The Dutch Empire lasted from 1600 to 1975 and beyond; even now there are some Caribbean island dependencies left. The size, shape, and nature of the empire has evolved and altered, but over those centuries the Dutch colonies have been an important, if fluctuating, component of the national consciousness. Economic advantages were very considerable, but arguably the Dutch gained just as much in terms of self-confidence and status for their small nation: in the nineteenth century the empire was seen as absolutely essential in terms of both economics and prestige. Even in the twenty-first century, a centrist prime minister could call for a return to “the mentality of the VOC” (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, United East Indies Company), a remark that was not universally well received.

“The peoples of Asia did not perceive of themselves as ‘Asians’ until the Europeans classified them in that way,” as the cartographical scholar A. J. Klinghoffer once remarked. Geographical orderings like the continents, the “Middle East,” or the “Third World,” are concepts usually invented by Europeans. Europeans have viewed the world in relation to themselves: one only needs to think of the Prime Meridian, where the longitudinal divisions of the world radiate out from the Greenwich Observatory in London. This chapter is concerned with “East” and “West,” and more specifically, with “Asia” and “Europe”: what do those terms imply? “The West”: that ubiquitous term in our daily media, but West of what? The East means “East of Europe,” but it has not always remained static. From about 700 ce in Western usage, “East” began increasingly to be associated with the Muslim religion and the areas it came to dominate. Later this East expanded to include the Indian subcontinent, as the Europeans discovered a new colonial Orient. Other variations would later include the Ottoman Empire (as in the “Orient Express”) and the Far Eastern “Yellow Peril.” East and West are thus terms culturally constructed by Europeans rather than being scientifically or geographically defined: “the East” is designated according to the changing dictates of the West.

Architecture can capture and project identity. Kings and presidents try to secure their legacy with palaces and museums in prominent places; eminent citizens project their achievements and wealth by building imposing residences; even ordinary citizens instinctively choose dwellings which they think reflect their style and taste. And the same is true of cities, especially capital cities. Amsterdam, like other European capitals, presents itself by commissioning its built environment at various levels and in successive periods, especially its public buildings.

There is a common popular assumption that political identities are singular, fixed items; you have one, and it involves loyalty and allegiance to a particular body or unit, most usually a nation state. If you are Dutch, then your primary loyalty or identification is with the Netherlands, and sharing that identity with something else – another country for example – will weaken or even damage your Dutch identity. Half-measures are signs of weakness: you can only have one identity, and it is the same for everyone. Remember the trouble Princess Maxima got into when she had the cheek to suggest in 2007 that there was no single Dutch national identity? Perhaps the most notorious perceived clash of identities happens when national and European identities collide: many would take the view that the more you identify with Europe, the less strong your national identity becomes.

If that kind of view characterises populist rhetoric, then it is far too simplistic. Our identities always involve loyalties to all sorts of different things, like family, gender, age group, ideology, religion, region, country, continent and much else. In addition those loyalties change over time in themselves and in relation to others, but together they make up a complete, total identity which is the sum of those many different allegiances. Some strands may be more important than others, but identities are invariably multiple.

Here I shall illustrate this by looking at the way three kinds of identity not only coexist, but actually support each other in Amsterdam. Those three forms are ones which might be seen as being especially mutually incompatible: the local identity of the city of Amsterdam, the national identity of the Netherlands, and a European identity. Amsterdam is a particularly good but by no means unique example: a similar exercise could be conducted in London, Lisbon, Vienna, or other capitals.

