take over.
In response to the advent of steam, the VOC established a string of coaling stations around
the world. To increase its profit even further, the VOC sold its excess coal to any ship that ventured
into its stations. VOC Cruise shipped not only freight with the power of steam, but passengers as
well. The same year the division was established, a Rotterdam-to-Recife passenger service, with
travel time of days as opposed to weeks with only sail.
Further inventions out of the United States added to the VOC’s wealth. By the 1870s, VOC
Comm sowed telegraph cables from the Provinces to Brazil, to Kapenstaat, all the way to Ceylon.
The telegraph network cut transit time for information from days (and weeks for Ceylon) to a matter
of minutes. Word of rebellion in India could reach the Hague before the rebels themselves even knew
what was happening. However, it would take days to weeks to traverse the distance. The opening
of the Suez Canal cut transit time to India dramatically. Again, by the 1870s, the VOC owned a sixty
percent share of the early information market.
The Nineteenth Century saw a dramatic turnaround for the almost vanquished company, but
its expansion and acquisitions of the Twentieth Century would send it to the top of the market. By
the start of the Twenty-first Century, the VOC would be an over six hundred billion guilder
company.6
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]Dutch Raj[/FONT]
After the first collapse of the VOC, the United Provinces inherited India along with other
colonies around the Indian Ocean. By the 1820s, India consisted of a network of crown colonies and
allied principalities spreading across southern and eastern India. Between 1820 and 1880, the Dutch
extended their Indian Empire both north and westward, either bringing states into alliance and
vassalage or outright conquering them. Those that submitted or allied themselves with the Hague
enjoyed a degree of autonomy. Those that resisted, did not.
The Indian people did not enjoy the liberty long since established in Ceylon. Ceylonese
natives owned their own plantations and manors along with descendants of VOC officials and of
later Dutch colonists. For two centuries, the Dutch and Ceylonese existed as mostly equal. In 1837,
a level of self-rule was established within the colony in the form of a Colonial Assembly, with both
natives and those of Dutch ancestry allowed to vote for the Colonial Assembly, though the
Governor-General of Ceylon was still appointed by the Staaten-General. It was not until 1911, that
non-land owning Ceylonese were enfranchised.
Though close together, Ceylon and India experienced different colonial existence. Ceylon, a shining beacon of liberty. India was a land kept under the domination of
the Dutch, with the only free natives being the allies. The Ceylonese owned their own land and ran
their own businesses. The Indians were largely overseen by Dutch colonists and officials. The only
common thread between the two lay in the fact that the mother country never interfered with native
religions. The Hindus and Muslims of Bengal appreciated this one fact, as opposed to the British
attempts at conversion.
Poverty was a rarity on the island of Ceylon, but it was the norm on the subcontinent. Large
slums sprouted around Goa, Mumbai, Dacca and Calicut, much like mushrooms after a storm. Work
in India involved mostly the extraction of various resources from the island; harvesting fields,
working the mines and serving on Dutch estates. During the middle of the Nineteenth Century,
English-style villas were all the rage in India. Any colonist with fashion sense would erect such a
manor as soon as possible, including the rose hedges. However, the Dutch did add their own little
touches to these villas, most notably in the form of tulips. Where Netherlanders colonized, that
particular flower followed.
The Dutch Raj was an era of unification in India. Over the millennia, various empires spread
across India, the most recent being the Mughals. Under these empires, the Indian peoples continued
to speak their own languages and keep their cultural identity. The Dutch Raj offered India a common
language for the first time in its history. Previous empires offered little incentive to speak the
conquer’s language, but with the Dutch, if any of the native wished to communicate with the newest
Raj, they would have to speak the foreigner’s language, for they refused to speak the natives’.
Despite their distrust, at best, of foreigners, the natives were forced to concede that Dutch was a
handy common language in a land with at least a dozen major languages of its own.
The Dutch unification of India was not all about conquest and exploitation. During the
Nineteenth Century, India began to develop a sophisticated infrastructure, strengthening trade and
facilitating economic growth, though mostly for Dutch benefit. VOC Rail laid tracks across India
as fast as the indigenous populace could work. The VOC imported foremen and managers, but left
the remedial work to the underpaid natives, though railroad workers received more pay than the
average Indian.
During the Dutch Raj, tens of thousands of Netherlanders immigrated to the colony. With
unemployment reaching unbearable levels back home, the Hague was more than happy to send the
less fortunate to India. When a colonist arrive, they were granted a lot of land approximating one
square kilometer. With India already heavily populated, the only way colonists could receive land
was at the expense of the natives. Millions of Indians were displaced and dispossessed. In order to
support themselves, some were forced to work for the same colonists who displaced them, and work
their former lands at a sub par wage.8
The same land once grew rice, wheat and other foods for the native population. Colonists
were not interested in growing vast quantities of food stuff. Old fields of wheat and rice were
ploughed under, replaced with tea. Innovations in the United States in the 1790s allowed for easy
separation of seed from cotton, allowing cotton to become an economically viable option. Cotton
was the new cash crop, and Nineteenth Century India was dominated by growing more and more of
it. However, cotton depleted the soil, and soon colonists were forced to move to fresh lands, and
displacing more natives.
Obsession with cotton lead to a series of famines across India. Colonists grew enough
produce to feed themselves, but belatedly disregarded the native situation, transforming their
previous farmed land into cash crops destined only for European consumers. The Famine of 1858
was the greatest tragedy in Dutch history. The biggest tragedy of the famine was how a people who
prided themselves on their freedom could oppress and starve the native population. Some historians
have proposed the famines were orchestrated, as a means to control the population. A hungry people
were a weak people, and a weak people could not rise up against its oppressors.
By comparison, Ceylon was paradise. Rebellion was rare and the middle-class was on the
rise. For the most part, plantations and estates were divide by various trading families from previous
centuries. However, quite a few of those employees were the natives of Ceylon. Unlike the Indians,
native Ceylonese did quite well for themselves. Their plantations were not stocked with the leaching
cotton, but rather with fields of cinnamon. Though many other crops were produced on Ceylon,
cinnamon was its most important cash crop. European demand for the spice had never wavered in
two centuries.
