Capital of the Netherlands Years War, which allowed the city a lot of trade opportunities, but made it unsuitable for the seat of government of the emerging 'rebel' state. Before the institution of the Batavian Republic of 1795 the Netherlands were not a unitary state, but more of a confederation in which the independent provinces and the larger cities and towns were very much politically autonomous. During the seventeenth century, the Prince Stadtholder as official of the States of Holland clashed several times with the city government of Amsterdam about policy, up to the point that the city was beleaguered by the army. Up
Kingdom of the Netherlands into 12 provinces: Drenthe, Flevoland, Friesland, Gelderland, Groningen, Limburg, Noord-Brabant, Noord-Holland, Overijssel, Utrecht, Zeeland, and Zuid-Holland. The provinces are divided into municipalities. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands is Mark Rutte. The Netherlands has the euro as its currency, except in the special municipalities of the Caribbean Netherlands (BES islands), where the Netherlands Antillean guilder was replaced by the US dollar in 2011. The special municipalities of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba (referred to as Caribbean Netherlands or "BES islands") are part of the Netherlands proper but do not form part of a province. They resemble ordinary Dutch municipalities in