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Aftermath of the Eighty Years' War

This article is about the short- and long-term effects of the war. For how the Eighty Years' War has been seen after it started, and debates between historians how to write about the war, see Historiography of the Eighty Years' War.

The aftermath of the Eighty Years' War (c. 1568–1648) had far-reaching military, political, socio-economic, religious, and cultural effects on the Low Countries, the Spanish Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, as well as other regions of Europe and European colonies overseas. By the Peace of Münster (15 May 1648), the Habsburg Netherlands were split in two, with the northern Protestant-dominated Netherlands becoming the Dutch Republic, independent of the Spanish and Holy Roman Empires, while the southern Catholic-dominated Spanish Netherlands remained under Spanish Habsburg sovereignty. Whereas the Spanish Empire and the Southern Netherlands along with it were financially and demographically ruined, declining politically and economically, the Dutch Republic became a global commercial power and achieved a high level of prosperity for its upper and middle classes known as the Dutch Golden Age, despite continued great socio-economic, geographic and religious inequalities and problems, as well as internal and external political, military and religious conflicts.[1][2]

  1. ^ Mulder, Doedens & Kortlever 2008, pp. 143–144.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hellinga was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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