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Shaping the International
Relations of the Netherlands,
1815–2000

This book seeks to launch a new research agenda for the

historiography of Dutch foreign relations during the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. It does so in two important ways. First, it
broadens the analytical perspective to include a variety of non-state
actors beyond politicians and diplomats. Second, it focuses on the
transnational connections that shaped the foreign relations of the
Netherlands, emphasizing the effects of (post-) colonialism and
internationalism. Furthermore, this essay collection highlights not
only the key roles played by Dutch actors on the international scene,
but also serves as an important point of comparison for the activities
of their counterparts in other small states.

Ruud van Dijk, Samuël Kruizinga, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer

and Rimko van der Maar are specialists in the history of
international relations working at the Department of History,
European Studies & Religious Studies of the University of
Amsterdam.

Routledge Studies in Modern European History

https://www.routledge.com/history/series/SE0246
49 Stalin’s Constitution: Soviet Participatory Politics and the
Discussion of the 1936 Draft Constitution
Samantha Lomb

50 Britain and the Cyprus Crisis of 1974

Conflict, Colonialism and the Politics of Remembrance in Greek
Cypriot Society
John Burke

51 Nationalism of the Rich

Discourses and Strategies of Separatist Parties in Catalonia,
Flanders, Northern Italy and Scotland
Emmanuel Dalle Mulle

52 Protecting Democracy from Dissent: Population

Engineering in Western Europe 1918–1926
Shannon Monaghan

53 Orphans and Abandoned Children in European History

Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries
Nicoleta Roman

54 1916 in Global Context

An anti-Imperial moment
Edited by Enrico Dal Lago, Róisín Healy and Gearóid Barry

55 Shaping the International Relations of the Netherlands,

1815–2000
A Small Country on the Global Scene
Edited by Ruud van Dijk, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer, Samuël Kruizinga
and Rimko van der Maar

56 Italy Before Italy

Institutions, Conflicts and Political Hopes in the Italian States, 1815–
1860
Marco Soresina
Shaping the International
Relations of the
Netherlands, 1815–2000
A Small Country on
the Global Scene

Edited by Ruud van Dijk,

Samuël Kruizinga,
Vincent Kuitenbrouwer and
Rimko van der Maar
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 selection and editorial matter, Ruud van Dijk, Samuël Kruizinga, Vincent
Kuitenbrouwer and Rimko van der Maar; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Ruud van Dijk, Samuël Kruizinga, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer and Rimko van der
Maar to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-0-415-78453-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-22844-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Keystroke, Neville Lodge, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton
Contents

List of figures
Notes on contributors

Introduction: A small state on the global scene

RUUD VAN DIJK, SAMUËL KRUIZINGA, VINCENT KUITENBROUWER AND RIMKO
VAN DER MAAR

1 National interest versus common interest: The

Netherlands and the liberalization of Rhine navigation
at the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815)
JOEP SCHENK

2 Algiers burning: The United Kingdom of the

Netherlands and the post-Napoleonic European order
of peace and security
ERIK DE LANGE

3 Joining the international war against anarchism: The

Dutch police and its push towards transnational
cooperation, 1880–
BEATRICE DE GRAAF AND WOUTER KLEM

4 ‘You act too much as a journalist and too little as a

diplomat’: Pieter Geyl, the National Bureau for
 Documentation on the Netherlands and Dutch public
diplomacy, 1919–
PELLE VAN DIJK

5 Between the League of Nations and Europe: Multiple

internationalisms and interwar Dutch civil society
ANNE-ISABELLE RICHARD

6 Rethinking small state security: Dutch alignment in the

1940s compared to Swedish neutrality
SUSANNA ERLANDSSON

7 Expropriating American power: Dutch clientelism and

the East Indies crises, 1941–
DAVID J. SNYDER

8 The guardians: An international history of the Dutch

and ‘Hague Law’, 1944–
BOYD VAN DIJK

9 Attracted and repelled: Transnational relations

between civil society and the state in the history of the
fair trade movement since the 1960s
PETER VAN DAM

10 Joop den Uyl, the emergence of the European Council

and the expanding role of the prime minister in Dutch
foreign policy, 1973–
JAN-WILLEM BROUWER

11 Taking stock of a ‘Ruslandganger’: Ernst H. van Eeghen,

De Burght Foundation, and private diplomacy in East–
West relations during the 1980s and 1990s
GILES SCOTT-SMITH
Conclusions and outlook: Small states on the global
scene
RUUD VAN DIJK, SAMUËL KRUIZINGA, VINCENT KUITENBROUWER AND RIMKO
VAN DER MAAR

Index
Figures

1.1 Portrait of Johann Joseph Eichhoff. Painter unknown, year

unknown (www.rheinisches-bildarchiv.de)
2.1 Bombardment of Algiers by the United Anglo-Dutch Naval
Squadron (1816). Gerardus Laurentius Keultjes. (©
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam)
3.1 Willem Voormolen, head of police, Rotterdam, 1893–1908.
(Stadsarchief Rotterdam)
4.1 F.J.W. Drion (1913). (Nationaal Archief/Collectie
Spaarnestad/Het Leven/A.M.A. Susan)
5.1 IFLNS members, including several Dutch delegates, pose for a
group shot in Geneva, 1930 (International Federation of
League of Nations Societies, P95, Assembly Files, Geneva)
6.1 ‘Run to the best world order. End of the neutrality policy. The
Netherlands has to show its colours!’ Cartoon by F.W.W. Simon
(from F.W.W.Simon en J.M.den Uyl, Van Bevrijding tot nieuwe
Staten-Generaal, Haarlem, 1947)
7.1 The USS Renville, 10 September 1947. The ship symbolized the
American power Dutch officials hoped to bring to bear on the
crisis. The agreement signed on board represented a high-
water mark of Dutch entanglement of American influence in
the dilemma, which quickly broke down immediately thereafter.
(Dutch National Archives website)
8.1 Plenary meeting revision-conference, organized by the Dutch
Red Cross. The Hague, Peace Palace, 1971 (Haags
 Gemeentearchief website)
9.1 Pastor Simon Jelsma (1918–2011) – one of the founding
fathers of the Dutch Third World movement – holding one of
his weekly sermons in the centre of The Hague, 1955.
(Nationaal Archief/Collectie Spaarnestad/Jan van Eyk)
9.2 Dutch national government expenditure on co-financing private
development organizations (EUR mln). From: Inspectie
Ontwikkelingssamenwerking en Beleidsevaluatie,
Terugkoppeling in het Medefinancieringsprogramma (Den Haag
2006)
10.1 European Summit, Copenhagen 15 December 1973, Round
table: seated counter-clockwise starting with Anker Jørgensen,
Danish Prime Minister and President in office of the Council,
from behind, Willy Brandt, German Federal Chancellor, Georges
Pompidou, President of France, Liam Cosgrave, Irish PM,
Mariano Rumor, Italian PM, Pierre Werner, Luxembourg PM,
Joop den Uyl, Dutch PM, Edward Heath, British PM, and
Edmond Leburton, Belgian PM. (EC - Audio-visual Service
Reference: P-009548/03-20 © European Union, 2017)
11.1 Businessman Ernst Van Eeeghen, back from the Soviet Union,
meeting the prime minister on the Russian position in the
missile situation. March 25, 1985. (Dutch National Archives
website)
Contributors

Jan-Willem Brouwer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for

Parliamentary History at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Since
1997 he has also been professeur invité at the Institute for
European Studies of the UCL Louvain-la-Neuve. His research
interests concern political biography, Dutch foreign policy and
European cooperation since World War Two.

Peter van Dam is Assistant Professor of Globalisation, Religion, and

Transnational Civil Society at the University of Amsterdam. His
recent publications include ‘Moralizing postcolonial consumer
society: Fair trade in the Netherlands, 1964–1997’, International
Review of Social History 61:2 (2016) 223–248, and ‘Constructing a
modern society through “depillarization”: Understanding post-war
history as gradual change’, Journal of Historical Sociology 28:3
(2015) 291–313.

