The Burgundian Circle was an administrative district of the Holy Roman Empire that existed for nearly three centuries and comprised what are now the Low Countries and some parts of France. The Circle was for a time called the Austrian Netherlands.

French dukes of Burgundy had ruled the Burgundian Netherlands for more than a century by the time that Maximilian I assumed total control of them and declared them to be part of the House of Habsburg, in 1482. A few decades later, the Holy Roman Empire gained control of the Low Countries and the French crown took back the Duchy of Burgundy. By this time, the Low Countries had formed into Seventeen Provinces:

• the County of Artois
• the Duchy of Brabant
• the Lordship of Drenthe, Lingen, Wedde, and Westerwolde
• the County of Flanders
• the Lordship of Frisia
• the Lordship of Groningen
• the Duchy of Guelders
• the County of Hainaut
• the County of Holland
• the Duchy of Limburg
• the Duchy of Luxembourg
• the Lordship of Mechelen
• the County of Namur
• the Lordship of Overijssel
• the Lordship of Utrecht
• the County of Zeeland
• the County of Zutphen.

It was in the 16th Century that Emperor Charles V declared that all of the Low Countries' Seventeen Provinces should forever be ruled by one person. When the emperor abdicated in 1556, he declared that his son, King Philip II of Spain, would be that person.

Various conflicts between Philip and the Seventeen Provinces led to the secession of the seven northern ones and then the Eighty Years War. It was at the end of another international conflict, the War of the Spanish Succession, that Austria gained control of what had been the Spanish Netherlands, the southern 10 of the original Seventeen Provinces. Historians generally refer to those lands at that time as the Austrian Netherlands. Austria retained ownership of those lands until 1794, when France annexed them during the War of the First Coalition. Complicated treaty negotiations dragged on until 1797, when Austria finally washed its hands of ownership and France took over completely.