A better one would be for people to identify the capital of Switzerland. Or both capitals of The Netherlands.
And we only got one capital, by the way. We just don't allow the government in it. Not permanently at least. And neither is the King a residential of the capital.
We've got two large cities who both have the ego and attitude for a capital. One, though, already has one of the largest harbours in the world, so we had to give the title of capital to the other one. Or else they just wouldn't shut up.
To balance things we put the government smack in the middle between them.
That way the rest of the country can go their way without being bothered by them.
So that's how it happened.
No, it's actually not how it happened. Anyway, kudos to you Travis for knowing there's something funny about the Dutch capital.
The Hague - in Dutch 's-Gravenhage or Den Haag - was the traditional court of the Count of Holland, and thus also became the residence of the States of Holland, the "parliament" of the county. The Hague, at the time, wasn't even a walled city, and it never got
city rights in a time that those mattered.
In the middle of the 16th Century, the Spanish King had collected all of the counties/duchies/bishoprics which correspond to nowadays Netherlands and Belgium and Luxembourg, and had made a joint parliament for those provinces, called the States General.
When the seven northern provinces revolted against the Spanish King, from 1568 on, they assembled their own States General, and the obvious place for these to assemble was The Hague, as Holland was by far the most powerful of these revolting provinces. It was also close to Delft, where William of Orange had chosen residence.
Amsterdam was out of the question to become residence at the time, because, unlike the other cities in Holland, it had not chosen immediately to side with the revolt against Spain; it only did so in 1578, i.e., 10 years after the start of the revolt. Amsterdam, at that time, was already the biggest city in Holland and in the Netherlands, with nearly 30,000 inhabitants. Rotterdam, by comparison, only had 10,000 inhabitants, and I would not be surprised if there were other cities bigger than Rotterdam at the time. It simply was one of the many cities in Holland, and had a modest port. During the Dutch Republic (1568-1795), Amsterdam would grow to over 200,000 inhabitants, while Rotterdam never had more than 50,000.
After the "French period", 1795-1813, when the Netherlands was a French vassal state and later part of France, the Kingdom of the Netherlands was established, and it was obvious that Amsterdam should be the nominal capital, being the largest and most important city, and The Hague remained the residence of the government as it had always been. Rotterdam didn't come into the equation: the rise of Rotterdam to be the second-largest city only occurred after 1872, when the Nieuwe Waterweg, the still current canal linking Rotterdam with the sea was dug to replace the shallow sea lanes that had been in use before.
) powerhouse of the world. So why don't Brits and Germans and Japanese know that the capital of New York State is Albany, rather than New York City? How many know that Washington DC is something more than a city and yet not a state? Yet, there it lies, probably the most influential piece of real-estate on the planet?