Boyd van Dijk is a doctoral candidate at the European University

Institute (EUI) and a teaching assistant at the War Studies
Department of King’s College London. His dissertation is a
comparative study of the making of the Geneva Conventions of
1949, the most important rules ever formulated for armed conflict.
Previously, he published a monograph on the bystanders of an SS
concentration camp in the Low Countries.
Pelle van Dijk is a PhD Researcher at the European University
Institute in Florence. He researches the League of Nations’
Information Section and international public opinion in the
interwar period. Previously he studied Dutch neutrality in the
period 1899–1939. In his master’s thesis he researched La Gazette
de Hollande and Dutch public diplomacy in the interwar period. He
is the author of ‘Both doctor and ethnographer: Arius van
Tienhoven, Dutch doctor at the Balkan front’, in: Elka Agoston-
Nikolova et al. (eds), Unknown Fronts: The Eastern Turn in First
World War History (Groningen 2017).

Ruud van Dijk is Assistant Professor of History at the University of

Amsterdam. He is the senior editor of the Encyclopedia of the Cold
War (Routledge). His current project investigates the Euromissile
Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s as a clash in the West between
traditional deterrence policies and an anti-nuclear revolt in society
and politics. A recent publication is: ‘Prelude to the Euromissile
Crisis: The Neutron Bomb Crisis, the Netherlands, and the “Defeat
of the Strangeloves”’, Nuclear Proliferation International History
Project Working Paper, 3 August 2015.

Susanna Erlandsson has a doctorate in history from Uppsala

University, Sweden. She wrote the award-winning dissertation
Window of opportunity: Dutch and Swedish security ideas and
strategies 1942–1948 (Uppsala 2015). Her current post-doctoral
research at the University of Amsterdam focuses on diplomatic
culture and the role of non-officials and personal politics in
shaping the post-war world.

Beatrice de Graaf is Professor of History of International Relations

and Global Governance at Utrecht University. In 2016, she was
visiting scholar at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge University.
Her current research revolves around the project ‘Securing
Europe, fighting its enemies, 1815–1914’ (awarded with an ERC
consolidator grant in 2013). De Graaf publishes widely on security
and terrorism in the nineteenth to twenty-first century. Recent
 books include Evaluating Counterterrorism Performance
(Routledge 2011; 2014), Terrorists on Trial (Leiden University
Press 2016) and Reintegrating Jihadist Extremist Detainees
(Routledge 2017). De Graaf is currently working on a monograph
on the Vienna 1815 peace settlement, scheduled to appear in
2018 with Cambridge University Press.

Wouter Klem is PhD candidate in the ERC research programme

‘Securing Europe, fighting its enemies 1815–1914’. His research
concerns the development of concerted European police efforts
against the background of violent anarchism between the 1880s
and 1914. These efforts resulted in transnational networks of
police and judicial authorities, secretive protocols and international
conferences.

Samuël Kruizinga is Assistant Professor of Modern and Military

History at the University of Amsterdam. His main research
interests are the histories of global wars and transnational
violence, of neutrality and of small European states in the
nineteenth and twentieth century. Having recently written a
number of books and articles about neutrality during the First
World War, he is currently researching the International Brigades
during the Spanish Civil War and the global history of food
production, distribution and consumption during the First World
War. Additionally, he is developing a major new project on small
states since the nineteenth century and on the history of ‘foreign
fighting’ before the Islamic State.

Vincent Kuitenbrouwer is Assistant Professor International

History at the University of Amsterdam. His current research
focuses on the history of Dutch international radio broadcasting.
He is a core member of several international research projects
including ‘Connecting the Wireless World’ and ‘Getting the Big
Picture on Small States’. Recent publications include: ‘Radio as a
tool of empire: Colonial broadcasting from the Netherlands to the
Dutch East Indies in the 1920s and 1930s’, Itinerario: International
 Journal on the History of European Expansion and Global
Interaction 40:1 (2016) 83–103; ‘Propaganda that dare not speak
its name: International information services about the Dutch East
Indies, 1919–1934’, Journal of Media History 20:2 (2014) 239–
253.

Erik de Lange is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University and works

within the ERC-funded research project ‘Securing Europe, fighting
its enemies 1815–1914’’. His research concerns the imperialist
dynamics of inter-national security cooperation on the
Mediterranean Sea. He is the chief editor of the USHS (Utrecht
School for Historicising Security) Blog.

Rimko van der Maar is Assistant Professor, History of International

Relations, at the University of Amsterdam. His research concerns
the history of Dutch diplomacy and foreign relations, in particular
during the Cold War era, and Third World solidarity movements
during the 1960s and 1970s. His most recent book is a biography
of the Dutch top diplomat and senior negotiator during the Dutch–
Indonesian decolonization war, Herman van Roijen (co-authored,
with Hans Meijer).

Anne-Isabelle Richard is Assistant Professor at the Institute for

History, Leiden University, and specializes in twentieth-century
world and European history from a transnational perspective. Her
current research interests concern African conceptions of
‘Eurafrica’ for which she received a NWO Veni grant (2017–2021)
Recent publications include: ‘The limits of solidarity: Europeanism,
anti-colonialism and socialism at the Congress of the Peoples of
Europe, Asia and Africa at Puteaux, 1948’, European Review of
History/Revue Européenne d’histoire (2014), ‘Competition and
complementarity: Civil society networks and the question of
decentralising the League of Nations’, Journal of Global History 7:2
(2012) 233–256.
Joep Schenk is post-doctoral researcher within the ERC-funded
project ‘Securing Europe, fighting its enemies 1815–1914’ at
Utrecht University. He is researching the role of the Rhine
Commission in the formation of a European Security Culture in the
long nineteenth century. Schenk wrote ‘The Central Commission
for the Navigation of the Rhine: A First Step towards European
Economic Security?’, in a collection entitled Securing Europe after
Napoleon, forthcoming in 2018 from Cambridge University Press.
In 2015 he defended his thesis at Erasmus University, Rotterdam:
‘Port barons and Ruhr tycoons: The origins of an interdependent
relationship between Rotterdam and the Ruhr area 1870–1914’.

Giles Scott-Smith holds the Ernst van der Beugel Chair in the
Diplomatic History of Transatlantic Relations since WW II at Leiden
University, and is the Academic Director of the Roosevelt Institute
for American Studies in Middelburg, the Netherlands. He is one of
the organizers of the New Diplomatic History network:
www.newdiplomatichistory.com. He is currently working on a
biography of Ernst van Eeghen as a ‘private diplomat’.

David J. Snyder is Faculty Principal of the Carolina International

House and Senior Instructor in the Department of History at the
University of South Carolina. He is the editor of two books and has
contributed articles and chapters to leading journals and
anthologies in US diplomatic history. He is currently working on a
manuscript tentatively titled ‘The Dutch Encounter with the
American Century’.
Introduction
A small state on the global scene

