II. Schools and Politics in the Netherlands, 1796–1814

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Abstract
By 1811, just a year after the annexation of their national territory to the French Empire, the Dutch had organized the most effective and comprehensive system of elementary education in Europe. How had this been accomplished? Not, at any rate, in emulation of their former neighbours. At the zenith of its power, Imperial France had nothing to show for years of speculation and derelict legislation except the return of responsibility for the ‘écoles primaires’ to the Church. The respective condition of the two states made this contrast still more emphatic. France commanded financial and administrative resources which the most absolute of her monarchs would have coveted; the Dutch were exhausted by fiscal penury and torn by bitter political division.

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