County of Holland

Etymology

The oldest sources refer to the not clearly defined county as Frisia, west of the Vlie (also known as West Frisia). Before 1101, sources talk about Frisian counts, but in this year Floris II, Count of Holland, is mentioned as Florentius comes de Hollant ('Floris, Count of Holland'). Another early usage of the word is a deed dated 1083 in which Dirk V used the term "Count of Holland" for himself.

Holland is probably from the Old Dutch: holt lant, lit. 'wood land'. The counts of Holland generally kept to this single title until 1291, when Floris V, Count of Holland decided to call himself "Count of Holland and Zeeland, Lord of Friesland". This title was also used after Holland was united with Hainault, Bavaria-Straubing, and the Duchy of Burgundy. The titles eventually lost their importance, and the last count, Philip II of Spain, only mentioned them halfway through his long list of titles.

History

Francia and Lotharingia

Around 800, under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire covered much of Europe. In much of this empire, an important unit of regional administration (corresponding roughly to a shire or county in England) was the gau (Frankish) or pagus (Latin). A comes (count) ruled one or more gaue. Because of the low volume of trade, the negative trade balance with the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim states and the disappearance of currency, the economy was more or less reduced to barter. The king's vassals could be rewarded only with land (beneficium or, from the tenth century, feodum) and usufruct, and feudalism developed from that. The vassals, who were generally appointed by the king, strove for a system of inheritance. This informal rule became more widespread and in 877 was legalised in the Capitulary of Quierzy.

Upon the death of a king, the Frankish kingdom was frequently divided among his heirs. The system of partible inheritance often caused internal strife, which made centralized government problematic. The Viking raids further undermined centralized government. At the end of the reign of Emperor Louis the Pious, royal power had weakened by the flood of 838 and by infighting between the king's sons. After Louis died in 840, his son, Emperor Lothair I, who was king of Middle Francia, rewarded the Danish Viking brothers Rorik and Harald with Frisia in an attempt to resist Viking attacks.

When Lothair died in 855, the northern part of Middle Francia was awarded to his second son, Lothair II, and was called Lotharingia.

Rorik was granted the right to rule Kennemerland in 862.

The 880 Treaty of Ribemont added the Kingdom of Lotharingia (which included the Low Countries) to East Francia, which attempted to integrate it. However, there were no strong political connections like those between the four German stem duchies of east Francia: Franconia, the Saxony, the Bavaria and the Swabia. Lotharingia had considerable self-determination; this became clear when Louis the Child, East Francia's last Carolingian, died in 911. Although the stem duchies flocked to Duke Conrad I of Franconia, Lotharingia chose the Carolingian king of West Francia, Charles the Simple.

In Frisia, the situation was complex. Power was in the hands of Rorik's successor, Godfrid, who became embroiled in the politics of the Frankish empire and was allied with the children of Lothair II. Danish rule ended in 885 with the murder of Godfrid at Herispijk, and all Danes east of the coastal areas of West Frisia were killed or driven out in what must have been a complex, successful conspiracy. Henry of Franconia led a coalition of Babenberg Franks, Hamaland Saxons and Teisterbant Frisians (in cooperation with the bishop of Cologne and the Emperor), which outsmarted Godfrid and the Danes. The chief conspirator in the murder was Everard Saxo, count of Hamaland. One of those who profited most from the power vacuum was the Frisian Gerolf, comes Fresonum (count of Frisia), from Westergo in the present-day province of Friesland. Gerolf, Godfrid's former envoy to the emperor, demanded lands in the Moselle valley from the emperor to provoke a war.

Imperial State

The rising status of the House of Holland was shown when in 938 Count Dirk II, probably the grandson of Count Dirk I, married at the age of 8 with Hildegard of Flanders, daughter of Count Arnulf I of Flanders.

The County of Holland and other nearby territories had a considerable amount of independence from Holy Roman Empire leadership in the 10th and 11th centuries. Until at least the second half of the 10th century, Holland's leadership valued secular principles, a contrast to the nearby Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht.

