In the early summer of 1914, the Dutch University of Groningen celebrated its 300th anniversary. The students’ representative, Melchior Bos, in an address to foreign guests on the first night of the festivities, reminded his audience of the glorious past of the Netherlands, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Dutch Golden Age. In commerce, the arts, science, and scholarship Holland had then taken the lead in Europe. The founding of the University of Groningen in 1614 had been part of that spectacular flowering of Dutch culture. However, Bos argued, this Golden Age was more than just a memory. His country experienced a new wave of economic and cultural expansion, and perhaps, he concluded, a future generation would describe the period he lived in as a second Golden Age, or even a Diamond Age.