This volume presents five texts which were published in the Low Countries between 1570 and 1590, during the crucial decades of what is nowadays labelled, with understatement, the ‘Dutch Revolt’. From 1555 a series of revolutionary events led to the abjuration of Philip II by the States General of the Dutch provinces in 1581 and to the subsequent foundation of the ‘Dutch Republic of the Seven United Provinces’, one of the great powers of the seventeenth century.

Despite the general recognition that the rise of the Dutch Republic was of major political, cultural and economic importance for the course of European history, historians have tended to neglect the political thought of the Dutch Revolt. However, as more than 2,000 publications (published between 1555 and 1590) exemplify, the political debate of the Revolt was not only immense, but also comprehensive and, above all, passionate. The purpose of this volume is to make some of the most important texts of the Revolt available in a modern edition.

The first major issue which the protagonists of the Revolt had to confront was how to justify first the protest and resistance against the government of Philip II and eventually his abjuration by the States General. Closely related to the reflections on the limits of political obedience and the justice of political resistance was a fundamental debate on the true and desirable character of the Dutch political order.