Italiaanse geschiedschrijvers over de Nederlandse Opstand, 1585-1650: Een transnationale geschiedenis

Abstract

The Revolt in the Low Countries against the Spanish monarch received a lot of international attention in the seventeenth century. In Italy too, the events in the Low Countries were closely followed. This apparent from the large number of Italian historical works on the war. Using a variety of texts, this research focuses on different aspects of early modern Italian historiography on the conflict in the Low Countries. The first question of this thesis has sought to address is how we can explain the great historiographical interest in Italy for the military, religious and political complications during the Revolt. This research shows that some Italian texts about the Revolt have their origins in a local context, such as political debates in Italian cities. The second part of this study concerns the impact of the transnational historiography on political opinions, in particular the question of the implications of the Italian histories of the Revolt for the political debates in Italy and in the Republic of the United Provinces. How were those Italian publications received and what can we learn from them when it comes to the influence of transnational works on the writing of history and on political debates, both in the Republic and in Italy? This study aims to contribute to a greater knowledge of the international attention for the Revolt and to our contemporary view on the conflict in the Low Countries.