Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813

New York: Knopf, 1977. First American Edition. fair. 25 cm, 745 pages, maps, some damp damage and cover wear/staining, text pages generally okay. This is a tale of a once-powerful nation's desparate struggle to survive the treacheries and brutality of European war and politics. Between 1780 and 1813 the Dutch Republic - a country once rich enough to be called the cash till of Europe and powerful enough to make war with England - was stripped of its colonies, invaded by its enemies, driven to the edge of bankruptcy, and, finally, reduced to becoming an appendage of the French empire - an appendage not even the French seemed to value overmuch. Out of these events Simon Schama has constructed a gripping chronicle of revolution and privateering, constitutions and coups, in a tiny nation desperately struggling to stay afloat in a sea of geopolitics. The result confirms Schama as a historian in the finest tradition - one whose study of the past reveals volumes about the present. Drawing on a mass of hitherto untouched archival material, this work captures the disintegration of a great European power--the Dutch Republic--into military impotence and economic ruin. Simon Michael Schama, CBE (born 13 February 1945) is an English historian specializing in Dutch history, and French history. He is a University Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University, New York. He first came to popular public attention with his history of the French Revolution titled Citizens, published in 1989. In the United Kingdom, he is perhaps best known for writing and hosting the 15-part BBC television documentary series A History of Britain broadcast between 2000 and 2002. He worked as a lecturer in history at Cambridge, where he was a Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Christ's College, and at Oxford. At this time, Schama wrote his first book, Patriots and Liberators, which won the Wolfson History Prize. The book focused on the effect of the Patrios revolution in the Netherlands, and its aftermath.