Portal:Netherlands

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

Welcome to the Netherlands Portal

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.

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...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Featured article - show another

Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

Newspaper advertisement

Gagak Item ([ɡaˈɡaʔ iˈtəm]; Vernacular Malay for Black Raven, also known by the Dutch title De Zwarte Raaf) is a 1939 bandit film from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) directed by Joshua and Othniel Wong for Tan's Film. Starring Rd Mochtar, Roekiah, and Eddy T. Effendi, it follows a masked man known only as "Gagak Item" ("Black Raven"). The black-and-white film, which featured the cast and crew from the 1937 hit Terang Boelan (Full Moon), was a commercial success and received positive reviews upon release. It is likely lost. (Full article...)

List of Featured articles

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various Netherlands-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Influential Utrecht theologian Adriaan Florenszoon Boeyens, 1459–1523, was an advisor to Charles; in the last year of his life he became pope as Adrian VI (1522–1523). (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 2Administrative divisions of the First French Empire in 1812, illustrating the incorporation of the Netherlands and its internal reorganisation (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 3Dutch East India Company factory in Hugli-Chuchura, Mughal Bengal. Hendrik van Schuylenburgh, 1665 (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 4Fighting between Belgian rebels and the Dutch military expedition in Brussels in September 1830 (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 5Street in Amsterdam in 1891 (Vijzelstraat [nl] looking towards Muntplein) (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 6Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on 18 July 2019 (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 7Distribution of the primary Germanic groups c. 1 AD (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 8Saint Willibrord, Anglo-Saxon missionary from Northumberland, Apostle to the Frisians, first bishop of Utrecht (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 9Liberty tree erected in Dam Square in Amsterdam, 1795 by H. Numan (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 10Shepherdess With a Flock of Sheep by Anton Mauve (1838–1888), of the Hague School (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 11'Holmes's Bonfire', the burning of Dutch Merchant Ships by the English Royal Navy (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 12De Tafelbaai by Aernout Smit, 1683 (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 13Dorestad and main trade routes (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 14Chapel of St Nicholas (Sint-Nicolaaskapel (Nijmegen) [nl] or Valkhofkapel) in Nijmegen, one of the oldest buildings in the Netherlands (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 15Location of the Elp and Hilversum cultures in the Bronze Age (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 16Expansion of the Franks from 481 to 870 (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 17Population growth 1900–2000 (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 18Map of the Seventeen Provinces (Low Germania) (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 19Skating fun, a traditional rural scene by 17th-century Dutch painter Hendrick Avercamp (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 20Map of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and Luxembourg, 1815 (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 21Map showing roughly the distribution of Franks and Frisians c. 716 (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 22Painting of an account of the arrival of Jan van Riebeeck, by Charles Bell (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 23Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 24Eustachius De Lannoy of the Dutch East India Company surrenders to Maharaja Marthanda Varma of the Indian Kingdom of Travancore after the Battle of Colachel. (Depiction at Padmanabhapuram Palace) (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 25Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut, 1401–1436, known to the Dutch as "Jacoba of Bavaria" (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 26Rorik of Dorestad, Viking conqueror and ruler of Friesland; a romantic 1912 depiction by Johannes H. Koekkoek (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 27Peasant woman, seated, with a white hood, painted in Nuenen in December 1884 by Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890). Born in Groot-Zundert, van Gogh was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work, notable for its rough beauty, emotional honesty and bold color, had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 28An account of the first trekboers (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 29Religion in the Netherlands in 1849.
Roman Catholicism
Protestantism (Calvinist)
(from History of the Netherlands)
Image 30Tribes during the Roman Empire (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 31Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General of New Netherland (New York). His provincial capital, New Amsterdam, was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan. (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 32Prince Maurits at the Battle of Nieuwpoort, 1600 CE, by Paulus van Hillegaert (from History of the Netherlands)
Image 33The Low Countries in the late 14th century CE (from History of the Netherlands)

edit

Selected picture

Credit: Commons user Berkh

Dutch wooden shoes (whole feet clogs or klompen), in the traditional everyday use style. Nowadays mostly folklore, some three million pairs are made each year, primarily as souvenirs for the tourist industry. Only some Dutch farmers and (market) gardeners still wear these as everyday footwear.

More selections

Read more

edit

Selected biography

Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank was a German-born Jewish girl from the city of Frankfurt. She gained international fame posthumously following the publication of her diary which documents her experiences hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

Anne and her family moved to Amsterdam in 1933 after the Nazis gained power in Germany, and were trapped by the occupation of the Netherlands, which began in 1940. As persecutions against the Jewish population increased, the family went into hiding in July 1942 in hidden rooms in her father Otto Frank's office building. After two years, the group was betrayed and transported to concentration camps. Seven months after her arrest, Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, within days of the death of her sister, Margot Frank. Her father Otto, the only survivor of the group, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl.

More selections

Read more

Did you know (auto-generated)

... that the first landing during the Dutch invasion of Saint Helena was defeated by English settlers throwing rocks?
... that the wedding of Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands and Claus van Amsberg was marred by protests over Amsberg's German heritage and past membership in the Hitler Youth and the Wehrmacht?
... that Moses Cohen Belinfante founded the first Dutch Jewish newspaper?
... that Alois Wyrsch, the first member of colour of the Swiss parliament, was born to a mercenary in the Dutch Indies in 1825?
... that "Nahe wollt der Herr uns sein" (The Lord wanted to be close to us), first written in Dutch by Huub Oosterhuis in 1964, was included in the 1975 German hymnal Gotteslob?
... that Bearded Man with a Beret by the Dutch artist Jan Lievens is an example of a tronie?