Theo H.P.M. Thomassen



In the storage area of the Algemeen Rijksarchief in The Hague is a castiron safe painted black standing amid hundreds of shelves of identical, acid-free boxes and files stored in modern portfolios. With the turn of a key two glass cases can be brought up on a tray in the safe <how so?>. Two documents are displayed opposite each other in the upper case. They are bound in red velvet and tied shut with ribbons of the same fabric. At present they lie open to the last folio, revealing the gold seals and the signatures below the text of each: 'Yo el rey' ('I the king') and 'Philippe', respectively. These are the acts of ratification of Philip IV of Spain on the treaty that was signed in Münster in 1648 by his plenipotentiaries and those of the States General.

Each of the two ratifications consists of a declaration by Philip whereby he confirmed the Münster treaty which — along with the plenary powers of the envoys who negotiated it — is included word for word in that declaration. The one exemplar is a ratification in French of a French-language version of the treaty, the other a ratification in Spanish of a Dutch-language version. Thus there must also be two ratifications of <or 'by'?> the States General in the Spanish town of Simancas: a French ratification of a French-language version of the treaty and a Dutch-language ratification of a Dutch-language version. The parties settled on this arrangement because they did not understand one another's languages, whereas they both knew French, and because they had not made a Spanish version of the treaty. [1] Both ratifications are signed by the King, countersigned by the Spanish secretary Hieronimo de la Torre, and confirmed with a solid gold seal — one side bearing the royal arms and the legend 'Philippus IIII, DG Hispaniarum Rex', while the other side is smooth — suspended from a gold cord.

In the lower case is displayed a casket covered with red velvet, decorated with silver mountings and silver thread, and lined with leather. The casket contains a portfolio that cannot be much more than one hundred years old. The portfolio, tied shut, contains two modern light-blue acid-free binders and a yellow folder from the 1950s.

Inside the yellow folder is a facsimile of the peace treaty that, as appears from a pencilled notation, must have been made in October 1940 and therefore have had a symbolic meaning. One of the blue bindings contains the two peace treaties, including the plenary powers of the signatories, which were signed on 30 January 1648 and sealed with the arms of the envoys. On the left we see the names and arms of the Spanish envoys Gaspar de Bracamonte y Gusman, count of Penaranda, and Antoine Brun; on the right the seals and the signatures of the States envoys, the Gelderlanders Barthold van Gent van Loenen and <1st name?> Meynerswijck, the Hollanders Johan van Mathenesse and Adriaan Pauw, the Zeelander Johan de Knuyt, the Utrechter Godard van Reede, lord of Nederhorst, the Frieslander Frans van Donia, Willem van Ripperda from Overijssel, and the Groninger Adriaen Clant.

The order of the seals and signatures corresponds to the precedence of the signatories. The Spanish king was allotted the place after the crowned heads and the Republic of Venice, which Their Noble Great Mightinesses had always claimed, but of course his rank was still higher and he was therefore the first to sign. Because Philip IV had definitively renounced the titles duke of Gelderland, count of Holland and Zeeland and lord of Utrecht, Friesland, Overijssel and Groningen, the States envoys could now sign on behalf of the new sovereigns of those provinces. Indeed the precedence was so scrupulously observed that space was left for Van Reede between the signatures of De Knuyt and Donia, since he was forbidden to sign initially. Especially in the Dutch copy one can clearly see that Utrecht's envoy placed his signature and seal in blank space only after the province had reconciled itself to the situation. [2]

In the second binding are a number of other agreements that were reached by the Spanish and Dutch envoys. In a political sense the most important was undoubtedly the particular article in French about trade. The accompanying 'acte obligatoir' required the Spanish to come to The Hague within two months and ratify this article. There are also several other acts regarding treaty provisions. All of these agreements were reached shortly before the ratification and confirmed in the same manner as the treaty, with the exception of the missing signature and seal of Johan de Knuyt, who had been recalled in the meantime by his principals in Zeeland. Two declarations are linked to these agreements, namely a declaration by the Spanish envoys concerning the question of religion in the Meierij of 's-Hertogenbosch, with a receipt from their Spanish colleagues, and a declaration by the Spanish envoys concerning the princes whom the Spanish wished to have included in the treaty <OK?>.