Ruud van Dijk, Samuël Kruizinga, Vincent

Kuitenbrouwer and Rimko van der Maar

One of the most enduring divides in modern international relations is

that between ‘small states’ and ‘great powers’. This divide was
formally established at the 1814 Treaty of Chaumont. There, for the
first time, the notion that all states were equal was done away with.
With the treaty, members of the coalition against Napoleon were, de
facto, divided into two categories. The first consisted of Great
Powers such as the Austrian and Russian Empires, Prussia and
Britain – which fielded the largest armies and were therefore
shouldered with the main responsibility of (re)shaping the
international system after victory. The second category consisted of
those countries whose contributions to the war effort had been
modest; as ‘small powers’, they were deemed too insignificant to
contribute significantly to the international environment.1 In the
Treaty, the Netherlands – which had been one of the most powerful
states during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – was
relegated to small state status. It would, in the eyes of both its
inhabitants and the rest of the world, remain a small state until the
present day. This volume deals with the question of how various
actors from this small state – from inside and outside the ranks of its
government – acted on the global scene and dealt with the issues
that emerged during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the
wake of great geopolitical forces such as the Concert System,
imperial expansion and decolonization, the two world wars and the
Cold War.
Our answer to this question departs from the assumption that
small does not necessarily mean insignificant. This notion is widely
recognized amongst both historians and political scientists interested
in international relations since Annette Baker Fox’s 1959 landmark
study of small states during the Second World War, showing how
countries such as Sweden and Switzerland managed to maintain
room for diplomatic manoeuvring during the Second World War.2
During the 1960s and 1970s, the field of small state studies emerged
in her footsteps, developing in three separate, but not mutually
exclusive, directions. The first focused on the search for empirical
criteria to separate three distinct categories of states: great, middle
and small. But no consensus emerged, as every proposed set of
small state criteria was quickly met with a barrage of counter-
proposals and examples. The Netherlands is an interesting case in
point.3 Despite being widely regarded as a ‘small country’,
throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it had quite a
large GDP, population size and density. Moreover, it had a varied
economic structure and emerged as a vital global trading hub.
Finally, it was, for much of the last two centuries, in possession of
the third largest colonial empire, which, according to imperial
enthusiasts, elevated it above ‘the rank of Denmark’.4
A second strand in the field focused not on what small states are,
but what they do. Robert Keohane and Robert Rothstein, writing in
1968 and 1969 respectively, suggested that small states, rather than
being defined by some measurable quantity or typical behaviour, are
characterized by their fundamental inability, recognized by both
themselves and others, to provide for their own security.5 Others,
most notably Michael Handel, have expanded upon this notion and
have equated a ‘small state’ with a ‘weak state’.6 Because of this
fundamental ‘weakness’, historians of international relations have
argued, small states are ‘satisfied powers’, uninterested in acquiring
more territory as this could potentially bring them into conflict with
other, stronger states.7 Roderick Ogley has even argued that war, in
general, is bad for small states.8 Drawing on these notions, many
scholars have noted that neutrality seems to be the preferred option
for small states, as it potentially insulates them from war and
entangling alliances.9 But rather than neatly confirming to this small
state norm of neutrality, the Dutch case shows a more complex
trajectory. During the latter nineteenth and first half of the twentieth
century it remained neutral during major conflicts that took place
amongst European powers – most notably the First World War.10 But
after the Second World War, which saw the invasion of the
Netherlands by Nazi Germany, the country became a member of
NATO and joined the process of European unification.11
A third strand of small state studies is closely connected to the
second as it highlights the role played by small state agents in
promoting the ideal of international peace though institutions and
laws. Patrick Salmon, for example, argues that ‘[s]mall states hanker
after the world as it ought to be; great powers deal with the world
as it is’.12 A normative preference for working with and through
international institutions to promote stability is, according to some,
the cultural flip side of the powerlessness of small states.13 This
would also explain their enthusiasm for international law and
institutions as a means to strengthen the international rule of law
protecting them from harassment by more powerful states and
stabilize the international system to prevent conflict from breaking
out. Finally, international institutions allow small states a venue to
have their voices heard and allow for coalition-building on specific
international issues.14 And indeed, the Netherlands is no stranger to
international institutions. It hosted the two Hague Peace
Conferences (1899 and 1907), became an early member of both the
League of Nations and the United Nations, and supplied civil
servants, observers and, occasionally, soldiers to international
monitoring or peace-keeping missions.15 However, Dutch
membership of international institutions was nearly always fraught
with debate and occasionally clashed with other visions of Dutch
national duty and mission.16
Noticeably, despite these thematic overlaps, Dutch perspectives in
the international scholarly debate on small state studies are few and
far in between.17 There is, however, a substantial body of literature
on the history of Dutch international relations, which looks at this
history from an isolated, national perspective. The majority of these
studies focus on the role of the Dutch state and are based on
empirical research in a classical corpus of diplomatic documents.
Prior to the Second World War, historical research concentrated on
Dutch official dealings with international law and trade. After 1945,
the focus shifted to matters of international politics, surrounding
NATO and Europe, and interdepartmental strife and the influence of
public opinion at home.18 And in the course of the 1970s and 1980s
historians began to analyse Dutch imperialism and its foreign policy
implications, starting a debate on whether or not the Netherlands
was an imperial power in the British mould.19 The 1991 essay
collection De kracht van Nederland (‘The power of the Netherlands’),
edited by Niek van Sas, provides a useful overview of the results of
this first, empirical phase of historiography on Dutch foreign policy.20
From the 1960s onwards, the empirical case studies on Dutch
foreign policy issues were complemented by a more theoretical
debate about long-term continuities. Inspired by an agenda-setting
article by Hans Boogman, historians and political scientists engaged
in a debate on the nature of Dutch foreign policy since 1813.21
Several years later, Joris Voorhoeve, a political scientist, focused on
internal political and ideological factors, such as competing Dutch
power interests and a strong sense of national mission, which he
argues even date back to the time of the Dutch Republic in the early
modern age.22 Although he does not deny these domestic dynamics,
Duco Hellema, also trained as a political scientist, prioritizes external
factors, arguing that the Netherlands’ geographical position
predisposed it to become a vital economic connection between
mainland Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, which made a foreign
policy based on free trade and neutrality a rational and logical
outcome.23 Another line of criticism on Voorhoeve’s thesis came from
historians in the 1990s who argued that, based on archive material,
the historical practices of Dutch foreign policy appeared to be
complex, and thus difficult to capture in abstract notions of the
continuities in foreign policy formation.24 Nevertheless, the notion of
continuities remains important because it has introduced concepts in
the debate on Dutch foreign policy, enabling historians to think
beyond a ‘general’ empirical method.25
The early decades of the twenty-first century have seen the rise of
a new cohort of historians working on Dutch international relations
expanding on the work of previous generations in various directions.
In publications that appeared after 2000 historians moved beyond
diplomatic sources in studies of, often interrelated, topics such as
human rights, development aid, solidarity movements and NGOs.26
Other researchers moved away from a singular Dutch-centric
perspective by addressing the agency of Dutch actors in boundary-
crossing networks, such as the pro-Boer movement around 1900,27
the Interdoc anti-communist network set up in 196328 and church-
based and other dissident organizations in Eastern Europe in the
1970 and 1980s.29 In addition, there is a growing engagement of
Dutch scholars with theoretical approaches from international
literature. Prime examples are the concepts ‘cultural transfer’,
‘entangled history’ and ‘securitization’ that have been thoroughly
discussed in recent Dutch-language publications.30 Contributors to a
recently published volume on the history of Dutch foreign policy
have further experimented with the use of theories such as
constructivism and methods such as discourse analysis in their
work.31 Our volume builds upon these recent efforts, but seeks to
improve on them by systematically connecting Dutch historical
research with two leading trends in current international debates.
With this purpose in March 2016 a group of historians, at various
stages of their careers, came together at the University of
Amsterdam to discuss the current state of international relations
research in the Netherlands and its future. The chapters in this
collection are based on the papers that were presented at that
symposium. We asked contributors to reflect on the role of non-state
actors beyond politicians and diplomats, and on the transnational
connections that shaped the international relations of the
Netherlands, such as (post-)colonialism and internationalism. All
contributions in this volume engage with least one of these central
concepts, either seeking to offer new interpretations of documents
that can be found in official archives that have been used previously,
or by exploring sources that up until now have largely been
overlooked in historiography. The goal of this effort is to move from
the study of Dutch foreign policy – a purely state-centred approach
based on the notion of a country’s governing apparatus as a single
rational actor interacting with other, equally rational actors – to a
study of Dutch international relations, which presupposes a much
wider array of intersecting and possibly even conflicting interactions
between Dutch and non-Dutch actors.
In addition this collection of Dutch case studies makes a relevant
contribution to the international debate as our approach allows the
authors in this volume to engage critically with the related concepts
of transnationalism and non-state actors. Less a clearly defined
research methodology than an all-encompassing research agenda for
history and the social and political sciences, transnationalism,
according to Pierre-Yves Sauner, emphasizes how in the twentieth
century ‘flows of capital, people, ideas or images were making
nation states insufficient or irrelevant as units of analysis’.32 Although
the rise of transnational history has been associated with globalizing
movements that emerged since the latter half of the twentieth
century, more recently historians have cast their glances further
backwards in time.33 There is a danger here, because of the
tendency to dismiss completely the role of the state and focus
exclusively on those types of easy-to-identify transnational actors:
those who cross boundaries, institutional or otherwise, as a matter
of course, as part of their engagement with, for example, NGOs or
multinationals.34
However, Penny Von Eschen rightfully observes that even in the
case of these transnational organizations, actors both challenged
and intersected with the projects of states, including, but not limited
to, legal and ideological limits imposed and cultural values sponsored
by them.35 Mark Mazower suggests that even in transnational
organizations and institutions, erected since the early nineteenth
century to regulate and in some cases reorder global society, there
existed a complex relation between state interests and transnational
ideas and the institutions that emanated from them.36 This volume
will therefore emphasize not how Dutch transnational agents
replaced Dutch national agents, but how the two categories
