Guillaume Groen Van Prinsterer - Publications

Publications

By the time the revolutionary movement in Europe had begun to break out in various cities, the monarchist and restorationist secretary to the Dutch king began lecturing on the spiritual-political crisis of the Continent. Groen also was ready to publish. He had begun to do so with his Overview of 1831, his Essay on Truth of 1834, a manuscript harder to date precisely but entitled Studies on the revolution, his Prolegomena of 1847 (the following year Karl Marx issued the Communist Manifesto). Groen's most influential work Lectures on Unbelief and Revolution appeared in an initial edition in 1847, and then a revised edition of 1868; there were subsequent editions as well. In time he founded an intellectual Christian political circle among the upper classes, through which Groen tried to teach the political responsibility of such people. He also founded a newspaper.

He is best known as the editor of the Archives et correspondence de la maison d'Orange (12 vols, 1835-1845), a great work of patient erudition, which procured for him the title of the Dutch Gachard. JL Motley acknowledges his indebtedness to Groen's Archives in the preface to his Rise of the Dutch Republic, at a time when the American historian had not yet made the acquaintance of King William's archivist, and also bore emphatic testimony to Groen's worth as a writer of history in the correspondence published after his death.

At the first reception, in 1858, of Motley at the royal palace at the Hague, the king presented him with a copy of Groen's Archives as a token of appreciation and admiration of the work done by the worthy vindicator of William I, prince of Orange. This copy, bearing the king's autograph inscription, afterwards came into the possession of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, Motley's son-in-law.