The colonial capital of Colombo began a transformation into Amsterdam East. Colombo was
the trading center of the entire Indian Ocean. Merchants from Dutch colonies in Indonesia to the east,
and Ottomans and free Arabs in the west, all made the voyage to trade their goods in the Ceylonese
capital. Netherlanders were more than happy to take these same goods back to the United Provinces,
for a substantial profit.
Where profit is earned, banks as sure to follow. The Bank of Colombo was established in
1839, shortly after limited self-determination was instituted. With a steady bank, money was loaned
and new businesses began to sprout across the city. The most prosperous of Colombo’s citizens
could afford to abandon the crowded apartment flats of the city proper, and build luxurious mansions
on the outskirts of town. These estates were reminiscent of estates in Britain or America more so
than the Provinces. Though the Dutch were a well-to-do people, not many were wealthy, and in a
land with high concentration of populations, large estates were a very expensive investment.
Labor was imported from India at cheaper prices to maintain the estates. It was not just the
colonists that brought in foreign workers, but the natives did as well. When native wages rose too
high, Ceylonese simply went abroad, searching for the desperate, those who would work for halfwages.
To an extent, the natives were assimilating to the ways of the colonists. Assimilation was not
a one-way avenue. The colonists took to eating native cuisines, adopting some native dress and even
adopting native architecture, producing a unique Oriental-Dutch hybrid design.
The adaptation on Ceylon caused little unrest on the island, where as India was always a
hotbed for turmoil. Indians who were subjects of the Princely States fared even worse than their
direct-ruled counterparts. In the crown colonies, Indians were subject to Dutch law and, though
treated like second-class citizens, were citizens of the Dutch empire nonetheless. However, India was
a vast land, and administrating the entire colony was difficult under the best of circumstances.
Decades would pass before quality of life would rise to acceptable levels.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]King William VI[/FONT]
Born Willem Frederick George van Oranje on December 6, 1792, young William’s life was
spent in the turmoil of the French Revolution and exiled to Brazil. In 1815, William lead a division
of Dutch soldiers in the campaign of liberation, including the final victory at Waterloo. In 1816, he
was married to Princess Paulina of Sweden. Unlike times in the past, the Staaten-General did not
view this as grounds for alliance. Sweden had an uneasy peace with its Ottoman neighbors in the
south, and had little in the means of competition on its Far Eastern border.
On October 7, 1840, Maurice II died after a long struggle with what is believed to be lung
cancer. Maurice II was know for his fondness of Brazilian tobacco. William returned to the tradition
of being crowned in Liege. It should be noted that Maurice II was the only Dutch monarch not to be
crowned in Liege, though a ceremony was preformed their after Maurice’s return from exile. William
kept his name, a long standing tradition in the Netherlands, and was crowned King William VI.
William VI’s reign was short, lasting only nine years, though it was no uneventful.
Industrialization in the southern Provinces caused an increase in poverty, an ailment once considered
foreign. With nothing to do, no work to be had, and little food to be eaten, the unemployed were
desperate. Desperate people do desperate things. Several textile mills in Upper Gelders and Namur.
Venlo in Upper Gelders was held by exploited workers. The workers made no demands and seemed
content to destroy the mills and execute the owners. The Worker’s Uprising of 1843 is widely noted
by Karl Marx when he developed his own theories of socialism.
The Count of Upper Gelders called forth his own militia, and demanded assistance from the
Hague. William VI traveled to Venlo at the head of a small army, only eight thousand. He had hoped
to end what could only be called an uprising peacefully. He met with ‘leaders’ of the uprising in an
attempt to negotiate. Negotiation was impossible, because the workers had no demands. No demands
aside from destroying the mechanical monstrosities and returning the Province to the way it was in
the days of their fathers.
As it is widely known, progress can not be reversed. Seldom can it be stopped. Even if laws
were passed banning technology, history has taught us that there will always be those who will
simply ignore laws, and nations have their own leaders that will disregard the law whenever it suited
their purpose. With no grounds for negotiation, William was forced to unleash his army to crush the
uprising. Over two thousand workers were killed.
The ‘Venlo Massacre’ weighed heavily upon William, and the people never forgave him for
his action, nor did they let him forget. The newly freed media condemned the action, and
independent presses published pamphlets calling for everything from his removal from the throne,
to his removal from life on earth. In 1849, William VI became the only Dutch monarch to abdicate
his throne. He stepped down in favor of his brother, Alexander, and left the Provinces in a selfimposed
exile. He spent the rest of his life with his wife and her family in Stockholm.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]King Frederick II[/FONT]
Born Alexander Frederick van Oranje, Frederick II took the throne on September 5, 1848,
as soon as the Staaten-General ratified the Act of Abdication. His rule was one of the only stretches
in Dutch history that peace dominated the political landscape. The United Provinces had not fought
against a European opponent since 1815. His reign saw a slowdown in expansion in India, leaving
the interior states of India and tribal lands on the upper Indus River to be dealt with by his successor.
After the violence in Venlo, Frederick II went out of his way to promote peace and
prosperity. Moved by the atrocious conditions under which the Venlo workers suffered, he pushed
for the Staaten-General to create and pass laws protecting the worker, protecting his people. In his
mind, the British were impoverished; the French were impoverished; the United Provinces were
suppose to be free of poverty. For two centuries it was a rarity, but the facts of industrial life changed
the whole plan. It was now a land ruled by the law of supply and demand. Mechanization increased
productivity while decreasing labor, and that created a surplus of workers, and that the owners and
capitalist fully exploited to their advantage.
Factory owners around the United Provinces petitioned against any such laws. They claimed
that to pass these laws, the government would be interfering in another of the Netherlands’ sacred
institutions; commerce. The Staaten-General went out of its own way to avoid interfering with the
economy, aside from placing import tariffs, standardizing currency and the gauges of rail. The
capitalists convinced many that by passing the laws, they would force prices upwards, and that it was
the capitalists that had the people’s best interest in mind; that being lower costs, and passing those
savings onto the consumer.
In reality, costs were cut, but factory owners simply pocketed the profits and continued to sell
at prices comparable to pre-industrial prices9. There were two things Frederick II loved; peace and
liberty. He viewed poverty as another means to subjugate the people. Even in a nation as libertyminded
as the United Provinces, Frederick was seen as a liberal. His critics expanded beyond just
factory owners. Various bankers, one of th cornerstones of the Dutch economy, went as far as
charging him with attempting to nationalize the banks.
