The Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547-1619) was the principal architect of the independence of the republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands after the death of William the Silent.

Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was born on Sept. 14, 1547, in the province of Utrecht, in the small city of Amersfoort, into a family of very minor nobility. At the age of 16 he began the study of law in an attorney's office at The Hague, then in 1566 undertook 4 years of formal legal studies in the universities of Louvain, Bourges, Cologne, Heidelberg, and probably Padua. In 1569 he returned to practice law in The Hague and Delft. He chose the party of the Prince of Orange in 1572 and took part in the vain attempt to relieve Haarlem in 1573 and in the successful relief of Leiden in 1574. From 1577 until 1586 he was the pensionary (chief legal officer) of Rotterdam, but his legal duties were subordinated to political tasks, principally representation of the town in the States of Holland, and he acquired increasing importance as a national leader.

Dutch Independence

Oldenbarnevelt did not favor the policy followed by William I (William the Silent) of seeking a foreign sovereign for the Dutch provinces, urging instead until the prince's murder in 1584 that he be named sovereign lord. However, Oldenbarnevelt was a member of the delegation which went to England in 1585 to offer Elizabeth I the sovereignty of the United Provinces. She refused but sent the Earl of Leicester to be governor general.

So Oldenbarnevelt turned to William's son, Maurice of Nassau, as a figure around whom to organize resistance to Leicester's attempts to build a political base in the United Provinces independent of the States General and the provincial States. On Oldenbarnevelt's initiative Maurice was given his father's posts as stadholder of Holland and Zeeland in 1585 and later in other provinces. Meanwhile Leicester was repeatedly thwarted in his political initiatives by Oldenbarnevelt, who became advocate of Holland (a post like that of town pensionary on the provincial level) on May 6, 1586. When Leicester quit his post and went home in 1587, Oldenbarnevelt used the opportunity to shift the primary work of central government in the United Provinces from the Council of State, in which successors of Leicester continued to sit, to the States General. However, he staunchly maintained the principle that the ultimate sovereignty lay in each province.

Oldenbarnevelt supported Maurice in his military campaigns, especially during the 1590s. In 1596 he negotiated a triple alliance with England and France, which constituted the first de facto recognition of the Dutch Republic as an independent state. Although he was unable to prevent Henry IV of France from making a separate peace with Spain in 1598, he did help to persuade Elizabeth to remain at war.

The relations between Maurice and Oldenbarnevelt began to cool after the former's victory at Nieuwpoort in the southern Netherlands in 1600. Maurice began to resent supervision by Oldenbarnevelt, who grew haughty and domineering over the years. Oldenbarnevelt was also looking ahead to peace with Spain, while Maurice was still eager for victories and glory. In 1602 Oldenbarnevelt persuaded the small companies competing in the East Indies trade to join in a single Dutch East India Company. In 1609 he obtained conclusion of a Twelve Years Truce with Spain over bitter opposition from strict Calvinists, refugees from the south, and Maurice.

Later Career

During the truce years the differences between Oldenbarnevelt and Maurice deepened. The advocate of Holland thwarted Maurice's efforts to break the truce in connection with the Jülich succession disputes in 1610 and 1614. However, Oldenbarnevelt's stubborn backing of the Remonstrant or Arminian (moderate Calvinist) side in the religious dissensions gave Maurice a powerful ally in the Contra-Remonstrant or Gomarian (rigorous Calvinist) camp. Under Oldenbarnevelt's prodding and despite the opposition of Amsterdam, the States of Holland decided (1617) to enforce a policy of religious toleration within the Reformed (Calvinist) church and began to recruit provincial soldiers because Maurice would not employ his troops to do so. The States of Utrecht, the only province to follow Holland in refusing a national synod designed to condemn the Remonstrants, also raised a force of provincial soldiers, which Maurice decided to disband on the authority of the States General.

