Dutch Act of Abjuration
The northern provinces of the Netherlands deposed their king in July 1581 on the argument that a ruler who oppresses his subjects may be replaced. Philip II of Spain was their lawful sovereign as Duke of Brabant, Count of Holland and so on through a list of separate titles, and the revolt against him had been running since 1566 over taxation, the Inquisition, the presence of Spanish troops and the suppression of Calvinist worship. The Act of Abjuration is a legal document rather than a manifesto, and its reasoning is the interesting part. It states that a prince is appointed by God to protect his subjects as a shepherd protects sheep, that when he oppresses them instead and treats them as slaves he is no longer a prince but a tyrant, and that the estates may then lawfully abandon him and choose another. It cites specific grievances at length in the manner of a bill of particulars. They then offered the sovereignty to the Duke of Anjou, who proved useless and attacked Antwerp, and to Elizabeth of England, who declined, before concluding in 1588 that they would manage without a monarch and becoming a republic almost by exhaustion. The war ran until 1648, when Spain recognised the independence it had been denying for eighty years. The document was known to the American colonists, and the resemblance of its structure to the Declaration of Independence — principle, grievances, conclusion — has been noticed since the eighteenth century. William of Orange, who had led the revolt, was assassinated three years later by a man collecting a bounty Philip had offered, and was the first head of state killed with a handgun. The provinces went on without him.
- Year: 1581 CE
- Category: Political
