The Political Culture of the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1566–1648

—a conference organized by Peter Arnade, California State University, San Marcos; Margaret C. Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles; and Henk van Nierop, Universiteit van Amsterdam

The multi-pronged series of events known as the Dutch Revolt (1566–1648) is one of early modern Europe’s greatest upheavals. The Revolt resulted in the dismissal by the Estates General of the Netherlands of the Spanish Habsburg Philip II as monarch, and in the establishment of a commonwealth that became an economic and cultural bellwether of seventeenth-century Europe. Participants in the Revolt hotly debated theories of political resistance, the limits of monarchical rule, and the value of popular sovereignty. In the religious sphere important deliberations over the accommodation of difference and liberty of conscience took place, while Catholics and Calvinists squared off over the practice of their faiths. The Revolt transpired within an urban world whose forms of sociability anticipated the Habermasian public sphere of later liberal society. The Revolt also reverberated throughout Europe and drew many key states into its orbit. Still, the events of the Dutch Revolt are not fully appreciated in contemporary Anglo-American scholarship. Even within the Dutch and Belgian tradition of scholarship on the Revolt, there has been no comprehensive effort to assess the popular media of the Dutch Revolt and its general political culture. This interdisciplinary conference brings together specialists in history, art history, and literature from the United States, Belgium, England, France, and the Netherlands to explore the cultural forms—pamphlets, broadsheets, theater, popular prints, balladry, and ceremony, among others—deployed by participants in the Revolt to stake out political and religious commitments and to forge a rebellion.

Cosponsored by UCLA’s Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies, the Willam Andrews Clark Memorial Library, the Netherlands Consulate General of Los Angeles, and the Centrum voor de Studie van de Gouden Eeuw, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Program

Session 1: The Dutch Revolt: Contexts and Comparisons
Moderator: Margaret C. Jacob, University of California, Los Angeles

Marc Boone, Universiteit Gent
“The Dutch Revolt and the Mediaeval Tradition of Urban Dissent”

Wayne te Brake, Purchase College, State University of New York
“The Revolt of the Netherlands in Comparative Perspective”

Henk van Nierop, Universiteit van Amsterdam
“Rumor in the Revolt”

Session 2: Political Thought and Civic Rights
Moderator: Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Guido Marnef, Universiteit Antwerpen
“Loyal Opposition and the Celebration of Privileges in Sixteenth-Century Brabant”

Catherine Secretan, Centre national de la recherche scientifique/Université de Saint-Etienne
“‘Considering the circumstances…’ (Ph. de Marnix): The Political Thought of Revolt between Theory and Practice”

James D. Tracy, University of Minnesota
“Tyranny, Turbae, and Auctoritas: Justus Lipsius as a Commentator on the Events of the Dutch Revolt”

Session 3: Political Ritual and Public Representation
Moderator: Peter Arnade, California State University, San Marcos

Mark A. Meadow, University of California, Santa Barbara
“Philip II’s 1549 Joyous Entry and the Failure of Ritual”

Anne-Laure Van Bruaene, Universiteit Gent
“Spectacle and Spin for a Spurned Prince. Civic Strategies in the Entries of the Duke of Anjou in Antwerp, Bruges, and Ghent (1582)”

Alastair Duke, University of Southampton
“From Beggars to Patriots: The Construction of Rebel Identities in the Dutch Revolt, c. 1566–1579”

Session 4: Conflicted Identities
Moderator: Christine Sellin

René van Stipriaan, Independent Scholar/Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren
“Words at War: The Early Years of William of Orange’s Propaganda”

Judith Pollmann, Universiteit Leiden
“Forging the Catholic Cause in the Dutch Revolt”

Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez, Universiteit Utrecht
“The Pelican and His Ungrateful Children. The Construction and Evolution of the Image of Dutch Rebelliousness in Golden Age Spain”