Netherlands

The Netherlands is a low-lying country in northwestern Europe, between Germany, Belgium and the North Sea. It is the largest of the four countries that form the Kingdom of the Netherlands, together with Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten in the Caribbean.

Amsterdam is the capital, while parliament, cabinet and the Supreme Court sit in The Hague. Dutch is the official language, and West Frisian has official status in the province of Friesland. The House of Valois-Burgundy and its Habsburg heirs ruled the Low Countries from 1384, and Charles V joined them as the Seventeen Provinces. The northern provinces renounced Philip II of Spain with the Act of Abjuration in 1581, and Spain accepted their independence in the Peace of Münster in 1648. In the Golden Age of the 17th century the Dutch Republic became a leading sea and trading power, and its East India and West India companies set up posts across the globe. A kingdom followed in 1815 under William I.

Monarchy under a constitution dates from 1815 and parliamentary rule from 1848; the monarch is head of state, and policy is made by the cabinet and the States General. About a quarter of the land lies below sea level, much of it in polders won from the water since the 14th century. The Afsluitdijk closed off the Zuiderzee in 1932, and the Delta Works guarded the southwestern coast between 1958 and 1997. Farming is highly mechanized and exports tomatoes, apples, cut flowers and bulbs, while Shell, Philips, ASML, Heineken and KLM are among its companies. Natural gas found from the 1950s brought large revenues to the state.

The painters Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer worked in the Golden Age, and Vincent van Gogh and Piet Mondrian followed in later centuries. Christiaan Huygens found Saturn's moon Titan and built the pendulum clock, and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first described single-celled life under a microscope. Gouda and Edam cheeses are still traded at markets in Alkmaar and Gouda. Bicycles outnumber motor vehicles about two to one, and the country legalized same-sex marriage in 2001, the first in the world to do so. In sport, the men's football team won the European Championship of 1988, and Max Verstappen became the first Dutch Formula One world champion.