British historian Simon Schama has been invited to give the annual Huizinga lecture, on the 9th of December. His subject: ‘What happened to toleration’. Nrc went to see him in New York where he teaches history and history of art at Columbia University.

Simon Schama, who has written extensively about the Netherlands – books include Patriots and Liberators, The Embarrassment of Riches and Rembrandt’s eyes – confesses that in spite of ample experience of the Dutch and their ways he has never been quite able to understand what makes them tick.
Hesitant
‘I have often wondered why the Dutch are so hesitant to speak about their identity, almost as if it were something shameful’, he says.
To a foreigner like Schama it seems perfectly obvious that the Dutch are different from say, the British or the Americans. In his book The Embarrassment of Riches, a history of the Dutch golden age, Schama writes ‘Dutch painters used the same pigments as their Flemish and Italian counterparts and yet the end result was unmistakably different.’ ‘That particular accent is what constitutes Dutch culture’, Schama says.
Limits of tolerance
The inspiration for his lecture comes from his fascination for the limits of tolerance and how tolerant we should be in the face of intolerance. ‘It’s a subject that has been hotly debated in the Netherlands since the death of Theo van Gogh in 2004 but it also played a major part in the time of the Dutch Republic’, he explains.
Although tolerance was considered a good thing, it was mostly thanks to the decentralised way the Republic was governed and the limited powers of the Reformed Church that Jewish and Catholic communities could flourish in the 17th century, Schama says. ‘Pragmatism preceded the ideal of tolerance. It was the result of a considerable dose of economic opportunism, especially where the Jewish minority was concerned.’
‘We find ourselves in the 17th century once again. There is religious fundamentalism but also intolerance towards religions. The present clash between tolerance and fundamentalism in not one I saw coming. When I was a student in the fifties my teacher said the role of religion as an institution would be played out by the end of the century.’
‘Verzuiling’
Schama thinks it is the fact that Dutch society was divided up into different religious affiliations (‘verzuiling’) with people more or less happy to cooperate with each other that made the absorption of immigrants more difficult. ‘It came as a shock to the Dutch that a group of relative newcomers refused to conform to the rules of ‘verzuiling’. It is what distinguishes the Netherlands from other European countries.’
Vague
When asked about Geert Wilders, Schama is dismissive. ‘His is a protest movement like many others, based on a vague sense of unease. It’s never really clear what they stand for. Wilders is against Islam, what is he going to do, deport all Muslims? Make them swear an oath of allegiance? It’s all so terribly vague.’
Schama hopes that the Dutch ambivalence about identity will generate a debate that will do away with some of its myths. ‘Do mosques really go against the Dutch grain? I don’t believe it for one minute. The Netherlands was the first European country to allow synagogues. It’s fine to have a diversity of religious communities. It only becomes a problem if a madrassa in Rotterdam starts to preach jihad against the democratic state.’