His father Frederik Willem was a Lutheran tobacco manufacturer of German descent, while his mother Christine Regina was born in the Lower Saxon Osnabrück.

Frederik Willem's business suffered badly from the anti-British policies of the French occupiers, and his tobacco factory went bankrupt in 1803, after which he was unable to find another source of employment and would spend most of his time on the education of Johan Rudolph and his younger brother.

At Giessen he lectured as an extraordinary professor, and at Göttingen, in 1824, published his treatise, Ueber das Wesen der Geschichte.

[1][6] Upon his return to the Netherlands in 1824, he settled in Amsterdam, where he wrote his first political work of significance, Bedenkingen aangaande het Regt en Den Staat ("Concerns about the Law and the State").

The work managed to gain some attention, and Thorbecke became professor of Political Science at Ghent University the following year,[5] a position he was forced to resign from due to the Belgian Revolution in 1830.

The following year, Thorbecke became professor of Diplomacy and Modern History at the Leiden University,[6] where his students would describe him as a distant, analytical mind, living a secluded life in his study.

The climax of this series was Over het hedendaags staatsburgerschap, literally "On contemporary citizenship", published in 1844, in which he argued that universal suffrage would eventually be unavoidable.

[3] In the House, he developed into the leader of the liberal opposition and, later that year, joined forces with eight like-minded members in a vain attempt to amend the constitution in the so-called Voorstel der Negenmannen ("Proposition of the Nine Men").

[7] Despite initial reluctance, William III appointed Thorbecke as formateur in late October 1849, and his first cabinet took office on 13 November.

Thorbecke, who remained passive in the issue in defence of the separation of church and state, was accused of Catholic sympathies, and he was forced to resign.

[citation needed] There are three statues of Thorbecke (one in Amsterdam, one in The Hague and one in Zwolle), and a room in the Dutch parliament building is named after him.