intertwined, leading to conflicts and compromises that together
shaped the way the Netherlands, as a small state, acted on the
global scene. Although the following chapters address fascinating
topics in their own right, the collection as a whole serves to further
advance the historical study of modern international relations in the
Netherlands. Indeed, as we explain the final chapter, the relevance
of this volume extends beyond the confines of Dutch historiography
as it contains the building blocks of a new approach to the field of
small state studies.
Chapter outline
The following chapters offer eleven original case studies in
chronological order, ranging across the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. In his chapter, Joep Schenk demonstrates that the new
European order during and after the Congress of Vienna in 1814–
1815 was not just determined by the Great Powers. A small nation
such as the Netherlands played a significant part in drafting and
implementing at least two key results in terms of institutionalized
international cooperation that flowed from the Congress: the
declaration of the principle of freedom of navigation on international
rivers and the constitution of the Central Commission for Navigation
of the Rhine (CCNR). The flow of the Dutch decision-making
processes on a new transnational Rhine regime highlights how, at
crucial junctions, the Dutch position was influenced by the need for
a balance between shared European economic interests and Dutch
national interests. Moreover, this contribution shows that the way
these interests were interpreted hinged not just on Dutch officials,
but also on non-state actors.
Erik de Lange zooms in on the bombardment of Algiers in 1816,
carried out by a combined Anglo-Dutch fleet. This devastating
cannonade forced Regent dey Omar Agha to issue a declaration
forever renouncing ‘Christian slavery’. At the time, Dutch authors
lauded this result as a victory of European significance, which finally
abated the transnational threat posed by the Barbary corsairs.
Therefore De Lange argues that the bombardment of 1816 must be
situated in the context of post-Napoleonic European security politics,
which was not simply dominated by the Great Powers as is often
assumed. In fact, he shows that Anglo-Dutch cooperation came
about as a result of diplomatic efforts by small states in combination
with the pressures of public opinion which had an impact on the
dynamics of the new European order. De Lange not only stresses the
role of non-state actors in this matter, but he also draws attention to
the often overlooked Dutch involvement in imperial interventions in
the Mediterranean at the beginning of the nineteenth century that
were carried out under the banner of security.
Beatrice de Graaf and Wouter Klem discuss Dutch reactions to
anarchist terrorism in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
They primarily focus on the efforts of police officials to counter this
transnational threat. Although the Netherlands was not hit by a
large-scale attack at the time, fear of anarchists was disseminated
through newspapers which extensively reported on bloody incidents
that occurred in other countries. Addressing public anxieties, public
prosecutors and local police commissioners in the Netherlands
succeeded in putting the struggle against anarchism high on the
national security agenda which enabled them to instigate large-scale
police reforms in terms of bureaucratization, standardization and
centralization. In this process they focused on importing new
technologies and practices from abroad which put them in touch
with colleagues from other countries. Through this network several
Dutch police officials attended international anti-anarchist
conferences in 1897 and 1898, where they successfully lobbied for
harsh measures. By doing so these actors, who did not belong to the
Dutch diplomatic corps, managed to leave their mark on Dutch
international relations at the turn of the twentieth century.
In his contribution, Pelle van Dijk focuses on Dutch public
diplomacy between the First and Second World Wars. He actively
engages with recent literature on public diplomacy which seeks to
broaden the field by including cases predating the Cold War and by
analysing the agency of non-state actors. Van Dijk shows that these
insights can successfully be applied in Dutch historiography by
analysing the National Bureau for Documentation on the Netherlands
(1919–1935). The purpose of this organization, that was set up by
the former parliamentarian F.J.W. Drion with the aid of Dutch
businessmen, was to improve the public image of the Netherlands
abroad via a network of ‘silent press attachés’, consisting of Dutch
journalists who tried to promote the Dutch image by influencing
foreign media. Although high officials at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs stood in close contact with Drion and even provided the lion’s
share of his funding, the Dutch government wanted to keep these
connections a secret. A close reading of the correspondence
between Drion and his attaché in London, journalist and historian
P.C.A. Geyl, reveals the complex interactions between official and
non-official actors in Dutch public diplomacy.
Anne-Isabelle Richard analyses the Dutch European movement in
the interwar period in the context of debates on Dutch
internationalism. Her chapter proves that a European movement
existed in this period and it shows the movement’s relevance for
understanding support for European cooperation post-1945. The
interwar European movement only becomes visible if we adopt a civil
society approach that looks at the wider foreign policy network of
business people, intellectuals and grassroots activists as well as
Foreign Ministry officials. This chapter focuses on the Vereeniging
voor Volkenbond en Vrede (VeV), the Dutch League of Nations
Union, which is a perfect case study to examine debates about
internationalism.
Using a comparative method, Susanna Erlandsson challenges
assumptions about Dutch history and the role of alignment in small
state security. She argues that the Dutch road from aloofness to
NATO membership was not primarily about the experience of failed
neutrality, or about fear of the Soviet Union or a new war: it was
not, as it has often been depicted, a sacrifice of (peace-time)
sovereignty for (wartime) security. On the contrary, Erlandsson
claims that the changed course was in fact about retaining
sovereignty, not only in wartime but in times of peace. A close
comparison with the Swedish case reveals that the Dutch decision to
ally was based on the same considerations that caused the Swedish
government to opt for nonalignment. Both were motivated by a
desire to safeguard regional stability and cooperation in order to
maintain margin for manoeuvre in a world where small states were
no longer expected to be able to survive independently. These
results transcend the Dutch case study and shed new light on our
understanding of small state security choices in general.
David Snyder examines the East Indies Crisis (typically dated
1945–1949) as an example of ‘clientelism’, which is developed here
as a new strategy of postwar state power. Themes of
interdependence, legalism and moralism dominate the literature on
post-World War II Dutch foreign policy, leaving the realities of Dutch
power under-addressed and under-theorized. While the postwar
Netherlands may have been deprived of conventional forms of state
power, it did seek to leverage American power in the pursuit of its
interests, in this case the retention of its traditional Indonesian
colony. American power offered itself as a new international force in
these years, one which Dutch authorities eagerly sought to
expropriate in their struggle with Indonesian nationalism. That the
effort in this case failed by 1948 is less important than the fact that
the broader clientelist strategy became a cornerstone not only of
postwar Dutch foreign policy, but of many other states as well. The
clientelist perspective credits Dutch foreign policy with much more
agency and influence than is apparent in the current literature.
Furthermore, it casts the postwar international system in a much
more dynamic light than is typically captured in notions of
hegemonic domination and resistance. In ensuing decades, the
Netherlands drew on the power of the American imperium in the
form of Marshall aid and NATO support. As this chapter shows,
however, the Dutch were no mere passive recipients of that power.
Rather, clientelism allowed (and allows) small powers to mould and
shape the international system in their own right.
Boyd van Dijk explores the history of the origins of the Dutch as
guardians of ‘Hague Law’. Based on a collection of multilingual
archival materials, and focusing on three principal questions in
particular (i.e. war crimes, the law of occupation, and colonial
warfare), the article shows how the Dutch played a far more
significant role in revising the post-1945 international legal order
than is commonly assumed in the literature. Especially the now
largely forgotten lawyer M.W. Mouton played a critical role in
promoting a new war crimes’ regime that would lie at the origins of
the International Criminal Court’s founding statute. However, while
trying to revise the Hague and Geneva Conventions, these Dutch
officials had to bring their internationally progressive effort to
promote criminal law into harmony with their own obligations as a
loyal NATO partner and a declining colonial power. Adding a new
dimension to ongoing debates about the War of Independence in
Indonesia, this article reveals how the Dutch rejected plans to apply
the future Conventions to colonial wars. As a result of these clashing
images, it became eventually impossible for them to uphold their
role as the guardian of ‘Hague Law’.
As Peter van Dam writes in his contribution, Dutch transnational
relations have often been cast as a struggle between the figures of a
self-interested merchant and a morally concerned clergyman. To
appreciate the role of civic organizations in transnational relations,
we have to move beyond this simple opposition of interests and
ideals, he claims. His chapter demonstrates how attraction and
repulsion between state and civic actors created a force field in
which the lines between state and civic actors and between national
and international policy became blurred. The Netherlands is an
excellent point of departure for these studies because of the
historically lively interactions between its state and civic actors. Case
studies from the movement for fair trade since the 1960s exemplify
three roles performed by civic organizations in shaping transnational
relations. They functioned as forerunners, shaping public opinion on
relevant issues and structuring the international arena through
contacts with transnational organizations. Second, they constituted
an alternative to government foreign policy and third, these
organizations could serve as partners for government policy,
providing input, legitimacy and alternative channels of
communication.
Jan Willem Brouwer’s chapter deals with the changes in
international politics in the 1970s, particularly the rise of summitry.
Traditionally, foreign policy was seen largely as the responsibility of
the Foreign Minister. In the early 1970s this situation changed with
the rise of multilateral summitry. Especially through the creation of
the European Council in 1974 the prime minister became an
important spokesman for the Netherlands. Brouwer analyses how
Prime Minister Joop den Uyl and Foreign Minister Max van der Stoel
managed to deal with the anomalous situation. Brouwer shows that
the expansion of the Dutch prime minister’s activities initially had
more to do with the international developments than with his
personal ambitions. Nevertheless Den Uyl intended to act not only as
prime minister, but also as party leader in the Socialist International
and in bilateral relations. This caused widespread resentment among
senior figures of the Foreign Ministry for whom the prime minister
lacked competence in foreign affairs. Major collisions were avoided
by Den Uyl’s tactful behaviour and his good working relationship with
Foreign Minister Van der Stoel.
Giles Scott-Smith examines the activities of Ernst H. van Eeghen,
businessman and citizen diplomat extraordinaire. He looks closely at
the Burght Foundation that Van Eeghen created to pursue his
international mission of East–West reconciliation. By analysing his
activities in detail, it becomes possible to examine the role and
relevance of a non-state actor in the context of Dutch–Soviet and
Dutch–Russian relations. In doing so, this chapter questions the
state-centric approach of the orthodox diplomatic history that has so
far covered this bilateral relationship. Scott-Smith shows that Van
Eeghen considered himself perfectly justified in undertaking such an
international role, and that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs went along
with this. However, his relationship with Dutch diplomacy was not
entirely smooth. Ministries are eager to make use of NGOs to
achieve their goals, but are deeply suspicious of non-state actors
that seek to go their own way regardless.

