This history presents a systematic outline of the establishment of the modern Netherlands from the ashes of the Eighty Years' War and foreign political conspiracy. A well-researched work by American author, diplomat, and famous historian, John Lothrop Motley, who is best known for his works on the Netherlands like the three-volume work The Rise of the Dutch Republic, and four-volume History of the United Netherlands. Motley had begun to plan a history of the Netherlands, in particular the period of the United Provinces in 1846. This work was planned on a larger scale and displayed the results of a more significant amount of original research. Motley had actually mapped this history down to 1648, but he died before finishing this work. But by then, he had published, in four volumes, The History of the United Netherlands, 1584–1609 (1860–67).