Holland
Holland | |
---|---|
Country | Netherlands |
Largest settlements | List
|
Area | |
• Total | 7,511 km2 (2,900 sq mi) |
• Land | 5,476 km2 (2,114 sq mi) |
Population (1 November 2019) UTC+2 (CEST ) |
Holland is a geographical
The area of the former County of Holland roughly coincides with the two current Dutch provinces of North Holland and South Holland into which it was divided, and which together include the Netherlands' three largest cities: the capital city (Amsterdam), the home of Europe's largest port (Rotterdam), and the seat of government (The Hague). Holland has a population of 6,583,534 as of November 2019,[1] and a population density of 1203/km2.
The name Holland has frequently been used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands.[3] This casual usage is commonly accepted in other countries, and is even employed by many Dutch themselves.[4] However, some in the Netherlands (particularly those from regions outside Holland or the west) find it undesirable or misrepresentative to use the term for the whole country.[5] In January 2020, the Netherlands officially dropped its support of the word Holland for the whole country, which included a logo redesign that changed "Holland" to "NL".[6]
Etymology and terminology
The name Holland first appeared in sources for the region around
"Holland" is informally used in
Between 1806 and 1810 "Holland" was the official name for the country as a whole, after Napoleon made his brother Louis Bonaparte the monarch of the Kingdom of Holland.
The people of Holland are referred to as "Hollanders" in both Dutch and English, though in English this is now unusual. Today this refers specifically to people from the current provinces of North Holland and South Holland. Strictly speaking, the term "Hollanders" does not refer to people from the other provinces in the Netherlands, but colloquially "Hollanders" is sometimes used in this wider sense.
In Dutch, the word Hollands is the adjectival form for Holland. Hollands is also colloquially used by some Dutch people in the sense of Nederlands (the Dutch language), occasionally with the intention of contrasting with other types of Dutch people or forms of the language—for example Limburgish, the Belgian varieties of the Dutch language ("Flemish"), or even any southern variety of Dutch within the Netherlands itself.
In English, Dutch refers to the Netherlands as a whole, but there is no commonly used adjective for "Holland". The word "Hollandish" is no longer in common use. "
History
Initially, Holland was a remote corner of the Holy Roman Empire. Gradually, its regional importance increased until it began to have a decisive, and ultimately dominant, influence on the History of the Netherlands.
County of Holland
Until the start of the 12th century, the inhabitants of the area that became Holland were known as
After the
In 1432, Holland became part of the
Dutch Republic
In the Dutch Rebellion against the Habsburgs during the
The largest cities in the Dutch Republic were in the province of Holland, such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leiden, Alkmaar, The Hague, Delft, Dordrecht and Haarlem. From the great ports of Holland, Hollandic merchants sailed to and from destinations all over Europe, and merchants from all over Europe gathered to trade in the warehouses of Amsterdam and other trading cities of Holland.
Many Europeans thought of the United Provinces first as Holland rather than as the Republic of the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands. A strong impression of Holland was planted in the minds of other Europeans, which then was projected back onto the Republic as a whole. Within the provinces themselves, a gradual slow process of cultural expansion took place, leading to a "Hollandification" of the other provinces and a more uniform culture for the whole of the Republic. The dialect of urban Holland became the standard language.
Under French rule
The formation of the Batavian Republic, inspired by the French Revolution, led to a more centralised government. Holland became a province of a unitary state. Its independence was further reduced by an administrative reform in 1798, in which its territory was divided into several departments called Amstel, Delf, Texel, and part of Schelde en Maas.
From 1806 to 1810,
During the period when the Low Countries were annexed by the
Kingdom of the Netherlands
In 1815, Holland was restored as a province of the
Geography
Holland is located in the west of the Netherlands. A maritime region, Holland lies on the North Sea at the mouths of the Rhine and the Meuse (Maas). It contains numerous rivers and lakes, and has an extensive inland canal and waterway system. To the south is Zealand. The region is bordered on the east by the IJsselmeer and four Dutch provinces.
Holland is protected from the sea by a long line of coastal dunes. The highest point in Holland, about 55 metres (180 ft) above sea level,[16] is in the Schoorlse Duinen (Schoorl Dunes). Most of the land area behind the dunes consists of polder landscape lying well below sea level. At present the lowest point in Holland is a polder near Rotterdam, which is about 7 metres (23 ft) below sea level. Continuous drainage is necessary to keep Holland from flooding. In earlier centuries, windmills were used for this task. The landscape was (and in places still is) dotted with windmills, which have become a symbol of Holland.
Holland is 7,494 square kilometres (2,893 square miles), land and water included, making it roughly 13% of the area of the Netherlands. Looking at land alone, it is 5,488 square kilometres (2,119 square miles) in area. The combined population was 6.5 million in 2018.[17]
The main cities in Holland are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague.
The Randstad area is one of the most densely populated regions of Europe, but still relatively free of
Reclamation of the land
The land that is now Holland has not been geographically "stable" since prehistoric times. The western coastline shifted up to 30 kilometres (19 miles) to the east and storm surges regularly broke through the row of coastal dunes. The Frisian Isles, originally joined to the mainland, became detached islands in the north. The main rivers, the Rhine and the Meuse (Maas), flooded regularly and changed course repeatedly and dramatically.
The people of Holland found themselves living in an unstable, watery environment. Behind the
To the south of Holland, in
However, the Hollanders did not stop there. Starting around the 16th century, they took the offensive and began land reclamation projects, converting lakes, marshy areas and adjoining mudflats into polders. This continued well into the 20th century. As a result, historical maps of medieval and early modern Holland bear little resemblance to present maps.
This ongoing struggle to master the water played an important role in the development of Holland as a maritime and economic power, and has traditionally been seen as developing the presumed collective character of its inhabitants: stubborn, egalitarian and frugal.
Culture
The stereotypical image of Holland is a contrived amalgam of
, far from the reality of everyday Holland. These stereotypes were deliberately created in the late 19th century by official "Holland Promotion" to attract tourists.The predominance of Holland in the Netherlands has resulted in regionalism on the part of the other provinces, a reaction to the perceived threat that Holland poses to their local culture and identity. The other provinces have a strong, and often negative,[18] image of Holland and the Hollanders, to whom certain qualities are ascribed within a mental geography, a conceptual mapping of spaces and their inhabitants.[19] On the other hand, some Hollanders take Holland's cultural dominance for granted and treat the concepts of "Holland" and "the Netherlands" as coinciding. Consequently, they see themselves not primarily as Hollanders, but simply as Dutch (Nederlanders).[20] This phenomenon has been called "hollandocentrism".[21]
Languages
The predominant language spoken in Holland is
Standard Dutch was historically largely based on the dialect of the County of Holland, incorporating many traits derived from the dialects of the previously more powerful Duchy of Brabant and County of Flanders. Strong dialectal variation still exists throughout the Low Countries. Today, Holland proper is the region where the original dialects are least spoken, in many areas having been completely replaced by standard Dutch, and the Randstad has the largest influence on the developments of the standard language—with the exception of the Dutch spoken in Belgium.[23]
Despite this correspondence between standard Dutch and the Dutch spoken in the Randstad, there are local variations within Holland itself that differ from standard Dutch. The main cities each have their own modern urban dialect, that can be considered a
Legacy
New Holland
The province of Holland gave its name to a number of colonial settlements and discovered regions that were called Nieuw Holland or New Holland. The largest was the island continent presently known as Australia:[3] New Holland was first applied to Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Dirk Hartog as a Latin Nova Hollandia, and remained in international use for 190 years. After its discovery by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, New Zealand was likewise named after the Dutch province of Zealand. In the Netherlands Nieuw Holland would remain the usual name of the continent until the end of the 19th century; it is now no longer in use there, the Dutch name today being Australië.