Acknowledgements
We, the editors, would like to thank the following individuals and
institutions that have made it possible to host the symposium
‘Recasting the History of Dutch Foreign Relations’ at the University of
Amsterdam in March 2016 where this volume originates. Liz
Buettner, Marianne van Leeuwen, Niek van Sas and Roel van der
Veen provided valuable comments on the papers which helped us to
formulate the general themes in this volume. The funding for this
project was provided by the Amsterdam School for Historical Studies
and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At the latter institution our
special thanks goes out to Bert van der Zwan for his ongoing
support.
Notes
1 J. Alford, ‘Security dilemmas of small states’, The World Today 40:8/9 (1984) 363–
369; M. Handel, Weak States in the International System (2nd ed. London 1990) 228–
229; O.F. Knudsen, ‘Small states, latent and extant: Towards a general perspective’,
Journal of International Relations and Development 5:2 (2002) 182–198.
2 A.B. Fox, The Power of Small States: Diplomacy in World War II (Chicago 1959); cf.
idem, ‘The range of choice for middle powers: Australia and Canada compared’,
Australian Journal of Politics & History 26:2 (1980) 193–203.
3 For a reflection on this issue cf. S. Kruizinga, ‘A small state. The size of the
Netherlands as a focal point in foreign policy debates, 1900–1940’, Diplomacy and
Statecraft 27:3 (2016) 420–436.
4 H. Baudet. ‘Nederland en de rang van Denemarken’, Bijdragen en mededelingen
betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 90:3 (1975) 430–443.
5 R.O. Keohane, ‘Lilliputians’ dilemmas: Small states in international politics’,
International Organization 23:2 (1969) 291–310, 296; R.L. Rothstein, Alliances and
Small Powers (New York 1968) 29.
6 M. Handel, Weak States in the International System (2nd ed. London 1990).
7 A.F.K. Organski, World Politics (New York 1968 [1958)).
8 R. Ogley, The Theory and Practice of Neutrality in the Twentieth Century (London
1979).
9 K. Goldmann, ‘Tension between the Strong, and the Power of the Weak: Is the
Relation Positive or Negative?’, in: K. Goldmann and G. Sjöstedt (eds), Power,
Capabilities, Interdependence Problems in the Study of International Influence
(London/Beverly Hills 1979) 115–140.
10 On Dutch neutrality during the First World War cf. W. Klinkert, S. Kruizinga and P.
Moeyes, Nederland neutraal. De Eerste Wereldoorlog 1914–1918 (Amsterdam 2014).
11 For Dutch membership NATO cf. I. Megens, American Aid to NATO Allies in the 1950s:
The Dutch Case (Amsterdam 1994); W. Mallinson, From Neutrality to Commitment:
Dutch Foreign Policy, NATO and European Integration (London/New York 2010). For
European unification cf. M. Segers, Reis naar het continent. Nederland en de Europese
integratie, 1950-heden (Amsterdam 2013); R. de Bruin, Elastisch Europa. De
integratie van Europa en de Nederlandse politiek (Amsterdam 2014).
12 P. Salmon, Scandinavia and the Great Powers 1890–1940 (Cambridge [etc.] 2000) 18.
13 C.A. Tamse, ‘Kleine landen als een bijzondere categorie van internationale actoren.
Het geval van Nederland en België (1830–1914)’, in: C.A. Tamse, Het Huis van Oranje
en andere politieke mythen (Amsterdam 2002) 40–70.
14 S. Waltz, ‘Universalizing human rights: The role of small states in the construction of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly 23:1 (2001) 44–
72; M. Hong, ‘Small states in the United Nations’, International Social Sciences Journal
47:2 (1995) 277–287.
15 R. van Diepen, Voor Volkenbond en vrede. Nederland en het streven naar een nieuwe
wereldorde 1919–1946 (Amsterdam 1999); C. Klep and R. van Gils, Van Korea tot
Kabul. De Nederlandse militaire deelname aan vredesoperaties sinds 1945 (Den Haag
2005).
16 F. Baudet and P. Malcontent, ‘The Dutchman’s Burden? Nederland en de internationale
rechtsorde in de twintigste eeuw’, in: B. de Graaff, D. Hellema and B. van der Zwan
 (eds), De Nederlandse buitenlandse politiek in de twintigste eeuw (Amsterdam 2003)
69–104.
17 An exception is: S. Erlandsson, Window of Opportunity: Dutch and Swedish Security
Ideas and Strategies 1942–1948 (Uppsala 2015).
18 For an overview cf. B. de Graaff, ‘Buitenlands en toch provinciaals. De historiografie
van de Nederlandse buitenlandse politiek, 1870–1998’, Theoretische Geschiedenis,
26:3 (1999) 310–333.
19 For an overview cf. M. Kuitenbrouwer, ‘Het imperialisme-debat in de Nederlandse
geschiedschrijving’, Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der
Nederlanden 113:1 (1998) 56–73.
20 N.C.F. van Sas (ed.), De kracht van Nederland. Internationale positie en buitenlands
beleid in historisch perspectief (Haarlem 1991).
21 J.C. Boogman, ‘Achtergronden, tendenties en tradities van het buitenlands beleid van
Nederland (eind zestiende eeuw – 1940)’, in: Nederlands buitenlandse politiek: heden
en verleden (Baarn 1978) 9–28.
22 J.J.C. Voorhoeve, Peace, Profits and Principles: A Study of Dutch Foreign Policy (Den
Haag 1979).
23 D. Hellema, Nederland in de wereld. De buitenlandse politiek van Nederland (5th ed.
The Hague 2014 [1995]). English translation: Dutch Foreign Policy: The Role of the
Netherlands in World Politics (Dordrecht 2009).
24 Malcontent and Baudet, ‘The Dutchman’s Burden’, 70–72.
25 M. Kuitenbrouwer, ‘Nederland gidsland? De ontwikkelingssamenwerking van
Nederland en gelijkgezinde landen, 1973–1985’, in: J.A. Nekkers and R.A.M.
Malcontent (eds), De geschiedenis van vijftig jaar ontwikkelingssamenwerking 1949–
1994 (Den Haag 1999) 183–200.
26 For example cf. E.M. van den Berg, The Influence of Domestic NGOs on Dutch Human
Rights Policy: Case Studies on South Africa, Namibia, Indonesia and East Timor
(Antwerp 2001); R. van der Maar, Welterusten mijnheer de president. Nederland en
de Vietnamoorlog 1965–1973 (Amsterdam 2007); N.G. Pas, Aan de wieg van het
nieuwe Nederland. Nederland en de Algerijnse oorlog, 1954–1962 (Amsterdam 2008);
P. van Dam and W. van Dis, ‘Beyond the merchant and the clergyman: Assessing
moral claims about development cooperation’, Third World Quarterly 35:9 (2014)
1636–1655.
27 J.J.V. Kuitenbrouwer, War of Words: Dutch pro-Boer Propaganda and the South
African War (1899–1902) (Amsterdam 2012).
28 G. Scott-Smith, Interdoc. Een geheim netwerk in de Koude Oorlog (Amsterdam 2012);
English translation: Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network: Cold War
Internationale (London 2012).
29 B. de Graaf, Over de Muur: De DDR, de Nederlandse kerken, en de vredesbeweging
(Amsterdam 2004); German translation: Über die Mauer: Die DDR, die
niederländischen Kirchen und die Friedensbewegung (Münster 2007); C. Miedema,
Vrede of Vrijheid? Dilemma’s, dialoog en misverstanden tussen Nederlandse en West-
Duitse linkse organisaties en de Poolse oppositie in de jaren tachtig (Amsterdam
2015).
30 For cultural transfer cf. M. van der Burg, Nederland onder Franse invloed. Culturele
overdracht en staatsvorm in de napoleontische tijd 1799–1813 (Amsterdam 2009). For
‘entangled history’ cf. P. van Dam, ‘Vervlochten geschiedenis. Hoe histoire croisée de
natiestaat bedwingt’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 125:1 (2012) 96–109. For
 ‘securitization’ cf. B. de Graaf, ‘De historisering van veiligheid’, Tijdschrift voor
Geschiedenis 125:3 (2012) 305–313.
31 J. Pekelder, R. Raben and M. Segers (eds), De wereld volgens Nederland. Nederlandse
buitenlandse politiek in historisch perspectief (Amsterdam 2015).
32 Transnational History: Theory and History (London 2013) 15. Cf. C.A. Bayly, S.
Beckert, M. Connelly, I. Hofmeyr, W. Kozol and P. Seed, ‘AHR conversation: On
transnational history’, The American Historical Review 111:5 (2006) 1441–1464; A.
Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (London 2012).
33 T. Davies, NGOs: A New History of Transnational Civil Society (Oxford 2014); P. Von
Eschen, ‘Locating the Transnational in the Cold War’, in: R.H. Immerman and P.
Goedde (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (2013); J.S. Nye, Jr. and R.O.
Keohane, ‘Transnational relations and world politics: An introduction’, International
Organization 25:3 (1971) 329–349.
34 K.K. Patel, ‘Überlegungen zu einer transnationalen Geschichte’, Zeitschrift für
Geschichtswissenschaft 52:7 (2004) 626–645. Cf. J. Reinisch, ‘Agents of
internationalism’, Contemporary European History 25:2 (2016) 195–205; P. Clavin,
‘Defining transnationalism’, Contemporary European History 14:4 (2005) 421–439.
35 P. Von Eschen, ‘Locating the Transnational in the Cold War’, in: R.H. Immerman and P.
Goedde (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (2013). See also: S. Snyder,
‘Bringing the transnational in: Writing human rights into the international history of
the Cold War’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 24:1 (2013) 100–116.
36 M. Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present
(London [etc.] 2012).
1 National interest versus
common interest
The Netherlands and the liberalization of Rhine
navigation at the Congress of Vienna (1814–
1815)

