Blockmans Tim, Prevenier Walter. The Promised Lands. The Low Countries Under Burgundian Rule, 1369-1530

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. — 304 p.This book is an account of one of the most striking political developments in the history of late medieval and early modern Europe: the formation of the state of the dukes of Burgundy in the Low Countries. The process of state formation began with the naming of Philip the Bold, son of King John II of France, as first peer of France and duke of Burgundy in 1363, and with his marriage in 1369 to Margaret of Male, heiress to the county of Flanders and other lands. With Philip's virtually independent financial and political power base in Burgundy and the wealth of the Flemish countship and cities, Philip and his descendants built an elaborate network of many principalities, diverse in their character and history but all united in the person of the duke. From its beginnings in Burgundy, the center of gravity of this network moved increasingly to the Low Countries. In the sixteenth century, much of this state followed the tangled pathways of inheritance into the Habsburg Empire of Maximilian I and his grandson Charles V, who organized the Low Countries into the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands in 1543 and the Bourgondische Kreits, the Burgundian Circle, a self-contained part of the Empire, in 1548. In turn, part of this was transformed into the Spanish-Netherlands Empire of Charles's son Philip II.Perspectives on the Burgundian Dynasty in the Low Countries
A New European Power in the Making, 1363–1405
Burgundian Interests in France and the Low Countries, 1404–1425
The Decisive Years, 1425–1440
The Difficult Path Toward an Integrated State, 1440–1465
The Promised Lands, 1440–1475
War, Crisis, and a Problematic Succession, 1465–1492
The Second Flowering, 1492–1530
The Burgundian Legacy