History of Europe and its lands. The European religious wars between German and Spanish rulers. The Reconquista ended Muslim rule in Iberia. By the 1490s a series of oceanic explorations marked the Age of Discovery, establishing direct links with Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Religious wars continued to be fought in Europe, until the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. The Spanish crown maintained its hegemony in Europe and was the leading power on the continent until the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which ended a conflict between Spain and France that had begun during the Thirty Years' War. An unprecedented series of
Seventeen Provinces during the Eighty Years' War (see Generality Lands), which ended with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Artois and parts of Flanders and Hainaut (French Flanders and French Hainaut) were ceded to France in the course of the 17th and 18th centuries. By the mid-16th century, the Margraviate of Antwerp (Duchy of Brabant) had become the economic, political, and cultural center of the Netherlands after its capital had shifted from the nearby Lordship of Mechelen to the city of Brussels. Bruges (County of Flanders) had already lost its prominent position as economic powerhouse of northern Europe. And Holland was gradually