Joep Schenk*

Introduction
In 1814–1815, after more than twenty years of violence and war, the
European powers gathered in Vienna with the aim of bringing back
peace and security to a continent ravaged by the French
Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. This necessitated new ways of
settling Great Power conflicts and cooperative structures to allow
them to defend shared interests.1 But smaller states, like the
Netherlands, were represented at Vienna as well. They too played an
important, but hitherto largely unrecognized, role, in shaping the
new European order.
Two key results in terms of institutionalized international
cooperation that flowed from the Vienna negotiations were the
declaration of the principle of freedom of navigation on international
rivers and the constitution of the Central Commission for Navigation
of the Rhine (CCNR). The CCNR was the first large-scale
intergovernmental organization designed to facilitate international
cooperation in the field of trade and navigation on a European scale.
With the benefit of hindsight we now know the CCNR marked the
beginning of a shift towards international free trade in Europe.
Moreover, the institutional set-up of the CCNR made it resilient
enough to survive the era of hegemonic empires at the beginning,
and bellicose nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century. Since
its first meeting in 1816 the CCNR is exclusively responsible for
securing freedom of navigation on the Rhine. By drafting
international regulations, installing a uniform tax system, exercising
legal control as the highest court of appeal in all matters related to
Rhine navigation and by functioning as a consultative body to
national governments it aimed to liberate international navigation
from the many political and (geo)physical obstructions like high
tariffs, local privileges and badly maintained towpaths and
riverbeds.2 Earlier this was the exclusive domain of the national, and
sometimes the local, governments, representing quite particular and
often conflicting interests.
From 1815 the riparian states established a new kind of uniform
river governance that can be seen as a radical experiment in
intergovernmental administration with the aim of reconciling national
interests like territorial sovereignty with the common European
interest of increased trade, traffic and prosperity along its most
important river.3
The Netherlands, where the estuaries of the Rhine are located,
played a significant part in drafting and implementing this new form
of cooperation. The other riparian states, particularly Prussia, were
well aware of the crucial Dutch role as gatekeeper of the Rhine, and
thereby as connector of the overseas markets and suppliers on one
side and the continental European hinterland on the other. No
international agreement could survive without Dutch consent. This
chapter will therefore focus on the Dutch role in shaping a new
international Rhine regime at the Congress of Vienna.

Nineteenth-century internationalism
Forms of international cooperation in the nineteenth century remain
understudied.4 Scholars of international relations mostly date the
emergence of international cooperation back to the establishment of
the League of Nations in 1918.5 Historians mostly understand the
nineteenth century as an age of European nationalism, in which
balance of power, national interest, hegemony and bellicosity were
the main determining elements of international affairs.6 More recent
studies recognize the international dimension of the nineteenth
century’s ideas on and practices in governance. Mark Mazower’s
Governing the World even calls the long nineteenth century ‘the era
of internationalism’, and both Mark Jarret and Beatrice de Graaf do
see the Allied cooperation within the Concert system after the final
defeat of Napoleon as an example of a European security regime
that in their scale and scope exceeded any previous forms of
international cooperation.7 However, even the more specialized
works on the Conference of Vienna largely ignore the establishment
of one of the most far-reaching and enduring forms of
institutionalized European cooperation: the CCNR.8
Moreover, this chapter, like the others in this volume, seeks to
transcend the more traditional form of diplomatic history. Rather
than putting the (conflictual) inter-state relations as such at the
centre, it focuses on the decision-making processes behind the
scenes. My analysis of these processes shows first that the
understanding of ‘the national interest’ might be more fluid than
previously assumed. Secondly, it highlights the crucial role
information plays within the decision-making processes. In fact the
considerations and actions of state representatives active abroad
(such as in Vienna) were as much determined by what they knew as
by what they did not know. Information asymmetries were caused,
on the one hand, by the absence of comprehensive and/or regular
instructions by superiors in the negotiator’s capitals, and on the
other hand by state actor’s inability to take into account their
interlocutor’s concerns, beliefs and norms. Crucially, non-state
actors, both solicited and unsolicited, filled this information vacuum
and thereby inserted into the negotiation process concerns that were
less bound to traditional state interests.9
In this chapter I focus on the carriers of these diplomatic
processes: state and non-state agents. The bottom-up perspective
opens up new layers of investigation and facilitates looking across
national boundaries, thereby evaluating the transnational sphere
rather than the inter-state sphere. More specifically it allows for a
further understanding of the contribution of a European epistemic
community – ‘a network of professionals with recognized expertise
and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to
policy relevant knowledge within that domain’ – to the processes
that led to the establishment of the CCNR and consequently to an
increased interconnectivity and interdependence both among the
riparian states, and between them and the overseas world.10
By employing a perspective that is both non-teleological and
bottom-up this chapter reveals how the Netherlands viewed
international cooperation in a transboundary river regime as a
feasible and attractive way to pursue national as well as regional
economic interests. By acknowledging and scrutinizing these liberal
aspects of Dutch foreign policy, this chapter contributes to the
understanding of the Netherlands as a small power that, also
informed by an epistemic community, advocated for international
(economic) cooperation on the basis of reciprocity since the early
nineteenth century.

