The Netherlands , [ k ] informally Holland , is a country in Northwestern Europe , with overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It shares maritime borders with the United Kingdom , Germany, and Belgium. Nevertheless, it is the world's second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products by value, owing to its fertile soil , mild climate, intensive agriculture , and inventiveness.
The Netherlands has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a unitary structure since The country has a tradition of pillarisation separation of citizens into groups by religion and political beliefs and a long record of social tolerance , having legalised prostitution and euthanasia , along with maintaining a liberal drug policy.
The Netherlands allowed women's suffrage in and was the first country to legalise same-sex marriage in It hosts intergovernmental organisations and international courts , many of which are in The Hague. The countries that comprise the region called the Low Countries Netherlands, Belgium , and Luxembourg all have comparatively the same toponymy.
The Romans made a distinction between the Roman provinces of downstream Germania Inferior nowadays part of Belgium and the Netherlands and upstream Germania Superior. Thus, in the case of the Low Countries and the Netherlands, the geographical location of this lower region is more or less downstream and near the sea, compared to that of the upper region of Germania Superior.
From the mid-sixteenth century, the "Low Countries" and the "Netherlands" lost their original deictic meaning. In most Romance languages , the term "Low Countries" is officially used as the name for the Netherlands. The term Holland has frequently been used informally to refer to the whole of the modern country of the Netherlands in various languages, [ 34 ] including Dutch [ 35 ] [ 36 ] and English.
