The nation-state and the river: Spaces and times on Dutch rivers, 1795–1814

Nothing indeed demonstrates more forcefully the extent to which Dutch water management corresponds to the nature and the needs of the Dutch people and their land, and how it has emerged there from in a natural fashion than the fact that the revolutionaries of 1795, despite being so intoxicated by their unexpected victory and sudden power that they overturned everything … nonetheless refrained from laying hands on institutions whose extreme antiquity would in those days have provided more of an excuse to abolish than to preserve them (J.W. Welcker, De Noorder-Lekdijk Bovendams en de doorsteking van den Zuider-Lekdijk bij Culemborg 1803–1813. Een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van den Nederlandschen Waterstaat geschetst en met onuitgegeven stukken toegelicht (‘s-Gravenhage: 1880), p. 2).