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
Suriname (Kingdom of the Netherlands) had propaganda purposes; the Dutch government had the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in mind, and hoped to appease public opinion in the United States, which had become skeptical towards colonialism. After Indonesia became independent, a federal construction was considered too heavy, as the economies of Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles were insignificant compared to that of the Netherlands. In the Charter, as enacted in 1954, Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles each got a Minister Plenipotentiary based in the Netherlands, who had the right to participate in Dutch cabinet meetings when it discussed affairs that applied to the Kingdom as