On September 6, 1948, Juliana was sworn in as Queen of the Netherlands at a ceremony in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. Her mother, Wilhelmina, had reigned for nearly 58 years, the longest of any Dutch monarch, and had signed the instrument of abdication two days before. Wilhelmina stayed on as a private citizen until her death in 1962.
The timing was not accidental. The Netherlands had come out of the German occupation wrecked, with its ports, railways and housing stock damaged and its economy tied to an empire that was coming apart. In 1947 Dutch forces had launched what they called a police action in the East Indies, trying to reassert control over the Indonesian republic declared in 1945. Two rounds of military action and heavy international pressure, including the threat of losing American Marshall Plan money, It ended in 1949. The Dutch recognized Indonesian independence.
That loss defined Juliana's early reign. Her mother had been head of state through two world wars and the symbol of resistance to the occupation; Juliana inherited the retreat from empire instead. She also oversaw the country's turn toward permanent alliances: the Netherlands joined NATO in 1949 and was one of the six founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951.
She reigned for 31 years. She changed the tone of the monarchy more than its powers. Her 1956 marriage to Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld had produced four daughters, and the succession ran through daughters for three generations. In the 1950s a faith healer named Greet Hofmans was given rooms at palace Soestdijk and became the center of a crisis that reached the cabinet and the press before she was removed.
Juliana abdicated on April 30, 1980, on her 71st birthday, in favour of her eldest daughter Beatrix. The date has been kept by her successors: Koningsdag is still celebrated on April 30 or, as under Willem-Alexander, April 27.