Second Stadtholderless Period

The Second Stadtholderless Period or Era (Dutch: Tweede Stadhouderloze Tijdperk) is the designation in Dutch historiography of the period between the death of stadtholder William III on March 19, 1702 and the appointment of William IV as stadtholder and captain general in all provinces of the Dutch Republic on May 2, 1747. During this period the office of stadtholder was left vacant in the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht, though in other provinces that office was filled by members of the House of Nassau-Dietz (later called Orange-Nassau) during various periods. During the period the Republic lost its Great-Power status and its primacy in world trade, processes that went hand-in-hand, the latter causing the former. Though the economy declined considerably, causing deindustralization and deurbanization in the maritime provinces, a rentier-class kept accumulating a large capital fund that formed the basis for the leading position the Republic achieved in the international capital market. A military crisis at the end of the period caused the fall of the States-Party regime and the restoration of the Stadtholderate in all provinces. However, though the new stadtholder acquired near-dictatorial powers, this did not improve the situation.

The terms First Stadtholderless Period and Second Stadtholderless Period became established as terms of art in Dutch historiography during the 19th century, the heyday of nationalistic history writing, when Dutch historians wistfully looked back on the glory days of the Dutch Revolt and the Dutch Golden Age and were looking for scapegoats for "what went wrong" in later years. Partisans of the new royal house of Orange-Nassau, like Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, who were indeed continuing the traditions of the Orangist party during the Republic, recast that history as a heroic narrative of the exploits of the stadtholders of the House of Orange (interestingly, the Frisian stadtholders from the House of Nassau-Dietz, though the forebears of the House of Orange-Nassau, were less prominently featured). Anybody who had stood in the way of those stadtholders, like the representatives of the States Party, eminently fitted the role of "bad guys" in these romantic stories. Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, Hugo Grotius, Johan de Witt, though not actually demonized, got decidedly shorter shrift than later historians were prepared to do. The lesser-known regents of later years even fared worse. John Lothrop Motley, who introduced Americans to the history of the Dutch Republic in the 19th century, was strongly influenced by this point of view.

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