Historiography of the Eighty Years' War

The party papers of Jacob van Wesembeke [nl], the Apology, the Defences of the States against Don Juan, etc., etc., were regarded as infallible truths: the "Romish folks," as one expressed themselves, they might well live in peace and tranquility, provided they behaved only quietly and did not claim the least of rights at all.

[7] Rather than presenting the war as 'a united fight for faith and the old freedoms', Grotius wrote that it was 'a difficult struggle with powerful Spain on the one hand, and with divisions, political self-interest and religious fanaticism on the Dutch side on the other.

Hooft was a Renaissance humanist who took no sides in religious matters, nor was he a member of any church,[10] but he was educated with an admiration for Tacitus (whose style he adopted, just like Grotius before him) and a staatse republican perspective on justifying the revolt against Spain based on the sovereignty of the States, regarding Orange as their servant.

[11] In 1609, 28-year-old Hooft wrote several poems to commemorate the Twelve Years' Truce, in which he compared the Dutch revolt against Spain to the Overthrow of the Roman monarchy, and Orange to Moses as the Israelites' liberator from slavery.

[15] In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Belgian scholars Louis-Prosper Gachard and Joseph Kervyn de Lettenhove also carried out a thorough source research into the Eighty Years' War, especially in the Brussels and Spanish archives.

[13] The liberal Reinier Cornelis Bakhuizen van den Brink (born 1810) [nl] made important contributions to Eighty Years' War studies starting in 1844, and as the National Archivist from 1854 to 1865.

"[20] Van Vloten appreciated Motley's attempt to generate attention to the history of the Netherlands amongst an English-speaking audience, but his lack of Dutch-language knowledge prevented him from reviewing the latest insights from Dutch historiographers, and made him prone to partiality in favour of the Protestants and against the Catholics.

[23] After Fruin had read Nuyens's critique of The Rise of the Dutch Republic, he stated in 1867: 'I must now confess that the tone in which the eloquent American has written must be offensive to Catholics, and what is much worse, that he has not spoken the pure truth everywhere.

[26] Van der Zeijden circumscribed his method as 'a careful investigation of authentic historical sources (usually state documents as well as letters and memoirs of important statesmen)' and 'an impartial, positivist manner of historiography'.

Nuyens's main work Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Beroerten in de XVIe eeuw ("History of the Netherlandish Troubles in the 16th Century"; Amsterdam, 1865–70, 8 volumes) was important for finding/retrieving the role of Dutch Catholics in the Revolt, and contributed to their emancipation.

[1] Contrasting his own situation to earlier times of Calvinist censorship against 'popish naughtiness', Nuyens (1869) expressed relief that he or fellow Catholic writers[note 1] would not be 'arrested or thrown out of the country, not even risk being reviled as a bastard-Dutchman or somesuch.

[27] Fruin said the entire Dutch nation had a lot to learn from Nuyens's Catholic point of view, drawing attention to numerous issues he himself had missed, such as the Protestant biases of leading historiographers.

[36] In the late 20th century, British historians Geoffrey Parker and Jonathan Israel sought to demonstrate that many of the developments during the Dutch Revolt were impossible to understand but from an international perspective, and that one also needed to look at events through Spanish eyes.

[39] The driving forces behind the Revolt were variously identified as the role played by the Dutch Reformed Church in social organisation;[40] the allegedly impoverished lesser nobility which rebelled against the threats to their privileges;[41] or frustrations by the emerging middle classes that they were unable to obtain more political and economic power to match their increasing wealth, but instead faced heavier trade taxes.

[1] In the 20th century, historians came to consider this dating to be "completely arbitrary", with the Winkler Prins (2002) stating: 'One could just as easily claim that this 'war' already began somewhere between 1555 and 1568 (the 'Prelude' in the naming of R.J. Fruin), or in 1572 (first meeting of rebel cities), in 1576 (Pacification of Ghent), 1579 (Union of Utrecht), or in 1581 (Act of Abjuration).

