Was Holland a Spanish colony at one time?
From the 10th century to the 16th century, Holland proper was a unified political region, a county ruled by the Count of Holland. By the 17th century, Holland had risen to become a maritime and economic power, dominating the other provinces of the Dutch Republic. The proper name of the area in both Dutch and English is “Holland”. “Holland” is a part of the Netherlands. “Holland” is informally used in English and other languages, including sometimes the Dutch language itself, to mean the whole of the modern country of the Netherlands [4] (this example of pars pro toto or synecdoche is similar to the tendency to refer to the United Kingdom as “England”. The Spanish Netherlands (Dutch: Spaanse Nederlanden, Spanish: Países Bajos españoles) was a portion of the Low Countries controlled by Spain from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. When part of the Netherlands separated from Spanish rule and became the United Provinces in 1581 the remainder of the area became known as the Spanish Ne