As contemporary exonym for the Netherlands
While "Holland" has been replaced in English as the official name for the country of the Netherlands, many other languages use it or a variant of it to officially refer to the Netherlands. This is the case in Southeast Asia particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, and Cambodia for example:
- Acehnese: Blanda
- Banjar: Walanda
- Banyumasan: Landa
- Javanese: Walanda
- Malaysian standards): Belanda
- Minangkabau: Balando
- Khmer: ហុល្លង់
References
- ^ a b "CBS Statline". Archived from the original on 2017-08-03. Retrieved 2020-01-10.
- ^ "Regional key figures; National Accounts". www.cbs.nl. 22 December 2023.
- ^ a b c d G. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I, Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105
- ^ Netherlands vs. Holland Archived 2020-11-24 at the Wayback Machine, Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions
- ^ a b "Holland or the Netherlands?". Dutch Embassy in Sweden. Archived from the original on 27 October 2016. Retrieved 15 December 2012.
- ^ Romano, Andrea (January 7, 2020). "The Netherlands Will No Longer Be Called Holland". Travel + Leisure. Retrieved 2022-02-05.
- ^ Antheun Janse, "Een zichzelf verdeeld rijk" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), 2003, Geschiedenis van Holland, Vol. 1, p. 73
- ^ a b Oxford English Dictionary, "Holland, n. 1," etymology.
- ^ "The majority of English people still behave as if 'English' and 'British' are synonymous", historian Norman Davies quoted in The English: Europe's lost tribe Archived 2020-07-29 at the Wayback Machine, BBC News Story, 14 January 1999
- ^ George Mikes, How to be an Alien, "When people say England, they sometimes mean Great Britain, sometimes the United Kingdom, sometimes the British Isles - but never England."
- ^ "Is "Holland" the Same Place as "the Netherlands"?". Archived from the original on 2016-04-13. Retrieved 2016-04-15.
- ^ Willem Frijhoff, "Hollands hegemonie" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), 2002, Geschiedenis van Holland, Vol. 2, p. 468
- ^ C.F. Gijsberti Hodenpijl (1904) Napoleon in Holland, pp. 6–7.
- ^ G. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel II, Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1831-1832
- ^ Hans Knippenberg and Ben de Pater, "Brandpunt van macht en modernisering" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), 2003, Geschiedenis van Holland, Vol. 3, p. 548
- ^ "Highpoints of the Netherlands". Archived from the original on 20 September 2015.
- ^ (in Dutch) [1] Archived 2018-07-27 at the Wayback Machine Statline CBS: Bevolkingsontwikkeling per maand.
- ^ Rob van Ginkel, "Hollandse Tonelen" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), Geschiedenis van Holland, Vol. 3, p. 688
- ^ Hans Knippenberg and Ben de Pater, "Brandpunt van macht en modernisering" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), 2003, Geschiedenis van Holland, Vol. 3, p. 556
- ^ Thimo de Nijs, "Hollandse identiteit in perspectief" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), 2003, Geschiedenis van Holland, Vol. 3, p. 700
- ^ Rob van Ginkel, "Hollandse Tonelen" in Thimo de Nijs and Eelco Beukers (eds.), 2003, Geschiedenis van Holland, Vol. 3, p. 647
- ^ Dutch: An Essential Grammar, p. 15 Archived 2015-05-20 at the Wayback Machine, William Z. Shetter, Esther Ham, Routledge, 2007
- ^ Sijs, Nicoline van der, 2006, De geschiedenis van het Nederlands in een notendop, Amsterdam, Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, pp. 127–128
- ^ Sijs, Nicoline van der, 2006, De geschiedenis van het Nederlands in een notendop, Amsterdam, Uitgeverij Bert Bakker, p. 123
- ^ E.J. van den Broecke-de Man, D.K. Soldaat-Poortvliet & F. Heerschap, 1988, Dialect op Goeree-Overflakkee, Zeeuwsche Vereeniging voor Dialectonderzoek, Ouddorp, 271 pp