Welcome to the Netherlands Portal
Welkom bij het Nederlandportaal!
The Netherlands, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands consists of twelve provinces; it borders Germany to the east and Belgium to the south, with a North Sea coastline to the north and west. It shares maritime borders with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Belgium. The official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland. Dutch, English, and Papiamento are official in the Caribbean territories.
The Netherlands has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a unitary structure since 1848. The country has a tradition of pillarisation (separation of citizens into groups by religion and political beliefs) and a long record of social tolerance, having legalised prostitution and euthanasia, along with maintaining a liberal drug policy. The Netherlands allowed women's suffrage in 1919 and was the first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001. Its mixed-market advanced economy has the eleventh-highest per capita income globally. The Hague holds the seat of the States General, Cabinet, and Supreme Court. The Port of Rotterdam is the busiest in Europe. Schiphol is the busiest airport in the Netherlands, and the fourth busiest in Europe. Being a developed country, the Netherlands is a founding member of the European Union, eurozone, G10, NATO, OECD, and WTO, as well as a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. It hosts intergovernmental organisations and international courts, many of which are in The Hague. (Full article...)
Selected biography
Muller started his career as a businessman, trading with East and West Africa. In his mid-twenties he travelled to Zanzibar, Mozambique, and South Africa for business purposes, but showed himself a keen ethnographer as well, collecting ethnographic artifacts and writing reports about the societies and people he encountered on his way. In 1890, Muller retired from business for personal reasons, and went to Germany to study ethnography and geography. He graduated with a Ph.D. dissertation four years later.
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that Jacob Christiaan Koningsberger, a biologist who catalogued the flora and fauna of Java, also served as the Dutch minister of the colonies?
- ... that the Argentina and Netherlands national football teams have played each other at every other FIFA World Cup since 1998?
- ... that the botanist Victor Jacob Koningsberger spoke out against the expulsion of Jewish academics in the occupied Netherlands?
- ... that Bulkboeken ('bulk books') were cheap reprints of Dutch literary classics, published from 1971 to the late 1990s, and again from 2007?
- ... that after leading the Khoikhoi in war against the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope, Doman returned to Dutch service as an interpreter?
- ... that the wedding of Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands and Claus van Amsberg was marred by protests over Amsberg's German heritage and past membership in the Hitler Youth and the Wehrmacht?
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