Portal:Netherlands
Welcome to the Netherlands Portal
Welkom bij het Nederlandportaal!
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The Netherlands, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands consists of twelve provinces; it borders Germany to the east and Belgium to the south, with a North Sea coastline to the north and west. It shares maritime borders with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Belgium. The official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland. Dutch, English, and Papiamento are official in the Caribbean territories. People from the Netherlands are referred to as Dutch.
The Netherlands has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a unitary structure since 1848. The country has a tradition of pillarisation (separation of citizens into groups by religion and political beliefs) and a long record of social tolerance, having legalised prostitution and euthanasia, along with maintaining a liberal drug policy. The Netherlands allowed women's suffrage in 1919 and was the first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001. Its mixed-market advanced economy has the eleventh-highest per capita income globally. The Hague holds the seat of the States General, cabinet, and Supreme Court. The Port of Rotterdam is the busiest in Europe. Schiphol is the busiest airport in the Netherlands, and the fourth busiest in Europe. Being a developed country, the Netherlands is a founding member of the European Union, eurozone, G10, NATO, OECD, and WTO, as well as a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. It hosts intergovernmental organisations and international courts, many of which are in The Hague. (Full article...)
Selected biography
Enchanted by his new homeland of New Netherland, Van der Donck made detailed accounts of the land, vegetation, animals, waterways, topography, and climate. Van der Donck used this knowledge to actively promote immigration to the colony, publishing several tracts, including his influential Description of New Netherland. Charles Gehring, Director of the New Netherland Project, has called it "the fullest account of the province, its geography, the Indians who inhabited it, and its prospects…It has been said that had it not been written in Dutch, it would have gone down as one of the great works of American colonial literature."
Did you know (auto-generated)

- ... that conservation in Indonesia had little local support after independence because it was associated with the Dutch colonial period?
- ... that the grave of a Dutch officer and his dog who were killed in the Battle of Nanggulon is a designated cultural object in Indonesia?
- ... that Dutch rabbi Meijer de Hond, who grew up in poverty, was known as the Volksrebbe ('people's rabbi') for his popularity among the Jewish poor of Amsterdam?
- ... that Isabella Correa was one of the few Jewish women poets active in the Netherlands before the 19th century?
- ... that the 1961 Indonesian census was the country's first since 1930 and the first since gaining independence from the Netherlands?
- ... that Storm Poly caused hundreds to be stranded at Amsterdam's central station as it passed the Netherlands?
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