244 Chapter XI
It was the American war that precipitated the abortive revolution known as the
Patriot movement.^2 There had been the usual intellectual preparation. Dutch
writers had played little role in the European Enlightenment; the Amsterdam re-
gents, like those of Geneva, had suppressed Rousseau’s Social Contract when it
appeared; and there was no legalized freedom of the press before 1795. But in fact
the Dutch press had long been active, and many books and magazines in the inter-
national language, French, had their place of publication in Holland. Nowhere was
the periodical press older or better established, yet Dutch historians, like others,
attribute the first appearance of specifically political journals to about the year
- Here as elsewhere a public opinion, or an opinion on matters of public con-
cern outside the circles of government, was beginning to form.
An early spokesman of the new ideas was J. D. van der Capellen tot de Pol, who
was also one of the first of the Dutch who openly favored the American rebels.^3
He was a nobleman of Overyssel, one of the “land provinces” which long remained
apart from the financial and maritime interests of Holland. He was thus unin-
volved with the influential magnates of Amsterdam.
Capellen first called attention to himself in 1775. There was in the Dutch ser-
vice a certain Scotch Brigade, which the British government expressed a desire to
borrow for use in America against the insurgents. The stadtholder, William V,
asked for favorable action on this request in the several provincial estates. In the
Estates of Overyssel, van der Capellen eloquently opposed the despatch of the
Scotch Brigade, and succeeded in blocking it. He also broke all precedent by vio-
lating the secrecy of discussion in the estates, and making known his opinions to
the public. On another occasion he took the lead in persuading the Estates of
Overyssel to abolish certain corvées, by which peasants had owed two days of labor
service a year. He was in touch with parliamentary reformers in England, trans-
lated Richard Price’s Essay on Civil Liberty in 1776, and corresponded with the
revolutionary governors of Connecticut and New Jersey. He lent 20,000 French
litres’ worth of his own money to the Americans as early as 1778. Well informed
on American, British, and Dutch affairs, he was one of the first international fig-
ures of the incipient democratic revolution.
Around Capellen there gathered a circle of men, pro- American and dissatisfied
with Dutch conditions, who were later to lead the democratic wing of the Patriots.
These were for the most part well- to- do burghers, many of them bankers, mer-
chants, owners of manufacturing establishments, printers and publishers, or pro-
fessors at Utrecht or Leiden. They were upper middle- class, but so were most
2 On the Patriot movement, see P. Geyl, op.cit., I. Vijlbrief, “De Patriottencris, 1780–1787” in
Algemeene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, VIII, 128–69 (Utrecht, 1955); I. H. Gosses and N. Japikse,
Handboek tot de staatkundige Geschiedenis van Nederland (The Hague, 1947), 674–717; P. J. Blok, His-
tory of the People of the Netherlands, Eng. trans., V, 172–272 (London and New York, 1912); Helen L.
Fairchild, Francis Adrian van der Kemp: an autobiography with extracts from his correspondence ( N.Y.,
1903); C. M. Davies, Memorials and Times of Peter Philip Jurian Quint Ondaatje (Utrecht, 1870) in
Werken uitgegeven door het Historisch Genootschap gevestigd te Utrecht, new series, no. 13.
3 On Van der Capellen see the above and W. H. de Beaufort, Brieven van en aan Joan Derk Van
der Capellen van de Poll (Utrecht, 1879), which is no. 27 in the series of the Utrecht Historical Society
just cited. Many of Van der Capellen’s letters and papers, as of other Dutch figures of the period, are
in French or English.