Holland, historical region of the Netherlands, divided since 1840 into the provinces of Noord-Holland (North Holland) and Zuid-Holland (South Holland). It constitutes the flat, low-lying northwestern portion of the modern country.
Holland originated in the early 12th century as a fief of the Holy Roman Empire and was ruled by a dynasty of counts that traced its origin to the 9th century. These nobles had reemerged in the 10th century after Viking devastation of the coastal area had ended, and they proceeded to expand their territory of present Noord-Holland northward, at the expense of the Frisians, and eastward and southward, which involved them in a series of wars with the bishops of Utrecht. The name Holland perhaps derives from the region around Dordrecht, which was known as Holtland (“Wooden Land”).
Dirk III, the third in the line of the early counts of Holland, conquered much of what is now Zuid-Holland from the bishops of Utrecht; he defeated their forces and an imperial army in 1018 at Vlaardingen, a fortification that he had erected to levy river tolls on traffic in the Meuse (Maas) River delta. Under Dirk’s descendants Holland reached its final frontiers by the 13th century, although it gained possession of Zeeland in 1323.
In 1170 Holland’s physical shape was altered by flooding, a devastation that helped to form the Zuiderzee (now the IJsselmeer). William II, count of Holland from 1234 to 1256, promoted land reclamation, pressed for the maintenance of waterways and dikes, and encouraged municipal development by granting trading privileges to the growing towns of the county. He was also elected German king in 1247 by the opponents of Conrad IV in Germany. The family line of the ancestor of the house of Holland, Dirk I (who had received the original feudal land from the Carolingian Charles III the Simple in 922) continued until 1299—a line of 14 descendants. At that time John I of Avesnes, count of Hainaut and a relative of John I, the last of the old house of the counts of Holland, took the title of John II of Holland, uniting Holland with Hainaut to the south.
During the succeeding rule of the house of Avesnes, economic prosperity was promoted by extensive land reclamation, and the towns profited by growing trade and fishery enterprises. A disputed succession on the death of William IV (1345) led to a prolonged civil war between factions known as the Hooks (Hoeken) and the Cods (Kabeljauwen), who came to represent rival aristocratic and middle-class parties, respectively. The issue was finally settled with the intervention of the house of Wittelsbach, whose members served as counts of Holland, Zeeland, and Hainaut until forced to give up the titles to Philip III the Good, duke of Burgundy, in 1433.
Under the Burgundian line of counts, Holland’s material prosperity increased continually owing to the thriving herring fishery and the development of the carrying trade. Under Philip’s son, Charles the Bold, Holland suffered from heavy taxation, however, and, after Charles’s death in 1477 and the collapse of the central government, Holland, along with other Burgundian possessions, passed to the Habsburgs (1482). Philip IV the Handsome (Philip I of Spain), grandson of Charles the Bold, came of age in 1494, and the territory of Holland prospered under his rule for 12 years. Upon his death, his son Charles II (later Holy Roman emperor Charles V) succeeded him. In 1555 Charles abdicated rule of the Netherlands in favour of his son, the future Philip II of Spain.
In 1559 William I of Orange (William the Silent) was appointed stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht by Philip II. Under William’s leadership Holland and Zeeland in 1572 became the centre of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain. Holland, along with the six other northern Netherlands provinces, declared its independence from Spain in 1579, proclaiming the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The last vestiges of the old order disappeared at the end of 1587, when Holland became one of the sovereign provinces of the seven United Provinces. The province of Holland during the 17th and 18th centuries was governed by its states. After 1608 this assembly consisted of 19 delegations, 1 representing the nobility and 18 the towns, each having a single vote. Important questions such as peace and war, the voting of subsidies, and the imposition of taxation required unanimous approval in the estates. During periods when the estates was not in session, the continuous supervision of the province was confided to a group of deputed councillors, who were charged with its general administration as well as with the carrying out of the resolutions of the estates.
In the 17th century, Holland was the dominant power in the Dutch Republic, and, during the next 100 years, its capital, Amsterdam, became Europe’s foremost commercial centre. Because of this predominance, both the Republic and the present Kingdom of the Netherlands are often called “Holland”; but this name as applied to the whole country is proper only for the Napoleonic Kingdom of Holland, which occupied the territory of the old republic between 1806 and 1810. See also Noord-Holland; Zuid-Holland.