These charges caused a rush on many banks throughout the United Provinces, one of the
leading factors of the recession during the 1850s. Times were rough during the 1850s, but not nearly
as bad as two hundred years prior, when the English blockaded the low countries coast during the
First Anglo-Dutch War. It was bad enough, however, to see ninety-three percent of the House of
Electorate loose their job in the election of 1856.10 The 1850s were a time of great change Europe;
two monarchies were toppled, and revolution was rampant across Germany and the Balkans. For a
time, it was doubted that the House of Orange could survive the crisis.
Revolution did not come to the United Provinces, at least not violent revolution. The Staaten-
General did pass some of the King’s recommendations, including limiting work to eight hours a day
per worker. If a factor ran twenty-four hours a day, then it must hire three shifts worth of workers,
thus lowering unemployment. The Worker’s Safety Act was one of the most progressive measures
passed in the 1850s, if not the entire century. It was the first act that dictated what a company could
and could not do to its employees. Injuries in the textile mills decreased, as did poverty in the
surrounding area. Though the quality of living stayed below its pre-industrial levels, it did steadily
increase over the next three decades.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]Formosa and Hainan[/FONT]
On the other side of the world, industrialization was in full swing in the Dutch colonies of
Formosa and Hainan. Over the past two hundred years, Formosa grew from a wild island inhabited
by aboriginals into the most advanced territory in all of East Asia. Though it would not be until the
1840s that the steam engine made its way to Formosa, the descendants of the Chinese workers
quickly adapted it to increase productivity in their own textile mills.
Throughout it history, Formosa struggled to keep up with European and later American
demands for silk. The fabric was both luxurious and highly prized from royalty to aristocracy right
down to the lowliest of shopkeepers. Formosa was a land that produced many desirable commodities.
Porcelain coffee cups were in demand in Amsterdam’s cafes. The original natives of Formosa, once
they learned how to make porcelain, produced some of the most elegantly designed pottery in the
world. It was not long after Dutch colonization that Formosan vases were as prized as their Ming
counterparts.
Formosa shares many similarities to Ceylon. Chinese immigrants and natives both thrived
along side their Dutch colonial rulers. Until 1800, the island was sole domain of the VOC, and the
company was far more interested in productivity than any ridiculous racial ‘theories’ that came out
of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Europe. The only significant enclaves of ethnic Dutch on the
island were around Taipei and New Antwerp. When a wave of Dutch nationalistic colonialism
spread out after Napoleon, Formosa simply assimilated any of those such colonists into its unique
culture.
By 1850, all the different peoples of Formosa considered themselves Formosan, and not Han
or Dutch. When recent immigrants asked about the native Formosans, those of Dutch ancestry
simply told them they were looking at a Formosan. Some tension existed between the long-time
Formosans and the recent arrivals from the Provinces. The newcomers attempted to press their new
ideals upon the locals, and were appalled by some of the local customs. The biggest shock came in
the form of sushi and sashimi. Both dishes were not native to the island, but after decades of trade
with the isolated Japanese, some of their cuisines were exported along with their silver and copper.
Newcomers were often disappointed by their own crop failures. Like many Europeans, they
brought along their familiar produce. Their attempts to spread wheat across the island failed, as did
their attempt to introduce sheep. Wool? This is Formosa, we grew silk here. The newcomers were
accustomed to seeing silk as a luxury, one they could afford back home, but not in sufficient
quantities to cloth themselves. Imagine their surprise when they finally discovered that most
Formosan dress was made from silk.
Between 1850 and 1880, waves of newcomers gradually assimilated into the established
Formosan society. They ate their rice, wore their silk and worked in citrus groves and mulberry
orchards. Of the various ideas imported by the newcomers, one caught on quickly. Instead of waiting
for shipments of steel to arrive from the United Provinces or Brazil, several enterprising newcomers
established their own series of steel mills around the island. By 1880, Formosa was the fourth highest
producer of steel; behind Brazil, the United States and the recently established German Empire.
To the south of Formosa and China itself lay the small island of Hainan. In 1664, the VOC
captured the island from the Manchu Dynasty ruling China. The Manchu had little interest in the
island, and offered little resistance against the annexation. In truth, internal turmoil more than
disinterest kept the Manchu from responding, that and the fact that the VOC’s private navy was more
than capable of cutting China off from external trade.
The VOC did little with the island. It was made a trading center for southern China, and
numerous Chinese worker were brought in to work the tea plantations. By 1667, the Dutch ruled the
seas, and the only way the English would get their tea was through Dutch traders. Throughout the
Nineteenth Century, Hainan remained a predominately agrarian economy, more a colony of Formosa
than the United Provinces.
Attempts to establish sugar plantations on Hainan met with marginal success. Sugar was
always in demand in Europe, but with Brazil, Formosa and the Indonesian colonies supplying sugar
for the Dutch, it was an unwise move to enter an already crowded market. Very few colonists from
the United Provinces made the move to Hainan until the Twentieth Century, though by then the
natives spoke as much Dutch as they did Cantonese.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]The Indonesian Colonies[/FONT]
Of all the colonies in the Indonesian Reaches, Java has always been the most critical to the
Dutch economy. Java and the rest of Indonesia share an analogous relationship with Ceylon and
India. Java was always the island of liberty, and by 1850, was not only the heaviest populated island,
but also the densest. Where many of the larger islands remained primeval jungles, Java was
transformed to a cornucopia of the spice trade.
Spices were the original reason for venturing to the East Indies. If not for the lure of
cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg and ginger, then most likely Europe would have left them alone. Java had
its own thriving culture when the Dutch arrived, and VOC conquest of the island did little to change
that. The native Javanese simply took what they saw was great about the foreigners and made it their
own. VOC employees were forced to make do with what was on the island. Though Javanese
restaurants became all the rage in Twentieth Century Europe and America, the food was not enjoyed
by the first colonists, who viewed it as very foreign.
When the VOC centered its trade around the cities of Batavia and Jakarta, secondary
businesses moved in. Where ever trade is centered, it takes little time for the bankers to appear. By
1850, the Bank of Jakarta was the largest such bank in the East Indies, handling accounts across
Indonesia, and as far as the British colonies in the Philippines and the French in Indochina. With
large flows of capital moving through its ports, Jakarta grew like no other colonial city.
