The formation and consolidation of the Dutch National Security State

This chapter complements the hitherto dominant account of Dutch state formation in terms of the forging of a consociational and consensus democracy by exploring how the formation of the institutions, culture, and practices of a Dutch national security state took shape. It observes that the Netherlands has long not been as peaceful or stable as the dominant narrative has implied. Pace and stability had to be actively forged and then consolidated. This chapter therefore retraces the historical trajectory of the institutionalization of Dutch national security from the inception of the first nation state around 1800 up until the 1940s, when Dutch national security was subsumed in the international and collective security institutions and organizations of the Western military and economic alliances.