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Authors: Lisa Jardine
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for many years in England. 16
The arrival of Leon’s models produced a flurry of interest in reconstructed ancient Biblical architecture. Robert Hooke recorded in his diary, early in September 1675: ‘With Sir Chr. Wren. Long Discourse with him about the module of the Temple at Jerusalem.’ 17 A good deal has been written by Dutch historians of architecture about the influence of the reconstructions of the Biblical buildings on Dutch church architecture in the second half of the seventeenth century. It is perhaps time for a similar kind of exploration of the effect of the collection of models brought to London by Leon on Wren and his contemporaries’ ecclesiastical architecture.
On a number of occasions while I have been writing this book, distinguished Dutch academics have expressed the hope to me that I would provide a picture of how, in the seventeenth century, Dutch fortunes declined as English fortunes grew, which was more sensitive to the Dutch side of the story.
The Dutch have always felt aggrieved at the way in which wealth, power and influence seeped away from the United Provinces at the beginning of the eighteenth century, as those of Britain increased. They have seen their diminishing role on the international scene as directly related to England’s rise. I hope that I have shown here that they are broadly right in thinking so. William III and his wife Mary Stuart carried with them into England not just the hopes and aspirations of a generation, but much of their tax revenue and wealth. Hence the word ‘plundered’ in my subtitle, though the process was, as I hope I have shown, considerably more subtle and extended than that word perhaps implies.
I hope I have indeed managed to paint a more colourful and varied picture of Anglo–Dutch relations and their outcome at the end of the seventeenth century, and thereby done something towards setting the record straight. It was the case then, and remains the case today, I believe, that the English and the Dutch share a remarkable amount in terms of outlook, fundamental beliefs, aspirations and sense of identity.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it is fascinating to watch British and Dutch commerce continuing to share fundamental attitudes and outlooks, which have facilitated large-corporation mergers to produce major Anglo–Dutch interests – the formation of Corus Steel in 1999 by the merger of British Steel and Koninklijke Hoogovens, for instance, and most recently the ongoing negotiations towards a proposed merger between a British bank and the Dutch bank ABN Amro, to create one of the world’s biggest financial institutions.
I have come to feel a deep sense of shared values and common purpose with the people of the Netherlands in the course of carrying out my research. In the end this book is intended to be a celebration of our equal sharing in events in history at the beginning of our modern mercantile and consumerist age – our ‘going Dutch’.
Bibliography of Secondary Sources
Adamson, J. (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe 1500–1750 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999)
Akkerman, N.N.W., The Letters of the Queen of Bohemia (unpublished dissertation, Free University of Amsterdam, 2008)
Akkerman, N.N.W., and P.R. Sellin, ‘A Stuart Masque in Holland, Ballet de la Carmesse de La Haye (1655)’, Parts 1 and 2, Ben Jonson Journal 11 (2004), 207–58; 227 and 12 (2005), 141–64
Akkerman, N.N.W., and Marguérite Corporaal, ‘Mad Science Beyond Flattery: The Correspondence of Margaret Cavendish and Constantijn Huygens’, Early Modern Literary Studies Special Issue 14 (May 2004), 2.1–21 [http://purl.oclc.org/emls/si-14/akkecorp.html]
Alpers, S., The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983)
Andriesse, C.D., Titan kan niet slapen: een biografie van Christiaan Huygens (Amsterdam: Contact, 1993), French trans. D. Losman, Christian Huygens (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998)
Andriesse,
The arrival of Leon’s models produced a flurry of interest in reconstructed ancient Biblical architecture. Robert Hooke recorded in his diary, early in September 1675: ‘With Sir Chr. Wren. Long Discourse with him about the module of the Temple at Jerusalem.’ 17 A good deal has been written by Dutch historians of architecture about the influence of the reconstructions of the Biblical buildings on Dutch church architecture in the second half of the seventeenth century. It is perhaps time for a similar kind of exploration of the effect of the collection of models brought to London by Leon on Wren and his contemporaries’ ecclesiastical architecture.
On a number of occasions while I have been writing this book, distinguished Dutch academics have expressed the hope to me that I would provide a picture of how, in the seventeenth century, Dutch fortunes declined as English fortunes grew, which was more sensitive to the Dutch side of the story.
The Dutch have always felt aggrieved at the way in which wealth, power and influence seeped away from the United Provinces at the beginning of the eighteenth century, as those of Britain increased. They have seen their diminishing role on the international scene as directly related to England’s rise. I hope that I have shown here that they are broadly right in thinking so. William III and his wife Mary Stuart carried with them into England not just the hopes and aspirations of a generation, but much of their tax revenue and wealth. Hence the word ‘plundered’ in my subtitle, though the process was, as I hope I have shown, considerably more subtle and extended than that word perhaps implies.
I hope I have indeed managed to paint a more colourful and varied picture of Anglo–Dutch relations and their outcome at the end of the seventeenth century, and thereby done something towards setting the record straight. It was the case then, and remains the case today, I believe, that the English and the Dutch share a remarkable amount in terms of outlook, fundamental beliefs, aspirations and sense of identity.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it is fascinating to watch British and Dutch commerce continuing to share fundamental attitudes and outlooks, which have facilitated large-corporation mergers to produce major Anglo–Dutch interests – the formation of Corus Steel in 1999 by the merger of British Steel and Koninklijke Hoogovens, for instance, and most recently the ongoing negotiations towards a proposed merger between a British bank and the Dutch bank ABN Amro, to create one of the world’s biggest financial institutions.
I have come to feel a deep sense of shared values and common purpose with the people of the Netherlands in the course of carrying out my research. In the end this book is intended to be a celebration of our equal sharing in events in history at the beginning of our modern mercantile and consumerist age – our ‘going Dutch’.
Bibliography of Secondary Sources
Adamson, J. (ed.), The Princely Courts of Europe 1500–1750 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999)
Akkerman, N.N.W., The Letters of the Queen of Bohemia (unpublished dissertation, Free University of Amsterdam, 2008)
Akkerman, N.N.W., and P.R. Sellin, ‘A Stuart Masque in Holland, Ballet de la Carmesse de La Haye (1655)’, Parts 1 and 2, Ben Jonson Journal 11 (2004), 207–58; 227 and 12 (2005), 141–64
Akkerman, N.N.W., and Marguérite Corporaal, ‘Mad Science Beyond Flattery: The Correspondence of Margaret Cavendish and Constantijn Huygens’, Early Modern Literary Studies Special Issue 14 (May 2004), 2.1–21 [http://purl.oclc.org/emls/si-14/akkecorp.html]
Alpers, S., The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1983)
Andriesse, C.D., Titan kan niet slapen: een biografie van Christiaan Huygens (Amsterdam: Contact, 1993), French trans. D. Losman, Christian Huygens (Paris: Albin Michel, 1998)
Andriesse,
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