At a time when Manilla, Saigon and Sydney were nothing but simple houses and dirt roads,
Jakarta boosted the largest paved roads in the region. More than fifty percent of the city’s roads were
paved with cobblestone and flagstone. The roads were reminiscent of ancient Rome’s highways, and
just as sturdy (amazing considering the level of rainfall Jakarta receives in comparison with Italy).
Though wood was plentiful throughout the region, houses in Jakarta was built from mason and stone,
materials impervious to termites.
When steam arrived in Java, it was not used immediately for factories. The island dealt
mostly with exports of produce, not production. Instead, the city boasted one of the most advanced
water and sewer systems of the Nineteenth Century. On an island where tropical disease was an
annual occurrence, the Javanese (both native and colonists) invested in pumps that would force waste
water to flow away from the city, and often directly into the sea. Nearby swamps, endemic with
malaria, were systematically drained by the new pumps, and its land quickly settled with an influx
of Dutch, German and even Swedish colonists flocking to the eastern Land of Opportunity.
The other islands in the regions did not fare as well as Jakarta. Up until the 1800s, the VOC
and the Dutch left them largely alone. The only contact with natives was in the form of business,
with Javanese trading goods imported from Europe and elsewhere to acquire rare commodities of
Sumatra and Borneo. Most notably was the wildlife itself. There was always trade in hide, tusks and
horn from the wildlife of Sumatra, but with the advent of menageries and later zoos, Sumatra became
an attraction for zoological collections. Rare animals of Sumatra, such as tigers, tapirs, orangutans
and the sun bear were captured from the wild an hauled off to mid-Nineteenth Century zoos across
Europe and the Americas.
Around the same time that zoos grew in popularity, Formosa was in the midst of
industrialization. In the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, coal and iron were dominate, but in Indonesia,
the Formosans found an abundance of minerals. First and foremost was gold, not a very useful
building material before the digital age, but sought after nonetheless. Much of the gold mined on
Borneo found its way into the vaults of banks on Java and Ceylon.
For the interest of Formosa, copper, tin and nickle were extracted from Sumatra, and tin, then
later bauxite came from Borneo. With both islands, the United Provinces established colonies
dedicated to rubber plantations. Rubber was rapidly becoming a vital resource in industrialization.
Everything from hoses to tires to seals were made from the extract of the rubber tree. Coconut
plantations also sprung up along the coast of Borneo. Coconuts proved popular in Dutch markets
during the 1890s, but were far less useful than rubber or tin.
Not all of Borneo was conquered during the 1880s and 90s. The Sultanate of Brunei
maintained a degree of independence, though like many princely states of India, it was a vassal to
the Hague. The Sultan turned to allying himself with the Dutch in Java because he feared invasion
by the British or French more than Dutch overlordship. The Sultanate was largely independent in its
own internal affairs. In return, they offered anchorage to the Royal (Dutch) Navy, and after the
discovery of oil under the Sultan’s domain, exclusive rights were given to Royal Dutch Shell, and
its later incarnation VOC Shell.
Farthest of the Indonesia holdings was New Holland. New Holland was not an island of
itself, but rather part of a continent. In 1751, colonists trying to escape the wars in Europe and the
tyranny of the VOC established the town of Perth, on the continent’s western shore. At the time,
Australia was known as the southern continent, as it was believed to be connected to Antarctica.
Further exploration, including the discover of Tasmania and what would become New Zeeland
disproved that theory.
Perth was not intended to be a haven for traders or a land of cash crops. It was a simple
experiment in transporting a piece of old Holland to New Holland. On this most arid of continents11,
the need for dikes and levies did not exist. The Perth river was a very seasonal river, but offered
sufficient irrigation to support the colony. The wheat and corn farms augmented the nutritional
intake of the colonists, which derived much of its food from the sea. The colony would not be
agrarian but rather pastoral. Sheep by the hundreds were imported to what seemed an empty
continent, and Perth developed a small wool and textile trade.
Constant vigilance was required to guard the sheep against the wild dogs of Australia,
believed to have arrived from early southeast Asian traders, at least two thousand year ago. To range
with the herds, the colonists naturally brought horses, but these animals did not far so well in the arid
landscape. One colonist, whose name has been lost to history, stumbled upon the idea of importing
camels. The beasts served Arabs well, and were the backbone of the ancient Silk Road, surely they
could handle Australia’s sandy landscape. Camels did all too well on the continent; a handful
escaped into the night in the early years, and their offspring soon spread across the continent,
browsing where the indigenous wildlife did not.
The VOC made no attempt to take control of New Holland. They saw little profit in the small
time wool outfit, especially when they were making millions of guilders in trading of silk. During
the Age of Napoleon, the British seized the colony. Their pretext was to defend their own Australian
colony against the potential of the French gaining a foothold in New Holland. With the Congress of
Vienna, the British returned New Holland to the Dutch, who for the first time, took direct control
over the colony.
Unlike so many other colonies, New Holland’s was not a story of conquest. A few natives
did live in Australia. The aborigines were as wild as the marsupials that occupied the continent. They
had little of value, and more over, had little concept of land ownership. Owning nothing of interest
and having no territorial conflicts, the New Hollanders were content to leave the aborigines alone.
Until 1860, the colonists clung to the Australian coast.
In 1861, sheep herders in the interior stumbled across a dry river bed. At the bottom of this
bed, one of the ranchers notices something shimmering in the light. What he found sparked the New
Hollander gold rush. Once word spread, much faster thanks to steam-powered transportation,
prospecting veterans of the American West flocked to Australia, along with adventures from Brazil,
Europe and China. Impact on the Aborigines was nearly disastrous.
The Americans were the most ruthless of the bunch. They treated the Australian natives even
worse than they did their own Indian population. Americans, along with Europeans, often shot down
who bands of Aborigines, who happen to be currently residing on land rich in gold. Native
populations plummeted as the plundering of the land, along with introduction of new diseases, took
their toll. Many British Australians simply brought their own practice of extermination to the Dutch
sector of the continent. Along with the miners, came the scoundrels, the thieves, and most damaging
to the native culture, the missionaries.
