Dutch declaration of independence

Act of Abjuration
First page of the Act of Abjuration
Ratified	26 July 1581
Author(s)	Andries Hessels Jacques Tayaert Jacob Valcke Pieter van Dieven Jan van Asseliers
Purpose	Declaration of independence of the Dutch Republic

The Act of Abjuration (Dutch: Plakkaat van Verlatinghe, literally 'placard of '), was the declaration of independence by many of the provinces of the Netherlands from Spain in 1581, during the Dutch Revolt.

Signed on 26 July 1581 in The Hague, the Act formally confirmed a decision made by the States General of the Netherlands in Antwerp four days earlier. It declared that all magistrates in the provinces making up the Union of Utrecht were freed from their oaths of allegiance to the King of Spain, Philip II. The grounds given were that Philip II had failed in his obligations to his subjects, by oppressing them and violating their ancient rights (an early form of social contract). Philip was therefore considered to have forfeited his thrones as ruler of each of the provinces which signed the Act.

The Act of Abjuration allowed the newly-independent territories to govern themselves, although they first offered their thrones to alternative candidates. When this failed, they formed the Dutch Republic, the predecessor of the modern state of the Netherlands. The Act also exacerbated the political divisions between the rebellious northern provinces and the southern provinces of the Spanish Netherlands, which did not sign the Act and remained loyal to Philip II.

The Seventeen Provinces of the Habsburg Netherlands were united in a personal union by Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain Charles V with the incorporation of the duchy of Guelders in his Burgundian territories in 1544. They were constituted as a separate entity with his Pragmatic Sanction of 1549. His son, King Philip II of Spain, inherited these provinces on Charles' abdication in 1555. But this actually meant that he assumed the feudal title of each individual province, as Duke of Brabant, Count of Holland etc. There never was a single, unified state of the Netherlands, though the provinces were all represented in the States General of the Netherlands, since the Great Charter or Privilege of Mary of Burgundy of 10 February 1477.