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Kingdom of the Netherlands
I will uphold
Prince Henry
of Mecklenburg
William of Wied
Hamengkubuwono VII
Ernest
of Lippe-Biesterfeld
Jan Joseph Godfried
van Voorst tot Voorst
Adolph Frederik
Lodewijk van
Rechteren Limpurg
Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek
Moolam Thirunal
of Travancore
Alauddin Muhammad Da'ud Syah II
Frederik van Bylandt
The Congress of Vienna added the southern Netherlands to the north to create a strong country on the northern border of France. William Frederick raised this United Netherlands to the status of a kingdom and proclaimed himself as King William I in 1815. William became hereditary Grand Duke of Luxembourg in exchange for his German possessions. However, the Southern Netherlands had been culturally separate from the north since 1581, and rebelled. The south gained independence in 1830 as Belgium (recognised by the Northern Netherlands in 1839 as the Kingdom of the Netherlands was created by decree), while the personal union between Luxembourg and the Netherlands was severed in 1890, when William III died with no surviving male heirs. Ascendancy laws prevented his daughter Queen Wilhelmina from becoming the next Grand Duchess. The Belgian Revolution and the Java War in the Dutch East Indies brought the Netherlands to the brink of bankruptcy. However, the Cultivation System was introduced in 1830; in the Dutch East Indies, 20% of village land had to be devoted to government crops for export. The policy brought the Dutch enormous wealth and made the colony self-sufficient. The Netherlands abolished slavery in its colonies in 1863. Enslaved people in Suriname would be fully free only in 1873. The
Dutch empire comprised the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), as well as Suriname in South America and some minor possessions. The empire was run from Batavia (in Java), where the governor and his technical experts had almost complete authority with little oversight from The Hague. Successive governors improved their bureaucratic and military controls, and allowed very little voice to the locals. The colony brought economic opportunity to the mother country and there was little concern at the time about it. The military forces in the Dutch East Indies were controlled by the governor and were not part of the regular Dutch army. As the map shows, the Dutch slowly expanded their holdings from their base in Java to include all of modern Indonesia. Most islands were not a problem. The Aceh war (1873–1913) was a long, costly campaign against the Achin (Aceh) state in northern Sumatra.
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