The Royalist Republic

Helmer J. Helmers’s book aims to define and illustrate the paradox of how a Dutch Republic which was dominated by Calvinists became involved in the English civil wars, regicide and restoration. It does this by interrogating a comprehensive corpus of Dutch and English works dealing with the English situation in the period. Helmers’s approach, which involves a double Anglo-Dutch perspective of ‘international historicism’, enables a more complete overview of the close exchange between the nations—not only politically speaking, but also in religious, cultural and intellectual terms (p. 19). The book is divided into two parts, the first of which sets out to define the public sphere shared between England and the United Provinces. The second illustrates how this public sphere produced texts that influenced specific events, and vice versa. The author focuses on the Dutch royalist response to the Stuart cause, but he also pays attention to the development of an Anglo-Dutch republican party, creating a coherent image of the Dutch political situation in the 1640s to 1660s. The book explores several developments which suggest that the discourse between the nations was much more vivid and influential in the Netherlands than has previously been thought; this was especially visible among English migrants who functioned as ‘traffickers in news and opinion’, such as Scottish bilinguals residing in the Dutch Republic who translated English polemical pamphlets into Dutch, and English printers active in the Dutch Republic who were working exclusively in an Anglo-Dutch (and Scotto-Dutch) sphere (p. 51). For example, the discussion of Charles I as the ‘martyr king’ or ‘mirror of Christ’, and the reception of Eikon Basilike in the United Provinces are wonderful illustrations of how the public sphere and print culture continuously exchanged images and ideas (pp. 115–48). Through these detailed cases, Helmers demonstrates that the English political situation not only interested a small group of Dutch academics and other intellectuals, but that English political developments—in particular, the regicide—were addressed in works printed in the vernacular and followed by all sections of the population (pp. 47–50). Helmers’s argument that political developments in England were often connected to Dutch political events is important; an example of this was that condemnation of the regicide could co-exist with sanctification of the Dutch revolt. Direct connections can, of course, be found in the complex Anglo-Dutch Wars, during which conflicts of trade, politics and religion all played a role

Media studies · Political science · Politics · Public sphere · Royalist · Sociology · The Republic · Theology · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity