Four Golden Ages Regional Interdependency in the Low Countries

Although the Low Countries formed a political unity only for short periods they have been seen by other European nations as a region in its own right. What created some kind of unity, as experienced by the inhabitants? My concept started from the geographical conditions of a delta of three major rivers, in a generally flat area facilitating transport. This was a basic condition for urban growth. The core questions were therefore – what at different times in the various regions, led to that extraordinary level of urbanisation on a European scale? Why and how did the successive ‘golden ages’ come to an end, and what remained in the previous core areas? Why did some regions remain peripheral? How do the various aspects interrelate – geographical conditions, social and political institutional arrangements, economic developments, and how do cultural phenomena fit into these patterns?

twentieth century nation-states, and their national histories, and those of the traditional periodisations'. Third, both of us chose as a central idea the striking regional diversity in a relatively small area and tried to come to an understanding of the successive shifts in the leading positions. 4 However, as Van Bavel's research has focused primarily on rural societies and mine on relations between cities and state, we approached our subject from very different, essentially complementary angles. As his has been extensively discussed at a high scholarly level in another review, I gladly refer to that debate. 5 So Van Bavel's sigh 'each of the reviewers specialises in a specific region [...] each of them may feel that "their" region is misrepresented or underrepresented' could also be mine. 6 The choice, as I saw it, is between a multi-authored encyclopaedic handbook, and a book with a challenging vision. After the criticism that the previous generation's fifteen-volume Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden had been all too fragmented and lacked coherence, the initiators of De Geschiedenis van Nederland now have taken the opposite direction. Each option has its implications.

What's in a name
It is hard to explain in other languages why my choice and that of Van Bavel to deal with regions in the present-day states of Belgium and the Netherlands are historiographical statements because each language's vocabulary is contaminated by its history. In recent years most historical research remains limited to the borders of the existing states, each of them focusing on their own Sonderweg. 7 As I explained at length in the introduction to my book, the region we are dealing with has formed a political unity only from 1815 to discussiedossier -discussion 1830, and from 1543 to 1585 for the 'XVII Provinces', which did not include the ecclesiastical principality of Liège. Hence it was named by foreigners with pars pro toto names such as Flandes/Fiandra and Holland, or nonce-words such as the fifteenth-century 'lands of hither', or the 'XVII Provinces'. In sixteenth-century Latin, Germania Inferior was used, which corresponds with the term Niederlande, used in High-German texts. In those days even the language was often called (neder-)duytsch, which led to the English word 'Dutch'. As the language borders never coincided with political or ecclesiastical boundaries, foreigners remain confused up to the present day. They are not to be blamed for that: even Johan Huizinga, as quoted by Catrien Santing, mixed the name 'Holland' (the county? the province(s)? no: the present-day state of The Netherlands) with the concept of a 'nation'. The plural forms 'Low Countries' and 'Netherlands' refer to the region's diversity and lack of political integration. This explains why a many readers and reviewers are in disarray with the contrast between the series' title referring to the present-day state Nederland, while I am dealing with what I consider to be the relevant unity of analysis for the period assigned to me. By the way, it is telling that the publisher did not expect to find a market for a series with a scope on the wider geographical area, as had been possible in the 1950s and 1980s.

A geographical unity
What then created some kind of a unity, experienced by the inhabitants of the Low Countries and observed by outsiders? My concept started from the basic geographical conditions of a delta of three major rivers, in a mostly flat area facilitating transport within the region as well and with partners at a greater distance. Waterways are favourable for shipping bulk cargoes and thus for trade. This was a basic condition for urban growth as it developed in particular (sub-) regions in specific contexts. I thought that it was worthwhile to dwell on the explanation of the early and high level of density of population in the south-western parts of the Low Countries, by 1300 only surpassed in Europe by Northern and Central Italy, at a moment when Amsterdam was hardly more than a few streets and a dam. The core questions were therefore, what led, at different times, to an extraordinary level of urbanisation on a European scale?
Why and how did these successive 'golden ages' come to an end, and what remained in the previous core areas? Why did some regions remain peripheral, as geographical conditions were not invariable in themselves? Which social and political institutional arrangements concur with economic developments, and how do cultural phenomena fit into these patterns?
It was the high level of urbanisation in the Low Countries as a whole, and especially in some of their regions, mostly along the rivers and coasts, that shaped the specificity of these lands, most of which are not especially fertile and ruled by several rivalling and discontinuous dynasties at the periphery of major states -as Catrien Santing reminds us with Huizinga's quote. Up to the present day, the Low Countries have an economy based on its favourable opportunities for export and transport. That is also expressed by contemporaries on the maps they drew for practical use by their shippers, the oldest that have been preserved dating from the sixteenth century.
In the book a map has been reproduced of 'Lower Germany', designed by Abraham Ortelius in 1571. It shows the whole region from Frisia to Artois in a north-western orientation, along with some neighbouring territories. The delta leading to the North Sea was obviously the unifying idea. This was a common pattern used by mapmakers, many of whom were active in the main cities.

Shifting cores
The interconnectedness of regions led to neither convergence, nor to stability.
Instead, both Van Bavel and I have been struck by the repeated shifts in the core locations. Our explanations differ somewhat: while he stresses that an institutionalised 'social balance' tends to be disrupted from within, I see competitive advantages of particular locations in an ever-changing macroeconomic and political environment as decisively leading to the re-location of economic activities. Former cores tended to specialise in high-value services and products such as tapestry weaving for royal and aristocratic courts all over Europe in Arras, referred to in Italian as arazzo. The overall trend I observed from the twelfth to the seventeenth century is the on-going expansion of economic activity, even against the general European cycles. Larger markets required ever more transport capacity, favouring the best accessibility for large sea-going vessels; the organisational structures for the production and