Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

particularly important role within the oligarchic and decentralized political structure of the
United Provinces and, second, meetings offer a largely untapped source for examining the
practical negotiation of policy.
John Kenneth Galbraith is said to have quipped that “meetings are indispensable when
you don't want to do anything,” but in the Dutch Republic they were in fact the heart and soul of
politics. As many historians have pointed out, the Dutch Republic was a meeting society. 72
Following the revolt from Habsburg authority in the 1560s, and several abortive efforts to attract
the protection of another European monarch, the Treaty of Utrecht created a system of
government in which urban and provincial assemblies, represented at the States General, were
largely responsible for decision-making. This system—which built upon, among other things, a
long tradition of locally managing water-works—enhanced the power of urban magistrates in
relation to the remaining elements of the nobility and increased the importance of committees,
boards, and other representative bodies for deliberating on issues of public concern. 73 It gave rise
to what Wilbert van Vree calls “Europe's first meeting class” and, with it, a relatively horizontal
political system in which discussion and consensus, rather than hierarchy and command, played
a central role. 74 It was not simply that the Dutch met often, or that so many people participated in
these meetings, but that meetings were constituitive of political authority to a greater extent than
elsewhere in Europe.
Among Dutch historians, this aspect of political culture is referred to as discussieculture
(discussion culture), a concept that helps to explain both the relatively open and inclusive
72 Wilbert van Vree, Meetings, Manners, and Civilization: The Development of Modern Meeting Behaviour
(London: Leicester University Press, 1999); Hank te Velde, Dennis Bos, and Maurits Ebben, eds., Harmonie in
Holland: het Poldermodel van 1500 tot Nu (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2008). A recent summary can be found in
Frijhoff and Spies, 1650: Hard-Won Unity.
73 Te Velde, Bos, and Ebben, Harmonie in Holland: het Poldermodel van 1500 tot Nu.
74 Van Vree, Meetings, Manners, and Civilization, 107.
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