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
Treaty establishing the European Defence Community Treaty establishing the European Defence Community The Treaty establishing the European Defence Community, also known as the Treaty of Paris, is an unratified treaty signed on 27 May 1952 by the six 'inner' countries of European integration; West Germany, France, Italy, and the Benelux countries. The treaty would have created a European Defence Community (EDC) with a pan-European defence force. The treaty failed to obtain ratification in the French parliament, and consequently never entered into force. Instead, West Germany was admitted into the Western European Union (WEU), a dormant successor of the 1948 Western Union, as well as NATO. The