European wars of religion European wars of religion The European wars of religion were a series of religious wars waged in 16th and 17th century Europe. The wars were fought in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation (1517), which disrupted the religious order in the Catholic countries of Europe. However, religion was not the only cause of the wars, which also included revolts, territorial ambitions, and Great Power conflicts. By the end of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Catholic France was allied with the Protestant countries against the Catholic Habsburg monarchy. The wars were largely ended by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), establishing a
Piracy in the Caribbean problems at home to turn much attention to their New World colonies. The non-Spanish colonies were growing and expanding across the Caribbean, fueled by a great increase in immigration as people fled from the chaos and lack of economic opportunity in Europe. While most of these new immigrants settled into the West Indies' expanding plantation economy, others took to the life of the buccaneer. Meanwhile, the Dutch, at last independent of Spain when the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia ended their own Eighty Years War (1568–1648) with the Habsburgs, made a fortune carrying the European trade goods needed by these new