History of the Netherlands

The history of the Netherlands is the history of a seafaring people thriving on a lowland river delta on the North Sea in northwestern Europe. Records begin with the four centuries during which the region formed a militarized border zone of the Romanempire. This came under increasing pressure from Germanic peoples moving westwards. As Roman power collapsed and the Middle Ages began, three dominant Germanic peoples coalesced in the area, Frisians in the north, Low Saxons in the northeast, and theFranks.

During the Middle Ages, the descendants of the Salian Franks, the Carolingian dynasty, came to dominate the area and then extended their rule to a large part of Western Europe. The region of the Netherlands therefore became part of Lower Lotharingiawithin the Frankish Holy Roman Empire. For several centuries, lordships such as Brabant, Holland, Zeeland, Friesland, Guelders and others held a changing patchwork of territories. There was no unified equivalent of the modern Netherlands.

By 1433, the Duke of Burgundy had assumed control over most of the lowlands territories in Lower Lotharingia; he created theBurgundian Netherlands which included modern Belgium, Luxembourg, and a part of France. Under the heir Emperor Charles V this union was declared independent of Germany and France, and then became part of Charles' new Spanish empire.