Dutch States Party

The Dutch States Party (without the qualifier "Dutch" if the meaning is clear from the context) is the name used in Anglophone historiography for the faction in the politics of the Dutch Republic referred to in (older) Dutch historiography as the Staatsgezinde partij. This republican faction is usually (negatively) defined as the opponents of the Orangist, or Prinsgezinde faction, who supported the monarchical aspirations of the stadtholders, who were usually (in this context) members of the House of Orange-Nassau. The two factions existed during the entire history of the Republic since the Twelve Years' Truce, be it that the role of "usual opposition party" of the States party was taken over by the Patriots after the Orangist revolution of 1747. The States party was in the ascendancy during the First Stadtholderless Period and the Second Stadtholderless Period.

The two factions were not political parties in the modern sense of the word. They were mostly kept together by animosity between families belonging to the Regenten class on the local level, for reasons that differed between localities. These local factions might take sides to either faction simply based on the fact that their opponents were loyal to the other faction. There was little explicit ideological coherence, and whatever ideology existed on either side differed with changing circumstances over the course of the history of the Republic. Still, since the days of the conflict between Maurice, Prince of Orange and Land's Advocate of Holland Johan van Oldenbarnevelt the States Party stood for provincial sovereignty, vested in the provincial States (like the States of Holland), whereas the Orangist party emphasized the "supra-provincial" sovereignty, residing in the States-General of the Netherlands. The supremacy of the provincial States was first defended by François Vranck in his debate with Thomas Wilkes in 1587 during the rule of the Earl of Leicester as governor-general under the English protectorate, and later taken up by Hugo Grotius in his De antiquitate reipublicae Batavicae (On the Antiquity of the Batavian Republic). The theme was taken up again during the conflict between stadtholder William II and the States of Holland in 1650, in which first the Prince prevailed, and after his death the States, ushering in the "True Freedom" of the First Stadtholderless Period.

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