The Rise of the Netherlands

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The Rise of the Netherlands

A Victorious Rebellion.

Since the 1560s the counties of the Low Countries (modern Belgium and Holland) had been waging a war of independence against Spain. To protect Spanish authority in the region, Philip II had fortified his positions in the region that is today Belgium. At Antwerp, he had created a bastion of Spanish and Catholic authority, and the religious intolerance that became customary there eventually resulted in the migration of many Protestants and Jews from the southern Netherlands into the free counties of the north. The largest of the counties that comprised the United Dutch Provinces was Calvinist Holland, where the revolt against Spanish authority produced a burgeoning population and an increase in trade. In Amsterdam, the policies of relative religious tolerance fueled the economy's swift development during the seventeenth century, while at Antwerp to the south, trade and commerce stagnated. In this period, the southern Netherlands remained a center of elite learning and culture, while Holland became the center of a thriving trade empire. In this way Dutch influence spread throughout Europe through the region's many trading contacts with other important financial centers on the Continent.

Character of Dutch Culture and Costume.

Although a hereditary nobility existed in the United Dutch Provinces, the character of life throughout the region was shaped by its cities, where merchant and commercial activity dominated. The Dutch church was Calvinist, and despite the presence of numerous religious minorities in the region's cities, Calvinism shaped the ethos of the country. In dress, religious convictions came to be expressed in a fondness for dark colors and a less ornate and decorated style. In this regard Dutch clothing came paradoxically to imitate the somber fashions of Spain that had been prevalent in that country during the previous centuries. These styles had generally grown more elaborate and ornate as they had been accepted elsewhere in Europe, but now the rise of Dutch influence throughout Northern Europe in particular promoted an increasingly conservative and less artificial style. In contrast to the clothing worn in the previous generation, the fashions Dutch traders and merchants favored were less constricting and confining and more comfortable. Corsets, farthingales, and other examples of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century artifice were now abandoned in favor of outfits that granted their wearers greater freedom.

Decoration.

Two of the most characteristic decorative items of the time were the ruff and lace. Lace, the product of an industry that had thrived in the Netherlands since the Middle Ages, was almost always confined in Dutch fashions to the wrists and neck. During the seventeenth century Dutch traders conducted a busy trade in lace, which was primarily woven by peasant and poor city women in the towns of Flanders in the southern Netherlands. In contrast to the strongly geometric patterns of the later Middle Ages and the sixteenth century, this Belgian lace became increasingly ornate after 1600, first incorporating floral patterns into its designs and then elaborate, running scrollwork patterns by the mid-seventeenth century. Somewhat later, small freestanding ornaments came to be inserted into the open weave of the fabric at regular intervals. The techniques used to produce these highly prized designs relied on a combination of methods that were both native to the region and which were imported from Italy. During the Middle Ages Belgian lacemakers had developed their art by weaving together threads from scores of bobbins assembled on a frame with hundreds of pins rising from its surface. The character of this work was fine, but angular in its orientation since the threads were woven around numerous pegs. In Venice and other Italian centers of lace weaving, producers had long relied on the needle to create designs that were more freely flowing. By the seventeenth century Belgian lace weavers had developed ways of combining both types of art, thus producing work that was highly prized throughout Europe for its great delicacy and imaginative designs. The trade in lace thus became a major source of revenue, as the bolts of fabric from the towns of the Southern Netherlands constituted major imports in England, France, and elsewhere on the continent. At the same time, the trim was notoriously expensive, and prompted efforts to copy the work. In France, for example, King Louis XIV's chief minister Colbert imported Venetian weavers and issued a royal grant to underwrite the establishment of a state industry in lace weaving in 1665. At Alençon, Rheims, and a number of other centers of production throughout France, he charged weavers with copying the most intricate patterns of Belgian and Venetian weavers, while at the same time prohibiting the import of any more of the trim. His efforts gradually bore fruit; by the end of the seventeenth century, lace produced in France—particularly at Alençon—had acquired a reputation comparable to its Italian and Flemish sources of inspiration. Colbert's successful protectionist efforts to establish a native French industry were not duplicated elsewhere in Europe, where lace production failed to get off the ground as little more than a homespun pastime until the nineteenth century allowed for its production by machine looms. To stem the tide of Dutch lace imports, most states tried to limit demand for the finery. In this regard the restriction placed upon lace consumption in the mid-seventeenth century by the Puritan officials of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was typical: lace was forbidden to all but the wealthiest members of society. In this way its cachet as a sign of social distinction only rose in most people's estimation.

