1.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands, also informally known as Holland is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously
2.
Dutch language
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It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after English and German. Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is said to be roughly in between them, Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic and incorporates more Romance loans than German but far fewer than English. In both Belgium and the Netherlands, the official name for Dutch is Nederlands, and its dialects have their own names, e. g. Hollands, West-Vlaams. The use of the word Vlaams to describe Standard Dutch for the variations prevalent in Flanders and used there, however, is common in the Netherlands, the Dutch language has been known under a variety of names. It derived from the Old Germanic word theudisk, one of the first names used for the non-Romance languages of Western Europe. It literarily means the language of the people, that is. The term was used as opposed to Latin, the language of writing. In the first text in which it is found, dating from 784, later, theudisca appeared also in the Oaths of Strasbourg to refer to the Germanic portion of the oath. This led inevitably to confusion since similar terms referred to different languages, owing to Dutch commercial and colonial rivalry in the 16th and 17th centuries, the English term came to refer exclusively to the Dutch. A notable exception is Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a West Central German variety called Deitsch by its speakers, Jersey Dutch, on the other hand, as spoken until the 1950s in New Jersey, is a Dutch-based creole. In Dutch itself, Diets went out of common use - although Platdiets is still used for the transitional Limburgish-Ripuarian Low Dietsch dialects in northeast Belgium, Nederlands, the official Dutch word for Dutch, did not become firmly established until the 19th century. This designation had been in use as far back as the end of the 15th century, one of them was it reflected a distinction with Hoogduits, High Dutch, meaning the language spoken in Germany. The Hoog was later dropped, and thus, Duits narrowed down in meaning to refer to the German language. g, in English, too, Netherlandic is regarded as a more accurate term for the Dutch language, but is hardly ever used. Old Dutch branched off more or less around the same time Old English, Old High German, Old Frisian and Old Saxon did. During that period, it forced Old Frisian back from the western coast to the north of the Low Countries, on the other hand, Dutch has been replaced in adjacent lands in nowadays France and Germany. The division in Old, Middle and Modern Dutch is mostly conventional, one of the few moments linguists can detect somewhat of a revolution is when the Dutch standard language emerged and quickly established itself. This is assumed to have taken place in approximately the mid-first millennium BCE in the pre-Roman Northern European Iron Age, the Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups, East, West, and North Germanic. They remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration Period, Dutch is part of the West Germanic group, which also includes English, Scots, Frisian, Low German and High German
3.
County of Holland
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The territory of the County of Holland corresponds roughly with the current provinces of North and South Holland in the Netherlands. The oldest sources refer to the not clearly defined county as Frisia, before 1101, sources talk about Frisian counts, but in this year Floris II, Count of Holland is mentioned as Florentius comes de Hollant. This title was used after Holland was united with Hainault, Bavaria-Straubing. The titles eventually lost their importance, and the last count, Philip II of Spain, around 800, under Charlemagne, the Frankish Empire covered a great deal of Europe. In much of this empire an important unit of administration, corresponding roughly to a shire or county in England, was the gau. A comes or Count ruled over one or more gaue, because of the low trade, the negative trade balance with the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim states, and the disappearance of currency, the economy was more or less reduced to bartering. The kings vassals could only be rewarded by giving them land, from this the system of Feudalism developed. The vassals, who were appointed by the king, strove for a system of inheritance. This become more and more the rule, and in 877 it was legalised in the Capitulary of Quierzy, upon the death of a king, the Frankish kingdom was frequently divided among his heirs. This partible inheritance often caused internal struggle which made centralized government problematic, the Viking Raids further undermined centralized government. At the end of the reign of Emperor Louis the Pious, the power had weakened because of the flood of 838. Upon Lothairs death in 855, the part of Middle Francia was awarded to his second son Lothair II. The Treaty of Ribemont in 880 added the Kingdom of Lotharingia — of which the Low Countries were part — to East Francia, which attempted to integrate it. However, there were no connections there were between the four German Stem Duchies of east Francia, the Franconia, the Saxony, the Bavaria. Lotharingia took a position with a large amount of self-determination. This became clear when Louis the Child, the last Carolingian of East Francia, while the Stem Duchies flocked to Duke Conrad I of Franconia, Lotharingia chose for the Carolingian Charles the Simple, king of West Francia. In Frisia the situation was complex, the power was in the hands of Roriks successor Godfrid the Sea King, who became embroiled in the high politics of the Frankish empire. He was allied with the children of the former Carolingian Lotharingian king Lothair II, the main actor in this murder was Everard Saxo, the count of Hamaland
4.