The second binding also contains acts having to do with the formalities surrounding the conclusion of peace: the plenary powers for the envoys who were to swear the ratification — issued of course by the States General — the oaths and the documents pertaining to the proclamation of the treaty. This last group of documents consists of the original act of proclamation in Dutch, a copy of the proclamation in French and an accompanying letter from the States envoys to Their Noble Great Mightinesses. Because a treaty could only be enacted if it was read aloud, it was common practice to register the account of proclamation or to preserve it in the archive.



Rituals: swearing and proclaiming peace

The safe in The Hague contains more than the written testimonies of the agreements reached in Münster. The parties involved cast the testimonies in a special form, to give them <or 'to enhance their'?> evidential value, but also to underscore the importance of the agreements. And not only the form of the acts, but also the formal acts that they reflect — the swearing of the peace, the exchange of the ratifications and the proclamation of the treaty — were intended to give the agreements evidential value and meaning. Consequently the agreements cannot be adequately interpreted if one ignores the formalities or the rituals behind them.

On 15 May 1648 the treaty between the King of Spain and the States General of the United Netherlands was sworn by the Spanish and States envoys in the town hall of Münster, the doors open to the outside and a large crowd in attendance. The Spanish delegation was complete; on the States side Van Reede and De Knuyt were absent, the former because of illness, the latter because his principals opposed ratification. After the ratifications had been read aloud in French, it was time for the swearing. The Spanish were first. A silver cross had been laid in a large Bible, held open by the priest of the Spanish embassy. On it the two Spanish plenipotentiaries laid their right hand. De Penaranda read his oath in Spanish; the moment he said he took God as his judge he, like Brun, raised his right hand and kissed the cross. Then Meynerswijck read the oath to the Spanish envoys in French. The words 'ainsi m'aide Dieu' were pronounced by all the States plenipotentiaries, the index and middle fingers of their right hand raised. [3]

Gerard Ter Borch's painting, which immortalises both swearings, is discussed elsewhere in this volume. [4] Worth noting in this context is the sequence in which the artist arranged the envoys round the table, which matches that of their signatures beneath the treaty and thus reflects an imperative political convention. Donia and Ripperda appear to be in the second row only because Ter Borch placed Adriaen Pauw prominently in front <check ptg.>. After all, Pauw was not only Ter Borch's patron and client, but also the representative of Amsterdam — the most powerful member of the most powerful province — and responsible for bringing about the peace. He therefore deserved some prominence, provided he not disturb the established precedence.

Once the peace had been sworn, the ratifications could be exchanged, along with all the related documents. As we have seen, the documents presented by the Spanish to the States envoys were kept in the red velvet casket. In the painting the casket is shown on the table at the right <is this correct?>; before it lies one of the Spanish ratifications with Philip's great seal in gold. According to the reports, the documents intended for the King of Spain were in a casket covered with red velvet. Ter Borch placed it on the table at the left <is this correct?>. One of the ratifications of Their Noble Great Mightinesses, with the red wax seal of the States General, is seen lying on top of it. The Spanish casket resembles a treasure chest, the Dutch one a large cigar box. Not knowing there was any difference, one would certainly not notice it in Ter Borch's painting. [5] Is this simply another instance of Dutch parsimony? No doubt, but the qualitative difference was presumably another manifestation of the formal hierarchical relationships.

The safe in The Hague also contains an act of publication as we have noted <has this in fact been noted?>. Proclamation and publication were formal requirements. Not a single act, and certainly no treaty, could do without oral testimony, or the oral testimony without the recollection. [6] The treaty had already been read aloud on the fifteenth of May, before the swearing. But the next morning it was proclaimed once more from the steps of the Münster town hall. First the Dutch version of the treaty was read, then the Spanish ratification in Spanish, the ratification of Their Noble Great Mightinesses in Dutch, the particular article with the ratifications, and finally the act of publication in French. Many people followed the reading, which lasted for hours, in three incomprehensible languages: the authorities were sensible enough to surround it with plenty of pomp and circumstance, impressive diplomatic ceremonial, splendid decors, music and drink. That very day the States envoys sent the original act of proclamation in Dutch and a copy of it in French along with a cover letter to The Hague. The original act of publication could therefore be read in a plenary session of the States General as early as 18 May. Later on, as we have seen, the documents would be placed in the casket along with the ratifications.

