Home > Provinces of the Netherlands
The modern day Netherlands are divided into twelve provinces (provincies in Dutch), listed below with their capital city:
| Drenthe | Assen |
| Flevoland | Lelystad |
| Friesland | Leeuwarden |
| Gelderland | Arnhem |
| Groningen | Groningen |
| Limburg | MaastrichtMaastricht also spelled Maestricht or Mestreech in local dialect, is a municipality, the oldest city of the Netherlands and capital of the province of Limburg. The city is situated on both sides of the Meuse river Maas in Dutch) in the south-eastern appen |
| North BrabantNorth Brabant ( Dutch: Noord-Brabant is a province of the Netherlands, located in the south of the country, bordered by Belgium in the south, the Meuse River Maas in the north, Limburg in the east and Zeeland in the west. Noord-Brabant Province of the Net | Den Bosch |
| North HollandNorth Holland ( Dutch: Noord-Holland is a province of the Netherlands, located in the northwest part of the country. Its capital is Haarlem. Other cities include the country's capital Amsterdam, Hilversum, Alkmaar and Zaandam. Geography North Holland form | HaarlemHaarlem is a city in the west of the Netherlands, capital of the North Holland province. The city is located by the river Spaarne, about 20 km west of Amsterdam and near the coastal dunes. It is the center of a flower-growing district and the export point |
| OverijsselOverijssel is a province of the Netherlands, located in the central eastern part of the country. Geography The capital city is Zwolle. Other major cities include Almelo, Deventer, Enschede and Hengelo. There are three regions in Overijssel: Salland (in th | ZwolleZwolle is a municipality and the capital city of the province of Overijssel, Netherlands, 50 miles northeast of Amsterdam. Zwolle has about 110,000 citizens and is one of the most important cities in the northern and eastern parts of the country. History |
| South HollandThis article is about the province of the Netherlands. For the town in the United States, see South Holland, Illinois; for the district of Lincolnshire, see South Holland, England South Holland ( Dutch Zuid-Holland is a province of the Netherlands, locate | Den Haag |
| Utrecht | Utrecht |
| Zeeland | Middelburg |
See also the ranked list of Dutch provinces
1 Structure
A Dutch province represents the administrative layer in between the national government and the local municipalities, having the responsibility for matters of subnational or regional importance. The government of each province consists of three major parts: the Provinciale Staten which is the provincial parliament elected every four years. Elected from its members are the Gedeputeerde Staten, a college charged with most executive tasks, presided by the Commissaris van de Koningin or royal commissioner, appointed by the Crown.
2 Historical background
Nearly all Dutch provinces can trace their origin to a mediaeval state such as a county or a duchy, as can the provinces of Belgium. Their status changed when they came under a single ruler who centralised their administration, somewhat relegating the separate states to provinces, 17 in total. From these unified Netherlands, seven northern provinces would form the Republic of the Seven United Provinces in the 16th century, namely Holland, Zeeland, Gelderland, Utrecht, Friesland, Overijssel and Groningen. The Republic's lands also included Drenthe (one of the 17, but without the autonomous status of the others), and parts of Brabant, Limburg and Flanders, which were considered to be "conquered lands" and were governed directly by the Staten-Generaal, the parliament. They were called Staats-Brabant, Staats-Limburg and Staats-Vlaanderen, meaning "of the state". Each of these "Netherlands" had a high degree of autonomy, co-operating with each other mainly on defense and on the international level in general, but keeping to their own affairs elsewhere.
On January 1, 1796, during the Batavian Republic, Drenthe and Staats-Brabant became the eighth and ninth provinces of the Netherlands; the latter known as Bataafs Brabant, Batavian Brabant, changing its name to Noord Brabant, North Brabant, in 1815 when it became part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, which also contained (then) South Brabant, a province in Belgium. This new unified state featured the provinces in their modern form, as non-autonomous subdivisions of the national state, and again numbering 17 provinces, though not all the same as the 16th century ones. In 1839, with the independence of Belgium, the original single province of Limburg was divided amongst the two countries, each now having a province called Limburg. A year later, Holland, the largest and most populous of the Dutch provinces, was also split into two provinces for a total of 11. The 12th member was to be Flevoland, a province consisting almost entirely of reclaimed land, established on January 1, 1986.
