France–Netherlands relations
diplomatic relations between the French Republic and the Kingdom of the Netherlands
France and the Netherlands maintain interstate and bilateral relations. The two countries share a border division in the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, to which the northern part of the island is a French overseas collectivity known as the Collectivity of Saint Martin, while the southern part of the island is a Dutch constituent country known as Sint Maarten. Relations between the two countries date back to the 17th and 18th centuries when a conflict led to the transformation of the Dutch Republic to the Batavian Republic and eventually the Kingdom of Holland. Both nations were major European colonial powers in Southeast Asia between the Dutch in Indonesia (East Indies) and the French in Vietnam (Cochinchina, part of Indochina). The two countries currently enjoy close cultural and economic relations. Both nations are members of the OECD and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, as well as founding members of the Council of Europe, the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations.
History
Background
Close ties between France and the Netherlands already existed in the late Middle Ages. Large parts of what is now the Netherlands belonged to the Burgundian domain at that time, ruled by the House of Valois-Burgundy, a cadet branch of the French royal House of Valois. French was used as the court and cultural language at the court of the Dukes of Burgundy, who ruled both France and the Netherlands in the 15th century.
From the 1560s, France and the Dutch Republic considered themselves to be allies until 1668 when the Dutch Republic formed the Triple Alliance with the Kingdom of England and the Swedish Empire to revolt against Louis XIV of France's expansion in the War of Devolution in support of the Spanish Empire, whom France succeeded as the strongest nation in Europe.
“France–Netherlands relations” enters the record as diplomatic relations between the French Republic and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what France, Netherlands and relations can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “France–Netherlands relations” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.