officially KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS, Dutch NEDERLAND or KONINKRIJK DER NEDERLANDEN, byname HOLLAND country located in northwestern Europe. The name Holland (from Houtland, or "Wooded Land" was originally given to one of the medieval cores of what later became the modern state and is still used for 2 of its 12 provinces (Noord-Holland and Zuid-Holland). The irregular outline of The Netherlands, not unlike a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, encloses some 16,164 square miles (41,864 square kilometres) of mostly flat land, which lies between the North Sea on the north and west, Germany on the east, and Belgium on the south. Large parts of the total area consist of water, however. Excluding the territorial waters, the land area amounts only to about 13,255 square miles. A parliamentary democracy under a constitutional monarch, the kingdom includes the former colonies of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. The capital is Amsterdam and the seat of government The Hague.
Some 2,500 square miles of The Netherlands consist of reclaimed land, the result of a process of careful water management dating to medieval times. Along the coasts, land was reclaimed from the sea, and, in the interior, lakes and marshes were drained. All of this new land was turned into polders, usually surrounded by dikes. Initially, manpower and horsepower were used to drain the land, but they were later replaced by windmills. The largest schemes were carried out in the second half of the 19th century and in the 20th century, when steam pumps and, later, electric or diesel pumps came into use.
Despite government-encouraged emigration after World War II, which sent some 500,000 persons out of the country, The Netherlands is today one of the world's most densely populated nations. Partly as a result of this emigration, more than one-tenth of the citizens in the late 20th century were over 65 years of age. Amsterdam, nevertheless, has become one of the liveliest centres of the international counterculture of Western youth. This independence of outlook has strong roots in the 16th and 17th centuries, when Dutch merchant ships sailed the world and helped lay the foundations of a great trading nation characterized by a vigorous spirit of enterprise. In later centuries, burgeoning trade and commercial growth further stimulated development of the country.
With Belgium and Luxembourg, The Netherlands is a member of the economic union known as Benelux, in which capital, goods, and people can freely circulate; this union, in fact, served as a model for the larger European Economic Community (EEC; now within the European Communities [EC]), of which the Benelux nations are members. The country is also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Since World War II The Netherlands has become a highly industrialized nation occupying a central position in the economic life of western Europe. Although agriculture accounts for a small percentage of the national income and labour force, it remains a highly specialized contributor to Dutch exports. Because of the scarcity of mineral resources--with the important exception of natural gas--the country is dependent on large imports of basic materials.