Dutch Declaration of Independence

Impact

The Dutch Declaration of Independence by no means brought peace to the United Provinces. Through the 1580s, Spain continued to send troops to the Netherlands. Yet Spanish forces were being stretched thin; they continued to fight Islam in the Mediterranean, and the Spanish Armada was defeated by the British navy in 1588—just as the northern provinces of the Netherlands were building up their own navy. Spain was virtually bankrupt, and the Spanish people, burdened with high taxes and war casualties, grew increasingly unwilling to back the war in the Netherlands. Finally, Spain capitulated and agreed to a suspension of hostilities at Antwerp in 1609, a treaty known as the Twelve Years’ Truce. War erupted again, however, in 1621 over issues of religious toleration—of Protestants in the Catholic south and Catholics in the Protestant north—and sea trade routes. In 1639 the Dutch dealt the Spanish a decisive defeat in the last major campaign of the Eighty Years’ War. The war officially ceased with the 1648 Treaty of Münster, which ended Spanish control over the Netherlands. This treaty was part of the larger realignment in Europe brought about by the Treaty of Westphalia, which also ended the Thirty Years’ War—a complex war between Catholics and Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire that engulfed most of Europe.

Ultimately, the Dutch Revolt and the Dutch Declaration of Independence would have a far-reaching impact on Europe. The Dutch Revolt essentially challenged the divine right of kings to rule. As of 1648 the Netherlands was no longer a monarchy, a circumstance that sowed seeds of discontent with monarchial rule throughout the continent. The ultimate results of these antiroyalist sentiments were the decline of the Spanish Empire, the English Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century, and the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century. It has also been argued that the Dutch Declaration of Independence, read by Thomas Jefferson, had a significant effect on the crafting of the American Declaration of Independence of 1776.