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... Show moreThe 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. Show less
This PhD thesis has studied the meeting practice of the Dutch States General to address the role of tradition and culture in times of political and institutional transition in the first half of the... Show moreThis PhD thesis has studied the meeting practice of the Dutch States General to address the role of tradition and culture in times of political and institutional transition in the first half of the 19th century. Dutch revisionist historians of the Revolutionary Era have emphasized the sense of rupture surrounding the year 1800. The Batavian revolutionaries, together with French Revolutionary and Napoleonic armies, caused a clear break between the ancien régime of the Dutch Republic and the 19th-century Kingdom of the Netherlands. Modern constitutions replaced the de- centralized government system of the Dutch Republic with a unitary state from 1798 onwards. When the Dutch regained their independence after the fall of Napoleon in 1813, the new state did not turn the clock back to 1795. In that respect, the Netherlands has been studied as a fine example of Reinhard Koselleck’s concept of Sattelzeit. Continuities, such as the name States General for the bicameral parliament, were merely invented traditions to hide the new institutions of the Restoration state. Notwithstanding obvious evidence of discontinuity, in political practice there was more continuity in the Netherlands during the transitional period from the 18th to the 19th century than historians have assumed. Show less
