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

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Chapter 9. The working of politics. The Disquisitiones politicae
aker promised the reader that the Disquisitiones politicae revealed ‘the most hidden
principles of state’ and ‘the best means to rule’, and that it offered the reader
‘a good opportunity to instruct himself in the functioning of states on other’s
people cost’ and an easy way ‘to gather the secrets and mysteries of princes’. 3
Glazemaker wanted not only the magistrates to make themselves familiar with
this material, but also the private citizens who did not hold any administrative
offices, for they had the duty to keep an eye on things and, if they detected or
anticipated any problems, to notify the magistrate ‘in an orderly fashion’. 4
In 1669 this appeal to civil watchfulness would not have fallen on deaf
ears. The year before Johan de Witt had successfully concluded a Triple Alliance
between the Dutch Republic, England, and Sweden to check Louis XIV’s
expansionist ambitions. However, France’s ceaseless encroachments in the
Southern Netherlands continued to worry the populace and the regenten
alike, while Charles II’s commitment to the newly signed treaty was doubted.
Furthermore, in Holland the calls became stronger to renounce the Perpetual
Edict – the edict the States of Holland had passed in 1667 and that had abolished
the stadholderate in that province – and to install the young William III
in the offices his ancestors had held. Internally and externally tensions were
mounting; this was not a time to sit back and relax, but to stay on the alert and
to keep a look out for possible dangers. 5
Glazemaker’s Dutch edition of the Disquisitiones politicae which was published
amidst the mounting tensions of the late 1660s and all the other editions
of the work which appeared between 1650 and 1701 indicate that Boxhorn’s
a bibliography of the works he has translated, see C.L. Thijssen-Schoute, “Jan Hendrik Glazemaker:
de zeventiende eeuwse aartsvertaler”, in idem, Uit de republiek der letteren: elf studiën op het gebied der
ideeëngeschiedenis van de Gouden Eeuw (Martinus Nijhoff; The Hague, 1967), pp. 206-61. Jonathan Israel
has rated Glazemaker, ‘another reputed “atheist”’, among the ‘radical republicans, an intellectual
coterie which crystallized around 1660, first at Amsterdam and soon also at The Hague, Rotterdam
and Leiden’. Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 787. For Glazemaker and Rieuwertszoon, see also idem,
Radical Enlightenment, pp. 170, 278-79, 305.
3 Jan Hendrikszoon Glazemaker, “Voorreeden aan den lezer”, in Boxhorn, Disquisitiones politicae,
of Overwegingen van staat en bestiering, iv-v. ‘… verborgenste grondreegels van Staat … de treffelijkste
middelen van bestiering … bequame gelegentheit om zich in de bediening van heerschappijen op eens
anders kosten t’ onderwijzen … Eindelijk, men zal ‘er, met weinig moeite, de verborgentheden en geheimenissen
der Vorsten uit verstaan.’
4 Ibidem, ii-iii. ‘De bezondere en onbeampte Lieden hebben mijns oordeels, ook geen reden om
zich buiten de kennis en wetenschap van deze Staatbestiering te houden, en zich daar van uit te sluiten,
dewijl het hen, in ’t gemeen schip zijnde, vry staat, ja hun plicht is, om, gelijk men zegt, een oog in ’t zeil
te houden, en, merkelijk ongemak, en blijkelijke zwarigheit tegemoet ziende, den Stierman het nakende
onheil, op een behoorlijke wijze, bekent te maken.’ Unfortunately, Glazemaker does not explain what he
means by ‘orderly fashion’.
5 Israel, The Dutch Republic, pp. 739-95; Van Deursen, Last van veel geluk, pp. 293-98; Prak, The
Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 49-51. In this context Geyl’s discussion of the (pamphlet)
literature printed between 1650 and 1672 still merits attention. Pieter Geyl, “Het stadhouderschap in de
partij-literatuur onder De Witt”, in Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen
(Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Maatschappij; Amsterdam, 1947), pp. 17-84.