Wool.

Since the Middle Ages the traders of the Netherlands had been actively engaged in the marketing of woolen cloth, and the commerce in this valuable commodity had helped to transform the European landscape. Wool from England and Spain had long been the most coveted form of the material throughout Europe, and the increased demand for fabric necessitated that more and more arable land in these regions be given over to the raising of sheep in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In England, wool was a vital part of the economy and had spawned a number of acts of enclosure in the country's parliament. In these laws the previously common lands of many towns and villages were turned over to producers, and the bitter controversies that these dispossessions caused was still a bitter memory in the country during the seventeenth century. The Puritan settlers who came to colonial North America, for instance, desired to protect the common lands of their villages in part because of their memories of the depredations that the wool industry had worked on England during the previous generations. The Dutch continued to trade in wool throughout the seventeenth century, yet at the same time the country's traders began to tailor their own clothing from the fabric, an innovation in a world where the wealthy had long favored silks and velvet. To this time, woolen cloth had been used for garments primarily by the lower classes who wove their own homespun or purchased cheap grades of the cloth. In wealthy urban and aristocratic circles, wool's use had been largely confined to stockings, undergarments, hats, and felt slippers. Yet wool was an imminently practical fabric, especially the worsted wools that became popular at the end of the Middle Ages. This new type of woolen cloth, named for the sheep-raising village of Worstead in Norfolk, England, was woven from the shearings of long-haired sheep and combed to produce a soft fabric that was surprisingly waterproof, resistant to wrinkling, and immensely durable. The taste that Dutch merchants helped to inspire for garments fashioned from worsteds persisted into the eighteenth century before linens and eventually cottons surpassed their popularity. The new fashion for woolen garments also sustained the production of woolen cloth in England, the United Dutch Provinces' most active trading partner in the seventeenth century. By 1700 as much as two-thirds of the value of all British exports may have derived from the woolen industry, and outer clothing fashioned from wool had become a venerable staple in the wardrobes of Europeans.

Locks, Lace, and Leather.

Dutch elements of style spread easily through Europe because of the commercial contacts of this small but important trading region. The freer-flowing garments the Dutch favored were soon imitated throughout much of Northern Europe. Like the Spanish style that had preceded its rise, Dutch style was popular largely because of its ready adaptability to different circumstances. On the one hand, Dutch clothing styles provided a practical form of day wear for merchants, bankers, and other members of the urban middle classes in Northern European cities. The emphasis on a new informality and on comfort, as opposed to artifice, was enthusiastically embraced in Europe's cities, and the clothes that were favored there came to be relatively unadorned, even severe. Among aristocrats, though, elements of Dutch style continued to combine with a fondness for decoration, giving rise to courtly ways of dressing that favored generous amounts of lace and other trim by the mid-seventeenth century. By the 1630s, aristocratic dress in much of Europe had produced a style with a notable fondness for "locks, lace, and leather." This way of dressing can be seen in the many portraits of King Charles I of England and his Cavalier supporters, many of which were completed by the great Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck in the 1630s. In one of these, Charles I From Three Different Angles (1636), the king's two profiles and frontal view are depicted sporting the elaborately curled long hair and lace collars that were then the aristocratic fashion of the day. Another portrait from the same year, Charles I at the Hunt shows all the elements then in vogue in noblemen's fashions, including a rakishly worn felt hat, an outer jacket or doublet worn over a lace shirt, and knee-length britches that met leather boots. The effect that such costumes produced was refined and elegant while at the same time allowing for greater comfort and freedom of movement than the fashions of the later Renaissance. In this way, then, the elements of Dutch style came to be combined with aristocratic tastes for luxurious opulence, and the fashions of the Netherlands, like those of Spain before them, came to be transformed in ways that were very different from their original source.