Holland was once a superpower upon whose empire the sun never set. Today it is on the leading edge of social change. This history of Holland, from its earliest beginnings to the present day, provides the most up-to-date survey of modern Dutch history, including the current Dutch approach to a number of social issues, such as the welfare state, the environment, socialized medicine, and the role of the military in the post-Cold War world. Containing a wealth of current information and statistics, this work will help the reader to understand the Dutch both within the historical context in...

In the 1960s, the Netherlands became known as an anarchists social laboratory, producing one of the earliest examples of political correctness. Strong taboos in areas such as governmental control, privacy, and racial relations were the rule. While the Netherlands has become a country with a large degree of personal freedom, the ideas that originated in the openness of the 1960s have since spilled over from the private into the public sphere, resulting in an era of anxious conformity. Vuijsje, a Dutch journalist, examines why notions of political correctness became so strongly ingrained in...