New Holland had not government of its own, and the governor was appointed by the
Governor-General of Indonesia. Jakarta had its own interests, mainly seeing that as much of that gold
as possible ended up in the Bank of Jakarta’s vaults. The original colonists of Perth were soon
overruled by outside interests. Their own exodus from New Holland was a long time coming. Before
Napoleon established the Batavian Republic, the Staaten-General decided that the coasts of New
Holland made for an ideal place to ship prisoners, an idea copied from the British. Though the
United Provinces had far fewer criminal elements than the United Kingdom, exporting some of the
vagrants and debtors was seen as desirable.
The New Hollanders, in 1862, began to pack up and leave for New Zeeland, a land itself that
was pacified during the 1840s. They continued their pastoral lifestyles, this time uninterrupted by
the discoveries of precious metals or gems. However, some New Hollanders found a way to fight
back to influx of miners. When a gold rush occurred, it was not the prospectors who grew rich, but
the merchants that traded with them. Many traders packed carts in Perth for the barest of minium
prices, rode inland to the mining camps, and charged ten to twenty times the price they paid. The
miners, rich with gold, did not feel the least bit sorry about paying ten guilders for an apple, thirty
for a sack of flour. That combined with the inevitable rift-raft of mining camps, gambling and
prostitution, ensured that few miners left New Holland rich. Indeed, few left period, opting to settle
the land, instead of shelling out fare for the voyage home.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]Abyssinia[/FONT]
By 1852, many traders and merchants, along with captains of every ship under the flag of the
United Provinces, were desperate for a short cut to the Indies and all their riches. From Europe to
India, the only possible shortcut lay across the Sinai, in the Ottoman Empire. A resurgent VOC
proposed building a railroad across the isthmus, ensuring shorter passage to the Orient. Shorter
passage, and a larger cut of the profit.
In contrast to the VOC, investors from Britain and the United Provinces, along with a joint
financial adventure by the Banks of Amsterdam and England, proposed cutting a sea-level canal right
across the land. At first, the VOC attempted to oppose the plan, by convincing the Turks that this
would cut off their African territories from their Asians ones. Only after some debate within the
Board of Holders, did the VOC decide to invest in the plan. If they were wrong, then they lost some
investment but could still build their rail. If they were right, they would own a twenty-five percent
share of the Suez Canal.
The Anglo-Turkish War of 1852-54, saw Egypt wrested from the control of the Ottoman
Empire. While still staying strong in the Balkans, where it only had an Austro-Turkish War every
generation. The borders changed little, a kilometer south here, a few north there, only to be reversed
by the next war. North Africa was another matter. Aside from the area in which a canal would be
built, the Dutch had little interest in North Africa. France and Spain spent considerable resources
nibbling away at Ottoman control, and with the lose of Egypt, that left only Libya in Ottoman
control. That province would be lost by 1901, to the Italian Federation.
After two years worth of surveying, the ground breaking of the Suez Canal occurred on
November 14, 1856. For twelve years, labors native to Egypt under the supervision of British and
Dutch engineers excavated the short cut between India and Europe. Relations between laborer and
supervisor were cordial, but the tension between Dutch and British waxed and waned between 1856
and 1868. At the start, there was much debate as to who should be in charge. The British were further
down the road in industrialization and invested half of the capital. On the other hand, who in Europe
knew more about diverting water than the Dutch.
The entire project was nearly derailed in 1863. When the succeeding states of the United
States invaded Virginia and defeated the Union army at Manassas, on Union soil, the British took
steps to recognize the Confederate States of America and prepared to intervene on their behalf. The
Dutch, who always had strong commercial ties with the United States bluntly informed British
ambassadors in the Hague that if the British intervene on behalf of the Confederates, then the Dutch
and Brazilians would intervene on behalf of the Americans.
With a regional civil war threatening to spill over on to the global theater, Emperor Napoleon
III attempted to mediate a settlement between the two warring factions in America. France’s own
relations with the United States were occasionally strained and at the time they were not particularly
close. In truth, France had more to gain by Confederate independence in that they could acquire
concessions for cotton. Further more, the French, though not a party to the Suez Canal, had an
interest in seeing the canal open. With the American War of Succession peacefully resolved, the
British and Dutch continued work on the Suez Canal, albeit at an accelerate rate. Both parties would
be happiest if the canal opened as soon as possible.
The opening of the Suez Canal brought a boom to a long forgotten Dutch outpost. At the end
of the Forty Years War, the United Provinces absorbed all of Portugal’s colonial possessions. During
the last decade of the war, Dutch privateers and raiders destroyed most of Portugal’s trading posts
along the eastern coast of Africa, except for one. For centuries, Mogadishu was of little importance
to the VOC or the Dutch Empire. With the opening of the canal and shifting of world trade route,
Mogadishu saw an exponential increase in traffic.
The sleepy trading post soon boomed to a population of fifty thousand. Traders of all variety,
mostly Arabs, immigrated to the port. With commerce, piracy was often to follow. The Horn of
Africa was infested with pirates by 1870, all of which that preyed upon Suez traffic. The British were
based around the canal itself and for the most part out of range of pirate raids. The Dutch continued
their own battles with piracy for years, until thousand of pirates raided Mogadishu.
The Raid on Mogadishu galvanized the Dutch, and in 1871, the Staaten-General had an army
of fifty thousand raised in the Provinces and Brazil, along with summoning the largest Dutch fleet
since the Raid on Medway. Thousands of Dutch soldiers poured ashore in Somali lands, crushing
pirate nests and occupying the surrounding lands. In order to stop piracy, the Staaten-General
decided it best to occupy and annex the entire coast of the Horn of Africa. With no coast, the pirates
lacked bases of operations.
King Theodore of Ethiopia sent his own army to battle the Dutch soldiers along the Eritrean
coast, claiming it as his own. Negotiations broke down before they even started when the Dutch
delegates informed Theodore that his inability to control the pirates meant he waved the rights to the
land. The First Abyssinian War was a short, victorious war, and by December of 1871, the Dutch
were in complete control of the coast, though the Ethiopians were granted access to the sea along
with a Dutch monopoly on its trading.
Within seven months, Theodore rejected the treaty and called up his army. With telegraph
wire connecting all parts of the Dutch Empire, King Frederick II was not pleased. The King was the
one who insisted on lenient terms towards the Ethiopians, and felt personally betrayed. Before the
Staaten-General could act, the King ordered the Dutch army in Abyssinia to strike first. The Second
Abyssinian War lasted for two years, in which tens of thousands of Netherlander and Brazilian
soldiers died, mostly of disease setting in after wounding. The Chief of Staff, Colonel Piet Guilder,
was the highest ranking death, and his demise came not from bullet or disease, but from the bite of
a cobra he happed to step upon.
