Spoorwegen in Nederland: Van 1834 tot nu (review)

This book is a commissioned history for Nederlandse Spoorwegen (Dutch Railways, or NS), but in his foreword the author claims that the commission had no influence on the contents. After reading the book, I believe in the sincerity of this claim. NS is only visible commercially in a very subtle manner, that is, in the choice of the company colors (yellow and blue) for the book dust jacket.

While NS formally was founded only in 1917—as a community of interests of the main Dutch railway companies Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij and Staatsspoorwegen (which literally means State Railways, but nevertheless was a private company)—and replaced its constituting partners formally from 1937, the book covers the entire railway history of the Netherlands from 1834, with prominent roles for NS's two forerunners. The author does not pose general questions at the beginning of his book. The general structure of the book is chronological, but the chapters and sections are organized according to subjects. This enables Veenendaal to highlight several general themes in his narrative account.

I will name a few. First, the Netherlands possessed an unusually well developed landscape of navigable rivers and canals at the outset of the railway development. This suggests that the railway did not create a new transportation system but rather supplemented an existing one. Furthermore, the book illustrates very well the passive and inconsistent attitude of the Dutch government, at least until the law on new railway connections and concessions of 1860. This forces the author to deal with the early private initiatives one by one that resulted in a fragmented set of railways. These became publicly owned after 1860 but remained to be exploited by private concessionaries (a situation virtually unique in nineteenth-century Europe, but now in vogue again due to the E.U. policy of liberalization). Still, the separation of the public and private spheres was not clear cut; for instance, the railway companies had to agree that part of their eventual "excessive" profits should be transferred to the state. Even after the government came into possession of the majority of the shares of NS's constituting partners in 1920 (and of all NS shares in 1937), relations between the two parties remained problematic. This was because of constant tension between the railway company's need to earn a decent profit versus its social obligation to provide frequent and reliable public transport at an affordable price—what is in fact the overarching theme of Dutch railway history.

The author presents his book as the first company history of the NS; and indeed, J. A. Faber's Het spoor.150 Jaar spoorwegen in Nederland (1989) is too selective in its coverage to serve the purpose. However, it should be noted that Veenendaal published a book on Dutch railway history in English only a few years ago, Railways in the Netherlands: A Brief History, 1834–1994 (Stanford, Calif., 2001), an expanded version of a Dutch book published in 1998.

What does the book under review offer in addition to the earlier one? First of all, the author now refers to primary sources and secondary literature in endnotes (Railways in the Netherlands contains only a bibliographic essay). Second, he offers much more detail on Dutch railway history: Spoorwegen in Nederland is more than twice as thick, and each page contains two columns of text. This higher level of specificity also applies to the author's comparisons with railway developments in other (neighboring) countries and, at appropriate places, the sketch of the wider national context of important railway issues (for example, competition with other modes of transport). Third, the new book is illustrated even more abundantly than Veenendaal's earlier work, with many beautiful and well-chosen pictures, including two photographs of model steam locomotives built by Veenendaal himself to show the equipment's colorfulness in the pre–color photo era!

Still, the book under review has its limitations. Although the author went into partial early retirement to write the...