The bulwark of Europe

The linchpin of Dutch negotiations at Vienna was the territorial
ambition of the newly minted Dutch sovereign William Frederick.11
The territorial reorganization of Europe, however, would not only
serve demands made on it by the victors, but, more importantly, was
also to serve the political stability of the continent for generations to
come. William Frederick was clear when it came to the extent and
shape of his future state. It would annex the Austrian Netherlands,
reach to France in the south and expand all the way until the Rhine
in the east, keeping the Moselle as a natural demarcation line. In
William Frederick’s mind these added territories had quite a specific
function. First of all, the southern parts would serve as a defence
against France, acting as a strong deterrent and as a fortified zone
around the old Dutch heartland. ‘In times of need’, William Frederick
wrote in 1813, ‘they will unfortunately be the theatre of war … As
the enlarged Holland will be the bulwark of Europe, so the old
provinces will be the citadel of the Netherlands and safeguard the
sustainability of trade and commerce.’12 With this last passage,
William Frederick also hinted at another function of Dutch territorial
expansion: trade security. By extending its territory deep into
Germany until the Rhine-Moselle valleys, the Netherlands would not
only incorporate significant commercial cities like Cologne and
Coblenz, but would also gain control of the most important part of
the navigable Rhine. This, in turn, would enable the Netherlands to
finally get rid of obstructive foreign tax systems and trade and
transport regulations. By presenting the new Netherlands as the
bulwark of Europe enabling peace and security within Europe as a
whole, William Frederick, rather conspicuously, tried to secure the
political autonomy and economic independence of his new nation.13
The ambitious Dutch plans – ill-fitting a junior member of the anti-
French Alliance, were met with some ridicule in Britain. But they
were also seen as serving both Allied and British interests, including
economic interests.14 Holland constituted an important part of the
European market. Europe as a whole might benefit from increased
monetary confidence when order and safety would return to an
enlarged Holland. Moreover, military security and trade security in
the Netherlands were seen as indispensable were it to function as a
solid and viable barrier against France. Nevertheless, British
representatives continued speaking in very general terms with
regard to the exact shape of the future Dutch state, unwilling to
prejudice other claims.15
Given the outcome of the Vienna settlement, it is unsurprising that
most historians have focused on Dutch efforts to gain territories to
the south in current-day Belgium. But coming in to the Congress, it
is clear that at least some of its participants were convinced that the
‘ouvrage politique’ of the Allied Powers could only be completed and
strengthened by a territorial aggrandisement of the Netherlands that
besides the southern provinces also included the entire Meuse and
the Rhine rivers up to Coblenz. A memo from the Prussian General
and Russian envoy to the Netherlands, Karl Ludwig von Phull (1757–
1826) dated 24 August 1814, addressed to the British
representatives in Vienna, argued that only the inclusion of the Rhine
could guarantee the new Netherlands its military security. However,
letting the Dutch control the Rhine until the Moselle at Coblenz was
not merely a matter of recognizing that these rivers would form the
new state’s natural borders. In fact, Phull continued, having the
Dutch control the Rhine was of a major economic significance.
Transforming the Rhine into a Dutch river would be a boon to British
economic interests. British commerce looking for the German
markets would finally be freed from the various obstructive tax
systems and unfavourable regulations that the German and French
powers bordering the Rhine saw fit to impose on navigating and
trading on this river.16 Phull was closely connected to the new Dutch
sovereign, and probably wrote this memo in his support, but he also
was a respected Prussian general and confidant of Tsar Alexander
that could not allow himself to be completely out of line. His account
therefore reflects the desire felt among the allies to open the Rhine
for free international trade and navigation that, as we’ll see shortly,
was already proclaimed during the peace talks in Paris the previous
May. However, more importantly for the purpose of this chapter his
account also attests to an understanding that Dutch rule of the
Rhine would be a liberal one that would remove feudal impediments
to commerce and promote free trade.
However, simply extending Dutch borders might not be the only
way to construct a liberal regime on the Rhine. Other means of
securing the Rhine for European commerce, in the interest of
common European stability and progress, would come to the fore at
Vienna.

Towards the Congress of Vienna: between

self-interest and the common good
William Frederick’s private interest in the lands bordering the River
Rhine were primarily motivated by his desire to include the
hereditary lands of his House of Orange into the new kingdom. The
Dutch sovereign’s plenipotentiary in Vienna, the German free-lancing
diplomat Hans von Gagern,17 was quite sceptical of the chances of
success. In a letter dated 14 February 1814 Von Gagern did not
mince words: ‘Your Royal Highness has, compared to other Powers,
contributed too few forces and battles to have contributed to the
happy ending. They [the Allies – JS] will accuse you of insatiability
…’. Moreover, Prussia, another victor state on the lookout for the
acquisition of German territory, would most likely claim the territories
on the Rhine. Its claims, moreover, were buoyed by the security
requirements of Europe; by extending Prussia to the Rhine and
thereby to the French border, it, too, would have a vital stake in
keeping French expansionism in check. The first aim of the sovereign
Prince should therefore be to focus on forming a union between the
Dutch territories and the former Austrian Netherlands to the south
and ‘… to combine and constitute the two with wisdom and
forbearance’.18
Despite this early setback, the Rhine continued to be an important
element in William Frederick’s plans for his future state. His
plenipotentiaries lobbied at the British residence in Vienna for the
inclusion of the lands along the Rhine in order to secure Dutch
independence within a new and just political equilibrium in Europe as
late as January 1815.19 More importantly, however, the Dutch
maintained an immense interest in Allied plans to liberate navigation
of the Rhine. Article 5 of the Peace Treaty of Paris of 30 May 1814
stipulated that: ‘The navigation of the Rhine, from the point where it
becomes navigable unto the sea, and vice versa, shall be free, so
that it can be interdicted to no one.’ The plenipotentiaries of the
follow-up Congress in Vienna should therefore find a new way of
governance that would cover the entire Rhine and formulate new tax
regulations ‘in the mode the most impartial, and the most favourable
to the commerce of all nations’.20 The Dutch interest becomes
evident from the instructions of the Foreign Office sent out to its
delegates Von Gagern and the Dutch diplomat Gerrit Carel Baron Van
Spaen de Voorstonde before their departure to Vienna in august
1814.21 ‘Article 5 … will undoubtedly elicit highly interesting
discussions for Holland’, the Foreign Secretary Anne Willem Carel Van
Nagell wrote. Van Nagell welcomed the proposed standardization of
the duties on navigation and agreed that such a measure could be
beneficial for the development of trade of all nations, not the least of
all for the Netherlands. The crucial importance of the new tax
regulations for the Netherlands, however, are most demonstrably
evidenced by Van Nagell’s instruction that the plenipotentiaries adopt
different approaches to the two types of duties being negotiated at
Vienna: Octroi duties and transit duties.22
The Octroi duties were the remnants of a first attempt to create a
uniform river regime by Napoleonic France and the German riparian
states, then vassals of the French Empire, in 1804. The Rhine Octroi
Convention aimed at harmonizing traffic regulations, improving
conditions for navigation and installing a uniform tax system on the
so-called ‘conventional Rhine’ that is the Franco-German part of the
river from the Swiss to the Dutch border. This new tax system was
rather successful as trade and navigation, at least on the Franco-
German stretch, profited from the substitution of all existing tolls
with one uniform Rhine toll: the Octroi. It enabled shippers and
traders to anticipate not only on the costs of transport, but also on
the duration of the shipping time. This had been impossible on the
Rhine for ages, because the number and duration of toll-stops varied
each voyage. From 1804 however, they were limited to twelve, and
tax-officers had to comply with uniform regulations.23 This Franco-
German Rhine regime was more a product of French coercion than
of a mutual understanding and with the decline of the Napoleonic
Empire many German riparian states and cities reinstalled their local
tax regulations and systems of privileges. A reimplementation of the
Octroi duty could, the Dutch Foreign Secretary argued, be in the
Dutch interest. ‘Everything that makes the Rhine more expensive,
enhances the attractiveness of the Weser and the Elbe, and that
might result in a significant reduction of the current expedition [in
the Netherlands – JS]’. Therefore, Van Nagell argued, the riparian
states should introduce a fairly low, uniform and fixed rate that
improved the competitiveness of Rhine navigation. In addition, the
concentration of the tolling stations into a single office could yield
significant timesaving.24
However, the second type of duties, the transit duties, could in no
way be subject to a common and permanent regulation. The
continuous changes in the price of and demand for industrial and
natural products required, according to Van Nagell, frequent
modifications of these duties. A non-variable rate was therefore not
in the interest of the Netherlands, nor of any other state, Van Nagell
wrote. Any state should be able to intervene when revenues
declined, as a result of fluctuations in the dimension of expedition.
Van Nagell therefore tasked the Dutch representatives in Vienna to
find out as much as possible about the existing interests that
concerned the Rhine and to lobby for a new and uniform system that
would contribute to trade and traffic, provided that the transit duties
would be excluded from any agreement.25
So, it seems, in the run-up to Vienna the Netherlands was not
exclusively focused on the annexation of the lands along the Rhine.
It understood that cooperation with other riparian states was
necessary to get to a new and productive Rhine regime that was
both advantageous for the national interest and for the common
good. Moreover, the extent of cooperation was limited, as the transit
duties would be subject to the rule of the national sovereign
exclusively. The new regime should most of all be beneficial to the
Netherlands not only in terms of trade and traffic but also in terms of
stable and predictable state revenues. Van Nagell believed the
Netherlands could convince the other riparian states to accept a river
regime as suggested by the Netherlands because he was aware of
the Dutch leverage being the ruler of the estuaries of the Rhine. In
September 1814 Van Spaen and Von Gagern left with their
instructions for the Austrian capital. There, it would be mainly Van
Spaen who would take care for all Rhine related issues.