On 5 June 1648 the text of the peace was proclaimed from every town hall in the Northern and Southern Netherlands. Every regent, admiral, high military commander, governor, and foreign envoy was informed of the swearing. The proclamation and printed copies of the act of publication, the treaty in Dutch and French (including the plenary powers for the envoys), and the acts of ratification were distributed over the entire world among the subjects of the state <which state?>. Zeeland, too, proclaimed the peace, on the condition that the province not be blamed for whatever consequences the treaty might have. [7] All of the formal requirements had now been met.



The transferral of the documents from Münster to The Hague

Almost four months after the exchange of the ratifications, on 8, 9 and 10 September 1648, the States envoys presented an official report in the assembly of the States General. The session of 8 September 1648 was largely devoted to the handing over of the casket and the inspection of its precious contents. Besides the casket, Meynerswijck also took the opportunity to return the numerous acts and resolutions that had been given him at the time of his departure for Münster, be they copies or originals, by the secretariat (griffie) of the States General. These included important acts connected with the peace negotiations: the passports of the Emperor and the King of Spain, and the plenary powers and instructions of Their Noble Great Mightinesses. But most of the documents were retroacts from previous diplomatic negotiations <or 'diplomatic missions'?>. He had even taken along the old resolution registers from the truce negotiations (1607–1609), from the negotiations with the representatives of the Southern Netherlands (1629 and 1632–1634), and from the negotiations that preceded the treaty with France (from 1634 on). Nor was the effort wasted: the text of the Peace of Münster is largely quoted from the treaty of the truce. [8]

Eight days later Meynerswijck submitted the delegation report he had drawn up in consultation with his colleagues. Reports of this kind were the officially drafted and signed accounts of the actions and findings of the embassy, with all the relevant documents. [9] A classic delegation report, the Münster report covers the period from 5 December 1645 to 16 September 1648 and is divided into three parts. [10] The first two form the actual report. As was customary, it begins with the constituent acts of the embassy: the instructions, the oath, the passports from the Emperor, the King of Spain and the lieutenant-general of the Southern Netherlands, the act of indemnity (for diplomatic protection), the plenary powers and so forth. This is followed by a chronological survey of the negotiations, which serves primarily to connect the letters, memoranda and acts that the envoys exchanged with the States General and their fellow envoys in Münster. It concludes with the report that the envoys delivered to the States General on 9 September 1648. The third part consists of transcriptions of the relevant documents that the envoys received or were sent for their information.

Having concluded, confirmed, sworn and proclaimed the peace, the problem now was how to keep it. What was done at the secretariat of the States General with the documents the envoys brought from Münster? The resolution registers that had been removed as retroacts before departure were returned to the first shelf in the hallway of the secretariat, beside the other registers and reports of the peace and truce negotiations with Spain and the Southern Netherlands and the peace congresses. The Münster report was put behind them. [11]

The individual documents were placed in one of the rooms at the secretariat. Several years later they were stored in one of the two loketkasten, that is, cupboards specially made at the time for outsize papers and dossiers. Before papers were stored in these, they were folded lengthwise, bound together and inscribed <or 'labelled'?>. Documents that did not fit into one of these cupboards — because they were either too large or too numerous — were taken to the attic. The cupboard marked 'Spain' <OK?> contains the dossier of retroacts from 1608 onward that the envoys took to Münster and brought back in 1648. [12]

Shortly after it was submitted, the report was stored in the archives of the States General, where it remains to this day. The archives also contain two copies of the same, which do not belong there. The submitted copy was transcribed from one of them, which was apparently kept up to date and drafted by Meynerswijck himself; <add 'to judge from the handwriting'?>, he received little help. The series comprises six volumes containing the originals of the documents transcribed in the report that was submitted, as well as five volumes of original diplomatic memoranda. All eleven volumes apparently belonged to Meynerswijck's personal archive, and were acquired by <or 'for'?> the state archives at a sale in the early nineteenth century. [13]

