Volume 34, Number 21 & 22 · January 21, 1988
High Point in Low Countries
By Jonathan Brown
The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age
by Simon Schama
Knopf, 698 pp., $39.95
The Dutch Republic of the seventeenth century struck the foreign visitor as a society set apart from the rest of Europe. On a continent of beleaguered monarchies, the Dutch had founded a solid republic, and created a prosperous society. While Catholics and Protestants destroyed each other in bloody sectarian war, the Dutch provided an atmosphere of tolerance, if not equality, for people of many creeds. But like every other golden age, the Golden Age of the Republic did not last long. The Northern Netherlands began its revolt against the Spanish crown in 1566, and by 1598, after immeasurable hardship and struggle, had not only secured its status as an independent state but had become a major European power. Barely seventy-five years later, the soldiers of Louis XIV invaded Dutch soil and effectively reduced the nation to the secondary status it has occupied ever since.
Review, 4105 words
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