The Congress River Commission in Vienna:

negotiations at a distance
In December 1814 the High Allied Powers in Vienna appointed an ad
hoc River Congress Commission that was charged with the
implementation of Article 5 of the Paris Peace Treaty. Initially, only
the representatives of Prussia, England, France and Austria were
asked to prepare the deliberations, but it was almost certain that
eventually the Netherlands would be invited too. For Prussia it was
clear that the Netherlands needed to support and be part of a new
Rhine regime. High-ranking Prussian statesmen noted as early as
March 1814 that it was crucial to come to an agreement with the
new Dutch sovereign regarding the Rhine, and of vital importance to
persuade him to install a tolling system on the Dutch Rhine that was
similar to the one on the Franco-German Rhine.26 The Prussian
delegates in Vienna came to the same conclusion and regarded the
Netherlands a far more important business partner than France
when it came to the Rhine. In a confidential note the Prussian
representatives documented that if a central authority to secure the
freedom of navigation on the Rhine was to be installed after the
Congress, it was more important to include the Netherlands in such
a body than a country that controlled only a tiny stretch of the
navigable Rhine such as France.27 As, with the acquisition of the
large German provinces Westphalia and the Rhineland, Prussia’s
influence along the Rhine had increased considerably during the
Congress, its position regarding Dutch participation would prove to
be crucial.28
Probably with the approval of Prussia a German expert in Rhine
shipping sent a memo to the Dutch Foreign Office that went even
further, suggesting that the Dutch had ‘an incontestable right to take
part in this Commission’. The rather cumbersome title of the memo,
‘Considerations about the Treaty of 15 August 1804, known as the
Rhine Convention, and the great interest that the Netherlands has to
take part actively in the reorganization of this river by adopting the
same policing and taxing system on the branches passing the
territories of the United Provinces’, reveals that the writer felt the
urge to convince the Netherlands to collaborate with the other
riparian states in the establishment of a new transnational Rhine
regime. It was clear to him that it was crucial to finally get rid of the
arbitrary and capricious taxing systems that had generated so much
confusion and insecurity among merchants and ship owners, which
had re-emerged after the demise of the Octroi Convention. It was
essential, the author wrote, ‘to unite the interests and create a
system that is able to respond to the expectation and need of
commerce’. The memo emphasized the particular urgency for the
Dutch to participate in such an effort. Canal projects in France might
cause the slow and unpredictable Dutch Rhine to become obsolete
and endangered the privileged positions of the Dutch ports of
Amsterdam and Rotterdam. The only way for the Netherlands to
protect its commerce from decline was to adapt, in concert with the
other riparian states, a liberal system on the Dutch Rhine that was
similar to the previous French–German Octroi administration.29
The memo was almost certainly written by the German official
Johann Eichhoff.30 He was especially invited to the Congress not as a
representative of a country but to share his knowledge about
governing international navigation. Eichhoff had made his career as
a merchant, but entered the administrative power during the French
occupation of the Electorate of Cologne. By 1811 he became the
General Director of the central authority of the Rhine Octroi in
Cologne.31
At the Congress Eichhoff strongly lobbied for a liberal
reorganization of the Rhine on the basis of the previous Octroi
regime. His arguments did not fall on deaf ears. The Dutch
representative in Vienna, Van Spaen, who was responsible for
passing the memo to his government in The Hague, applauded the
liberal mind of the former General Octroi Director. It was an attitude
he thought to recognize in the spirit of his sovereign. Van Spaen
seemed to have endorsed the Rhine as a matter of common interest.
The new regulations should favour all, he wrote. After all, the time of
particularism was over: ‘I have seen throughout the duration of our
revolution that local interests and private motives were converted
into the more general visions of a real statesman.’ Van Spaen
considered the existing system as ‘an out-dated relic of the feudal
era … extremely poor and very unfavourable and inconvenient for
trade, without providing anything substantial to the Treasury’.
Eichhoff’s proposal would be a fair basis for a new system. Over the
following weeks Van Spaen stayed in close contact with Eichhoff, as
he rightly expected him to become an authority for the special River
Congress Commission that was to be installed, and as such, he
might become useful to the Netherlands.32
 However, both Van Nagell and William Frederick considered Van
Spaen’s enthusiasm premature. In January 1815 the minister asked
Van Spaen whether it was possible to postpone the negotiations on
the Rhine until after the end of the Congress. Making haste, the
minister felt, was not in the Dutch interest. In his message he noted
that the matter was too complicated to be dealt with swiftly.
Furthermore, he claimed, free navigation on the Rhine sounded
great in theory, but no one knew whether these free trade ‘theories’
would actually work out well; they were, after all, without precedent.
Be that as it may, the Dutch reticence might well be explained by the
political situation of the time. In Vienna there was still no certainty
about the territories the Netherlands would gain.33 Either the Dutch
sovereign still hoped to gain the lands along the Rhine and thought
of an international Rhine regime as a second best option, or the
Dutch preferred to wait until territorial composition and political
autonomy were assured, so as to face the most important Rhine
partner, Prussia, as an equal.34
Figure 1.1 Portrait of Johann Joseph Eichhoff. Painter unknown, year
unknown (www.rheinisches-bildarchiv.de)

Both points were cleared up by February 1815, when the Congress

reached agreement on the territorial composition and administrative
structure of the Netherlands. Almost the entire Austrian Netherlands
and the Prince-Bishopric Liege accrued to the new Netherlands. The
Prince received the title of King of the Netherlands and Duke of
Luxemburg, although the Grand Duchy became part of the German
Confederation and was separated administratively from the rest of
the new kingdom. A painful setback, however, was that, William
Frederick had to cede the Nassau hereditary lands to Prussia, while
the area on the left bank of the Rhine towards the Moselle accrued
to Prussia as well.35 Dutch ambitions to incorporate a longer stretch
of the Rhine into the kingdom had finally failed.
This also meant that the last stumbling block for Dutch
participation in the River Congress Commission, which started its
deliberations just as the negotiations on the shape and size of the
new United Kingdom of the Netherlands were winding down, had
disappeared. In the first session French and Prussian deputies had
presented very similar projects based on the liberal principles of the
Napoleonic Octroi administration.36 In the second session the smaller
riparian states, including the Netherlands, were invited to air their
views.37 France and Prussia, it appeared, were proponents of a
centralized administration guarding the freedom of Rhine navigation,
but the smaller German riparian states rejected such a permanent
central authority.38 According to Dutch delegate to the River
Congress Commission Van Spaen almost everyone in the ad hoc
Commission felt that Prussia, represented by the supposedly liberal
Wilhelm Von Humboldt, was not willing to conform to a centralized
or permanent administration itself once it was established. The
smaller riparian states were afraid of Prussian dominance within such
a central authority, argued Van Spaen. ‘Nominally Prussia wants to
commit itself to mutual obligations, but not in practice!’39 Although
most riparian states recognized the need for a new regime, the
smaller states were wary of a central authority that could become a
hegemonic tool of the most powerful riparian state.
Van Spaen, too, feared for Prussian dominance and openly
attacked Von Humboldt’s plan to establish a strong executive body
for governing the Rhine. Unless the Netherlands received a larger
say in such a body commensurate with its importance in controlling
the Rhine delta, Van Spaen stated, he would reject any such
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