Pepijn Brandon is a professor of global economic and social history at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and the author of War, Capital, and the Dutch State (1588-1795).
In the late sixteenth century, the Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule in a decades-long struggle that gave birth to the Dutch Republic. Although the initial spark for the revolt was religious, it helped pave the way for the rise of capitalism.
Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom did worse than expected on Wednesday. But there’s not much else to cheer in Dutch politics.
Truus Menger-Oversteegen was part of a generation that sacrificed everything to fight Nazism and build a better world.
Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem’s political career shows the rightward shift of European social democracy.