A Brill Calendar: July 30

Few constituents of Europe’s history have been as decisive generally as articulation in regions.

Even a small national state like The Netherlands, presently subdivided in twelve Provinces with their own prerogatives and responsibilities, features perhaps some forty regions; their boundaries sometimes, but certainly not always, loosely defined and delineated. European regions still reflect old feudal structures and continue to embody their socio-cultural descendants in the present.

The feeling of ‘belonging’ to a National State is much younger than attachment to a city or a region. Geographical constraints – shores, bridgeless rivers, mountains, moors, primeval forests – shaped them, while mutual distancing obeyed limits set by travel on foot. Most people never left their region of birth: a visit to its main city – if any - often was a rare adventure.

Even the horror of warfare tended to be limited to a region. When a British invading army of some 40,000 men invaded Walcheren island July 30 1809 to challenge Napoleon’s dominance over Europe, the city of Flushing was devastated and 5,000 casualties were counted, while in following weeks the ‘Zeeland Fevers’ and malaria took their toll. Ten years earlier, in 1799, a similar Anglo-Prussian military effort in the dunes near Castricum had also ended in a great battle and loss of lives.

The strange thing is that both dramatic events – the greatest of their kind on Dutch soil - hardly found their way into the text-books teaching succeeding generations national history. It is seldom that crucial events on the regional level truly match a national picture. What is remembered and celebrated in recollection nationally may differ substantially from a region’s documented past: no doctrine without indoctrination.