The Seventeen Provinces were a personal union of states in the Low Countries in the 16th century, roughly covering the current Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, a good part of the North of France (Artois, Nord) and a small part of Germany.
Flag of the Seventeen Provinces, XVIth century
The 17 Provinces
Fig. 1: Map of the unification of the Seventeen Provinces (
1477)
The numbers on the map (Fig. 1) corresponds to the following provinces:
- the county of Artois
- the county of Flanders (with the cities of Lille, Douai and Orchies)
- the lordship of Mechelen
- the county of Namur
- the county of Hainaut
- the county of Zeeland
- the county of Holland
- the duchy of Brabant (with Antwerp)
- the duchy of Limburg
- the duchy of Luxemburg
- the lordship of Utrecht
- the lordship of Friesland
- the duchy of Guelders (after 1543)
- the lordship of Groningen
- the county of Drenthe (with Lingen)
- the lordship of Overijssel
- the county of Zutphen
The area in blue (between Lille and Mons) corresponds to the city of Tournai, also considered as one of the 17 Provinces. The bishopric of Liège, the green area, is not a member-province.
It was not always the same "seventeen" Provinces represented at the Estates-General of the Netherlands. Sometimes one delegation was included in another. Normally Zutphen was a part of Guelders, and Limburg was depending of Brabant. On the other hand were the French-speaking cities of Flanders sometimes recognised as a separate Province.
In addition, there were a number of fiefdoms in this region that were not part of the Seventeen Provinces, the largest one is the Bishopric of Liège. In the north, there were also a few smaller entities like the island of Ameland, that would retain their own lords until the French revolution.
History
The Seventeen Provinces originated from the Burgundian Netherlands, that were inherited by Maximilian I of Habsburg in 1482. His grandson and successor Charles V united all 17 provinces under his rule, the last one being Guelders, in 1543. Most of these were fiefs under the Holy Roman Empire, of which Charles became Emperor himself. Two, Flanders and Artois, were French fiefs. The French king and the Holy Roman Emperor agreed to release all seventeen from the largely nominal and by then anachronistic ties to both realms. This was called the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549.
After Charles' V abdication in 1556, his realms became divided between his son, Philip II and his brother, Ferdinand I. The Netherlands went to his son, the king of Spain.
Conflicts between Philip II and his Dutch subjects led to the Eighty Years' War, which started in 1568. The seven northern provinces gained their independence as a republic called the United Provinces: Groningen, Friesland, Overijssel, Guelders (except its Upper Quarter), Utrecht, Holland and Zeeland.
The southern Provinces, Flanders, Brabant, Namur, Hainaut, Luxembourg a.o., were restored to Spanish rule thanks to the military and political talent of the Duke of Parma, especially at the siege of Antwerp (1584-1585). Hence, these Provinces became known as the Spanish Netherlands or Southern Netherlands. The northern United Provinces kept parts of Limburg, Brabant and Flanders during the Eighty Years' War (see Generality Lands), which was ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Artois, and parts of Flanders and Hainaut were ceded to France in the course of the 17th and 18th century.
Economy
In the days of Charles V, there is no doubt that the economic, political and cultural center of the Netherlands was the city of Antwerp (in Brabant), which had succeeded Bruges (in Flanders) as the economic powerhouse of northern Europe, although Holland was gradually gaining importance in the 15th and 16th centuries.
However after the independence of the seven northern provinces and the resulting closure of the Scheldt river to navigation, a large number of people from the southern provinces emigrated north to the new republic. The center of prosperity moved from cities in the south such as Bruges, Antwerp, Ghent, and Brussels to cities in the north, mostly Holland, including Amsterdam, the Hague, and Rotterdam.
Netherlands
To distinguish between the older, larger Netherlands from the current country, Dutch speakers usually drop the plural for the latter. They speak of Nederland for the current country and de Nederlanden for the domains of Charles V. In other languages, this has not been adopted, though the larger area is sometimes known as the Low Countries in English.
The fact that the same term Netherlands has such different historical meanings can sometimes lead to difficulties in expressing oneself correctly. For example, composers from the 16th century are often said to belong to the Nederlandse School. Although they themselves would not have objected to that term, today it may wrongly create the impression that they were from the north. In fact, they were almost exclusively from the south.
See also
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