This history of the States General of the Netherlands and its relations with the monarchy involves the dukes of Burgundy and the Spanish Habsburgs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After more than a century of mainly peaceful cooperation, the two sides quarrelled violently about religion, sovereignty and local privileges, and decades of civil war led to a split in the country. The North became a republic and a parliamentary regime, while the South remained attached to the Spanish monarchy and continued without the States General.

This book traces across the millennium of the Middle Ages the gradual crystallisation of a new and distinctive European identity. Koenigsberger covers the Islamic, Byzantine and central Asian worlds in his account which explains Europe's progression from chaos and collapse to the point where it was set to rule much of the world.