Civic culture, patrimonial state en sociaal kapitaal: De stad-Groninger elite in de zeventiende eeuw

How did the city of Groningen become a part of the Netherlands? For a long time it was unclear whether Groningen was to be a part of the Dutch or the German territories, but after 1594 Groningen definitely became a part of Dutch Republic. Not willingly however, and in the early seventeenth century troops were sent regularly from The Hague to to force the city into obedience. That was rather difficult, because the city was not easy to force. Therefore, the government in The Hague also tried to impose its authority by strenghtening its ties to the administrative elite in the city. In this thesis, this administrative elite has been studied in the century after Groningen joined the Republic. The prevailing view is that there was a family government, a so called patrimonial state. In a patrimonial state the heads of the families occupy the key positions on local, but also at federal level. Because they merged local and federal positions these family heads were important in the process of state building. In Groningen however, as this theis shows,there was no clear family government or patrimonial state. This was partly due to demographic reasons: because of a high mortality, families could not hold a position for more than three generations. Moreover, there was a broad-based civic culture of commitment to the city government and for that reason citizens tried to prevent a total control of a limited number of families on the city government. The civic culture was reflected in the participation of citizens in various urban institutions. This was the social capital of the city, which was not only able to bond people together, but also to form a bridge between the city and the federal government. In this way, the social capital of the city furthered its integration in the Dutch Republic.