In the 16th the Low Countries (corresponding
roughly to the modern day countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg)
were struggling to become a country of their own, and win freedom of religion.
Calvinism had begun to spread, and Charles V, the King of Spain, who owned the
title to the lands, called down the Inquisition on the region to try and halt
the spread of the ‘heresy’. Most cities in the Low Countries were governed by
guilds and councils, which elected a ruler, known as the ‘Steward’ or ‘Stadtholder’.
Many provinces would elect one person to be their Steward jointly, but the
position was not initially hereditary. Charles’s son, Philip II, tried to centralize
the government of the region, which was opposed as well. In 1566 he had to send
the Duke of Alva into the region to put down rebellion in the country. The
United Provinces of the Low Countries elected Prince William of Orange as their
leader, and thus began the 40 Years War. He was assassinated in 1584, and his
second son, Maurice, took over the fight. He was 17 at the time.
England came to the aid of the Low Countries, and then
France. By 1609 a truce had been established. In 1648 the Republic of the Seven
United Netherlands was recognized as their own country as part of the Treaty of
Westphalia. The Dutch struggle for independence had lasted eighty years.
In a northern city called Hoorn, in the Netherlands, they
found a subtle way of protesting the interference from the Kings of Spain... by
growing carrots. Orange carrots. Only orange carrots. This protest ‘took root’
and spread all over the region, but so subtly that there isn’t any record
stating explicitly why. Everywhere else people were growing yellow, red, white
and purple varieties as well. The 'Horn' variety of carrots comes from there.
So, why did orange become the only colour for carrots in the
modern, Western world?
The Reformed Church (a version of Calvinist Protestantism)
became the de-facto church in the new Republic. Catholicism was banned, or at
least taxed heavily, depending on the different policies of the individual provinces.
In 1654 England went to war with the Republic of the Seven
United Netherlands over trade, only six years after they helped to ratify the
agreement that established the country. England still had reduced trade with
Spain, while the Republic, ever-pragmatic, started up full trade relations with
Spain. Plus, the English had just suffered through a bitter civil war, and
every facet of life in that country had been disrupted. The Republic lost the
First Anglo-Dutch War, and as part of the negotiations, Oliver Cromwell, the
Lord Protector of England, had a secret annexe put on the treaty which forbade
the Republic from ever electing a representative of the House of Orange to the
position of Stadtholder ever again.
First William, then his sons Maurice and Frederick Henry,
and then William II and his son William III of the house of Orange, were seen
as defenders and upholders of Protestantism. All of them were extremely competent generals
and statesmen as well.
After what the Dutch call the ‘Year of Disaster’, 1672, when
Louis XIV invaded the Republic and forced them to cede land, the collective
provinces decided that the treaty they had signed with Oliver Cromwell was
defunct as he wasn’t around to enforce it anymore. They elected William III as Stadtholder, who
had already made himself King of England, Scotland and Ireland through marriage
to Mary II (the daughter of James II, king of England, and his first cousin on
his mother’s side), a shrewd military mind (see The Battle of the Boyne), and
some deft political negotiations (the Glorious Revolution of 1688).
What this meant was that Protestantism remained the dominant
form of Christianity in all of these countries, and the Republic remained free
to conduct trade throughout Europe and all of the colonies. The House of Orange
was at the head of the richest and most powerful trading and military empire in
Europe.
Religious factions remained bitterly opposed in England, and
in Ireland, the northern part of the island had just been recently entirely
depopulated of Catholics (by killing, selling into slavery, and those who saw
it coming running away) and then re-populated with the ‘troublesome’ Border
Scots, who happened to be extremely Protestant. Also, in Ireland, most of the
land was owned by Protestant lords, both in the North and South. In England,
Catholics were denied the right to vote and sit in the Wesminister Parliament,
and they could not hold commissions in the army for over a century. The ban on
the British Monarch from being a Catholic or marrying one was only repealed in
2013.
In Northern Ireland, the ‘Orange Order’ continues to this
day as a Protestant fraternal organization, which once had branches all over
North America. It’s not as popular in these times, when Protestant and Catholic
aren’t at each other’s throats as much anymore, at least, outside of Ireland.
Humans are well-known to engage in symbolic eating, whether
consciously or subconsciously. In the Netherlands the orange carrot remained a
symbol well into the late 18th Century, when it was against the law
to display the roots at market ‘too prominently’, as it was a symbolic gesture
of support for the monarchy… The House of Orange.
Everywhere else, the Horn carrot and its progeny were sweet, of good quality, and a very homogenous colour, even if the symbolic origins were forgotten over time. And Dutch farming was synonymous with quality products.