Count of Holland
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The Counts of Holland ruled over the County of Holland in the Low Countries between the 10th and the 16th century. The first count of Holland, Dirk I, was the son or foster-son of Gerolf and he received land around Egmond from Charles the Fat at a place called Bladella in 922. This is seen as the beginning of the county of Holland, however, until about 1100, the usual names for the county were West-Friesland, Frisia or Kennemerland, in spite of this the counts from Dirk I onwards are named of Holland. Note that the chronology of the first few counts is uncertain and this third Count Dirk is placed between Dirk I and II and numbered as Dirk I bis to avoid confusion with the already established numbering referring to the other counts of Holland named Dirk. John of Avesnes was a son of Adelaide of Holland, sister of William II of Holland, during the rule of Margaret, her son William V had the real power in the county. He became ruler in his own right as a result of the Hook and he was also Duke of Bavaria-Straubing as William I. This war was won by Philip of Burgundy in 1432. Philip was a nephew of William VI, who had married a daughter of Philip the Bold of Burgundy, in 1432 he forced Jacqueline to abdicate from Hainaut and Holland on his behalf. In 1581, the Estates General of the United Provinces declared themselves independent from the Spanish rule of Philip II. Until the Treaty of Münster in 1648, the kings of Spain still used the title Count of Holland, but they had lost the actual power over the county to the States of Holland. Philip IV, King Philip III of Spain Philip V, King Philip IV of Spain The County remained in existence as a constituent member state of the Dutch Republic until 1795. There were no more Counts however since the Estates of Holland, the Stadtholders, who were servants of the Estates were the de facto Chief-Executives during this period. Counts of Holland family tree A book of 32 plates of the counts of Holland published in Amsterdam in 1663, engraved by Adriaen Matham B. K. S. Dijkstra, Een stamboom in been, Amsterdam 1991
5.
Bourgeoisie
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A legally defined class of the Middle Ages to the end of the Ancien Régime in France, that of inhabitants having the rights of citizenship and political rights in a city. This bourgeoisie destroyed aristocratic privilege and established civic equality after the French monarchy collapsed, the aristocracy crumbled because it refused to reform institutions and financial systems. An affluent and often opulent stratum of the class who stand opposite the proletariat class. In English, bourgeoisie identified a social class oriented to economic materialism and hedonism, hence, since the 19th century, the term bourgeoisie usually is politically and sociologically synonymous with the ruling upper class of a capitalist society. The 18th century saw a partial rehabilitation of bourgeois values in such as the drame bourgeois and bourgeois tragedy. The bourgeoisie emerged as a historical and political phenomenon in the 11th century when the bourgs of Central and this urban expansion was possible thanks to economic concentration due to the appearance of protective self-organisation into guilds. Guilds arose when individual businessmen conflicted with their feudal landlords who demanded greater rents than previously agreed. In English, the bourgeoisie is often used to denote the middle classes. In fact, the French term encompasses both the upper and middle classes, a misunderstanding which has occurred in other languages as well. The bourgeoisie in France and many French-speaking countries consists of four evolving social layers, petite bourgeoisie, moyenne bourgeoisie, grande bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie consists of people who have experienced a brief ascension in social mobility for one or two generations. It usually starts with a trade or craft, and by the second and third generation, the petite bourgeois would belong to the British lower middle class and would be American middle income. They are distinguished mainly by their mentality, and would differentiate themselves from the proletariat or working class and this class would include artisans, small traders, shopkeepers, and small farm owners. They are not employed, but may not be able to afford employees themselves, the moyenne bourgeoisie or middle bourgeoisie contains people who have solid incomes and assets, but not the aura of those who have become established at a higher level. They tend to belong to a family that has been bourgeois for three or more generations, some members of this class may have relatives from similar backgrounds, or may even have aristocratic connections. The moyenne bourgeoisie is the equivalent of the British and American upper-middle classes, the grande bourgeoisie are families that have been bourgeois since the 19th century, or for at least four or five generations. Members of these tend to marry with the aristocracy or make other advantageous marriages. This bourgeoisie family has acquired an established historical and cultural heritage over the decades, the names of these families are generally known in the city where they reside, and their ancestors have often contributed to the regions history. These families are respected and revered and they belong to the upper class, and in the British class system are considered part of the gentry
6.
