Who Was When

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Dutch RepublicRepubliek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden

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The republic of seven northern provinces that broke from Spanish rule in the Dutch Revolt. It ran two chartered trading companies, the East India Company from 1602 and the West India Company from 1621, with trading posts, forts and plantations in Asia, Africa and the Americas, some worked by enslaved people. It ended in January 1795, when French troops entered and the Batavian Republic replaced it.

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Key events

  1. The provinces of the Union of Utrecht depose Philip II as their sovereign in the Act of Abjuration on 26 July

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  2. The States General grant the Dutch East India Company (VOC) a 21-year charter on 20 March

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  3. Spain agrees the Twelve Years' Truce, halting the fighting with the northern provinces

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  4. VOC forces take the Banda Islands, the centre of nutmeg production, and run them as plantations worked by enslaved people

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  5. Spain recognises the independence of the Dutch Republic in the Peace of Münster, signed on 30 January and later folded into the Peace of Westphalia

    Sources date the end of the war to January 1648, when the Peace of Münster was agreed, or to October 1648, when it was included in the Peace of Westphalia.

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  6. A Prussian army enters the Republic, with British diplomatic backing, ends the Patriot Revolution and restores the Orangist regime

    Encyclopedia.com calls the intervention British and Prussian and military. Britannica describes Prussian troops, with Britain acting through its ambassador, so the title names British backing as diplomatic.

  7. French troops overrun the Republic in January and the Batavian Republic replaces it

    Dutch Patriots asked for French help and took part in the change of government, which the Rijksmuseum describes as a sister state to revolutionary France.