Comments by "Lynott Parris" (@DenUitvreter) on "Empires, Conquerors, and Martin Luther" video.

  1. The defeat of the Armada was a joined effort by the England, the Dutch Republic and a storm. But it was the Dutch Republic that finished the Spanish Empire.
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  2.  @europos4541  The Dutch Republic finished the Spanish Empire as the world's supreme power, through war there and overseas but also by simply no longer generating more than half of all it's tax income. The British like to claim that and the Americans follow by lack of understanding the limitations of language, but the British Empire only took off after the Dutch invaded and modernized the country, about a century after they got lucky with a storm and a Dutch blockade. When the Spanish were finally beaten down enough to negotiate with the commoners of the Dutch government does not really matter, Dutch independence was a fact since 1581 and was interrupted twice for about 15 years and 5 years since.
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  3.  @europos4541  Well modified... more like clarified what I initially meant. I don't know to what degree the income from the new world could be classified as tax, and the influx of gold an silver wasn't good for the Spanish economy. The Netherlands included the Southern Netherlands, now Belgium, and Antwerp was the richest city of Europe at that time. Not all of the Netherlands became part of the Dutch Republic, but the Spanish Netherlands and especialy Antwerp went into decline. So they lost about half of the taxed area and population, and what remained lost significantly in taxability. Let's say one 3rd to half of more than half of the tax income remained from the remaining Spanish Netherlands. So I don't know how this tax relates to all income of the Spanish crown, I do know 'more than half of the taxes' pops up in more than one source because together with the way of taxation it was a contributing factor to the revolt that started for religious tolerance. Especially the last tax raise was a problem, because it was feudal in it's logic while the Netherlands was already mostly a merchant economy on its way to become fullfledged capitalist very soon. But the war continued, with the Dutch Republic turning out to be an economic miracle that could afford a lot of armies and sieges. The Spanish troops were often not paid and plundered cities or demanded a ransom, while the Dutch paid for a standing army, so they could be uniformized and trained between battles and sieges which was an important military revolution. From about 1602 the borders were mostly secure and the Dutch started taking the war to the East-Indies succesfully where they hurt further money streams and later to the West where they were pretty successfull privateering on Spanish ships, whit an enormous hit in 1628 called the Silverfleet, there's still a very well known song about that. They took a chunk from Brazil and from 1638 on they started capturing trading posts at the African coast, because they had just given up on their objections to slavery so it was slave forts mostly. So by 1648 they were probably about matched in money, but Spain alone had more than ten times the population while the Dutch Republic had much, much more ships. It's not like they could have any hope of getting it back, it was France's turn to have a go now.
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