We have reached the end of our stroll. We find ourselves in the company of Alexandre Dumas who, in 1850, wrote “The Black Tulip”. In it, he combines the stories of the tulip mania in the Netherlands with the tragic story of the brothers de Witt. In our final example of “About the data” we reconstruct the historic trading data of tulip bulbs, which turns out to be a detective story in its own right. Prices for tulip bulbs crashed on February 3, 1637. We also include the story of the growing of the first black tulip in 1986. Johan de Witt was tragically lynched by a politically motivated mob on August 20, 1672. With him, we meet a politician who, through his mathematical training, was able to solve an important problem from the realm of life insurance risk, the pricing of annuities. His publication “Waerdye” is our final example on risk communication. We leave the closing lines of our book to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who spoke the following words to Horatio “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” We hope that we were able to convince you that these words very much apply to the realm of risk.

Chapter 8 details the on-going importance of the politics of alliance before and after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. In the Empire, the organization of alliances shifted in the second half of the seventeenth century, as the principles of corporate alliance migrated into princely military leagues like the 1658 Rhenish Alliance and large-scale associations among Imperial Circles. Despite their different structures, both the military alliances and Circle Associations adopted the rhetoric of earlier leagues and mirrored their goals. Related processes played out in the United Provinces, where the decades after Westphalia witnessed a running debate over what form the Dutch state should take. At the heart of this conflict sat competing ideas about the Union of Utrecht. The Union served as a focal point for all kinds of proposals about the Dutch Republic’s operation. One of the few things that each side agreed on was the Union’s centrality. Accordingly, the development of the Dutch state during this period was inseparable from struggles over the Union’s meaning. By examining Westphalia’s legacy in both the Empire and United Provinces, this chapter traces the lasting influence of the politics of alliance on northern Europe’s political systems into the late seventeenth century and beyond.