Amsterdam, the capital The Hague, the seat of government

In most countries, the capital city is the seat of the national government. That is not the case in the Netherlands, however. Although Amsterdam is the Dutch capital, the government and States General (the Dutch parliament) are based in The Hague. The current head of state, Queen Beatrix, also lives in The Hague.
Amsterdam is the Netherlands’ largest city and its economic and cultural hub. It is also the scene of royal inaugurations and marriages. To discover why the government of the Netherlands does not have its seat in the capital, we must make an excursion into the country’s history.
The Hague
Amsterdam and The Hague were both founded in the thirteenth century. Between 1230 and 1280, the counts of Holland built a small castle-cum-hunting lodge on the site of the present-day Ridderzaal (Knight’s Hall) in The Hague. A settlement known as ’s-Gravenhage and abbreviated to Den Haag (The Hague) grew up around the castle.
In the fourteenth century, Holland developed a permanent administrative centre of its own. No longer would clerks and other administrative staff have to travel about with their count. The Binnenhof in The Hague was chosen as the location for the chancery. Thus, with the count’s administrative staff housed in the old hunting lodge, the foundations were laid for The Hague’s future as the seat of government.
In the centuries that followed, representative assemblies came into being in the different parts of the Netherlands, in which some or all of the three estates – nobles, clergy and towns – were represented. From 1585 onwards, representatives of these assemblies in the provinces of the Dutch Republic – the ‘States General’ – met in The Hague on a permanent basis.
The Hague’s emergence as the seat of government was the result of a power struggle between various Dutch cities. The town itself did not have a charter and counted for little, either politically or in relation to Dutch society as a whole, and as a consequence all the cities considered it an acceptable seat of government. The town could not take a seat in the States of Holland or the States General, which meant that the cities could centralise the administrative bureaucracy in The Hague without fearing that the new seat of government would seek to concentrate political power within its confines.
Amsterdam
The fishing village of Amsterdam grew up at the mouth of the river Amstel, likewise in the thirteenth century. In the course of a few centuries it became the largest mercantile city in the province of Holland and ultimately, thanks to its favourable geographical position, the most important city in the Netherlands. In fact, by the seventeenth century, the Dutch ‘Golden Age’, Amsterdam was at the centre of the known world, dominating global trade. Economic prosperity further enabled the city to develop into a leading centre for culture and science.
With the eighteenth century came a drop in the goods trade, but Amsterdam remained the money market of the world and the economic and cultural heart of the Netherlands. By the start of the nineteenth century, however, Amsterdam under French rule had lost its position as the world’s leading trade powerhouse.
In 1806 Napoleon designated his brother Louis Napoleon King of Holland. Napoleon wanted to make Amsterdam the capital of the new kingdom. In 1808, Louis Napoleon took up residence there, and the city on the Amstel became both capital and seat of government for the first and only time in its history.
The centre of political power
Amsterdam did not remain the seat of government for long, however. In 1810, the Kingdom of Holland was annexed by France. Three years later, Napoleon was defeated, and Prince Willem Frederik returned from England as sovereign and took up residence in The Hague.
In 1815 the Netherlands and what is now Belgium united to become the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Amsterdam became the Kingdom’s capital, with the monarch and the government spending one year in Brussels and the next in The Hague.
Following Belgium’s secession from the Netherlands in 1830, the government and the King based themselves permanently in The Hague. To this day, The Hague remains the centre of political power in the Netherlands.
Legal capital of the world
Over the years The Hague has also acquired importance as an international political centre. Aside from the residence of the Queen, the government and the foreign embassies, it also boasts several international institutions, such as the Permanent Court of Arbitration, the International Court of Justice, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court. The Hague has clearly earned its reputation as the ‘legal capital of the world’.

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