Dutch Declaration of Independence

The Dutch Declaration of Independence, signed on July 26, 1581, was formally called the Act of Abjuration or, in Dutch, the Plakkaat van Verlatinghe. A coalition of Dutch provinces in the northern portion of the federation called the United Provinces issued the declaration to pronounce their independence from Spanish rule under King Philip II. A literal English translation of Plakkaat van Verlatinghe would be “Placard of Desertion”; this title was given to the document because Dutch rebels believed that Philip had essentially deserted the Low Countries, like a shepherd who had deserted his flock, and the document outlines his abuses against the provinces.

The Dutch Declaration of Independence, regarded as the first modern declaration of independence, was forged during the Eighty Years' War, often called the Dutch War of Independence. The first phase of this war was the Dutch Revolt of 1568–1609, during which the Netherlands' northern provinces achieved independence from Spain. After Spain and the northern provinces signed the Twelve Years' Truce in 1609 at Antwerp, ending hostilities, the southern provinces continued to live under Spanish domination until the Treaty of Münster was signed in 1648. This treaty, part of the realignment brought about that year by the Treaty of Westphalia—which ended the Eighty Years' War as well as the Thirty Years' War, fought in central Europe—confirmed the existence of the Dutch provinces as an independent nation variously called the Dutch Republic, the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces.

In the twenty-first century, the names of Holland and the Netherlands tend to be used interchangeably. The terminology, though, is complex and oftentimes confusing. Netherlands literally means “Low Countries” or “Lowlands” and historically dates to the period when the Dutch Republic consisted of a loose confederation of seven provinces; the declaration refers to this confederation in the opening line as the United Provinces of the Low Countries. In 1830 two of those provinces broke off from the recently established United Kingdom of the Netherlands to form Belgium. Today, the phrase “Low Countries” is often used to refer collectively to the countries of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. The phrase actually has little to do with the countries' “lowness” relative to sea level; rather, it refers to the provinces' originally being the more southerly portions of earlier empires. Holland is a name commonly used to refer to the country of the Netherlands, but more accurately it reflects the names of two provinces, North Holland and South Holland, that historically were the most prominent members of the Dutch Republic. Finally, “Dutch” refers to the language spoken in the Netherlands, though the word is also used to refer to the people and the nation's institutions; it is etymologically related to “Deutsche,” or German.