At least as interesting, but more for its form than its content, is a two-part <or 'two-volume'?> report <or 'a copy of a two-part report'?>. [14] As appears from the handwriting, the two parts/volumes<?> were copied by provincial clerks in the secretariat of the States General, namely Aernout van Leliënberg, clerk of Overijssel <dates?>, and Ottho Viglius, clerk of Friesland as from 11 August 1648. They can be traced to the archive of the seventeenth-century diplomat-spy and news agent-historian Lieuwe van Aitzema. For years Laliënberg, a cousin/nephew<?> by marriage of Aitzema, and Viglius, who like Aitzema hailed from Friesland, transcribed official state documents from the secretariat of Their Noble Great Mightinesses for Aitzema, either legally or illegally. Aitzema used them in support of his diplomatic activities: in the period 1626–1669 he was resident of the Hanseatic League in The Hague. But he also employed them for his news agency, whose subscribers in 1648 included highly placed civil servants and diplomats directly involved in the negotiations — like one of the mediators at the Münster congress, the Venetian diplomat Contarini. [15] Once the transcriptions lost their political or journalistic value, Aitzema used them for his Verhael van de Nederlandsche vreedehandeling (Account of the Dutch peace negotiations), which appeared as early as 1650, and his Saken van staet en oorlogh (Affairs of state and warfare), which he started writing in 1659 on commission from Friesland. [16]

In 1669, shortly after Aitzema's death, three of his former clerks were tried for treason. His archive, including the Münster report, was claimed by the States General and transferred to the secretariat. There it was banished to the attic, where it was rediscovered in 1852. [17]

The casket containing the ratifications was finally placed in the secret cupboard (secrete kas), built in 1621, which stood in the assembly room of Their Noble Great Mightinesses from 1646. It held the individual documents that were either secret or of particular importance to the States General. [18]



Other Münster documents in the 'secrete kas' and the 'loketkas'

Besides the documents brought back by the States envoys, the Münster resolutions that Their Noble Great Mightinesses had taken in the course of the negotiations were, of course, also stored in the archives of the States General. Most of the appendices found a place in the cupboard (loketkas) and the secret cupboard (secrete kas), which still contain, besides the previously mentioned documents, several dozen dossiers and bundles of papers directly related to the peace negotiations. [19]

The thickest packets were originally the two so-called Münster files. The files were actually pieces of cardboard with a subject label and a string attached to the centre on which the relevant documents were strung <OK?>. They included the secret correspondence with all those involved in the negotiations, especially the States envoys. The Münster files were numbered among the documents from the secret cupboard, but were so extensive that in fact they hung above the cupboards where the ordinary registers and the proceedings of the States General were stored in the so-called agent's room. [20]

Other papers received were kept separate from the correspondence and actually stored in the cupboards: four reports and memoranda that the States envoys sent from The Hague and Münster to their principals in the period 1646–1648, a number of documents that they displayed in 1647 in the assembly, and transcriptions of the Spanish peace proposals. The proposals are formulated in two letters to the States General, the one written by the Spanish envoy Francisco de Moura y Cortereal <OK?> Castel Rodrigo in 1646, the other by his colleague Antoine Brun a year later.

Some of the items in the cupboard relate to the journey of the States envoys to, and their sojourn in, Münster, and to the passport that the King of Spain was supposed to issue them. The passport itself, which had been the cause of so much trouble, is kept here in the original, with an authentic transcription in the form of a vidimus issued by the Court of Holland; copies are found in various other locations. The retroacts go back to 1632. The documents in the cupboard and secret cupboard concerning the preparations for the negotiations are also interesting, such as the secret drafts of the instructions and plenary powers for the States negotiators and the plenary powers of their Spanish colleagues from 1645 and 1646, as well as a bundle of documents pertaining to the conditions under which the truce with Spain can be transformed into a peace. The cupboard also contains the packet of documents regarding the so-called preliminaries from the years 1643–1646, the standpoints of the provinces concerning union, religion and militia, which the provinces wished to establish before starting the negotiations.

Other dossiers contain papers — most of them secret — regarding the involvement of the States General in the negotiations and their standpoints concerning the practice of the Roman Catholic religion in the Meierij of 's-Hertogenbosch (1643 and 1647–1648), trade on the Baltic (1646) and claims to the Overkwartier (1646–1647). There are documents about the relations of the States General and their envoys during the conference with France in 1647 and 1648, and with the Prince of Orange in 1647. And finally there are also the documents directly related to the ratification: a transcription of the ratification, with a translation in Dutch, the memoranda that the Utrecht delegate Van Reede and the other envoys exchanged concerning the lord of Nederhorst's refusal to sign the treaty on behalf of Utrecht, and the ratifications of the provinces, that is the reports the provinces published regarding ratification in the assembly of the States General.



