Timeline of the Netherlands

1st cent. BC	The area's first inhabitants - Frisians, Batavians, and other tribes - settle the coastal territory along the Rhine River. The Batavians become allies of Rome.
12 BC	Roman general Drusus attempts to push the empire's frontier in Holland beyond the Rhine.
4th cent. AD	Barbarian invasions. Saxons settle in the east and Franks in the south.
814	On the death of Charlemagne, the Frankish emperor of the West and conqueror of the Saxons and Frisians, his empire is divided. The Low Countries become part of Lotharingia, squeezed between the German lands and France.
10th century	The counts of Holland and Zeeland and the bishopric of Utrecht begin to gain greater control of their own affairs.
1275	Count Floris V of Holland grants "Aemstelledamme" freedom from tolls on travel and trade. The year is regarded as Amsterdam's official foundation date.
1384	Duke Philip the Bold begins to gain control of the Low Countries for Burgundy.
1421	A storm on St. Elizabeth's Day breaks dikes along the Maas and Waal rivers, causing a flood that drowns 10,000 people.
1477	Beginning of the rule of the Austrian Habsburgs.
1506	The Netherlands is inherited by the future Habsburg Emperor and King of Spain Charles V.
1555	Philip II of Spain sends the duke of Alba to the Low Countries to confront the Protestant Reformation.
1568	Dutch rally against Spain in the beginning of the Eighty Years' War.
1578	Amsterdam abandons the Spanish and Catholic cause. Calvinists take over in what is called the Alteration. Public Catholic worship is outlawed and churches are confiscated. See Museum Amstelkring, Begijnhof and Lorhorstkerk.
1579	The Union of Utrecht unites the seven provinces of the northern Low Countries.
1581	The United Provinces declare their independence from Spain.
1602	The United East India Company (V.O.C.), destined to become a powerful force in Holland's "Golden Age" of discovery, exploration, and trade, is founded.
1609	Beginning of a 12-year truce with Spain. English navigator Henry Hudson, under contract to the United East India Company, sails from Amsterdam and "discovers" Manhattan Island and the future site of New York.
early 17th c.	Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal begin to arrive in the Netherlands.
1621	Dutch West India Company chartered.
1626	Peter Minuit "purchases" Manhattan Island from the Manhattoes Native Americans for the equivalent of $24, legalizing the Nieuw Amsterdam settlement founded the previous year at the mouth of the Hudson River. In 1664 it was renamed New York by the English.
1642	Rembrandt paints The Night Watch.
1642-43	Navigator Abel Tasman is the first European to reach Tasmania and New Zealand.
1648	End of Eighty Years' War with Spain.
1652	Dutchman Jan van Riebeek founds Cape Town, South Africa.
1661	Founding of the Church of Our Lord in the Attic, a clandestine Catholic church, in Amsterdam
1671	Grote Sjoel (Great Synagogue) founded in Amsterdam (now part of the Jewish Historical Museum)
1686	Obbene Sjoel (Upstairs Synagogue) founded in Amsterdam (now part of the Jewish Historical Museum)
1689	Stadhouder William III and his wife, Mary, become king and queen of England.
1700	Dritt Sjoel (Third Synagogue) founded in Amsterdam (now part of the Jewish Historical Museum)
1752	Neie Sjoel (New Synagogue) founded in Amsterdam (now part of the Jewish Historical Museum)
1782	Dutch become first to officially recognize nationhood of the United States.
1799	The United East India Company is liquidated.
1795	Velvet Revolution. French troops occupy Holland with the aid of Dutch revolutionaries and establish the Batavian Republic. William V flees to England.
1806-10	Louis Bonaparte, Napoléon's brother, reigns as king of Holland.
1813	The Netherlands regains independence from the French.
1814	The country becomes the kingdom of the Netherlands, a constitutional monarchy headed by Willem I of the House of Oranje-Nassau, and incorporating Belgium.
1830	Belgium breaks free from Dutch rule.
1853	Birth of Vincent van Gogh.
1887	St Niklaaskerk dedicated in Amsterdam
1890	Death by suicide of van Gogh.
1917	Despite Dutch neutrality in World War I (1914-18), the Netherlands suffers from severe food shortages, triggering street riots.
