Pieter Jelles Troelstra

Pieter Jelles Troelstra (Leeuwarden, 20 April 1860 – The Hague, 12 May 1930) was a Dutch politician active in the socialist workers' movement. He is most remembered for his fight for universal suffrage and his failed call for revolution at the end of World War I. From 1888 to 1904, Troelstra was married to Sjoukje Bokma de Boer, a well-known children's book writer, under the pen name of Nienke van Hichtum.

Troelstra was born in Leeuwarden and grew up in the village of Stiens, where his father was a liberal tax inspector. He was an ethnic Frisian, and his name is styled in the traditional Frisian way: first name ("Pieter", because of his Frisian writings, is often written as "Piter", as it is spelled in Frisian), patronymic ("Jelles", meaning "son of Jelle"), family name (Troelstra).

He went to read law at the University of Groningen. When he was finished he settled in Leeuwarden as a lawyer. He got into contact with politics and the workers' movement through a Frisian movement, later to be known as the Friese Volkspartij () (Frisian People's Party). He had originally joined this movement because of his poetry and interest in the West Frisian language. Through the movement and his work as a lawyer, he got into the social-democratic part of this wide movement.

In 1890, Troelstra joined the Sociaal-Democratische Bond (Social-Democratic League, SDB), an early Dutch socialist movement under the leadership of Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis. In time, he got into conflict with the anarchist tendencies of the movement. In 1893, the SDB took a decisive anti-parliamentary stance, and Troelstra no longer believed it could do any useful socialist work.

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