Seventeen Provinces: Encyclopedia II - Seventeen Provinces - The 17 Provinces

Seventeen Provinces - The 17 Provinces

The numbers on the map (Fig. 1) corresponds to the following provinces:

1. the county of Artois
2. the county of Flanders (with the cities of Lille, Douai and Orchies)
3. the lordship of Mechelen
4. the county of Namur
5. the county of Hainaut
6. the county of Zeeland
7. the county of Holland
8. the duchy of Brabant (with Antwerp)
9. the duchy of Limburg
10. the duchy of Luxemburg
11. the lordship of Utrecht
12. the lordship of Friesland
13. the duchy of Guelders (after 1543)
14. the lordship of Groningen
15. the county of Drenthe (with Lingen)
16. the lordship of Overijssel
17. the county of Zutphen

The area in blue (between Lille and Mons) corresponds to the city of Tournai, also considered as one of the 17 Provinces. The bishopric of Liège, the green area, is not a member-province.

It was not always the same "seventeen" Provinces represented at the Estates-General of the Netherlands. Sometimes one delegation was included in another. Normally Zutphen was a part of Guelders, and Limburg was depending of Brabant. On the other hand were the French-speaking cities of Flanders sometimes recognised as a separate Province.

In addition, there were a number of fiefdoms in this region that were not part of the Seventeen Provinces, the largest one is the Bishopric of Liège. In the north, there were also a few smaller entities like the island of Ameland, that would retain their own lords until the French revolution.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The 17 Provinces", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki