stadtholder

plural stadtholders · alternative stadholder · alternative stadhouder

1. historicalThe chief provincial magistrate, military commander, and, as a member of the House of Orange, highest-ranking noble in the Dutch Republic, who often served as a de facto head of state alongside the States General; the position became hereditary in 1747

   For decades, no stadtholder who would counterbalance the power of the Amsterdam regents had been appointed.

   2001 [1999], Geert Mak, translated by Philipp Blom, Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City, Vintage, page 150

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   In keeping with the decentralization principe, each province had, in any case, to appoint its own Stadholder, who might not necessarily be the same prince of Orange, or stem from the dynastic trunk. (…) Sovereignty, it was affirmed, lay with the States General, whose bidding the Stadholder was to do as once he had done the king’s.

   1988, Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: an Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, Berkeley: University of California Press, pages 64-65

   Early letters by the Malay rulers are addressed to the “king of Holland” whom they affectionately call their “brother”, in other words as their imagined royal counterpart. In practice such letters were received and read by the stadtholder, the States General, or both.

   2017, Peter Borschberg, “Lost in Translation? The Languages of Euro-Southeast Asian Diplomacy in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries”, in Susan Richter, Michael Roth, Sebastian Meurer, editors, Konstruktionen Europas in der Frühen Neuzeit: Geographische und historische Imaginationen. Beiträge zur 11. Arbeitstagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Frühe Neuzeit, Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, →DOI, pages 291-292

2. historicalAn office formerly held by Danish and Swedish officials, best translated as governor-general.