The quest for secrecy and the resolutions

In the archives of the States General (and those of other collegiate governing bodies from the ancien régime), the distinction between ordinary and secret is not only characteristic, but also significant. Documents were declared secret in order to limit not only access to information about the matter in question, but also the number of people who had anything to say about it. It was a way of restricting both publicity and consultation, so as to exclude the enemy as well as the provincial and local regents. The secrecy issue was related to the decision-making process. [21]

The distinction between ordinary and secret was therefore made not only with respect to individual documents but also to series, and especially series of resolutions. The question as to whether a document was secret or not was even determined grosso modo by the status of the resolution that was taken in response to that document or from which the document resulted. And in the archives of the States General, where all official documents are defined as appendices to one resolution or another, [22] this means that the motive for making a document secret can generally be deduced from the corresponding resolution.

The political struggle over war and peace between 1636 and 1648 was also a struggle over the recording and publication of the resolutions. Whoever was responsible for the day-to-day management of foreign affairs had a vested interest in keeping secret as much as possible and putting as little as possible on paper. Under the circumstances, temporarily delegating powers to secret commissions from the ranks of the States General was effective. These secret commissions, which were under the control of the Stadholder, could make decisions about sensitive issues on behalf of the entire assembly, decisions that sometimes did not even have to be recorded in every case. [23] Whoever did not have direct control of foreign policy desired political control <explain?> and thus a thorough registration and publication of the respective resolutions. In practice this meant that the pro-French party, which was led by the Stadholder's court and supported by the Grand Pensionary of Holland and the corrupt secretary Cornelis Musch, promoted secrecy at all costs. Those who might have been willing to sacrifice the alliance with France to peace with Spain, and especially the cities of Holland headed by Amsterdam, tried to control those delegates who, together with the Prince, sided with French by promoting the registration and distribution of the resolutions.

The peace party gradually grew in strength. In 1636 the States General commissioned the secretary (griffier) to take the minutes of the meetings held in the Prince's chamber. A year later Their Noble Great Mightinesses tightened their control over the editing of the resolutions (and thus over the secretariat) by no longer summarising and recording their decisions at the end of the meeting, but at the start. [24] In 1643 and 1644 most of the provinces, with Holland in the lead, bound their deputies to the Generality to strict guidelines regarding consultation and secrecy. In 1646 the provinces represented in the States General tried to gain greater control of the decision-making process by binding Musch to stricter guidelines. [25] Shortly thereafter, as a demonstration of their intentions, they had the secret cupboard transferred from one of the rooms in the secretariat to their own assembly hall. And that same year they changed the manner in which secret resolutions were recorded <OK?>. [26]

With regard to the peace negotiations, Their Noble Great Mightinesses took a great many ordinary and secret resolutions. Most of them are registered in one so-called particular register, popularly known as 'the book of the proceedings of the Peace of Münster', or simply 'the register of the peace negotiations'. [27] It contains not only most of the resolutions concerning the peace negotiations that Their Noble Great Mightinesses took in the period 1643–1649, but also the respective appendices. Most of the acts, resolutions and exhibits concerning the peace negotiations in this archive <or these archives'?> are transcribed in it, including the original acts, papers received and the minutes of outgoing papers that are found in the cupboard and the secret cupboard and the Münster files included in it. The register comprises four volumes, which span the period 1634–1649. [28]

At first, besides this particular register, registration also occurred in the ordinary or secret register, but as from 20 June 1644 the book of the proceedings contains a growing number of resolutions that are only registered in that location. From January to April 1648 all of the Münster minute resolutions are registered exclusively in the particular register.

The register of the proceedings begins not with resolutions from 1643, but with those from 1634, the reason being that the resolutions concerning Münster affairs from the period 1634–1643, and their appendices, were also transcribed in it, in reverse chronological order. For that period the book of the peace negotiations is not entirely, but virtually, complete.



