The Revolution That Wasn’t: The Coup D’État of 1650 in Holland

Abstract

One of the key notions of historical thought for the past ten or fifteen decades has been the idea of “revolution.” In the late seventeenth century the simple metaphor of the turning wheel of fortune, which raised men high and then cast them down, was applied to the events which drove James II from his throne and put William HI in his place; but a century later the events which sent Louis XVI to the guillotine gave a new meaning to the idea of revolution. The word now came to mean not just any change of rulers but a change of regime, and not just a change of the political system but a fundamental change all across the board — economic and social, ideological and spiritual, no less than political. It is a commonplace of contemporary historiographical thinking to say that a “real” revolution cannot be anything so narrow as a political change, even one wrought by means of force and against the will of the former ruler. Yet it is becoming increasingly questionable to some historians whether the term “revolution” in this contemporary usage helps us to understand the events of European history in the early modern era; indeed, it may be a positive hindrance. This view may be tested by examining the coup d’état of 1650 in Holland, which the distinguished historian Roger Bigelow Merriman included as one of the “six contemporaneous revolutions” of the mid-seventeenth century.¹

Published originally in European Studies Review, 4/2 (1974). Reprinted with permission.