Study On Eighteenth-Century Dutch Political Thought

Eighteenth-century Dutch political thought is an academic subject that has sprang up during the past decades especially since 1980s. Being intertwined with the problem of the decline of the Dutch Republic is the most conspicuous characteristic of the eighteenth-century Dutch political thought. Each group of the Dutch political thought in the eighteenth century, including Republicans, Orangists, Spectatorial literature writers and Patriots, attempted to prevent the Netherlands from decline in its own way. The eighteenth century, during which a political unification took shape and a nation state stood out from its decline and chaos, is a turning point for the Netherlands. In view of the fact that the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic has scarcely been studied in China, this article will try to draw an outline of the Dutch social history and academic life in the eighteenth century from a historical perspective, aiming to find out the characteristics and special values of the political thought by means of description and evaluation, and finally to elaborate that the new concept of citizenship that generated in the field of the political thought, combined with the rising of national awareness has brought about the unification of the political structure.There are six parts in the article.The preface mainly discusses the current situation of the study of the eighteenth-century Dutch political thought at home and abroad and the significance of this topic. Study on this topic plays an important role in the contemporary historians' research on the Dutch Patriot movement in the end of the eighteenth century and the Dutch Enlightenment. The study of the eighteenth-century Dutch political thought is still in its infancy in abroad and has even scarcely touched upon in China.Chapterâ… is the description of the social background of the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic. In this part, several factors, including politics, economy, military, culture and others, whose interaction resulted in the eighteenth -century Dutch society from its prosperity to descent will be described to display the relation of the political thought with the age.Chapterâ…¡, the main part of this paper, introduces the eighteenth-century Dutch political theories. It could be divided into four sections. The first section manifests the republican identity the eighteenth-century Dutch theorist all shared and find out the main stream and development of the eighteenth-century Dutch political thought. The second section introduces the political debate in the early eighteenth century. Lieven de Beaufort's republicanism was the most important political theory at that time. He attempted to resolve the shortcomings of the oligarchy by reversal of the roles between regents and citizens according to the political virtue. The third section analyzes the theory of the Spectatorial literature writers, taking Justus van Effen and his Hollandsche Spectator as representative. They emphasized the political liberty and the communication between the citizens, and thought that the French cultural invasion caused the decline of the Dutch Republic. So they took the seventeenth century, a golden age in Netherlands, as an original version to rebuild the virtue and resist the French culture. The last section analyzes the theory of the Patriots. The Patriots, deeply influenced by the Enlightenment thought, defined liberty as the sovereignty of the people and insisted direct election, and hoped people can defend their political liberty with the freedom of the press and their own army.Chapterâ…¢discusses the influence of the eighteenth-century Dutch political thought. Though the Dutch political theorist didn't reach their target to help the Dutch Republic return to the peak of seventeenth-century, their theories helped the Dutch rebuild their national consciousness and citizenship. The Batavian Republic founded in the end of the eighteenth century improved the structure of the past governments and the Netherlands finally became a unified national state.Chapterâ…£summarizes the characteristics of the eighteenth-century Dutch political thought by comparing with the political theory of the French Enlightenment. The eighteenth-century Dutch theorist put particular emphasis on advancing the status of the citizens in the politics to restrain the power of the stadholders while the French criticized the absolutism more. Meanwhile, the Dutch had another mission to build the national awareness and a unified national state.The last part analyzes the characteristics of the Dutch culture and overall evaluates the eighteenth-century Dutch political thought.