The five previous volumes of the Acta Historiae Neerlandicae appeared under the auspices of the Netherlands Committee for Historical Sciences. When in 1970 this Committee merged with the Historical Society to form the Dutch Historical Society (Nederlands Historisch Genootschap) an opportunity arose to rethink the aims of the Acta's original promotors. Also this sixth and succeeding volumes became the responsibility of the new combined Society as above. The volumes will from now on be published at The Hague by Martinus Nijhoff. From the early days of the Acta language barriers were broken down, and interested scholars from other countries could acquaint themselves with deve lopments in historical work in the Low Countries hitherto published only in Dutch. The Acta thus enabled discussion on Dutch historical topics to become international. However, initially subjects covered a wide field, not only of Dutch but also of general history, and articles were translated from Dutch not only into English but also into French and German. If sales can be taken as a guide, it appeared that scholars were not finding in the Acta precisely what they were seeking. Editors' expectations, and therefore their hopes, were, it was felt, going unrealised.

During the revolt of the Netherlands, 'rebels' developed for the first time in modern history political philosophies that had a decisive impact on political reality, influenced the actual course of events, led in fact to the creation of a new state. This was a form of theorizing from sheer necessity to the legitimate sovereign. As such it stands at the beginning of a long tradition of civil disobedience. The volume contains sixty-seven fragments of pamphlets, letters, treaties and other documents, translated from the Dutch, Latin and French, that together provide an insight into the motives of the 'rebels' and into discussions about the legality of the Revolt. Through detailed annotation and an editorial introduction, Professor Kossman and Dr Mellink gather together the threads of the complicated story and analyse some of the major theoretical problems discussed by sixteenth-century Netherlands, and sixteenth-century Europe in general and to all those interested in the history and development of political theory.