ABSTRACT
On 14 June 1713 fireworks lit the sky over The Hague to celebrate the Peace of Utrecht, which had been ratified by the States General. Central to the festivities was a floating artifice built in the Hofvijver depicting a temple of Janus surrounded by metaphorical figures. Fireworks were lit from all corners of the edifice. 1 The two-faced Roman god symbolised the end of war and the beginning of peace. 1713 marked the end of the war, but also the end of an old world and the harbinger of a new one. That is easier to see now, perhaps, than in 1713. Historians have argued that Utrecht spelled the end of the wars of religion or the beginning of a new European states system. More specifically, Dutch historians have argued about the significance of 1713 as a watershed in the history of the Dutch republic as a great power. 2 It heralded a relatively long period of peace. But that outcome was, of course, not obvious to contemporaries, who discussed the nature of international relations in the post-Utrecht period in order to decide upon a new direction of foreign policy.