William II, Count of Hainaut
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William II, Count of Hainaut was William IV of Avesnes, William IV of Holland and William III of Zeeland from 1337 to his death, succeeding his father, William I. He married Joanna, Duchess of Brabant and Limburg in 1334, William fought in France as an ally of the English. He went on crusade against the Saracens and the Lithuanians and he besieged Utrecht, because his one-time favourite bishop John van Arkel of Utrecht had turned against him. He died at Warns, near Stavoren, during one of the battles of Warns against the Frisians in 1345, William was succeeded by his sister, who was married to emperor Louis IV. Hainaut, Holland and Zeeland became a part of the crown domains. Counts of Hainaut family tree Counts of Holland family tree Friso-Hollandic Wars Frisia
7.
Margaret II, Countess of Hainaut
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Margaret II of Avesnes was Countess of Hainaut and Countess of Holland from 1345 to 1356. Margaret was the daughter of William I, Count of Hainaut, due to the dangerous hostility of the House of Luxemburg Louis increased his power base ruthlessly. Margaret then returned to Holland in 1346 to secure her position of power, when Louis IV died on 11 October 1347, he was succeeded by his six sons. Stephen II, William and Albert received Lower Bavaria, Holland, Louis V and Stephen were not sons of Margaret and her youngest sons Albert and Otto were still minors. Louis VI released Holland and Hainaut for his brothers William and Albert in 1349 since he expected the Polish crown by his marriage with Cunigunde of Poland, in 1353 also Stephen released Holland and Hainaut to his brother William. Despite Margaret resigning her sovereignty in favour of her son William, in 1350 and her son William refused to pay her alimony so she then battled for the power in Holland and Hainaut for some years with her son. The Cod League was formed on 23 May 1350 by a number of supporters of William, on 5 September of the same year, the Hook League was formed. Soon afterward these factions clashed and a war began, known as the Hook. Margarets health failed and she died two years later of tuberculosis, leaving William in possession of the entire Holland-Hainaut inheritance. In 1324 she married Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor and their children were, Margaret, married, in 1351 in Buda Stephen, Duke of Slavonia, son of the King Charles I of Hungary, and had issue, 1357/58 Gerlach von Hohenlohe. Anna married John I of Lower Bavaria Louis VI the Roman, duke of Upper Bavaria, elisabeth, married, Cangrande II della Scala, Lord of Verona in Verona on 22 November 1350. No issue Count Ulrich of Württemberg in 1362, no issue William V of Holland, as William I duke of Lower Bavaria, as Wiliam V count of Hainaut and Holland. He married Maud of Lancaster but their daughter died young Agnes. 25 October 1356 Eric XII of Sweden Louis Counts of Hainaut family tree
8.
Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor
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Louis IV, called the Bavarian, of the house of Wittelsbach, was King of the Romans from 1314, King of Italy from 1327, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1328. He obtained the titles Count of Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland, Louis was born in Munich, the son of Louis II, Duke of Upper Bavaria and Count Palatine of the Rhine, and Matilda, a daughter of King Rudolph I. A civil war against his brother Rudolf due to new disputes on the partition of their lands was ended in 1313, in the same year, on November 9, Louis defeated his Habsburg cousin Frederick the Fair who was further aided by duke Leopold I. Originally, he was a friend of Frederick, with whom he had been raised. However, armed conflict arose when the guardianship over the young Dukes of Lower Bavaria was entrusted to Frederick, even though the late Duke Otto III, on 9 November 1313, Frederick was defeated by Louis in the Battle of Gamelsdorf and had to renounce the tutelage. This victory caused a stir within the Holy Roman Empire and increased the reputation of the Bavarian Duke, the death of Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII in August 1313 necessitated the election of a successor. Henrys son John, King of Bohemia since 1310, seemed too powerful to most prince-electors, the most likely choice was Frederick the Fair, the son of Henrys predecessor, Albert I, of the House of Habsburg. In reaction, the party among the prince electors settled on Louis as its candidate to prevent Fredericks election. On 19 October 1314, Archbishop Henry II Cologne chaired an assembly of four electors assembled at Sachsenhausen and these four elector chose Frederick as King. The Luxemburg party did not accept this election and the day a second election was held. Upon the instigation of Peter of Aspelt, Archbishop of Mainz, five different electors convened at Frankfurt, in the following conflict between the kings, Louis recognized in 1316 the independence of Switzerland from the Habsburg dynasty. After several years of war, victory finally seemed within the grasp of Frederick. However, Fredericks army was defeated in the Battle of Mühldorf on 28 September 1322 on the Ampfing Heath. In this agreement, Frederick recognized Louis as legitimate ruler and undertook to return to captivity if he did not succeed in convincing his brothers to submit to Louis. As he did not manage to overcome Leopolds obstinacy, Frederick returned to Munich as a prisoner, Louis, who was impressed by such nobility, renewed the old friendship with Frederick, and they agreed to rule the Empire jointly. However, after Leopolds death in 1326, Frederick withdrew from the regency of the Empire and he died on 13 January 1330. After the reconciliation with the Habsburgs in 1326, Louis marched to Italy and was crowned King of Italy in Milan in 1327. Already in 1323 Louis had sent an army to Italy to protect Milan against the Kingdom of Naples, but now the Lord of Milan Galeazzo I Visconti was deposed since he was suspected of conspiring with the pope
9.
William I, Duke of Bavaria
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William I, Duke of Bavaria-Straubing, was the second son of the emperor Louis IV the Bavarian from his second wife Margaret of Holland and Hainaut. He was also known as William V, Count of Holland, as William III, Count of Hainaut and as William IV, in 1345 Williams father was conferring Hainaut, Holland, Zeeland and Friesland upon his wife Margaret, and shortly later also upon their son William. After his fathers death in 1347 William ruled Bavaria, Holland, with the first division of the Wittelsbach possessions in 1349 he received Hainaut, Holland and Lower Bavaria together with his brothers Stephen II and Albert I. After the next division of Bavaria in 1353 he ruled together with his younger brother Albert I in Bavaria-Straubing, Holland, William had engaged in a long struggle with his mother Margaret, obtaining Holland and Zeeland from her in 1354, and Hainaut on her death in 1356. In 1350, the nobles of Holland asked Margaret to return to Holland again and she then battled for the power in Holland and Hainaut for some years with her son William who refused to pay her alimony. The Cod league was formed on 23 May 1350 by a number of supporters of William, on 5 September the same year, the Hook league was formed. Soon afterward, these factions clashed, and a war began. Edward III shortly afterwards changed sides, and the empress saw herself compelled to come to an understanding with her son, he being recognized as count of Holland and Zeeland, Margaret died two years later, leaving William in possession of the entire Holland-Hainaut inheritance. William was married to Matilda of Lancaster, sister to Blanche of Lancaster, in 1357, William began to show signs of insanity, going so far as to attack and kill one of his knights for no apparent reason, before he could be restrained. His brother Albert assumed the regency in Holland and Hainaut in 1358, William was confined to Castle Le Quesnoy for the remainder of his life. He married Matilda of Lancaster, daughter of Henry of Grosmont, 1st Duke of Lancaster and they had only one daughter, who died in 1356. Also, he had children, Wilhelm, married 1398 Lisbeth Hughe. Elisabeth, married Brustijn van Herwijnen, lord of Stavenisse and he was succeeded by his brother Albert in 1389
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