{"id":259,"date":"2006-12-20T06:18:08","date_gmt":"2006-12-20T05:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=259"},"modified":"2006-12-20T06:18:08","modified_gmt":"2006-12-20T05:18:08","slug":"forgotten-world-53-the-netherlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=259","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten world (53): The Netherlands"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Netherlands\">Netherlands<\/a> &#8211; a nation of just over 16 million &#8211; is often referred to by the name Holland. This is not terminologically precise, as the provinces of North and South Holland in the western Netherlands are only two of the country&#8217;s 12 provinces.<br \/>\nIn the 17th century, the country was a great maritime nation which rivalled England which is why the English language has so many derogatory terms about the Dutch (such as &#8220;Dutch courage&#8221;).<br \/>\nThe bitter experience of invasion and occupation during World War II led the Netherlands to abandon neutrality in 1945 and become a leading supporter of international cooperation. Although their country has traditionally been one of the keener advocates of the European Union, Dutch voters echoed those in France when a referendum spurned the proposed EU constitution in 2005.<br \/>\nIn the post-war years, the Netherlands has been noted for its relaxed liberal policies towards drugs, prostitution, same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia. However, this reputation is being challenged by growing anti-immigrant sentiments and the killing of the poltician Kim Fortuyn and the film-maker Theo van Gogh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Netherlands &#8211; a nation of just over 16 million &#8211; is often referred to by the name Holland. This is not terminologically precise, as the provinces of North and South Holland in the western Netherlands are only two of the country&#8217;s 12 provinces. In the 17th century, the country was a great maritime nation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}