The count of Holland was in this period more of a military commander who had to resist Viking raids, and be subject to the authority of the Bishopric of Utrecht. In 985, King Otto III, at the request of his mother Theophanu, granted the ownership (proprium) of a number of lands to count Dirk II. These lands had already been given in loan (beneficium). This was the area between the rivers Loira or Lier and Hisla (a gouw called Masaland), villa Sunnimeri (on the Zeelandish island of Schouwen), the area between the rivers Medemelaka and Chinnelosara gemerchi (Kinheim) and the gouw Texla.

In 993, count Arnulf of Ghent was killed in a battle against Frisian land reclaimers who did not want to pay their due to the count. It is unknown where this battle took place but it was probably in the Rijnland or in the Maas estuary. Arnulf's son, count Dirk III of Holland was too young to rule, so his mother Lutgardis of Luxemburg acted as regent. In 1005 Dirk was old enough to rule in his own name, but he still made thankful use of the good connections that his mother had made. According to Thietmar of Merseburg, a reconciliation with the Frisians was arranged with help from his uncle-in-law, king Henry II, who travelled with an army and a fleet from Utrecht to the Maas-estuary (probably Vlaardingen) to force the inhabitants to recognize their count. This expedition appears to have been successful since after 1005 no revolts against the count in this southern part of the later county of Holland are known.

As a result of a promise he had made during the Frisian rebellion, Dirk III went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When he returned, the northern side of his county had become unsafe, so he travelled south and started granting rights to reclaim lands from nature around present-day Vlaardingen in order to cultivate these lands. He also built a castle at Silva Meriwido, the future Vlaardingen. From this castle, he forced merchants that travelled per ship from Tiel to England to pay toll. The Bishop of Utrecht, Adalbold and the merchants of Tiel complained against this piracy at the Reichstag of Nijmegen in 1018, the merchants of Tiel effectively pointing out that the emperor was losing tax revenue when he allowed the Tiel merchants to being plundered by Dirk III. It was decided to act against Dirk III. An army led by Godfrey II Duke of Lower Lorraine, consisting of a fleet with soldiers from the bishops of Utrecht, Cologne, Cambrai and Liège was however surprisingly ambushed in a swamp and nearly annihilated by Dirk III Frisian subjects in what was called the Battle of Vlaardingen, Dirk III himself playing a coordinating role, only to appear from his castle to officially take prisoner the duke of Lower Lorraine, when Godfrey was on the verge of being killed.

Burgundians and Habsburgs

The Hook and Cod Wars were a series of wars and battles in Holland between 1350 and 1490. Most of these wars were fought over the title of count, but some have argued that the underlying reason was because of the power struggle of the bourgeois in the cities against the ruling nobility. The Cod faction generally consisted of the more progressive cities of Holland. The Hook faction consisted of a large part of the conservative noblemen. Some of the main figures in this multi-generational conflict were William IV, Margaret, William V, William VI, Count of Holland and Hainaut, John and Philip the Good. Perhaps the most well known, however, is Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut. By the end of the Hook and Cod Wars, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, had taken control of Holland. Leading noblemen in Holland had invited the duke to conquer Holland, even though he had no historical claim to it. Some historians say that the ruling class in Holland wanted Holland to integrate with the Flemish economic system and adopt Flemish legal institutions.

Under the Burgundians, Holland's trade developed rapidly, especially in the areas of shipping and transport. The new rulers defended Dutch trading interests. The fleets of Holland defeated the fleets of the Hanseatic League several times. Amsterdam grew and in the 15th century became the primary trading port in Europe for grain from the Baltic region. Amsterdam distributed grain to the major cities of Belgium, Northern France and England. This trade was vital to the people of Holland, because Holland could no longer produce enough grain to feed itself. Land drainage had caused the peat of the former wetlands to reduce to a level that was too low for drainage to be maintained.

Charles (1500–58) became the owner in 1506, but in 1515 he left to become king of Spain and later became the Holy Roman Emperor. Charles turned over control to regents (his close relatives), and in practice rule was exercised by mostly French speaking Burgundians he controlled. Holland retained its own governments and court, controlled by the local nobility, and its own traditions and rights ("liberties") dating back centuries. Likewise the numerous cities had their own legal rights and local governments, usually controlled by the merchants, On top of this, however, the Burgundians had imposed an overall government, the Estates General of the Netherlands, with its own officials and courts.