1920	Dutch airline KLM launches the world's first scheduled air service, between Amsterdam and London.
1928	Amsterdam Olympics.
1932	Afsluitdijk (Enclosure Dike) at the head of the Zuiderzee is completed, transforming the sea into the freshwater IJsselmeer Lake.
1934	The Great Depression leads to shortages and riots; the government calls out the army to maintain public order.
1940	World War II: Nazi Germany invades on May 10. Holland surrenders 4 days later after the aerial bombardment of Rotterdam. Queen Wilhelmina goes into exile in London.
1941	Dockworkers and other workers in Amsterdam launch the "February Strike" against persecution and deportation of the city's Jewish community. See Jewish Museum.
1942	Anne Frank and her family, along with other Jewish friends, go into hiding in Amsterdam. Dutch East Indies occupied by Japan. See Anne Frank's House.
1944	The Frank family refuge is betrayed and its occupants are transported. Anne dies the following year at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
1944-45	Thousands die during the "Hunger Winter," when Nazi occupation forces blockade western Holland.
1945	May 5: German forces in the Netherlands capitulate. KLM inaugurates Amsterdam- New York air service; journey time, including stopovers in Scotland and Newfoundland: 25.5 hours.
1947	The Diary of Anne Frank is published.
1948	Benelux customs union with Belgium and Luxembourg takes effect.
1949	The Netherlands joins NATO. The Dutch East Indies' wins independence, as Indonesia, after a bitterly fought liberation struggle.
1953	Devastating North Sea storms produce significant coastal flooding. Dutch embark on long-range Delta Project to seal off river estuaries in the southwest.
1958	The Netherlands joins the European Economic Community, the forerunner of today's European Union (EU).
1966	Street protests in Amsterdam mar Princess Beatrix's marriage to German Claus von Amsberg, a former soldier in the World War II German army.
1975	Amsterdam's 700th anniversary. Cannabis use is decriminalized. The Netherlands grants independence to Surinam.
1980	Queen Juliana abdicates, and her eldest daughter Beatrix accedes to the throne.
1987	The four Ashkenazi synagogues of Amsterdam are restored and combined with new glass and steel architecture to form the Jewish Historical Museum.
1987	The Homomonument, the world's first public memorial to persecuted gays and lesbians, is unveiled in Amsterdam.
1992	The Treaty of Maastricht creates a single European market, replacing the European Community (EC) with the European Union (EU) and clearing the way for the creation of a single European currency.
1997	The Treaty of Amsterdam confirms European Monetary Union and the euro as the future common European currency.
2001	The world's first real same-sex marriage, husband and husband, with a legal status identical to that of heterosexual matrimony, takes place in Amsterdam (by 2004, around 8% of marriages in Holland are same-sex).
2002	Euro banknotes and coins replace the guilder. Crown Prince Willem-Alexander marries Argentine Máxima Zorreguieta. Dutch parliament legalizes regulated euthenasia ("mercy killing"), making the Netherlands the first country in the world to do so. Pim Fortuyn, a flamboyant, gay, populist right-wing politician, is shot to death in Holland's first political assassination of the modern era.
2003	The permanent International Criminal Court, for prosecuting large-scale crimes against humanity, is inaugurated in The Hague, despite opposition to the court from countries that include the U.S. In a project to test the medical efficacy of cannabis, the drug is made legal under controlled conditions and when prescribed by a physician for patients suffering from a range of terminal and chronic illnesses, including cancer and Aids.
2004	The former Queen Juliana dies. Vermeer's painting Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (ca. 1670) is sold at auction for more than $30m by Sotheby's in London. Controversial film director Theo van Gogh, 47, is stabbed and shot to death on the streets of Amsterdam after making a film critical of Moslems. Police arrest and charge a suspect holding joint Dutch and Moroccan citizenship. The killing ignites a wave of anti-Islamic violence across the Netherlands, and national soul-searching about the country's famed tolerance.

Main source: Frommer's Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg.