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Good afternoon dear Orion fellow citizens,

This article is to introduce you our beloved Netherlands. We believe that it is nice to know each other better, and what a better way to start than briefly explaining you where we live and how we do things. It will be composed of two short parts, first a quick introduction to the real life Dutch culture and then a quick recap on eDutch history.



Real Life Netherlands

First, a bit of context. The Netherlands is a small kingdom situated in the center-north of Europe, right next to Belgium and Germany. Both neighbours have influenced us and we share some traits with them. It is important to know that the Netherlands is not the same as Holland. Holland is a region, probably the most famous one, of a bigger country named the Netherlands, or Nederland in our native dutch.

Even though its relatively small size, with only 17 million citizens, it is an international political and economic power. Its GDP is top 20 worldwide and its GDP per capita always close to breach into top 10. It hosts the International court in The Hague, organ of the UN and stands as a major voice in the EU. Other examples include the major airport Schiphol and the ports in Rotterdam.

The Netherlands is truly an economic power, some major companies you may know from our country are Shell, ING Group and Airbus. Amsterdam is also known for having the first example of what would be considered today a stock market. It was started by the Dutch East India Company (VOC in Dutch) to exchange stocks and bonds of this same company.




Due to our comercial nature, we are a very international society. Amsterdam has only 50% of its population with Dutch ancestry. This number rises to 80% if you take into account the whole country, but still truly a multicultural and diverse country. Around 90% of dutch citizens can speak English to a basic level, that is why it is so easy to communicate with us in this game. Most parts of ingame interactions are conducted in this language.

Apart from money we are also good at making dams and cheese. The Netherlands is currently below sea level and it tries to gain terrain to the water but making huge dams everywhere it can. For cheeses, you need to try Gouda, it is done in many varieties and flavours.
Oosterscheldekering, considered one of the biggest engineering achievements in modern history



eRepublik history of the eNetherlands

The eNetherlands is a country that has been in eRepublik ever since the beginning. Population growth fueled by a rivalry between two Dutch online forms made sure of the country having one of the highest populations back in the day. Having joined PEACE in 2008 (and later PHOENI😵 the eNL uniquely merged with it neighbour eBelgium in the ''United Kingdom of the Netherlands''. With the introduction of Resistance Wars however, the Union fell apart in 2010.

This introduced darker times in the eNetherlands. Starting in 2011, ePoland attacked and occupied the eNL numerous times. The population was falling, eNL was internationally isolated and the remaining souls fought in petty political fights only hurting the cause more. Eventually a controversial rental deal was reached with Poland, assuring a bit of independence.

Poland turned out to be a good ally to eNL (up to this day) and eventually they agreed to release all regions. However, Poland's former role was taken up by eHungary who attacked and occupied us once again. However, this occupation only lasted a short while and ever since the start of 2015 the eNetherlands has been in full control of its cores.

This caused a small 'Dutch Spring' so to say. Activity returned, the eNetherlands joined Orion and was involved in numerous conflicts (wars with Norway, Germany, Italy, UK, Croatia are a few examples). With the declining activity of eRepublik however, the eNetherlands has been damaged a lot and longing back to earlier times.



This is a brief introduction to our small but lovely country, we hope you enjoyed it and it piqued your curiosity.

Sincerely, the eDutch FA team.