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
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