Disturbed order and lost meaning under the ancien régime

The Peace of Münster had to be established and it had to be done as unequivocally as possible. There was no room for confusion as to the terms of the agreement, be it in 1648 or, for that matter, in the centuries that would follow. Every effort was therefore made to ensure that the written representation of the peace satisfied three conditions. In the first place, the documents had to be drafted in the requisite form, that is, with the proper wording and with the appropriate means of confirmation. In the second place, they had to be firmly anchored in the structure of the archives of the States General, whereby their relation to the other Münster documents and to the decision-making and negotiation process was fixed. And in the third place, they were surrounded with objects intended not only for storage but also as vehicles of the meaning that the various parties attached, literally or figuratively, to the agreement. In sum, the archival documents were given the form, the structure and the context that would assure their authenticity and reliability, their value and significance once and for all. As it happened, these efforts were not completely successful in the end. The physical appearance, the textual form and the means of confirmation remained reasonably intact. But the structure — that is, the integrity of the archive as a whole and the structure of some archival elements — are no longer so authentic. What is missing above all is the physical context, the 'packaging' intended to enhance the documents' significance.

The first disturbance of the structure was the rearrangement of the regular series of resolutions from the years 1637–1651. The original structure of these resolutions was brought into line with those taken after 1651 by Cornelis de Heijde, agent and archivist of the States General. In 1662 De Heijde was instructed to index and bind the earlier resolutions as well, and therefore rearranged the resolutions taken before 1651. He brought together all the secret minute resolutions of the assembly in a continuous series of secret minutes, regardless of whether they were found among the ordinary series of minutes, in the secret cupboard or somewhere else. If ordinary and secret minutes were written on one sheet, as often happened, he made copies of them. To this series of secret minute resolutions he also added the resolutions of the secret commissions, in so far as he could find them. These included the resolutions that griffier Musch — sometimes in defiance of explicit orders — had not recorded in the secret register. Individual registers can therefore be involved, but also larger collections of resolutions that were taken by secret commissions of longer duration, such as the minute resolutions of the commission that was supposed to draw up the instructions for the envoys to Münster in 1645.

Besides a continuous series of secret minute resolutions, De Heijde also constructed a continuous series of fair copies of secret resolutions, by rearranging and rebinding individual assessment lists and existing registers (with the exception of the particular registers!). In addition, he sometimes eliminated overlaps or had assessment lists transcribed in order to bind the transcriptions in the same volume. Thus he constructed, for instance, one register of fair copies in which all of the secret resolutions for the period 1634–1646 seem to be recorded in the proper chronological sequence, whether or not they were voted by the full assembly or by a commission. Thenceforth the arrangement of the resolutions from the 1640s conveyed no sense of the hectic decision-making process that had led to the resolutions.

Finally, De Heijde indexed the series of ordinary and secret resolutions that he had created. He did the same with the five Münster resolution registers and the Münster account. The series of ordinary and secret resolutions were bound. [29] A new structure was introduced and established.



Transferral, collection formation and unsuccessful reconstruction

In 1806 the Peace of Münster was taken to Paris by Napoleon along with all the other treaties and ratifications of the States General. Since the Emperor was unable to use them as symbols of his greatness or that of his empire, as he had intended, the cupboards were returned to The Hague unharmed in 1813.

This transferral was a premonition of a far more radical operation. In the years after 1806 the archives of the States General were transferred from the secretariat, a goldmine of significant rights and evidence <???>, to what amounts to an archival warehouse, a warehouse of written historical sources. The change of context meant that the Münster archival documents were now conditioned as a written historical source, and subjected to the literary-historical approach of the nineteenth-century archivist. They were intended and prepared to be consulted by everyone, which had never been the intention. Acts were the embodiment of the rights laid down in them. The point of preserving them was not to consult them, but to uphold rights. The treaties and ratifications of the Peace of Münster were, along with the casket and the secret cupboard, the secular relics of the state, the representations of its fundamental rights, the symbols of a political milestone. Originals were not meant to be consulted; whoever wished to know the content of the documents had to rely on transcriptions or registers. Their Noble Great Mightinesses had therefore determined in 1653 and 1670 that an authentic transcription should be made of the most important original conventions, treaties and other documents of importance in the secret cupboard. [30]

The transfer of the Münster documents to an historical archive brought a new context and thus a new meaning with it. [31] Thenceforth they were only used, interpreted, presented and preserved as conveyors of historical information, and no longer as symbols, historical objects or as works of art. The cupboards that surrounded the written documents, but were not themselves inscribed with text and therefore of no interest to the archivist, were thus reduced to superfluous packaging.