By 1875, King Theodore was in exile in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a nation with
a large Orthodox population, and the Kingdom of Ethiopia dismantled. In its place, Ethiopia, Eritrea
and the Somali lands were untied into a single entity; Abyssinia. It was also the only Dutch colony
not dominated by Europeans. Aside from the city of Mogadishu, and various coffee plantations in
the Ethiopian highlands, the natives were left to their own devises.
The native governed themselves, under the watchful eyes of colonial ‘advisors’, and policed
themselves, again aided by various Dutch colonial units. They taxed themselves, and with all
colonies, a percentage was diverted for the Hague. Overall, Abyssinia behaved more like a Indian
princely state held in vassalage than a rebellious province under armed occupation. The influx of
Dutch goods drastically changed the region’s economy, but its political and cultural identity
remained largely unchanged, until the Hague took a more direct control over the colony during the
years leading up to the Great War.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]King Frederick III[/FONT]
When Frederick Willem Julius van Oranje took the throne on October 7, 1880, he inherited
a recently growing problem in southern Africa from his father. In 1824, the Staaten-General of the
United Provinces passed the Homestead Act, which granted Netherlanders the right to a square
kilometer of land in Kapenstaaten and territory beyond, provided they worked to improve the land13.
The influx of colonists were generally welcome in the city of Kapenstaat, but met with hostility when
they traversed into the interior.
Since the 1730s, Boers had steadily been leaving Kapenstaat for new lands free of VOC
interference. By 1830, the Boers established a series of quasi-states in southern Africa; Transvaal,
New Orange, Natalia and Johannestaaten. The republics as they called them were barely a
government in the modern sense. They possessed little power, and served mainly as a means to
mediate disputes and collect revenue for the general improvement of the land for all its inhabitants.
When th newcomers arrived on the Veld, they quickly raised fences, ploughed under grasses,
dug irrigation and general disrupted the Boer’s primarily pastoral lifestyles. True, the Boers did grow
produce, but they lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle similar to the natives of the region. Their tendency
to move about was another reason while the Boer governments were marginally effective.
Homesteaders simply ignored the Boer governments and banded together for protection. When Boer
herders entered a new township, the homesteaders greeted them not with open arms, but loaded ones.
Along with new technology and different agriculture, the homesteaders brought with them
an alien concept of race, that was largely absent in Eighteenth Century Kapenstaat. To the
newcomers, the European Race was superior, and because of the ways of natural selection, were the
fittest to rule. The Boers had their own tensions with the natives, such as disputes over grazing land,
and even a war of conquest in Natalia against the Zulu, but never did they view the natives as
inferior, different perhaps, but just as human as themselves. During VOC rule, more than sixty
percent of the Boers were male, and with limited Dutch woman about, the men took native wives.
Along with wives, the Boers adopted several other aspects of native life, such as clothing and
lodging. The conservative full wool dressings of the United Provinces were ill suited to the Veld
(except perhaps during the nights when temperatures plummeted in the arid land). Out of necessity,
they abandoned wool and took to wearing thinner cloth similar to the natives, though European
modesty still existed and most of the Boer’s bodies were covered.
With New Amsterdam now an American state, Kapenstaaten became the choice location for
emigrants departing the Provinces. India promised riches, but southern Africa offered a new start.
Most of the newcomers came from the southern Provinces, escaping from the industrial monster
consuming the workforce. However, if not for the efficiency of industrialization, far fewer
Netherlanders would have made the journey to new lands.
By 1880, conflict between the Boers and homesteaders was inevitable. The wave of
newcomers gradually reduced to a trickle, but the homesteaders multiplied at the same rate as the
Boers. When homesteaders matured and left home, they consumed more land and drove Boer
livestock to the further corners of the Veld. Homesteaders fired the first shots as new arable land
became scarce and competition increased.
Driving off the livestock was not enough, the homesteaders began to round up the livestock
or just destroy the Boer’s herds. In response, the Boers defended their herds with a ‘shoot first and
forget the questions’ attitude. Though they may have shared mostly peaceful relations with their
fellow humans, most Boers owned a firearm of one sort or another, for hunting game or driving off
predators. One encounter the homesteaders had not experience was that with a lion. Boers were quite
familiar with the largest of Africa’s cats.
Further to the desire for land, came the discovery of resources. Near Kimberley, miners from
Kapenstaat came across diamonds in a layer of coal there were extracting. At first it was just a few
gems, little did the miners know they stumbled upon the largest source of diamonds ever found. The
miners and more over the mine owners, attempted to keep the discovery secret, but to little avail.
Though diamonds do not spark the imagination they way gold would15 it still captured the attention
of enough adventurers to flood the Veld with more strangers. If the invasion of prospectors was not
bad enough, the mine owners added insult to injury by taking the diamonds and running. To the
Boers, any mineral found under common lands belonged to all the peoples of Transvaal and the
profits should be shared clans and family, both white and black. It would be only after the Boer Wars
that Transvaal would gain control over the diamonds, and establish the Kimberley Mining Company
to further exploit the resource.
Isolated shooting and retaliation bloomed into full-blown civil warfare, starting in Transvaal
in 1881. An army of hundreds of homesteaders cross the Vaal River, attacking Boer and native
villages for a depth of seven kilometers, driving both human and cattle away, and clearing the land
for horticultural usage. For the most part, such attacks were isolated to a single village and had not
yet been cleared to this extent. Word of the raid spread to Pretoria, the then center of government for
the nation of transients, and word went out calling for the Boers of Transvaal to go commando.
In the days before the Boer Wars, commando was simply what the Boers called patrols.
Along with taxes, the Boer men over the age of fourteen donated one week out of the year to patrol
the countryside around their settlements. For the most part, these were anti-predator patrols, intended
to drive off lions and leopards. Occasionally, though defeated years before, the Zulu would mount
raids against the Boers and their allies.
