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
Dominions of Sweden Norway to the king of Sweden under the Treaty of Kiel, which followed on Second War against Napoleon. However the treaty of Kiel never came into force: instead sovereignty of Western Pomerania passed to Kingdom of Prussia, who already held the eastern parts and merged them into the Province of Pomerania. Norway declared her independence, but was forced after a short war into a personal Union with Sweden. Sweden received the German town of Wismar with the surrounding countryside in the Peace of Westphalia (1648). In 1803 Wismar was pawned, in exchange for a loan, and control was handed over