Introduction

Revolutionary changes have occurred in social relations over the last two centuries, not least in the Netherlands. Collective society in the form of the state has become immensely powerful, reaching into every crevice of personal life, dictating what is acceptable behaviour in the home between parents and children, and in the workplace between employer and labour force. We have seen in Part II the state adopting a greater role in the economy throughout the nineteenth century, and will see here that it did so in social matters as well. Little of this social intervention was in place in 1800, and it was almost exclusively at local level; much of the writing was on the wall by 1914, as a function of central government. At the same time, while the state was expanding its influence over the lives of individuals, the latter were not entirely passive in the matter. Whereas only a tiny elite took part in political life at the start of the nineteenth century, nearly all the adult nation did so by 1919, and not only by voting: most people were by then ‘organized’ in one form or another. Voluntary participation in bodies with a public function grew with revolutionary rapidity in the nineteenth century, especially in its second half.