Introduction to The Netherlands The Netherlands is a country in part reclaimed from the blue-black waters of the North Sea, an artificially created land, around half of which lies at or below sea level. It's a country of unique and resonant images – the fertile, pancake-flat landscapes gridded with canals and interrupted by windmills and church spires, all beneath huge, open skies. Every city in the country has its ornately gabled town houses, the greatest and most noble in Amsterdam, while the bulbfields provide bold splashes of colour in springtime; in the west the long coastline is marked by mile upon mile of protective dune, backing onto wide stretches of pristine, sandy beach.
A major colonial power, the Dutch mercantile fleet once challenged the English for world naval supremacy, and throughout its seventeenth-century Golden Age, the standard of living (for the majority at least) was second to none. There have been a few economic ups and downs since then, but today the Netherlands is one of the most developed countries in the world, small and urban, with the highest population density in Europe, its sixteen million inhabitants concentrated into an area about the size of the US state of Maine. It's an international, well-integrated place too: many people speak English, at least in the heavily populated west of the country; and most of the country is easy to reach on a public transport system of trains and buses, whose efficiency may make British and American visitors weep with envy.
Successive Dutch governments have steered towards political consensus – indeed, this has been the drift since the Reformation, when the competing pillars of Dutch society (originally the Calvinists and the Catholics) learnt to live with – or ignore – each other, aided by the fact that trading wealth was lubricating the whole social structure. Almost by accident, therefore, Dutch society became tolerant and, in its enthusiasm to blunt conflict, progressive. These days, many insiders opine that the motive behind liberal Dutch attitudes towards drug use and prostitution isn't freewheeling permissiveness so much as apathy, and the country's avowed multiculturalism has been severely tested of late, with the shooting of Theo Van Gogh, as well as various racially motivated attacks, persuading many to reassess the success of the Netherlands' consensual politics.
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• The Netherlands has a population just short of 16 million. Of these, some 730,000 live in the capital, Amsterdam, 600,000 in Rotterdam and 450,000 in Den Haag (The Hague). "Holland" comprises just two of the twelve Dutch provinces: Noord-Holland around Amsterdam, and Zuid-Holland around Rotterdam and Den Haag.
• The country is a constitutional monarchy; the present queen, Beatrix, was crowned in 1980. She presides – in a titular sense – over the country's bicameral parliament, named the States-General, which comprises an Upper House or First Chamber and a Lower House or Second Chamber. Parliament sits in Den Haag. The Lower House is directly elected; the Upper comprises representatives of the country's twelve provinces.
• Every Dutch city has a municipal council with delegated powers over a wide range of social issues, from public order and safety, drugs and housing through to economic development and culture. Currently, the two largest national political parties are the left-of-centre PvdA and the right-of-centre CDA. The green-left Groenlinks also make a significant showing in the big cities.
• Almost half the population declare no religious affiliation. The three largest churches are the Catholics, the Dutch Reformed and its nineteenth-century breakaway, the Reformed; there is also a sizeable Muslim minority.
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