An effort by a delegation from Holland to dissuade his soldiers from this work led to Maurice's decision to have Oldenbarnevelt and three associates (including Hugo Grotius, his successor as pensionary of Rotterdam) arrested (Aug. 29, 1618) and tried for attempted rebellion. The trial was conducted by a special court named by the States General, whose jurisdiction over a servant of the States of Holland Oldenbarnevelt denied to the end. He was found guilty and beheaded on May 13, 1619, in front of the Knights' Hall in The Hague. Maurice had refused to grant a pardon to the 72-year-old statesman unless asked, which the family refused to do as implying admission of guilt.

Modern historians have come to see the trial and execution neither as the straightforward operation of law in a case of manifest guilt nor as an instance of judicial murder, but rather as a tragedy brought on by religious and political passions in a situation where constitutional powers were ill-defined and hotly debated. In the ultimate sense, however, Oldenbarnevelt was a martyr for his political principles.

Further Reading

The classic works of John Lothrop Motley, History of the United Netherlands, from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce (4 vols., 1861-1868) and The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland (2 vols., 1874), remain, despite their fierce and one-sided advocacy of Oldenbarnevelt's cause and their age, full of information and vivid writing. See also Pieter Geyl, The Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century, vol. 1 (1961).

For more information on Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, visit Britannica.com.

(yōhän' vän ôl'dənbär'nəvĕlt) , 1547–1619, Dutch statesman. He aided William the Silent in the struggle for Dutch independence from Spain and opposed the dictatorial policy set by Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, chosen by the States-General as governor-general in 1586. After Leicester's departure (1587) he helped to concentrate military power in the hands of Maurice of Nassau. Made permanent advocate of Holland in 1586, Oldenbarneveldt controlled the civil affairs of the United Provinces (in which Holland was prominent). He represented the patrician manufacturing and commercial oligarchies that ruled the states of Holland; and during his administration Dutch commerce expanded spectacularly, and the Dutch East India Company was founded. He negotiated (1609) a 12-year truce with Spain, despite the objections of Maurice of Nassau, and thus secured virtual recognition of Dutch independence. As leader of the party favoring control of state affairs by the States-General, Oldenbarneveldt was increasingly opposed by the house of Orange. This conflict was aggravated by the fierce struggle of the Remonstrants and the strict Calvinists; in this quarrel, Oldenbarneveldt and Maurice of Nassau found themselves in opposing camps. In 1618, Maurice, determined to crush the Remonstrants, convoked the Synod of Dort, which condemned their doctrine. Oldenbarneveldt was arrested and, after a highly irregular trial for treason, was sentenced to death. His execution was a judicial murder brought about by his personal enemies; no incriminating evidence has ever been found against Oldenbarneveldt, who was one of the ablest and most patriotic statesmen in the history of the Dutch.

Oldenbarneveldt, Johan Van (1547–1619), Dutch statesman who laid the foundations of the Dutch Republic. Johan van Oldenbarneveldt was born into a patrician family at Amersfoort in the province of Utrecht in 1547. His father was a difficult man who never took the family place on the town council and who was surrounded by rumors about his notorious behavior. The young Johan nevertheless received the kind of education thought suitable for young members of the class of town councillors (the regents): he went to the local Latin school, was for some years the pupil of a lawyer in The Hague (the administrative center of the province of Holland), and spent four years abroad, studying law at the universities of Louvain, Bourges, and Heidelberg. These were decisive years that molded Oldenbarneveldt's character and views. His stay at The Hague introduced him into the world of politics and acquainted him with the work and mentality of councillors and lawyers. The study of law that followed reinforced these earlier experiences. Throughout his career Oldenbarneveldt was obsessed with justifying his political turns and innovations by means of texts, and he reduced problems to practical and legal issues. In a religious respect, these educational years also proved to be of lasting importance. In 1568, during his stay at Heidelberg, Oldenbarneveldt became a Calvinist.

