They were, in the words of one contemporary observer, ""the Promised Lands."" In all of Europe, only Northern Italy could rival the economic power and cultural wealth of the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages. In The Promised Lands, Wim Blockman...
Willem Pieter Blockmans was Professor of Medieval History at Leiden University between 1987 and 2010. He earned a PhD from the University of Ghent. He has been Rector of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study since September 2002. He has published extensively on late medieval and early modern state power.
This book is interesting and the translation to English is adequate. The authors present the history from the point of view of the Low Countries. However, I found I did not learn anything new as an historian after reading Richard Vaughan's four volume series on the Valois Dukes of Burgundy. This book would be a short overview if the reader is not interested in reading those four books.