What The United States Learnt from The Netherlands. John Lothrop Motley’s History of the Dutch Revolt

Simon Schama was not the first Anglo-Saxon historian to put forward a controversial view of Dutch history. He was preceded by a man who in a sense deserves the honour of having laid the foundation for Dutch political historiography, not so much because he wrote it himself as because he prompted his critics to do so. The man in question is John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877), a name which is all but forgotten today. Jaap Verheul, a lecturer and researcher in cultural history at Utrecht University, has written a book about him: De Atlantische pelgrim. John Lothrop Motley en de Amerikaanse ontdekking van Nederland (The Atlantic pilgrim. John Lothrop Motley and the American discovery of the Netherlands).