(also stadhouder), the viceroy in the Netherlands of Burgundian and later of Hapsburg sovereigns during the 15th and 16th centuries. After the 16th-century bourgeois revolution in the Netherlands, the stadtholder was the chief executive power in the United Provinces of the Netherlands until the end of the 18th century.

in a number of European countries, an official who exercised state authority over a certain territory. Stadtholders existed in the Netherlands during the rule of the Burgundian and Hapsburg dynasties, in the crown lands of the Austrian Empire, and in Austria-Hungary until 1918. In the German Empire from 1871 to 1918, the term stadtholder was applied to the governor of Alsace-Lorraine. The office of Reichsstatthalter existed in fascist Germany from 1933 to 1945.