The Treaty of Münster (Spain–Dutch)

JAN 30 1648 · 12:00

Spanish and Dutch envoys swear the Treaty of Münster, ending eighty years of war. Place: Münster, Westphalia Figures: Adriaan Pauw and the Dutch plenipotentiaries · Gaspar de Bracamonte y Guzmán, Count of Peñaranda, for Spain · the Estates General of the United Provinces ratifying at home Eighty Years to a Signature The revolt of the Seventeen Provinces against Philip II begins in 1568. The Dutch declare independence in the Plakkaat van Verlatinghe of 1581, an act of formal abjuration that drafts, in advance, language the American colonies will borrow almost word for word in 1776. No European power recognizes the new republic for two generations. The Twelve Years' Truce of 1609 pauses the war without resolving its status question. Fighting resumes in 1621 and folds into the larger Thirty Years' War. By the early 1640s the Spanish treasury is exhausted by simultaneous wars in the Low Countries, against France, and against revolts in Catalonia and Portugal. The Dutch fleet has taken Brazil and lost it, taken the Caribbean salt trade, and made Amsterdam the busiest port in Europe. Peñaranda arrives at Münster with instructions to settle on the best terms still available. The Dutch arrive with eighty years of accumulated leverage and no need to compromise on the status question. Negotiation begins in 1646 and concludes 30 January 1648, five months before the main Westphalian instruments. Ratification at Münster follows on 15 May. A State Born by Revolt, Recognized by Treaty Article I of the treaty acknowledges the United Provinces as free and sovereign states, provinces, and lands, with Spain renouncing all claim in perpetuity. The Scheldt is closed to navigation past Antwerp, locking Dutch commercial primacy into the new map and condemning the Spanish Netherlands to a century of decline. The Republic keeps its conquests in Brabant, Flanders, and the East and West Indies. The Dutch East India Company's possessions in the Cape, Ceylon, and the spice islands pass under Republic sovereignty as colonial extensions of a state Spain has now conceded exists. The Treaty of Münster is the first instance under the new sovereign-state framework of a polity born by armed revolt being formally recognized as a peer of the powers it broke from. The Dutch state is not granted; it is acknowledged. The pattern will be invoked, with variations, by the United States in 1783, by the Spanish American republics after 1810, and by every secessionist movement that learns to speak the Westphalian language thereafter. Pope Innocent X protests this article especially. Peñaranda signs anyway. (See [[peace-of-westphalia-1648]] and [[innocent-x-denounces-westphalia-1648]].) Video: Eighty years of war ending at Münster, the first treaty of the Westphalian settlement.