Customer Reviews

Patriots & Liberators

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I have read most of Simon Schama's published works, and he is one of my favorite historians. His books range from the long to the short, from the survey text to the reseach tome. PATRIOTS AND LIBERATORS is a long research tome. The book contains 750 pages covering the years 1780s-1813 -- a period marked by the rise and fall of the Dutch Republic. A long bibliography and section of endnotes follows the text.

Readers of CITIZENS or AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES may not enjoy PATRIOTS quite as much as either of Schama's earlier books because it contains little joy. In CITIZENS, the French Revolution begins on a somewhat inspirational note, and though it is soon followed by a Reign of Terror, the rise of Napoleon restores some hope. In PATRIOTS, Schama continues the tale begun in CITIZENS, but the French Reign of Terror and Napoleon's exploits are viewed from the unhappy perspective of the Dutch.

While the French Revolution has sometimes been depicted as colorful, horrendous, and/or chilling, and Napoleons's exploits are often glorified with blue-white-red cockades as well as land and sea battles, the Netherlands knew only deprivation, destruction, and death at the hands of the French. And, although PATRIOTS begins at a time when the Dutch still enjoyed a bit of the prosperity depicted in RICHES, by the battle of Waterloo, economic conditions in the Netherlands were terrible.

Napoleon extracted every drop of wealth from every citizen of the Netherlands to finance his military exploits against other European powers. Although the Dutch originally established their own Republican government, it soon became a puppet of Napoleon. In the end, the Republic of the Netherlands was destroyed by the struggles of the European superpowers.

If you like history about the Napoleonic era, you will probably enjoy this book. If you are of Dutch descent, and want to gain a little insight into your ancestors experiences of ethnic cleansing and a holocaust during the early 1800s, this book will prove interesting and informative.

Unless you're an academic and the Napoleonic Wars are one of your subjects, the Netherlands is probably known to you as that progressive, Scandinavian-type little nation that's always ahead of the rest of the world (euthanasia, maternity leave, employer-paid child care, transparency in government, equal pay for women, universal healthcare & post-secondary education, absence of violent crime, etc.); and maybe, some dim memory from high-school/college of the Golden Age, when the Dutch were one of the world's powers. This interesting history by Schama covers the years just before the French Revolution up to Waterloo.

The book is extremely detailed with what, at times, I thought was minutia, but Schama has a gift for telling a story. He probably could have written the book in 300 or so pages instead of 650, but he makes the detail interesting, and there isn't that much written about this era of Dutch history. Recommended not only for history fans, but for readers who want to mix in some non-fiction with their usual novels.

This book deals with how the Age of Revolutions played out in the Netherlands, whereas I was looking for how Holland seceded from Spanish rule, which I found in the excellent Blom book, and for your information, is as follows:

Spain inherited the united (post-Burgundian) Low Countries from Habsburg Austria by royal marriage. It over-taxed the prosperous Low Countries, and suppressed the growing Reformation Protestantism in the North. The northern provinces under William of Orange successfully revolted in the Eighty Years' War of the Sixteenth Century with the help of England and France, who were looking to hurt a hegemonic Spain booming on New World silver.

Furthermore, the Blom says the Dutch Golden Age of the Seventeenth Century occurred partly because of the internal problems besetting England and France at the time. Indeed it was the relative decline of the next century that led to the democratic/Enlightenment Patriot Revolution Schama describes that swept away the Dutch ancien regime, prior to Napoleonic annexation lasting till Waterloo (after which the British seized the Cape Colony), which was followed by another union with Belgium (made brief by Belgian resentment at- Dutch domination of the state and at- the authoritarianism of Restoration monarchy), in a United Kingdom of the Netherlands, formed to make a more powerful buttress to France.

Bong on, Homes!

The story of a former world power's decline into relative obscurity, which unfortunately coincided with the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, this is a difficult but ultimately rewarding book. This was Schama's first book, and I believe it was from his thesis work.

The book covers a complicated period and is long enough that there is almost a complete turnover of characters. Add to this my complete unfamiliarity with all the characters, and their difficult (to American) names - Schimmelpennick, van der Capellan tot der Pol - and places - IJ, and IJssell, `s Hertogenbosh - and I found it pretty rough going at first. It took me nearly 200 pages before I was able to detect themes and remember people.

If you want a single theme and ongoing progress, this is not the time or place for you. Most of the story is about false starts, obstruction by individuals and groups intent on keeping their power, and changes in regimes. It bears a superficial resemblance to Revolutionary France (pre-Napoleon), but as Schama points out, this is only superficial. On the other hand if you are the kind of person who thinks you can learn a lot from the apparently unimportant, this is the book for you.

The two main lessons I learned from this book was that the change from mostly local powers controlling everything to a national (unitary) government required massive economic stress and (possibly) rule by another country. The other is that despite intense pressure from the French, the Dutch remained Dutch. These are lessons that are still relevant today.