Just as now, as early as in the seventeenth century, the Netherlands and Poland maintained close contacts in a wide range of areas, from trade and diplomacy to religion and science. At the same time, Polish and Dutch people developed various ideas about each other. Literary and cultural historian Paul Hulsenboom wrote a PhD dissertation on these mutual Polish-Dutch perceptions.
Peasants and barbarians
He examined sources such as Dutch, Polish, and Latin travelogues, poems and pamphlets, prints, maps, and paintings. Many of these sources had never been studied before. Together, they reveal the ways in which the two countries were represented. Whereas some Poles dismissed the Dutch as heretic peasants, the Dutch frequently portrayed the Polish people as uncultured savages.
Alongside these negative stereotypes, however, there were also more positive perspectives. For example, the Dutch praised Poland as a crucial trading partner and protector of Christianity against the Ottoman Empire. On the other hand, many Poles were impressed by the nature and rich cities of the Netherlands, or by the military prowess and the desire for freedom of the Dutch. Hulsenboom: “The narrative an author or artist used depended mainly on their background and interests.”
Hulsenboom stresses that imagery was often deliberately deployed for political and commercial purposes, for example by diplomats, but it could also have a more subtle impact. “Some Dutch scholars praised their Polish students or colleagues by saying they were surprised that Poles could be so smart and erudite at all.”
East and West
Crucially, moreover, the mental division of Europe began to shift in the seventeenth century. “Originally, Poland was classified among the northern countries,” says Hulsenboom, “where the nobility consumed a lot of alcohol, loved opulence to excess, and were violent, and where the common people were oppressed and living in abysmal conditions.”
