The German-Dutch Communist Left - Libcom

Chapter 1: Origins and Formation of the ‘Tribunist’ Current (1900-1914):
Religion, Capitalism and Colonial Empire: from the “Golden Age” to the decline
The Netherlands appeared to some Marxists as the first ‘bourgeois revolution’ in 16 th century. This revolution
against ‘feudalism’ would have started with the insurrection of the Hondschoote weavers (1566). Its birth was in
fact the product of complex historical factors.
The birth of the Netherlands, as a Union of seven provinces, coincided with the Calvinist revolt against Spain
and the Catholic Church. Riots (Beeldenstorm) in which iconoclast mobs destroyed images and statues in
catholic churches spread across the Low Countries. In reaction Philip II sent Spanish troops commanded by the
duke of Alva, which led a policy of bloody terror. In 1568, it was the beginning of the Eighty Years’ War against
Spain (till Westphalia Peace, 1648), where the prince of Orange William the Silent, as Stadholder, played during
16 years an important role, as one of the leaders of the revolt. As the southern catholic provinces reaffirmed their
loyalty to the Habsburg Empire, the Dutch northern provinces – Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland,
Overijssel, Drenthe, Friesland and Groningen – pledged a strong resistance to Philip II’s absolutism, who refused
to accept an Calvinist enclave in his empire, and also a dangerous commercial adversary on the oceans. In 1581,
the Dutch provinces within the Union of Utrecht (in 1579 an anti-Spanish alliance was founded under that name)
proclaimed their independence. When in 1588 the English armada, allied with the Insurgents, had destroyed the
Spanish ‘Invincible Armada’, the Republic of the United Provinces was established.
The Netherlands had known their bourgeois Golden Age in 17 th century. Under their republican form (under the
brothers De Witt, at the time of Spinoza), the Netherlands seemed not only one strong motor of capitalist
development, where Amsterdam was the financial centre of Europe, but a crucial intellectual pole of the
‘enlighten’ thought, under the sign of the Reason and the religious tolerance. Portuguese and Spanish Jews could
settle in the country and practise their religion.
The Dutch Republic had made its full great strides in the shape of commercial capital thanks to its far away
colonies, from South Africa to the West Indies (Brazil and North America), from Tasmania to Ceylon and
Indonesia (East Indies). The colonial companies were the fleuron of the Dutch capital: the West India Company
(West Indische Compagnie, or WIC) and particularly the United East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische
Compagnie, or VOC). This last one was born in 1602, as a joint-stock company, to which was granted the
monopoly on the trade ‘East of the Cape of Good Hope”. Led by a capitalist federal board of directors, which
became known as the Heeren XVII (‘ the 17 Gentlemen’), the VOC had the right to wage war and to conclude
peace, and then to govern the territories, which had become trading posts, by the arms.
The 18 th century, after the wars carried out by the French king Louis XIV and the British commercial power,
became that of the decline. The golden age of the United East India Company, engaged in the exploitation of
Indonesia, ceased at the end of the 18 th century. After the disastrous (Fourth) Anglo-Dutch War, the VOC
brought to bankruptcy. When the Netherlands were occupied by French troops in 1795, and the Batavian
Republic was proclaimed, the new government abolished the VOC. In 1796, the British troops completed their
definitive conquest of Dutch Ceylon. VOC territories, i.e. Indonesia, became the property of the Dutch state.
The Batavian Republic survived until 1806, when Napoleon I transformed the seven provinces into the kingdom
of Holland, led by Louis Bonaparte, and eventually in 1810 incorporated into the French Empire. One year later
British troops occupied Java and its dependencies in the name of the British East India Company. Nevertheless,
after the fall of Napoleon, and the 1815 Congress of Vienna, William Frederick of Orange became William I,
king of the Netherlands (including present-day Belgium and Luxemburg, till 1830). As The Netherlands had lost
its colony of Cape, Dutch authority on Java and dependencies could be re-established.
In 1824 the Netherlands Commercial Company (Nederlandsche Handels Maatschappij, NHM) was established.
King William I obtained, thanks to his own capital, the commercial monopoly for the exploitation of the
14