Editing Batavian Republic (section)

===Historiography note===
[[File:Johan Heinrich Neuman - Johan Rudolf Thorbecke.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Johan Rudolph Thorbecke]]]]
According to the British historian [[Simon Schama]], the Batavian Republic has been controversially treated by historians.<ref>Schama, pp. 15–23</ref> After the end of the [[Netherlands in World War II|Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II]], some historians{{Efn|Schama does not name names, but refers for an iconic example to an article in a 1950 issue of the popular Dutch weekly ''Elseviers Weekblad'', in which the Batavians are called "the NSBers of the eighteenth century".<ref>Schama, p. 16.</ref>}} saw a parallel between the [[National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands|Dutch National Socialist Movement]] (NSB) and the Patriot revolutionaries, while they pictured William V in the heroic role of [[Wilhelmina of the Netherlands|Queen Wilhelmina]] and her government-in-exile. However, Dutch historian [[Pieter Geyl]] opposed such comparisons in his ''Patriotten en NSBers: een historische parallel'' (1946).<ref>Schama, p. 16 and fn. 40.</ref>

Still, by that time the Batavians had already had a bad press in Dutch history writing. This may be explained by the fact that the old ideological struggle between the monarchically-oriented Orangist party and its successive opponents of a more "republican" bent (going back to at least the conflict between [[Johan van Oldenbarnevelt]] and [[Maurice, Prince of Orange|Prince Maurice]]), of which the Patriots were only the latest incarnation, was being refought in the standard works of 19th-century Dutch historians like [[Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer]], who saw plenty to despise in the "popular-sovereignty" philosophy of the Patriot radicals. In his turn Groen was very influential on the way [[John Lothrop Motley]] depicted the old Dutch Republic for an American audience.<ref>Schama, pp. 17–18</ref>

Motley did not get to deal explicitly with the Batavian Republic, but the way his collaborator [[William Elliot Griffis]] dismissed the Patriots speaks for itself: "…whether under the name of the 'Batavian Republic', the Kingdom of Holland, or the provinces of the French empire, the French occupation was virtually a French conquest that had little permanent influence on Dutch history or character."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Griffis |first=William Elliot |author-link=William Elliot Griffis |title=Motley's Dutch Nation: Being the Rise of the Dutch Republic (1555–1584) |date=1908 |page=898}}</ref>

However most, if not all, characteristics of the current centralized state of the [[Kingdom of the Netherlands]] were foreshadowed by the accomplishments of the Batavian Republic, not least the liberal [[Constitution of the Netherlands#History|1848 Constitution]]. That constitution restored the central tenets of the democratic ''Staatsregeling'' of 1798, under the guise of a [[Constitutional monarchy]], as its author [[Johan Rudolph Thorbecke]] acknowledged.<ref>Schama, p. 22.</ref>