Sandmannius
Banned
But would it be Russowank or Anglowank/Britwank?
I think it'd be a Dutchwank considering the Netherlands now has access to the resources and manpower of Russia and Britain.
But would it be Russowank or Anglowank/Britwank?
Hmm. I would say yes, for a generation. After that you have two eventualities, both of which arguably ruin the interest factor. One is that France seeks to annex Holland and sap its resources, money, etc for the benefit of France, and thus it becomes about as interesting as any other part of France. The other is that the risk of the above, tied with the way they've given up Catholic Spain for Catholic France and so on, mean that the Dutch turn on the French and militarily seek independence once more, resulting in a second slow struggle for independence involving much sieging of cities and flooding of land and no set piece battles at all. I regard the other two options (plus Option D - independence a la OTL) as being the option most likely to create the most interesting long-term Dutch story.
It does, and your option 2 is quite likely. However, my point was that it rather kills off the idea of an interesting Franco-Dutch culture, in an attempt to hark back to the OP. Rather you'd just get a Dutch-speaking outpost of French culture, and even that would likely slow become Francophone.
To say nothing about how continued direct French rule may have effected the cultures of Catalonia and Dalmatia. Tuscany may very well remain quintessentially Italian.I get what you're saying. I've often wondered what would happen to the Netherlands culturally and linguistically if the 1812 European borders had lasted a few generations.
I was thinking that a French-allied Dutch revolt, coupled to France's border with modern Belgium, means that the French would be able to drive the Spanish out of the southern Netherlands and mean that the eventual Dutch state encompasses the whole of the Low Countries.
Sure, as you say, a generation down the line the Dutch might break with France...but the two options there are 1) a fully independent Dutch state that includes the whole of the Low Countries and is therefore much more powerful than the OTL Dutch state, or 2) the French manage to hold on to the Southern Netherlands and it becomes part of France's natural borders.
Yes I know all that, I was just using "Southern Netherlands" as a geographic term because calling the area "Belgium" feels uncomfortably anachronistic in this context.You are talking about the start of the Dutch revolt, right (when Elizabeth and the king of France were offered the Dutch crown)? In that case there was no such thing as the southern Netherlands. There was just Spanish occupied Netherlands and Free Netherlands and certainly at the start of the war those did not match the Belgium-Dutch border. Looking at the Union of Utrecht, the provinces that decided to rebel against the Spanish, it more or less included all Dutch speaking parts, including Flanders and (most of) southern Brabant. If you look at what the Spanish managed to subdue in a short time after, it included large parts of what is now the Netherlands, including parts like Friesland. The idea of the southern Netherlands only came into being when after 80 year of war against the Spanish, the Dutch did not manage to recapture the southern parts of the Netherlands. So there would be no southern Netherlands only the Netherlands, assuming of course the French manage to conquer/free it all from Spain.
If you want an Anglo-Dutch Union that could last, you'll need to go back to the rebellion itself. IIRC there was talk of offerring the crown to Elizabeth I.