[44] In 1641, in the first volume of the Nederlandsche Historien, Hooft wrote: een oorlogh (...), dat nu in 't drientzeventighste jaar gevoert wort ("a war (...), that is now conducted in its seventy-third year"), meaning that he counted from 1568.

[11]: 38 [44] Groenveld (2020) concluded that this discrepancy indictated that contemporaries did not exactly agree on when hostilities broke out, in part because at no point 'war' had been formally declared: 'The term "Eighty Years'" didn't possess mathematical precision, but was an approximate designation.

What followed, they argue, was a regular war between a de facto independent, territorially-bounded nation-state — the Dutch provinces united by the Union of Utrecht — and the territorially contiguous possession of a multinational empire — Spain as dynastic ruler of the remaining Habsburg Netherlands — across a defined and relatively static frontier.

[61][60] The chaotic and dramatic early decades of the Eighty Years' War, which were filled with civil revolts and large-scale urban massacres, largely ended for the provinces north of the Great Rivers after they proclaimed the Republic in 1588, expelled the Spanish forces and established peace, safety and prosperity for their population.

[82] According to Grotius (1612), the primary motive for the Revolt was not the struggle for faith (that is, orthodox Calvinism), but the (sometimes selfish) political considerations of the cities, nobility and provinces, namely, the maintenance of their privileges and serving their own (financial) interests.

That goes for the efforts to establish a monopolish Calvinist church, to counter the Habsburg centralisation policies and the defence of endangered privileges, to maintain the power of both the greater and lesser nobility, [and] the attempts to definitively remove foreign troops.

Visconti (2003), for example, claimed that when pressured by Spain to implement this obligation, Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy proclaimed the Edict of Nice (15 February 1560), prohibiting Protestantism on pains of a large fine, enslavement or banishment, which soon led to an armed revolt by the Protestant Waldensians in his domain that would last until July 1561.

[note 9] In connection with the simultaneous papal bull Super Universas [nl; fr] (12 May 1559), Van der Lem (1995) remarked: "The secrecy that came about with the ecclesiastical reorganisation fed rumours that the king was also going to introduce the so-called Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands.

[103] 'She acquiesced to the advice of cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, until she suspected him of not supporting her dynastic interests (the marriage of her son Alexander Farnese to an Austrian princess and the return of Piacenza) to the king.

[103] It was thanks to the outrage caused by the Beeldenstorm that the noblemen finally respected her authority: 'Henceforth powerfully supported by Peter Ernst von Mansfeld, Noircarmes, Arenberg and Megen, Margaret managed to restore order.

'[96] He rejected the view of traditional historiography that, through the Council of State, Viglius, Berlaymont and especially Granvelle could easily control Margaret, but although they frequently advised the governoress, this merely created 'the illusion that a clique of three people was running the show'.

[96] Otherwise Van der Lem agreed with Winkler Prins that the Beeldenstorm outrage regained her the nobility's loyalty and thereby the ability to crush the unrest herself, but Philip already sent Alba with a Spanish army before he was informed that Margaret had succeeded.

'[109] Nevertheless, Alba proved incompetent to introduce these necessary tax reforms, which he appears to have admitted by requesting king Philip II at the end of every letter to him to send a successor to take over his job as governor-general.

[note 10] Van der Lem also pointed out that the term father of the fatherland didn't yet have its later nationalistic meaning in the 16th century, and that the Protestant-dominated Dutch Republic covering just the northern Netherlands (as it would achieve independence in 1648) would certainly not have been the 'fatherland' that Orange had envisioned, namely, a 17-province Netherlandish monarchy with a Valois dynasty and equality for Catholics and Protestants.

[112] Johann VI, Count of Nassau-Dillenburg, also simply known as Jan van Nassau, has long been hailed by nationalist historians as the driving force and 'great hero' behind the Union of Utrecht as he was the first to put his signature under the treaty on 23 January 1579.