After the archives were transferred, their original structure also vanished in part. The Münster documents were likewise removed from their original context. The treaties and ratifications of the peace remained in the secret cupboard, but the other documents were combined with similar ones from other archives to form a collection of 'foreign affairs'. In the 1880s the state archivist Van Riemsdijk launched an impressive operation aimed at restoring the original archives. Lack of time, funds and staff prevented the completion of this operation, however. By the time his reconstruction of the archives of the States General was completed in the first half of the 1960s, respect for anything difficult to understand had disappeared from the Rijksarchief, along with specialised knowledge. All the copies of the Münster reports and the particular Münster resolution registers that were still in the building were incorporated in the archive. The plan to integrate the cupboard and the secret cupboard by arranging the documents in chronological order, regardless of origin, narrowly missed being implemented.



Conservation and the loss of meaning

Changes in the structure and context of the Münster documents have also been caused by measures taken in the course of time in the state archives to facilitate consultation of the treaties, ratifications, the other acts and the registers and, to the same end, to conserve them. The unilateral emphasis on the value of the Münster documents as information led to measures to improve their accessibility; those measures called in turn for measures to increase their durability. All of these measures stripped the individual archival documents of their individuality, of the tokens of their dignity and of the vehicles of their meaning. Moreover, they reduced the objects that lent meaning to those documents to mere packaging. An attempt was made to preserve the symbolic value of only the casket with the silver mountings. When it had to be removed from the secret cupboard, it was not stored like the other secret bundles in a cardboard box, but in a castiron safe presumably made in the early twentieth century specially for this purpose. The safe ended up in the bowels of the archives on the Bleyenburg, from which it was transferred in 1981 to the Prins Willem Alexanderhof.



Illustrations and objects: disturbing the order and changing the significance [32]

The form of the Münster documents is well preserved, the structure and the physical context are no longer completely intact and the signification never amounted to much. Artists such as Gerard Ter Borch in the seventeenth, and Barend Wijnveld, Jr. and Pieter François Greive in the second half of the nineteenth century did not manage to cast the swearing of peace as a formal event of national significance. Nor could the beautiful casket do much to change this. When the cane of <Johan van?> Oldenbarneveldt, the tongue of Johan de Witt and the book chest of Hugo de Groot were placed in the service of nationalism as secular relics in the 1850s and 1860s, the state archivist Bakhuizen van den Brink had to have it restored at breakneck speed because it was no longer in the state in which it was depicted by Ter Borch: 'The silver mountings are oxidised by time here and there, a hinge is broken, and one of the four silver feet has come loose'. [33] Rather than as a symbol of national unity the casket functioned more often as one of national disunity. When it was exhibited anew in 1948, in his introduction to the catalogue Presser felt he had to account for the fact that he still subscribed to what he had written under a pseudonym as early as 1941: <where does this quotation begin?> that the peace that brought a brilliant end to the eighty-year conflict was undoubtedly the finest that the Netherlands had ever achieved'. [34]

And the castiron casket proves the opposite of what it probably should have proved. Compare it to the nationalistic falderal with which the Americans surrounded their Declaration of Independence in the National Archives in Washington. Every day hundreds of people file past the specially secured glass cases in which the pages are displayed. But the public cannot see the Peace of Münster: it is kept in the Algemeen Rijksarchief, at the back of the storage area on the fourth floor. For the Netherlands and the Dutch the Peace of Münster is indeed a symbol. But of what exactly? The Münster documents in the archives of the States General are a contemporary representation, a representation of the actions, transactions and rituals that were executed by delegates and envoys, all of whom were also representatives. These authors did everything they could to ensure that their image was fixed. They had griffiers and secretaries place their stamp on it, give it a permanent shape and structure, and place it in a material context. Yet the image is blurred and it has another substance and meaning.

It is difficult to say just what the symbolic meaning of the Peace of Münster is or was. One thing we can be certain of is that that meaning has undergone constant change. In 1981, when the Algemeen Rijksarchief in The Hague moved from the depths of the Bleyenburg to the new building on the Prins Willem Alexanderhof (a distance of no more than a kilometre), I was chosen to move the Peace of Münster — just like that, under my arm. To be sure it was wrapped in a cardboard portfolio in case of rain. I walked to the end of the Bleyenburg, turned left onto the Fluwelen Burgwal, crossed the Stationsplein and delivered the portfolio and its contents, safe and sound, to the new address. It was an odd feeling when I suddenly remembered what my history teacher had drilled into me in grammar school some fifteen years after the end of World War Two: '1648. Peace of Münster: we are free'.

FOOTNOTES