Republican Freedom against Monarchical Absolutism: The Dutch Experience in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

The tricentenary commemoration of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was enlivened in Britain and the Netherlands by interesting celebrations and exhibitions, but it was largely ignored by the public and did not produce a great deal of scholarly discussion about the significance of the event. The commemoration of the French Revolution in 1989 was of a different scope. Over the whole world — but, of course, specifically in France — the subject was brought to the attention of the population by all sorts of means and media and, moreover, an immense output of books. Of course, the state-sponsored festivities were not without nationalist overtones but, broadly speaking, this was not a simplistic glorification of French revolutionary generosity to which the modern values of democracy and human rights were supposed to owe, if not their origin, then at any rate their first implementation. On the contrary, in influential books the ideas and events of 1789 and following years were criticised for their radicalism leading to Jacobin tyranny, terror, expansionism, imperialism and war. Yet, whatever the interpretation and evaluation of the revolution, its decisive impact on the course of world history was denied by no one.