Title: History of the Netherlands - Wikipedia
Headings: History of the Netherlands
History of the Netherlands
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Contents
Prehistory (before 800 BC)
Historical changes to the landscape
Earliest groups of hunter-gatherers (before 5000 BC)
The arrival of farming (around 5000–4000 BC)
Funnelbeaker and other cultures (around 4000–3000 BC)
Corded Ware and Bell Beaker cultures (around 3000–2000 BC)
Bronze Age (around 2000–800 BC)
The pre-Roman period (800 BC – 58 BC)
Iron Age
Arrival of Germanic groups
Celts in the south
The Nordwestblock theory
Roman era (57 BC – 410 AD)
Native tribes
Roman settlements in the Netherlands
Batavian revolt
Emergence of the Franks
Disappearance of the Frisii?
Early Middle Ages (411–1000)
Frisians
Franks
Modern doubts about the traditional Frisian, Frank and Saxon distinction
The emergence of the Dutch language
Christianization
Frankish dominance and incorporation into the Holy Roman Empire
Viking raids
High and Late Middle Ages (1000–1433)
Part of the Holy Roman Empire
Political disunity
The Frisians
The rise of Holland
Expansion and growth
Hook and Cod Wars
Burgundian and Habsburg period (1433–1567)
Burgundian period
Habsburg rule from Spain
The Reformation
Prelude to war
The Eighty Years' War (1568–1648)
Golden Age
Dutch Empire
The Dutch in the Americas
Slave trade
The Dutch in Asia: The Dutch East India Company
The Dutch in Africa
Dutch Republic: Regents and Stadholders (1649–1784)
Refugees
Economic growth
Amsterdam
First Stadtholderless Period and the Anglo-Dutch Wars (1650–1674)
Anglo-Dutch wars
Franco-Dutch War and Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–1702)
Second Stadtholderless Period (1702–1747)
Economic decline after 1730
Culture and society
The Orangist revolution (1747–1751)
Regency and indolent rule (1752–1779)
Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784)
The French-Batavian period (1785–1815)
Patriot rebellion and its suppression (1785–1795)
Batavian Republic (1795–1806)
Kingdom of Holland to William I (1806–1815)
United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815–1839)
Constitutional monarchy
Belgium breaks away
Democratic and Industrial Development (1840–1900)
1848 Constitutional reform and liberalism
Religion and pillarisation
Flourishing of art, culture and science
1900 to 1940
Colonial focus
Neutrality during the First World War
Interwar period
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Nazi invasion and occupation
Holocaust in the Netherlands
The war in the Dutch East Indies
False hopes, the Hunger Winter and Liberation
Post-war events
Prosperity and European Unity (1945–present)
Baby boom and economic reconstruction
Flood control
Europeanisation, Americanisation and internationalisation
Decolonisation and multiculturalism
Liberalisation
Recent politics
The Netherlands today
Historians and historiography
Historians
Historiography
See also
Notes
Further reading
Geography and environment
External links

Content: The region nowadays corresponding to the Netherlands therefore became part of Lower Lotharingia within the Frankish Holy Roman Empire. For several centuries, lordships such as Brabant, Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, Guelders and others held a changing patchwork of territories. There was no unified equivalent of the modern Netherlands. By 1433, the Duke of Burgundy had assumed control over most of the lowlands territories in Lower Lotharingia; he created the Burgundian Netherlands which included modern Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and a part of France. The Catholic kings of Spain took strong measures against Protestantism, which polarised the peoples of present-day Belgium and the Netherlands. The subsequent Dutch revolt led to the splitting in 1581 of the Burgundian Netherlands into a Catholic, French- and Dutch-speaking " Spanish Netherlands " (approximately corresponding to modern Belgium and Luxembourg), and a northern "United Provinces" (or "Dutch Republic) ", which spoke Dutch and was predominantly Protestant. The latter entity became the modern Netherlands. In the Dutch Golden Age, which had its zenith around 1667, there was a flowering of trade, industry, and the sciences. A rich worldwide Dutch empire developed and the Dutch East India Company became one of the earliest and most important of national mercantile companies based on entrepreneurship and trade.