The five previous volumes of the Acta Historiae Neerlandicae appeared under the auspices of the Netherlands Committee for Historical Sciences. When in 1970 this Committee merged with the Historical Society to form the Dutch Historical Society (Nederlands Historisch Genootschap) an opportunity arose to rethink the aims of the Acta's original promotors. Also this sixth and succeeding volumes became the responsibility of the new combined Society as above. The volumes will from now on be published at The Hague by Martinus Nijhoff. From the early days of the Acta language barriers were broken...

During the revolt of the Netherlands, 'rebels' developed for the first time in modern history political philosophies that had a decisive impact on political reality, influenced the actual course of events, led in fact to the creation of a new state. This was a form of theorizing from sheer necessity to the legitimate sovereign. As such it stands at the beginning of a long tradition of civil disobedience. The volume contains sixty-seven fragments of pamphlets, letters, treaties and other documents, translated from the Dutch, Latin and French, that together provide an insight into the motives...

This history of Belgium and the Netherlands is the first major study in English to treat them as nations in their own right, while placing them in a wider European and world context.