The Netherlands: Geography, History, Culture, and Economy

Geographical Definition and the Origin of the Low Country’s Name

The Netherlands, a country located in northwestern Europe, is also known as Holland. The name “Netherlands” means "low-lying country"; the name Holland (from Houtland, or “Wooded Land”) was originally given to one of the medieval cores of what later became the modern state and is still used for 2 of its 12 provinces (Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland).

A parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarch, the kingdom includes its former colonies in the Lesser Antilles: Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten. The capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government is The Hague.

Polders: Water Management and Land Reclamation

The country is indeed low-lying and remarkably flat, with large expanses of lakes, rivers, and canals. Some 2,500 square miles (6,500 square km) of the Netherlands consist of reclaimed land, the result of a process of careful water management dating back to medieval times.

Along the coasts, land was reclaimed from the sea, and, in the interior, lakes and marshes were drained, especially alongside the many rivers.

All this new land was turned into polders, usually surrounded by dikes.

Initially, manpower and horsepower were used to drain the land, but they were later replaced by windmills, such as the mill network at Kinderdijk-Elshout, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The largest water-control schemes were carried out in the second half of the 19th century and in the 20th century, when steam pumps and, later, electric or diesel pumps came into use.

Population, Social Tolerance, and Legal Framework

Despite government-encouraged emigration after World War II, which prompted some 500,000 persons to leave the country, the Netherlands is today one of the world’s most densely populated countries. Although the population as a whole is “graying” rapidly, Amsterdam has remained one of the liveliest centers of international youth culture.

There, perhaps more than anywhere else in the country, the Dutch tradition of social tolerance is readily encountered.

Prostitution

“Soft-drug” (marijuana and hashish) use

Euthanasia

These are all legal but carefully regulated in the Netherlands, which was also the first country to legalize same-sex marriage.

Trading Tradition and Advanced Economy

This relative independence of outlook was evident as early as the 16th and 17th centuries, when the Dutch rejected monarchical controls and took a relatively enlightened view of other cultures, especially when they brought wealth and capital to the country’s trading centers.

In that period Dutch merchant ships sailed the world and helped lay the foundations of a great trading country characterized by a vigorous spirit of enterprise.

In later centuries, the Netherlands continued to have one of the most advanced economies in the world, despite the country’s modest size. The Dutch economy is open and generally internationalist in outlook.

International Organizations and Global Role

With Belgium and Luxembourg, the Netherlands is a member of the Benelux economic union, which served as a model for the larger European Economic Community (EEC; now embedded in the European Union [EU]), of which the Benelux countries are members. The Netherlands is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and it plays host to a number of international organizations, especially in the legal sector, such as the International Court of Justice.

Immigration and the Testing of Tolerance

The Dutch reputation for tolerance was tested in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, when an increase in immigration from non-European Union countries and a populist turn in politics resulted in growing nationalism and even xenophobia. This shift was marked by:

Two race-related political assassinations, in 2002 and 2004.

The government’s requirement that immigrants pass an expensive ‘‘integration’’ test before they enter the country.