There is no single definition of nationalism, but many of them hold it to be an ideology or even doctrine which makes the nation paramount and which implies a national identity based on cultural, linguistic and ethnic lines. The nation is seen to be the most natural and valid collectivity of humans beyond the family, and it should therefore be incorporated when possible in a sovereign political unit, the nation-state. The nation-state supported by cultural nationalism is a phenomenon associated primarily with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (although of course there were precursors aplenty). The question which will be addressed here is what form nationalism took in the Enlightenment, from about 1650 to 1800, and how it interacted with developments in cartography. Benedict Anderson remarked that modern nationalism grew up only when the old certainties like revealed religion and royal divine right dissolved, towards the end of the eighteenth century. In general, then, in the Enlightenment we are looking not so much at modern populist nationalism, but the popularised, later phases of state formation. The state was being imposed, and the support of the people of the nation was being sought, rather than simply the endorsement of the monarch. And from the seventeenth century onwards, the state frequently employed cartography as a material assistance to state formation. That, in turn, gave considerable opportunity for airing the subject of the nation in cartographic form.

Nationalism in and on Maps

Maps have often been harnessed for nationalist ends at various stages in history. Cartography has been particularly associated with the assertion of national unity at the expense of diversity within, with the declaration of a state's territorial ambitions vis-à-vis another’s, and with the claims of empire. In the words of G.H. Herb, ‘Surveying is an act of national hegemony’, and ‘only maps are able to communicate a precise image of a nation and foster a territorial consensus’. Ricardo Padrón expressed it as follows: the ideological force of cartography ‘ground[s] the authority, even the identity, of nations and empires alike in maps of their territories or their territorial ambitions’.

In considering the ‘imagining of Amsterdam’ in the context of globalization, the focus of this book falls on how the city has at various times been involved in and affected by globalizing tendencies in politics, economics, and, more especially, culture. The present chapter, taking an historical approach, will consider some of the ways in which Amsterdam has viewed itself over several centuries in the light of various waves of globalization. It is concerned with Amsterdam's view of its own position in the world, including its position in the emerging Dutch nation, as a European capital, and as the centre of a global trading and financial empire. The interaction between these different levels of self-perception and selfrepresentation is of particular importance: the principal objective in what follows is to uncover and unpick the kinds of ideas Amsterdammers have entertained about their city's position in the world in terms of their self-image or perceived identity, and in contexts ranging from the municipal, through the regional and the national, to the European and the global.

In doing so we shall concentrate on Amsterdam's status as an icon of commercial capitalism over several centuries, and particularly on the city's self-image in a colonial context at various points since the seventeenth century, right up to the twentieth. We shall be principally concerned with self-images in the sense of visual, graphic images in the public spaces of the city, on the facades of private houses and business premises, and decorating the great public and commercial institutions that have been built in the centre of Amsterdam, always a city more of burghers and merchants, of civic rule and civic pride, than of princes and sovereigns. In many academic disciplines, especially where an interest is shown in visual culture, there is an increasing recognition that many of the images which surround us in our daily lives are charged with meaning, and as a whole can be highly active in the social, cultural, and political process. Historians have perhaps been more reluctant than other scholars to branch out into using visual sources, but there has been a developing discussion over several decades; it is now widely accepted that a systematic use of visual images as historical evidence is not only illuminating and interesting, but perhaps even essential.

Switzerland. Religion, politics and the nation: competing and overlapping identities

In nineteenth-century Europe, the nation became one of the dominant factors in the construction of collective identities and social organisation. However, in denominationally mixed countries, such as Switzerland, religion remained a significant element in the construction of identity In nineteenth-century Switzerland, religion was one of the most important forces in the creation of competing conceptions of the nation. By creating a multi-cultural network of ideological and political loyalties, which cut across the linguistic frontiers and assured the cohesion of the multi-lingual state, the Kulturkämpfe of the middle decades of the nineteenth century reduced the importance of the linguistic factor. Although the Kulturkämpfe had weakened by the 1880s, ideological solidarities had assumed such fundamental discursive and organisational structures that they remained constitutive of the Swiss party system until the second half of the twentieth century.

Stability of confessional distribution and regional changes

In the confessional era of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft generated a model of religious co-existence in which the principle of territoriality – cuius regio eius religio – guaranteed confessional homogeneity within precisely defined areas. However, this right of existence was not applied to the small Jewish minority.

