Vijftig tijdperken, gebeurtenissen en personen die bepalend zijn geweest voor het beeld van de geschiedenis van Nederland vanaf de vroegste tijden tot heden.

This Article IV Consultation highlights that the Dutch economy has grown faster than the euro area average over the past few years reflecting recovering consumption and investment, and strong net exports. Progress with tackling long-standing imbalances in the households and corporate sectors, and thus external imbalances, has lagged. Households remain highly leveraged and their consumption constrained by a stagnating disposable income. In the corporate sector, dominated by large multinational corporations, investment is low but savings are high, and developments are diverging with domestic small and medium enterprises relatively stagnant. Strong fiscal performance in recent years has boosted buffers that can now be used to reduce distortions and strengthen potential growth. The report recommends that it is important to harmonize tax benefits and social security contributions for different types of employment to reduce labor market duality while increasing overall labor market flexibility. Using fiscal space to address household and corporate imbalances is desirable and is unlikely to jeopardize long-term fiscal sustainability.

The development of the Netherlands over the centuries has been a remarkable one. Situated at "the end of Europe," between land and water, its people have, for more than three thousand years, fought to make the best of a country unfavoured by nature. They have shaped it into one of the world's foremost economic powers but also, and even more importantly, into a society that prides itself on having reached a fair balance between material and social well-being. The history of this achievement is a fascinating one. Since time immemorial, it is the history of the struggle against the sea, of man seeking to dominate the forces of water. It is the history of the early medieval Dutch traders, who travelled all over Europe to sell their wares. It is the history of the activities ofthe world's first multinationals, the Dutch East and West India Companies, that spanned the entire globe. It is also the history of the loss of colonial empire and of the triumphant rebuilding of a mainly commercial economy into a mainly industrial one, whose activities, once again, span the globe. It is, of course, also the history of a culture to match, of commonsense and realism, of the wonderful works of art produced by the Dutch "Golden Age" of the seventeenth century and of the many attainments of Dutch civilization in more recent years. For all those who are often amazed at the industry and achievementsof this small nation, the "Short History of the Netherlands" offers a succinct historical tale that goes a long way to elucidate the country's past and, thus, explain its present.

This paper presents findings of Financial System Stability Assessment for the Netherlands, including Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes on Banking Supervision, Securities Regulation, Insurance Regulation, and Corporate Governance. Overall, the financial system is sound, resilient to potential adverse shocks, and well supervised. Risks both on the international front and domestically appear well within the capacity of the banks to manage them. The pensions sector, though still sensitive to significant equity price reversals, is in a rebuilding stage, underpinned by firm supervisory action.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands, lying mostly in Western Europe, is a country well worth exploring. The names Netherlands and Holland brings tulips, clogs and windmills to mind, but that is not the only attraction this country has to offer, it boasts a tremendous amount of history in cities and small villages alike. Its Europe’s most densely populated country representing not only the Dutch Nation but expats from many countries all over the world.

This book explores the political ideas of the Belgian Revolution of 1830, which led to the break-up of the Restoration state of the ‘united’ Kingdom of the Netherlands. It uncovers the origins of liberalism and political Catholicism in the Southern Netherlands in the wake of the French Revolution, and traces the development of political language in the context of the tensions between the Northern and Southern part of the united Netherlands. It shows how differences in ‘Dutch’ and ‘Belgian’ political and intellectual history resulted in different understandings of essential political concepts such as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘balance of powers’, as well as of the nature of the constitutional order of 1815. Finally, it traces the emergence of Belgian nationalism within the discourse of opposition against the government. Stefaan Marteel therefore provides a fresh perspective on the intellectual background of the rise of the nation-state in the nineteenth century.

Francio Guadeloupe has lived in both the Dutch Antilles and the Netherlands. An anthropologist by vocation, he is a keen observer by honed habit. In his new book, he wields both personal and anthropological observations. Simultaneously memoir and astute exploration, Black Man in the Netherlands charts Guadeloupe’s coming of age and adulthood in a Dutch world and movingly makes a global contribution to the understanding of anti-Black racism. Guadeloupe identifies the intersections among urban popular culture, racism, and multiculturalism in youth culture in the Netherlands and the wider Dutch Kingdom. He probes the degrees to which traditional ethnic division collapses before a rising Dutch polyethnicity. What comes to light, given the ethnic multiplicity that Afro-Antilleans live, is their extraordinarily successful work in forging an anti-racist Dutch identity via urban popular culture. This alternative way of being Dutch welcomes the Black experience as global and increasingly local Black artists find fame and even idolization. Black Man in the Netherlands is a vivid extension of renowned critical race studies by such Marxist theorists as Achille Mbembe, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, and C. L. R. James, and it bears a palpable connection to such Black Atlantic artists as Peter Tosh, Juan Luis Guerra, and KRS-One. Guadeloupe explores the complexities of Black life in the Netherlands and shows that within their means, Afro-Antilleans often effectively contest Dutch racism in civic and work life.