historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 4
Times of success.
Defending the fatherland
The 1630s and 1640s saw the conclusion of the war the Dutch had been fighting
with the king of Spain since the late 1560s and the definitive establishment
and official recognition of the Dutch Republic as an independent and sovereign
state. The victorious emergence of the seven united Dutch provinces
from this struggle as an economic powerhouse that dominated European
trade and commerce stunned the contemporary. So did the Republic’s complex,
confused, and multi-layered structure of decision-making that, although
it went against the tide of the centralisation and the concentration of power
that was visible everywhere else in Europe, seemed to have worked, at least
to seventeenth-century standards, amazingly well and efficient. 1
When Boxhorn just started his academic career in the early 1630s the outcome
of the Dutch struggle with the king of Spain was still uncertain. Although
the Dutch were on the offensive, the Spanish enemy proved to be a resilient
opponent who would not easily be beaten into surrender. Furthermore, the
seven Dutch provinces were surrounded by ambitious kings and princes
whose interests sometimes diametrically opposed those of the Dutch. Thus,
the Dutch always had to be on the watch, prepared and ready to respond,
with diplomatic means or with arms, to defend their freedom and interests
against external aggressors.
In this chapter we will look at several of Boxhorn’s works that appeared in
the 1630s and 1640s in which Boxhorn defended and explained the actions of
the Dutch both for a national and international public. What are the themes
he addresses? With whom does he take issue? What kind of arguments does
he use? In what terms does he describe the Dutch war with the king of Spain?
As a professor of eloquence it was a part of Boxhorn’s job to exalt Dutch war
efforts and to legitimise or at least to excuse Dutch actions. However, there is
1 Maarten Prak holds that the Republic’s loose state structure was one of the most important pillars
under its economic and political success. Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century, p. 272.
In his History of the Dutch-Speaking Peoples Pieter Geyl had already made some suggestions pointing in
that direction. Pieter Geyl, History of the Dutch-Speaking Peoples, 1555-1648 (Phoenix Press; London, 1 st
ed. 1932-1936, 2001), pp. 413, 417-18.