Revolt and the Dutch Republic

During the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation rapidly gained ground in northern Europe, especially in its Lutheran and Calvinist forms. Protestants in Holland, after initial repression, were tolerated by local authorities. By the 1560s, the Protestant community had become a significant influence in the county, although it clearly formed a minority then. In a society dependent on trade, freedom and tolerance were considered essential. Nevertheless, the Catholic rulers Charles V and his successor Philip II felt it was their duty to defeat Protestantism, which was considered a heresy by the Catholic Church and a threat to the stability of the whole hierarchical political system. The Catholic Spanish responded with harsh persecution and introduced the Spanish Inquisition. Calvinists rebelled. First, there was the iconoclasm in 1566, which was the systematic destruction of statues of saints and other Catholic devotional depictions in churches. After 1566 William the Silent, more or less by accident became the leader of a revolt that by severe mismanagement by Philip II and his governor the Duke of Alva turned into the Eighty Years' War. As a consequence, Holland and the other six allied provinces became an independent nation called the Republic of the Seven United Provinces. Over William of Orange Blum says, "His patience, tolerance, determination, concern for his people, and belief in government by consent held the Dutch together and kept alive their spirit of revolt." The main breakthrough came when Holland, along with Zeeland, was conquered in 1572 and following years by the Watergeuzen, a somehow effective maritime force of mainly Calvinists who turned pirate and pirates who turned Calvinist.

The States General of the Netherlands signed the Act of Abjuration, deposing Philip as Count of Holland and forming a confederation between the seven liberated provinces. From then on, the executive and legislative power would again rest with the States of Holland and West Friesland, which were led by a political figure who held the office of Grand Pensionary. The county, now a sovereign state within this larger confederation, became the cultural, political and economic centre of the Dutch Republic, in the 17th century, the Dutch Golden Age, the wealthiest nation in the world. The largest cities in the republic were situated in the province of Holland, such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leiden, Alkmaar, Delft, Dordrecht, Haarlem, and the nation's capital, The Hague. From the great ports of Holland, Hollandic merchants sailed to and from destinations all over Europe, and merchants from all over Europe gathered to trade in the warehouses of Amsterdam and other trading cities of Holland. Many Europeans thought of the United Provinces first as "Holland" rather than as the "Republic of the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands". A strong impression of "Holland" was planted in the minds of other Europeans, which then was projected back onto the Republic as a whole. Within the provinces themselves, a gradual slow process of cultural expansion took place, leading to a "Hollandification" of the other provinces and a more uniform culture for the whole of the Republic. In the early decades of the uprising, a great number of refugees from Flanders and Brabant settled in the big cities of Holland. They had a Frankish influence on the new dialect of urban Holland (that earlier had more Frisian influences) that in later centuries became the standard language of the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking Belgium.

Geography

The county covered an area roughly corresponding to the current Dutch provinces of North Holland and South Holland, as well as the northwestern part of the current province of North Brabant (roughly between the towns of Willemstad, Geertruidenberg and Werkendam), and the islands of Terschelling, Vlieland, Urk and Schokland, though it did not include the island of Goeree-Overflakkee.

In the early Middle Ages, large parts of the area covered by the present-day Netherlands were covered by peat bogs. These bogs limited the size of arable land in the Netherlands, but also proved to be a good source of fuel. Around 950, small-scale reclamation was started on the enormous bogs in Holland and Utrecht, probably set in motion by the minor nobility. In the 11th century the 'Great Reclamation' started, under the control of the counts of Holland and the bishops of Utrecht. Until the 13th century, large amounts of land were reclaimed between the IJ bay in the north, the dunes in the west, the Lek and Waal rivers in the south and the Old Rhine in the east.

Before the Great Reclamation, the borders between the county of Holland and the bishopric of Utrecht were unclear, and there existed a literal no-man's land. However, during the reclamation the counts of Holland managed to expand their influence at the cost of Utrecht.