A nation of drunkards
History has saddled the Low Countries with a more or less hereditary reputation for drunkenness. Greek and Roman writers like Hippocrates, Galen and Vitruvius developed a theory on the subject based on climate. They explained the different lifestyles of the various peoples as a product of their natural surroundings, the type of soil, water, wind and air. The Batavians, according to classical authors, had a number of negative characteristics: greed and alcohol abuse being chief among them. This was blamed on the circumstances in which they lived, since they ate and drank to combat the cold.
Dutch Courage
This image of a nation of drunkards continued to stay with the Dutch. Even in the seventeenth century they were notorious for their alcohol abuse. The British, who lived in similar climatic conditions, were also heavy drinkers but had to admit that ‘an
English man is sooner, a Dutch longer drunk’. In another revealing aphorism, the British explained that ‘we are drinkers, they are soakers’. Dutch courage remains a commonly used expression for alcohol-induced bravery.
The Spaniards blamed the rebellious character of the Dutch in part on their excessive drinking. Vasquez commented, for example, that ‘the vice of immoderate drinking often robs them [...] of all mental capacity and it is sad that such a thickly populated
country [...] should have lapsed from God and participated in heresy, and disobeyed its rightful ruler and king’. Debauchery as an explanation for Holland’s lust for liberty.
Myth or reality?
The accounts of foreigners who visited the Dutch Republic are vivid: it was a country in which people drank in excess. But was it? Were the inhabitants of the Netherlands in a constant state of inebriation? Probably not. Although alcohol consumption -
especially beer - is considerably lower today than it was in the seventeenth century, the Republic was a nation in the process of unprecedented economic growth. This would hardly have been possible if its population had been in a continual state of
intoxication. The Golden Age was certainly no Drunken Age.