Unlike the older predominantly mono-confessional cantons, most of those established by the Mediation Act in 1803 were denominationally mixed. After the foundation of the modern nation-state in 1848, fourteen of the twenty-five cantonswere more or less mono-confessional (Protestant: Zurich, Schaffhausen, Appenzell Outer-Rhodes, Vaud and Neuchatel; Catholic: Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Zug, Appenzell Inner-Rhodes, Ticino and Valais). Moreover, Fribourg and Solothurn had Catholic majorities, and Berne, Glarus and Basel Protestant majorities, all of between 80 and 90 per cent. In the mixed cantons of St Gall, Grisons, Argovia and Geneva the Protestant and Catholic populations varied between 38 and 62 per cent either way.

Introduction

Of the triptych of demography, economy and society in the Netherlands in the modern period, all three are unusual, interesting and instructive. But nowhere is there more to excite interest than in the economy. In a nutshell, since the late sixteenth century this has been one of the most successful economies in the world. It has been amongst the top in terms of per-capita product or income, but never underwent an industrial revolution of the kind which typified the experience of its neighbours Britain, Belgium, parts of France, and Germany. The Netherlands, which formed perhaps the world's first modern economy, was characterized by internationally renowned agriculture, and prodigious trade and transport, with a tidy but relatively modest manufacturing sector, and managed to keep up with the world leaders in economic development. How was this achieved?

We examine the Dutch economy in the long nineteenth century in some detail below, in order to come to some conclusions about the economic process undergone, to understand more about the structure of the Dutch economy in this crucial period, and to be able to draw some modest lessons about more general models of economic growth, development and industrialization. Although many regional examples will be brought into focus, and (as with demography) special attention will be paid to the internal diversity of this small country, the examination is primarily concerned with the macro-economy of the Netherlands as a whole.

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.

The Dutch compared to their neighbours in terms of GNP

There is no doubt that in the mid-seventeenth century, at the height of the economic, political and cultural influence of the Dutch Republic, the Netherlands was a very wealthy and very prosperous country indeed. In the early modern period, the Dutch were an economic success-story, with clear water between themselves and other nations. However, what happened next? The conventional wisdom is that the Republic's economy became less dynamic after 1650–70, and the ageing but still standard work on the economy of the Republic in the eighteenth century, by Johan de Vries, is entitled The economic decline of the Republic. Something seems to have gone wrong: instead of moving on from such a promising start to further economic glories in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the form of industrialization, the Netherlands floundered. Instead of forming a modern capitalist economy, the Dutch failed to graduate to modern industrial society. The Dutch economy was branded a failure, then, in the modern period. The doyen of Dutch economic historians of the previous generation, Peter Klein, pronounced that Dutch income per capita had probably not risen at all between 1700 and 1860, and although this was little more than an informed guess in 1973, it represented the general view.

Introduction

Much of the examination of the economy in the preceding chapters has concentrated on the supply side. Production is easier to research than consumption, there were more data on production collected by contemporaries, and until the post-war years most economic policy focussed on the supply side. The characteristics of an economy are easier to pick out in terms of production: what makes it distinctive, unusual, interesting. But very little can happen in the economy without demand for the goods and services produced, and if we are looking for growth trends and particularly for the timing of growth spurts, then for the dynamics of economic growth and development, demand is probably more important than supply. Fortunately some of the work done in recent years on the Dutch economy has begun to redress the historiographical imbalance.

In the course of the analysis we have already noted the importance of foreign demand to certain sectors in the Dutch economy. Three areas predominate. The urban markets of industrialized England could consume almost any amount of food that the Dutch could produce, especially fresh horticultural products and dairy goods. Demand was particularly strong from the mid-1840s to the mid-1860s (a critical time for the Dutch economy) and from the 1890s. Then there was the German giant next door, industrializing rapidly from the 1850s, with a massive demand for raw materials of all sorts except perhaps coal. And finally there were the colonies, and more particularly the East Indies.