ABSTRACT
THE epic struggle of the Netherlands against the forces of the kings of Spain,—the Dutch call it the Eighty Years’ War,— lasted from 1568 till 1648. It is best known to English-speaking people through the works of Motley, whose vivid narrative has done much to popularise in Anglo-Saxon countries the memory of the heroic struggle of the Dutch. But Motley imagined or invented a Dutch nation, existing as a separate entity, republican and protestant, that rose against a catholic tyrant who had robbed it of its freedom. I have already indicated that the true story is different. It was the whole of the Netherlands, the territory which is now Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, as well as a portion of Northern France, that revolted against its Hapsburg ruler. At the time of their revolt the people of the Netherlands could not have been called a nation. Nevertheless, an incipient sense of nationality was perceptible among them. Nationality is a matter of consciousness; men belong to the nation to which they feel that they belong. A Dutch historian has examined the entries made by between ten and fifteen thousand students and artists from the Low Countries in the registers of Italian universities and academies. 1 He found that, until about 1560, they wrote down only the principality from which they hailed and described themselves as Friso, Brabantinus, Geldrus, Zelandus, Hollandus. About 1560 provincial designations began to disappear, and all students, whether they came from the north or from the south of the Low Countries, described themselves indifferently as Belga, or Flamengus, either of which simply means Netherlander.
