Seventeen Provinces
Originally the term
Netherlands referred to a much larger entity than the current Kingdom of the
Netherlands.
Charles V of
Hapsburg was the lord of
seventeen provinces roughly covering the current
Netherlands,
Belgium,
Luxemburg and a good part of the North of
France (Artois). Most of these were fiefs under the
Holy Roman Empire, of which Charles became Emperor himself. Two, Flanders and Artois, were French fiefs. The French king and the Holy Roman Emperor agreed to release all seventeen from the largely nominal and by then anachronistic ties to both realms. This was called the
Pragmatic Sanction of 1548. Seven northern provinces claimed their independence in
1581 as a republic called the
United Provinces:
Three others were divided between north and south (which later became
Belgium):
Of the remaining territories:
In addition, there were a number of fiefdoms in this region that were not part of the Netherlands, the largest one is
Liege. In the north, there were also a few smaller entities like the island of
Ameland, that would retain their own lords until the
French revolution.
In the days of Charles V, there is no doubt that the economic, political and cultural center was the south, although Holland was gradually gaining importance in the 15th and 16th centuries. In fact, the south was one of the leading economic regions of Europe at the time.
To distinguish between the older, larger Netherlands from the current country, Dutch speakers usually drop the plural for the latter. They speak of Nederland for the current country and de Nederlanden for the domains of Charles V. In other languages, this has not been adopted.
The fact that the same term Netherlands has such different historical meanings can sometimes lead to difficulties in expressing oneself correctly. For example, composers from the 16th century are often said to belong to the Nederlandse School. Although they themselves would not have objected to that term, today it may wrongly create the impression that they were from the north. In fact, they were almost exclusively from the south.
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