The Tide of Democracy, from Amsterdam to Fee

I plan to write a series of historical novels about the origins of modern democracy, about 1.5 Million to 3 million words. When we talk about the history of modern democracy, most people will think of the British Glorious Revolution in 1688, the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, or the French Revolution in 1789. But few people know that two hundred years before these glorious moments, a more fundamental democratic revolution had already occurred in the Netherlands. In 1581, seven provinces in the Netherlands jointly issued the "Act of Abstention", which was the first political document in human history to formally declare that "the people have the right to overthrow a tyrant." It was 195 years earlier than the United States' Declaration of Independence. This uprising not only established Europe's first republic, but more importantly, it transformed "popular sovereignty" from an abstract theory into a political practice for the first time. However, this history is almost blank in the Chinese world. Our history textbooks summarize the "Netherlands Revolution" in a paragraph or two, as if it were just a footnote to Spain's decline. This neglect is unjust and dangerous—if we don't know where democracy comes from, it's hard to understand how to defend it. The first purpose of writing this history is to fill this gap and let Chinese readers see the true source of democracy.