Oldenbarneveldt returned from his grand tour in 1570 and went to The Hague to earn a living as an expert on feudal law and laws connected with dikes and drainage. It was a lucrative business. When, however, in the spring of 1572 the Dutch Revolt entered a new phase and one town after another in Holland and Zeeland took the side of the rebellious William I of Orange (William the Silent) and his adherents, Oldenbarneveldt decided to openly support the rebels' cause. Unsettled times followed, in which military and political events happened in quick succession. Oldenbarneveldt himself attracted attention because of his sheer competence in administrative issues and hard work. In 1576 he became pensionary, or legal advisor, of Rotterdam, and in March 1586 the States of Holland appointed him as their "advocate," a post that went back to Burgundian times but had gained greatly in importance since 1572. Not yet forty years old, Oldenbarneveldt was henceforth the principal figure in the States of Holland as well as their spokesman in the States General.

Lacking charm, tact, and adroitness, Oldenbarneveldt was never a charismatic personality. Contemporaries found him "very stiffe" or even "somewhat violent, imperious and bitter." But he was industrious, intelligent, and, above all, opportunistic. When he took office in 1586, the Dutch rebels found themselves in a lamentable situation, deprived of their assassinated leader William I of Orange, divided among themselves and half-conquered by Alexander Farnese, duke of Parma. Oldenbarneveldt, however, proved in his new position to be an outstanding statesman with a clear political objective: to organize an independent Dutch state with the province of Holland firmly in possession of all real power. In the following years he succeeded in driving the new governor-general of the Netherlands, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, away without losing the support of Queen Elizabeth I and in transforming the traditional Dutch institutions into efficient and flexible instruments of government. He thus not only managed to organize the new Dutch Republic in a more or less satisfactory way but also created the financial and political framework that allowed the young stadtholder Maurice of Nassau to achieve his decisive military victories of the 1590s. These safeguarded the frontiers and integrity of the new state. Realizing, however, the sharply escalating burden of military expenditure, Oldenbarneveldt tried from 1606 onward to bring the war to an end. With patience and versatility he controlled the negotiations with the Spanish delegations that eventually led to the Twelve Years' Truce of 1609.

Left on its own, the new Dutch Republic experienced during this truce one of the most profound crises in its history. It started innocently, with a theological debate between the Arminians or Remonstrants (moderate Calvinists) and the Gomarists or Counter-Remonstrants (strict Calvinists). But the controversies resulting from this debate became intertwined in a short time with religious fervor, polarized discussions about the relations between the state and the Calvinist church, popular mistrust about Oldenbarneveldt's alleged pro-Spanish and pro-Catholic sympathies (Had he not been the staunchest advocate of a peace with Spain?), and a bitter personal row between the advocate and the stadtholder, Maurice, who supported the Gomarists. For a time, Oldenbarneveldt gravely underestimated the seriousness of the situation. He sympathized for political reasons with the Arminians and tried to achieve his goals as he had always done, by manipulating the States of Holland and States General. But, confronted with popular opposition and riots, a divided body politic and, since 1616, a hostile stadtholder, Oldenbarneveldt fought a losing battle. He had never been a popular politician. In the end he was, notwithstanding his impressive record of service, just a civil servant of the States of Holland and thus no match for his opponent, stadtholder Maurice. As a nobleman by birth, son of William I of Orange, and a successful and famous military commander, Maurice was a clear favorite of the people. So when Maurice proclaimed Oldenbarneveldt's "Scherpe Resolutie" (Sharp Resolution) of August 1617, which had, among other things, empowered the towns of Holland to raise special troops to maintain order, an "affront to the true Reformed religion and our person" and publicly chose the side of the Gomarists or Counter-Remonstrants, Oldenbarneveldt's days were numbered. On 29 August 1618 he was arrested. After a trial that dragged on for months, Oldenbarneveldt was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. On 13 May 1619, the 72-year-old advocate, who had laid the foundations of the Dutch Republic and who had dominated Dutch politics for thirty years, was beheaded before a large crowd at the Binnenhof in The Hague.

Bibliography

Israel, Jonathan I. The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806. Oxford and New York, 1995.

Tex, Jan den. Oldenbarnevelt. 2 vols. Cambridge, U.K., 1973.

—PAUL KNEVEL

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