In 1881, thousands of Boers were called forth for commando, but not just to patrol. The
Boers planned on driving these newcomers south of the Vaal and back into New Orange. However,
word spread from the New Oranje side of the river to the town of New Orange. The Orange Boers
called forth their own commando, to patrol the southern side of the river. In the following weeks,
thousands of homesteaders were driven between the two rag-tag armies. Many escaped, but upwards
of thirty percent of the homesteaders were killed. Their corpses were left to the hyena as a warning
against further homesteader incursions.
Instead of heeding the warning, homesteaders sent word for assistance to Kapenstaat, asking
for protection against the marauding bands of Boers. The moment the colonial government
intervened, six years of brutal warfare followed. At first, the Boers just wanted to keep the
homesteaders from seizing their grazing lands, but when it was clear Kapenstaat favored the
homesteaders, calls for full independence rang out across the Veld. Dutch forces in southern Africa
were, though far more than the Boers could muster, not nearly enough to quash the rebellion.
The Boers were severely outnumbered, but knew the terrain and environment so well, they
could almost blend in with the background. The lacked uniforms, and often tied brush and grass to
their clothing, further camouflaging into the Veld. In contrast, the Royal Armies of the United
Provinces and Brazil, along with colonial brigades wore the same bright orange uniforms issued to
them during the French Wars. Though they dirtied quickly and blended in better with the savanna
than forests of India, they were still obvious. The fact that Dutch still used the tactic of marching
hundreds of soldiers abreast only made them easy targets for Boer sharpshooters.
The Dutch easily captured what passed for capitals in all the Boer Republics, but against
conventional wisdom, the Boers did not capitulate or sue for peace. They continued a guerilla war
in the wilderness. Though fewer in numbers, they scored casualties in higher proportions to their
adversaries. It is estimated that nearly twenty thousand Dutch were killed during the Boer Wars,
without forcing a single Boer army to surrender. What Dutch commanders failed to realize at the
time was that the Boers had no ‘armies’ in the European sense. Their bands were one thousand at
the most.
At first, the war was popular back home. The press in the United Provinces sold the war as
an attempt to reincorporated lost cousins back into Dutch society. The fact the Boers did not want
incorporation was beyond comprehension. Surely they would welcome the luxuries from across the
empire and the advances absent to them during the past one hundred fifty years. As the years drug
on, as townships fell and the Dutch death toll rose, the lack of foreseeable end wore on the public
opinion. Though the Senaat, who was primarily in charge of declaring war, was never up for
reelection, the House of Electorates were, and as the war drug on, they would receive the blame.
They pressed for a negotiated end.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]The Dutch Commonwealth of Nations[/FONT]
Negotiations began on-and-off in 1886. Dutch generals tried to lay terms for surrender on the
Boers. The Boers, under the command of Erik van Delft, continued their stance that the Boers would
not surrender. Negotiations went nowhere in 1886 and as 1887 started, King Frederick III stepped
in. He ordered the army to cease operations and only fire in self defense. Frederick suggested that
perhaps they should take the same approach with the Boers as they did the Brazilians; personal
union.
The Boers agreed to the self-governing status but refused to have a king. For decades, their
republics were ruled by assemblies and presidents, all of which were elected. The Boers did not like
the idea of having somebody in power who could not be removed, a throwback to memories of VOC
rule. It was van Delft that made his own proposal, via telegraph, to Frederick III. The Boers would
be ‘self-governing republics within the commonwealth’. His five words changed the history of the
Dutch empire.
When the idea of Commonwealth came before the Staaten-General, it met with resounding
support. Though the American Revolution long since passed from living memory, the effect on the
British did not. If the Boers continued their rebellion and succeeded in winning independence, it
might prompt India, the Indonesian islands and Abyssinia from declaring independence. It was but
a minor alteration to personal union plan. The Boer Republics would remain in commonwealth with
the United Provinces and Brazil, though they would not have a monarch.
The idea further developed into a league of Dutch states, all equal in status, bound together
by common language, currency and market. Each member state would send their own delegation to
meet in Amsterdam at least once a year. By 1888, delegates from Brazil, the United Provinces and
the Boer Republics met to draw up a charter for the commonwealth. The member states need not be
in personal union with the United Provinces, but the Dutch monarch would be recognized as the head
of the commonwealth. This the Boers could agree to. Since the Commonwealth Charter declared that
the Commonwealth Assembly would decide a common foreign policy, the Boer Republics were
technically protectorates of the Commonwealth. As was the case, their texts referred to the reigning
monarch as either Lord of Lady Protector.
In effect, the Dutch Commonwealth was an imperial federation. After the Boer Republics
achieved statehood, Kapenstaaten soon followed. It was the only state that did not fight against the
Hague or Recife during the Boer Wars. After its admission into the Commonwealth, it was soon
discussed that perhaps other colonies should be granted statehood. Ceylon, Java and Formosa were
at the forefront of possibility, and would all achieve statehood within sixty years, along with several
other, less outstanding colonies.
With the potential to achieve autonomy, the colonies began to strive to improve their own
infrastructure and governments. Like most political innovations of the Dutch during the Nineteenth
Century, it stemmed from American ideals. Ironically, it was the United Provinces and their method
of preserving Provincial powers that drove framers of the American Constitution to federation, along
with the diverse nature of each of the original eleven states. The formation of the Dutch
Commonwealth of Nations is the key factor for preserving Dutch unity to the present day, unlike
disintegration enjoyed by British, French and German colonial empires.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]Competition[/FONT]
In the 1820s, the first (literally the first) of the United Provinces experienced a complete
collapse of its colonial empire. The Latin American nations of Mexico, Grand Colombia, Peru,
Chile, Bolivia and Paraguay were under the heel of the Spanish Empire for three centuries. The
atrocities committed in the Provinces during Spain’s rule there paled in comparison to Latin
America. In the New World, conquistadores committed wholesale genocide against the indigenous
population, destroying their cultures and pillaging two continents.
Napoleonic rule of Iberia weakened Spain to the point it could no longer hold on to its
colonies. In 1810, Grand Colombia declared independence, with Mexico following the next year.
Though Mexico’s first rebellion was crushed, Grand Colombia had the privilege of superior
revolutionary commander. Simon Bolivar lead Grand Colombia to freedom, then pursued Spanish
colonial rule into Peru, Chile and Bolivia, the latter named in his own honor.
