Eighty Years' War other areas, although the heartland of the republic was no longer threatened; this included the beginnings of the Dutch Colonial Empire, which at the time were conceived as carrying overseas the war with Spain. After a 12-year truce in which the Dutch Republic achieved de facto recognition, hostilities broke out again around 1619, which can be said to coincide with the Thirty Years' War. An end was reached in 1648 with the Peace of Münster (a treaty part of the Peace of Westphalia), when the Dutch Republic was definitively recognised as an independent country no longer part of the Holy
Conventional warfare by Plato, then found more acceptance in the consolidation of power under the Roman Catholic Church. European monarchs then gained power as the Catholic Church was stripped of temporal power and was replaced by the divine right of kings. In 1648, the powers of Europe signed the Treaty of Westphalia which ended the religious violence for purely political governance and outlook, signifying the birth of the modern 'state'. Within this statist paradigm, only the state and its appointed representatives were allowed to bear arms and enter into war. In fact, war was only understood as a conflict between sovereign states.