The development of the literary field and the limitations of 'minor' languages; The case of the northern Netherlands, 1750-1850

Evaluations of the culture of the 18th century Dutch Republic vary considerably. The emerging picture is that of a nation mysteriously but rapidly declining from 'le magasin de l'univers' or 'the most enlightened nation of Europe,' to 'a backward region where stagnation and sleepiness reigned.' This article questions ideas about an inevitable 'rise and fall of nations.' It focuses on the limitations to the expansion of cultural infrastructure imposed by the restrictions of a minor linguistic community. Drawing on both quantitative data (e.g., on the circulation numbers of periodicals and the magnitude of the cultural public) and qualitative data on contemporary debates about ways to restore former greatness, it is argued that cultural expansion depends on 'thresholds.' Opportunities to create and maintain cultural infrastructure not only depend on the relative number of participants within a given population, but also on the absolute number. Attention is directed to the fact that Lain continued to be used in Dutch universities until well after the middle of the 19th century. Furthermore, both a fierce resistance to Romantic philosophy and literature during the first decades of the 19th century and an increasing anti-Catholicism are interpreted as ways of adapting to a newly discovered 'smallness,' giving rise to a national-cultural ideology that took 'noble simplicity and silent grandeur' as its central values. This ideology affected contemporary conception of literature in Holland, promoting 'simplicity' as the quintessence of every literary endeavor. The analysis suggests that comparative research of the cultural development of smaller linguistic communities might help to clarify the underlying factors and successive stages of the cultural modernization process that has already been extensively documented for the 'greater' European nations like France, England, and Gemany. (c) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.