5 - Enlightenment and Emancipation, from c.1750 to 1814

Summary

IN 1795, following a long period of political peace and economic Stagnation, the Republic was swept into the rapids of the French Revolution. The enlightened philosophical and political ideas on which that revolution was based had found favour even earlier with sections of the Dutch middle classes, paving the way for fundamental change.

Under the two last stadtholders from the House of Orange, William IV (1747-51) and William V (1751-95), the Republic had fallen further and further behind the maritime power of England and the territorial powers of France and Prussia, politically as well as economically. With the conquest of the Republic by the French revolutionary army and the flight of the stadtholder and his family to England in 1795, the formerly powerful and prosperous Republic of the Seven United Provinces came to an end. During the Batavian and French period, between 1795 and 1813, the political structure of the country changed from a loose federation of provinces to a centrally governed united State. All the religious groups that had been excluded from holding office in cities, rural districts, and provinces before 1795 were granted füll civil rights. By a decision of the National Assembly of the new Batavian Republic, ratified on 2 September 1796, these rights were also conferred upon the Jews, albeit after some hesitation.

The acceptance of Jews as full members of society in France in 1791, and later in the territories conquered by the French army, reflected the ideas of the Enlightenment. In the course of the eighteenth Century, European intellectuals had put forward a number of new theories, arguing in particular that all men, regardless of origin or social Status, were equal by nature. This view went hand in hand with the toleration of different religious faiths, all of which would eventually come together to worship a universal God, as dictated by reason and virtue. The Champions of the Enlightenment were convinced that by the adoption of enlightened ideas man and society would be changed for the better. These opinions found acceptance among the educated classes of western Europe.

The toleration of Jews and of the Jewish religion was no more than a marginal issue in the broad range of enlightened ideas, although it was held up every so often as one of the essential consequences of the ideals of rationality and equality.