The Dutch Declaration of Independence - July 26th, 1581
Geoffrey Parker looks at the moment when the representatives of certain provinces of the Netherlands met together to depose their lawful sovereign Philip II of Spain.
The political division of Atlantic Europe into a balance of seven separate but equal states was largely complete by the second decade of the thirteenth century. The battles of Murat and Bouvines in the year 1214 confirmed in broad outline the relative position of France and the Empire, Castile, Aragon and Portugal, Scotland and England. Although there were minor territorial changes over the succeeding centuries, the integrity of each polity was never again seriously called into question. But the allegiance of one area remained in question – the very region in which the battle of Bouvines had been fought: the Low Countries.
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