The Dutch welcome independence of Spanish colonies. If not for destroying their long-time
enemy, then for opening new markets stocked with millions of consumers, all willing to purchase
Dutch goods. During Spanish rule, Spain forbade any foreigners from trading in its colonies, though
it could never fully keep out determined Dutch smugglers. When Spain was driven from their former
colonies, Dutch traders of all types rushed in to fill the vacuum. Them, along with their British and
American counterparts effectively destroyed the Spanish export trade.
Revolution was not simply relegated to the colonial world. In 1848, a wave of revolutions
broke out across Europe. The United Provinces had its share of unrest in the 1840s, but that paled
in comparison to what happened across Germany, in France and Spain. Again the French monarchy
was abolished and replaced with the Second Republic, which was in turn replaced by the Second
Empire, and replaced again after the Franco-Prussian War16 with the Third Republic. Spain received
its First Republic when the reigning King, Carlos IV, was deposed in autumn of 1848. Ironically, the
Spanish King spent the rest of his life exiled in Flanders.
The toppling of the last Bourbon monarch sent ripples across France’s colonial possessions.
Quebec in particular was hit hard. At first, the Québécois welcomed the deposing of the king. At last,
they hoped they would be treated as one amongst equals as the revolutionaries were fighting for.
When Quebec was not elevated to a Department of France, it was a let down. When the new republic
treated it even more like a colony that the former king, that was the final straw. If Quebec would not
be equal, then it shall be separate. In 1851, Quebec declared its independence. To the world’s
surprise, France did little to stop it. At the time, France had its own internal conflicts to deal with.
When Louis Napoleon declared himself Napoleon III, he granted Quebec’s independence in return
for a free trade treaty with them. France would reap the economic benefits of a colony without
having to control it, and should the new Republic of Quebec fail, then France would be their to
‘assist’.
In 1861, France had its eyes further south. In April, tens of thousands of French soldiers
landed on the shores of Mexico, keen to collect on the debt Mexico had been either unwilling or,
more likely, unable to pay. When the Mexicans surrendered, Napoleon III decided to replace its
republic with a constitutional monarchy. As the Emperor, he chose an Austrian cousin, Maximilian.
The Mexican Emperor was an inept leader, and faced the firing squad in 1867. In response, France
invaded again, and this time it did not change the government, but abolished it completely. Mexico
joined Algeria and Indochina as French colonies.
Even the British managed to climb back from the pit they entered after losing not only India,
but the American colonies. During the 1820s, British nationals launched a land rush on the
unclaimed lands south of Rio de la Plata, to which the Prussians did not protest. The land was cold
and barren, and the British were welcome to Patagonia. It was a regret of later German Emperors
when Patagonia wool began to take up much of Europe’s market.
To replace India, the British managed to wedge themselves in between the Dutch Raj and
Siam. Their conquest of Burma was a relatively short affair, unlike their conquest of East Africa.
Again the British managed to wedge themselves between two states, Dutch South Africa and
Abyssinia. East Africa gave them not only a strategic presence both north and south of the Suez
Canal, but helped stretch their influence across central Africa. Though Britain’s star was once again
on the rise, it would always be second-rate compared to the United Provinces and its stars.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]Berlin Conference[/FONT]
Following the Boer Wars, the United Provinces entered into a monumental agreement with
other European powers. The sole purpose; to carve up Africa. In 1884, European empires sent
delegates to Berlin. Germany, Britain, the United Provinces, Austro-Hungary, France and Spain
divided the continent into their own private playgrounds. Germany and Austria were both new to the
colonial game and were granted the smallest portions. The Dutch received nothing new, only insured
the Boer Republics, Angola, Mozambique and Abyssinia stayed within their sphere of influence.
The British stretched their empire across southern and eastern Africa, following both the
Congo and Nile rivers. They expanded their holdings in western Africa, taking up the southern half
of West Africa. The northern half was annexed to Algeria and left under the direct rule of Paris.
France also gained suzerainty over Madagascar. The Germans were sandwiched between British
West Africa, Central Africa, and Egypt-Sudan. The Austrians gained a small section of western
Africa, which upon its independence, would make up the states of Nigeria and Biafra. Spain’s big
keep was Morocco. Along with Puerto Rico, the Marianas, Marshalls and Caroline Islands consisted
of what remained of their once world-straddling Empire.
The Berlin Conference marked the last terrestrial burst of colonialism. After Africa was
carved up, there was no land on Earth, save frozen Antarctica, that could be divided between
European World Powers. With no more room to expand, conflict was inevitable. Two major wars
would be fought by Europeans in Africa during the Twentieth Century. No matter the victors, it was
the Africans who lost. Europe’s drawing of borders cut tribes in half and contained mortal enemies
into the same colony. This marked the end of peace in Africa. Even after the next two world wars,
Africa would be rocked by violence during decolonization and waves of nationalism in the newly
independent nations.
[FONT=TimesNewRoman,Bold]King William VII[/FONT]
Two years after the Berlin Conference, Frederick III’s health began to decline. By 1888, his
son, Willem Maurice van Oranje took up the role as regent. He ruled in the name of his father.
Frederick’s body might be ailing him, but his mind was still sharp. He made certain his son did not
take the throne until after he died. He resisted pressure from his own family and the Staaten-General
to abdicate and allow his son to rule as King. All in good time was his response. Not until January
of 1891 did Frederick finally relinquish the throne and his own life. Four days after his death, his son
was crowned King William VII.
William VII was a strong believer in the principles of European expansion. He believed that
it was his people’s natural right to rule over the less fortunate, to guide them, to lift them from the
‘squaller of ignorance’. Until his reign, Angola and Mozambique were largely left alone by Dutch
interests. Limited logging went on across the two colonies, as did big game hunting. Some
prospectors, veterans of gold and diamond finds in the Boer Republics, headed north to search for
minerals. The jungles of Angola left its mineral rich regions inaccessible, and the technology to
effectively drill off-shore had yet to be invented.
William convinced the Staaten-General to open up land in both the colonies for settling, the
same as India and southern Africa. According to the Homesteader Act of 1824, Angola and
Mozambique were already open for colonization. However, with more agreeable lands in reach,
Netherlanders had little interest in Angola. Fisheries dotted the coast of Mozambique, but that was
as far as colonization went, fishers. William went further to plead with the Dutch citizenry, with
marginal success. In a strange twist of fate, some of the first colonies the United Provinces took were
the last to be colonized.
