Historiography of the Dutch Revolt has traditionally emphasised that it was painful and inopportune for seventeenth-century people in formerly rebellious South Netherlandish provinces to use memories of the rebellion in support of political arguments. More recently, scholars have turned this idea on its head by stressing the importance of memories of the Revolt in legitimating dynastic power as well as denigrating enemies around 1600. References to the conflict were often euphemistic, implicit and devoid of detailed discussions of events. Later in the seventeenth century, however, Southern propagandists publically deployed explicit references to the Revolt in political discussions. Asking how and why this shift occurred, this article shows that the (international) political context strongly influenced cultural memory politics in the Habsburg Netherlands. Count Henry van den Bergh's political use of war memories in opposition to the Habsburg overlord in 1632 prompted a reaction in kind from government officials, who deployed public references to the sixteenth-century rebellion more explicitly than ever before and thereby set a new standard for using historical narratives about the Revolt in support of the regime. Indeed, the politicisation of the Revolt in 1632 enabled political commentators during renewed Franco-Dutch military threats in 1635 and the War of Devolution in 1667-1668 to refer to the Revolt not as a painful memory but as a positive argument in favour of Habsburg rule.
Jubilees of the Revolt of the Netherlands. Seventeenth-century centenaries and their political contextHistorians generally consider centenaries in the nineteenth century as ‘invented traditions’ and in terms of scale and political motivation emphasise discontinuity with jubilees celebrated in the early modern period. This article, however, contends that centennial jubilees were organised and celebrated widely before the nineteenth century. Focusing on seventeenth-century commemorations of the Revolt of the Netherlands ‐ both in the Dutch Republic and the Habsburg Netherlands ‐ the authors shed new light on why people celebrated centenaries and what was at stake in doing so. People did not simply celebrate the passage of time, but jubilees also served clear secondary purposes. Foreign invasions threatening the unity of the Republic and the ongoing threat of Protestantism to South Nederlandish Catholicism motivated people to organise centenaries, much in the same way that nationalism stimulated the celebration of jubilees in the nineteenth century. A common feature of early modern centenaries was that commemoration of the past often masked disunity and political uncertainty.
The digital edition of this title is published in Open Access. Cover illustration: Memorial tablet in the façade of the so-called 'Spanish House' in the Holland town of Naarden, located on the spot of the former town hall. in 1572 during the dutch Revolt, 700 men from Naarden were gathered here and killed by Habsburg troops. The town hall was burnt down and rebuilt in 1615. (Photo Ralf Akemann). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Memory before modernity : practices of memory in early modern Europe / edited by Erika Kuijpers, Judith Pollmann, Johannes Müller, Jasper van der Steen. pages cm.-(Studies in medieval and Reformation traditions, iSSN 1573-4188; volume 176) includes bibliographical references and index.
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