History of the Netherlands

It is impossible to give a complete history of the Netherlands on just a few pages of a website. Many books have been written about this subject and many specialized websites do a far better job on this than we have done here. These pages are meant to give a short impression of the main events which have lead to the country we call "Nederland". 

For many centuries, the expression "de Nederlanden" (the Netherlands) has been used to describe (roughly) the area in North-Western Europe now known as the kingdom of the Netherlands and the kingdom of Belgium. 

It therefore makes sense to treat the history of both countries at the same time, up until the point where they got separated, in the 19th century.