Exiles and the Politics of Reintegration in the Dutch Revolt

The civil war in the sixteenth‐century Low Countries, generally known as the Dutch revolt, generated dramatic streams of refugees. Whereas scholars in the past have devoted much attention to the exile experience of Protestants in particular, the circumstances surrounding the return of these refugees to the Netherlands have remained largely unexplored. This article focuses on the repatriation and reintegration of Protestant exiles in the province of Holland in the years 1572–80. It seeks to assess what strategies returning exiles developed to regain their possessions and respectability in local communities and shows how they adopted rituals of cleansing to reinforce their social rehabilitation. It can be demonstrated that the exiles consciously used the houses and properties of their Catholic enemies to mark their re‐entry in Holland society. By appropriating possessions of escaped Catholic citizens, the former ‘victims’ of the Habsburg regime sought material compensation and styled themselves as members of a new civic elite. In this way two contrasting streams of refugees became symbolically connected because it was fugitive Catholics who provided returning Protestants with the tools to turn themselves from outlaws into the icons of the nascent Dutch Republic.