Dutch units of measurement

Smaller distances were measured in units based on parts of the body – the el, the voet, the palm and the duim.

These old units of measurement have disappeared, but they remain a colourful legacy of the Netherlands' maritime and commercial importance and survive today in a number of Dutch sayings and expressions.

At the Treaty of Verdun, the empire was divided between Charlemagne's three grandsons and Lothair received the central portion, stretching from the Netherlands in the north to Burgundy and Provence in the south.

By the start of the religious wars, the territories that made up the Netherlands, still part of the Holy Roman Empire, had passed into the lordship of the King of Spain.

Under the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the seven Protestant territories that owed a nominal allegiance to the Prince of Orange seceded from the Holy Roman Empire and established their own confederacy but each kept its own system of measures.

Examples include:[15] Length Area Volume Weight In 1816, the Netherlands and France were the only countries in the world that were using variations of the metric system.

A few of the older names remained officially in use, but they were eliminated when the system was further standardised by the 1937 Act on Weights and Measures (IJkwet).