Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present

Zakaria shifts the focus of the discussion to a very quiet revolution in the Netherlands that began in the late 1500s. He observes that unlike the Dutch’s bellicose neighbors, they did not build their nation’s fortunes on expansionist conquests and the exploitation of more land for agriculture. (The Netherlands offered little incentive for farming because the land was prone to flooding, and much of it needed to be reclaimed from the sea regularly.) Instead, the Dutch depended on banking, trade, and technological innovation to increase their prosperity, and they also rejected the notion of monarchy as the best form of political organization and instead built “the earliest flourishing of classical liberalism anywhere in the West” (25-26).

The author also observes that a parallel pattern began centuries earlier in the similarly swampy lowlands of 12th-century Venice, where the greatest opportunities for wealth lay in sea trade. Like the Dutch, the Venetians elected their leaders, but the city-state unfortunately fell victim to greed and corruption over time. In 1297, its government was supplanted by noblemen intent on establishing a hereditary monarchy. Subsequently, Portugal led the way during the age of exploration by charting a new course to expand European trade networks around the globe.

By the 16th century, the Dutch were poised to take advantage of this global trend. The little country implemented a decentralized form of government, and the land, such as it was, never belonged to the nobility, remaining instead “a collection of towns,” while the Dutch remained “an urban people in an age when most of Europe was rural” (33).

The technological innovation required to wrest land back from the sea also led to other innovations in ship design and commerce. Furthermore, the Protestant Reformation led to ideological changes throughout Europe, and Holland became a refuge for religious dissenters who wanted to avoid persecution. The free flow of ideas in Holland encouraged further innovations that fed the economy.

As the country continued its liberal policies, this trend provoked a backlash amongst its conservative citizenry. The author states that “[a]s the Dutch economy ballooned, liberal ideas and practices powered the nation forward but destabilized it internally. The pace of change was so fast that many people simply wanted a return to normalcy” (47). The democratic Dutch also posed a threat to the surrounding monarchies, and in 1672, Louis XIV sent an army to subdue the Netherlands. Although he won the war, he made the fatal error of leaving William of Orange in charge of the country afterward. This decision would lead to another type of revolution in England a few years later.

Unlike its European neighbors, England had taken the first steps away from an absolute monarchy during the Middle Ages, when the Magna Carta guaranteed limited rights to the nobility and held the king accountable to them. A few centuries later, the nobility realized that commerce might be a better way of securing wealth than owning large estates. As more land became dedicated to sheep grazing for the sake of wool production, the rural peasant class migrated to urban areas, changing the country’s demographic balance. Unfortunately, however, the religious antagonism between Catholic and Protestant factions played a decisive role in destabilizing the rulership of the country. During the 1600s, England went from a monarchy to a commonwealth and back again.

When the Catholic James II tried to claim the crown, he was forced to flee the country, and Parliament declared his abdication, after which his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her Dutch husband, William, became co-rulers of England in 1688. Their arrival was known as the Glorious Revolution because it did not result in a copious amount of bloodshed. Significantly, Parliament granted them their power, resulting in Britain’s first limited constitutional monarchy. As the author notes, “After 1688, England reached a final settlement, adopting a Goldilocks form of government, neither too rigid nor too chaotic, that catapulted the nation into its position of global dominance and remade the world” (51-52). England then entered into a period of growth through the cooperation of liberals and conservatives, for both factions were ready to reject the religious extremism that preceded the Glorious Revolution, forming instead a “bipartisan escape from dangerous polarization” (62).

Both Whigs and Tories were focused on economic prosperity rather than on wars of territorial expansion or religious fanaticism. The newly tolerant attitude of the British attracted collaboration from Dutch merchants and financiers, thereby putting an end to “the medieval world” (66). At this point, “[v]alue began to be measured in pounds and shillings rather than noble rank and religious purity” (66). While the British navy became the most powerful force on the seas, its ships were primarily employed to guarantee the safety of its merchant fleet. Ironically, as England continued to expand, the Netherlands retrenched and began indulging in protectionist policies to safeguard its own parochial interests. This practice echoed the Venetian failure of a few centuries earlier. When viewed from a broader perspective, both the Dutch and the English revolutions were successful because they grew organically rather than being mandated from above. However, the same could not be said of France in 1789.