Abstract

This chapter focuses on the European community as it was imagined in 1697 by Dutch authors celebrating the Peace of Ryswick. The aim is threefold. Firstly, to show that the concept of ‘imagined community’ can be stretched in a temporal way, as it provides us with a useful tool to discern the rise of imagined communities, more particularly the rise of national and European communities, in the early modern period. Secondly, to demonstrate that the European community was imagined in a variety of ways and dispersed into several different imagined communities that were defined by in- and exclusion of other denominations. Thirdly, to show that there was a strong interplay between the national and European levels. A close reading of the Dutch writings published to celebrate the Peace of Ryswick reveals that these publications expressed a strong sense of a shared European identity. Nevertheless, the majority primarily served as a means to propagate national sentiments, supporting the political and religious views of King/Stadtholder William III. History played a key role in the creation of this Dutch sense of exceptionalism within a larger European framework.

Keywords:Peace of Ryswick, national identity, Europeanism, imagined community, Dutch history, King/Stadtholder William III

Europe, world's pride, whose heart was trampled

by infuriated plagues of war

plunged into a sea of disasters,

buffeted from day to day by thundering gusts

in the crashing of the breakers against the coast

wounded by the murder weapon, sinks powerless down to the earth

[…] Ah! She calls […]

I descend in the eternal grave, my glory has gone.