Andries de Graeff

Andries de Graeff (19 February 1611 – 30 November 1678) was a regent and burgomaster (mayor) of Amsterdam and leading Dutch statesman during the Golden Age. He came from the De Graeff family, which, together with the Bicker family by marriage, held political power in Amsterdam, Holland, and ultimately in the Republic of the Seven United Provinces. He was a member of a family of regents who belonged to the republican political movement also referred to as the ‘state oriented’, the Dutch States Party, as opposed to the Orangisten and opponent of the political ambitions of the House of Orange. At the height of the Dutch Golden Age, during the First Stadtholderless Period from 1650 to the Rampjaar 1672, political power within Holland rested primarily with two republican and state-minded families. In Amsterdam this lay with the brothers Andries and Cornelis de Graeff, and in The Hague with the brothers Cornelis and Johan de Witt, the leaders of Holland's pro-state faction, which was reinforced by their close collaboration and mutual kinship. Andries de Graeff was one of the leading figures seeking to end the Eighty Years' War between the United Netherlands and the Kingdom of Spain. This took place in 1648 with the Peace of Münster. After his brother's death in 1664, he took over the leadership of the De Graeff faction and continued his politics. Andries was called the last mayor from the dynasty of the "Graven", who was powerful and able enough to rule the city of Amsterdam. His political stance was characteristic of his family: on the one hand libertine and state-minded, on the other hand, if only to a limited extent, loyal to the House of Orange. The proponents of the De Graeff family has shown they had an eye for national politics and tried to...