Abstract
By describing their present as enlightened, eighteenth-century intellectuals inevitably altered their relationship to the past. In search of an explanation for this Enlightenment, eighteenth-century philosophes created a historical narrative which connected European countries in a linear history from antiquity, through the barbarous Middle Ages, to the progress of the scientific revolution and, finally, to the enlightened present in which seventeenth-century knowledge was perceived as increasingly benefiting society as a whole. Even though this narrative served as a shared European history and identity, national varieties soon emerged. In the context of this European enlightened narrative, the Dutch Republic formed an extraordinary case, which has not been adequately researched from this broad international perspective. In the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic, the enlightened historical narrative of progress collided with a simultaneous debate on national decline and with a deeply rooted humanistic tradition. Dutch intellectuals, moreover, were suddenly forced to reconsider their national identity. The Batavian myth, which for two centuries had served as the primary historical foundation of their national identity, increasingly came to be viewed as barbaric in the light of the new enlightened narrative. As a consequence, the concept of a seventeenth-century Golden Age - still with us today - was invented. It replaced the Batavian myth with a celebration of seventeenth-century Dutch economic prosperity, commercial politeness and moral rectitude more in line with the requirements of enlightened historical thought.