Netherlands

The modern Netherlands took shape after the end of the Dutch Republic. French revolutionary armies overthrew the Republic in 1795, and Napoleon later made the country a kingdom for his brother and then annexed it to France. When Napoleon fell, the Congress of Vienna created the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 under William I of the House of Orange, combining the old Dutch provinces with what is now Belgium.

In 1795, French revolutionary armies and Dutch revolutionaries, the Patriots, established the Batavian Republic, which created a unitary state, separating church and state and granting equal rights to Jews. In 1806 Napoleon made his brother Louis king of Holland; Louis tried to protect Dutch interests and was removed in 1810, when the Netherlands was annexed to France. French rule introduced the civil code, the metric system and a modern tax system.

In 1813 the Dutch rose against the French, and William, son of the last stadtholder, returned and became King William I in 1815. He ruled the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, including today's Belgium and Luxembourg, and promoted industry, canals and trade, founding the Netherlands Trading Society. But Belgian Catholics and liberals resented Dutch dominance, and the Belgian revolution of 1830 split the kingdom.

In 1848, fearing revolution, King William II agreed to a new constitution drafted by the liberal Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, which established ministerial responsibility and direct elections. Over the following decades, Dutch society organised into "pillars", separate Catholic, Protestant, socialist and liberal communities with their own schools, newspapers, trade unions and political parties, a system that lasted into the 1960s. Universal male suffrage came in 1917 and women's suffrage in 1919.

The Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, was the core of the colonial empire. The Cultivation System, from 1830, forced Javanese farmers to grow crops for export, bringing great profits to the Dutch treasury but causing famines. The author Multatuli criticised colonial abuses in his novel Max Havelaar in 1860. The Dutch fought long wars, such as the Aceh War, to extend their control. They also held Suriname, where slavery was abolished only in 1863, and the Caribbean islands of Curaçao, Aruba and others.

The Netherlands remained neutral in the First World War. In May 1940, Germany invaded, bombed Rotterdam and occupied the country in five days. Queen Wilhelmina led a government in exile in London. During the occupation, about 102,000 of the country's 140,000 Jews were deported and murdered, including Anne Frank, whose diary became famous after the war. Resistance groups hid Jews and others. The "Hunger Winter" of 1944–1945 killed about 20,000 people.

After the war, the Netherlands fought a war against Indonesian independence until 1949. It joined NATO, the Benelux union and the European Coal and Steel Community. After the flood of 1953, which killed over 1,800 people, it built the Delta Works. In the 1960s and 1970s, Dutch society became more liberal and secular, and the Netherlands became known for its tolerance, including legalising same-sex marriage in 2001, the first country to do so. Rotterdam became one of the world's largest ports.

Our maps show the Netherlands on every map from 1815 to 2010. Its largest outline, about 620,000 square kilometres on the 1945 map, is mostly in Indonesia and Guyana, because the basemap includes Dutch colonies under the same name. Amsterdam is inside it from 1878, and Jakarta's site on several maps up to 1945. For the earlier state, see the Dutch Republic.