Seventeenth-Century Anglo-Dutch Hostility by David White

 

In 1585 Queen Elizabeth I of England agreed the Treaty of Nonsuch with her Protestant co-religionists, the Dutch, in their fight against Catholic Spain. A century later in 1689, William of Orange, Stadholder of Holland, became king of England, guaranteeing an alliance of the two nations against the French. Yet in between these dates, a Dutch fleet sailed up the River Medway in Kent in 1667, burned the royal dockyards and made off with the flagship of the Royal Navy, while in 1672 Charles II  went to war with the Netherlands to aid Louis XIV of France, a seemingly highly unlikely alliance in view of the continual warfare which would soon prevail between these two nations until the early 19^th century. What was it which led to twenty years of armed hostility between England and the Netherlands, with fighting taking place from the Caribbean to New York, from West Africa to Indonesia, and repeated naval battles in the seas between the two nations?

While commercial rivalry needs to be explored at length, we also have to consider other factors, among which is the fact that, other than Switzerland, the Netherlands was the only sizeable nation state in Europe which was a republic, a fact sitting uneasily with monarchs claiming the divine right to rule. Additionally, in an age where religion played a huge role in the beliefs and actions of nearly everyone, did that contribute to the animosity or militate against it? Furthermore, most historians agree that cultural factors are not just reflections of underlying social and economic forces, but are in fact movers of events in their own right. How, therefore, did the Dutch and English view each other?

In the latter part of the 17^th century, commercial rivalries between states often led to skirmishes, legalised piracy and ultimately war. To understand why, we need to grasp the concept of mercantilism, a philosophy of trade and wealth-creation which predominated across western Europe beginning in the 16^th century and lasting deep into the 18^th. Essentially the theory posited the idea that there was a given quantity of wealth in the world and that a gain by one group or nation would necessarily result in a loss to another.  It was therefore argued that government had both a duty and right to intervene and regulate the economy in the interests of the public good. This simplistic view of  wealth in an age before economics was recognised as a discipline, translated easily into economic nationalism; indeed it could be argued that mercantilism was a spurious justification for pre-existing state-sponsored predatory practices. The aforementioned piracy was often dressed up to appear respectable by letters of marque issued to privateers by sovereigns and governments who wished to share in the booty of high seas robbery. At national policy level mercantilism encouraged the use of protective tariffs, subsidies for nationally important industries (most notably military production), and a raft of legislation to enforce these policies which allowed for the seizure of foreign assets where it was perceived that these laws were being breached. Increasingly too, as the technology of sailing ships and weaponry improved, European maritime nations began to expand not only their trade into Africa, America and Asia, but also their imperialist ambitions through the acquisition of colonies. Expanded overseas trade and empire-building led in turn to the growth in size and importance of national navies. 1

One effect of  the hegemony of mercantilist beliefs and practices was a change in the way that international rivalry developed. Whereas previously wars had occured principally for dynastic or religious reasons, notably the Thirty Years War which had ended as recently as 1648, trade and commerce were now major factors, having become increasingly important issues of state. Commercial and military power had become intertwined – money was necessary for carrying out warfare, commerce was needed to produce that money, and commerce in the form of international trade needed to be supported by a powerful military. This was summed up in the words of William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England, who wrote to William III in the 1690s, “Nations… now so feelingly find how much money commands all things, and particularly the sword, and have reason to know that whatever might be formerly, yet the wars of these times are rather to be waged with gold than iron”.2

Neither the Netherlands nor England were great military powers in the 17^th century, and certainly not in the realm of land warfare. However both were seafaring nations whose navies had grown and assumed major significance as a result of threats to their sovereignty and security over the previous hundred years from the same source – Spain.3 Each was also a Protestant nation which set them at odds with her dynasty’s obsession with Catholic supremacy. Furthermore both England and the Netherlands gained disproportionate rewards, as compared to their continental rivals, from trade and colonisation in Africa, America and Asia. Trading with these growing empires and destinations beyond them was financed and insured by companies in London and Amsterdam. Imported tropical goods such as spices, sugar, tea, coffee, silks, tobacco, cotton, furs, oils, dyestuffs, gems, precious metals and exotic woods were paid for by the export of finished and manufactured goods whose production was financed and boosted by the profits of the international carrying trade. Importantly too, especially for the Netherlands, was the the use of their vessels to carry the goods of third parties for trade. Dutch ships obtained a near-monoply on the Baltic exports of  wheat, wood, tar and other essential naval supplies as well as the Atlantic coastal trade with Spain and Portugal for grain, wine and southern European foodstuffs.4 Mention must also be made of that most valuable of commodities, slaves, an essential commodity in the triangular trade across the North Atlantic which helped make England and the Netherlands wealthy.5

While England embraced mercantilism wholeheartedly, the Netherlands was less rigid. The Dutch had a vested interest in what would later be called free trade, especially because of the importance of their third-party maritime commerce. It was highly profitable carrying timber from Norway, grain from Lithuania and whale oil from Russia, not just for domestic use but to destinations beyond the Netherlands. However, this apparently disinterested stance was not the result of high-minded adherence to notions of fairness, no matter how much the Dutch might invoke freedom of navigation to justify their position. It was the result of holding a position of power in maritime commerce. Possessing Europe’s largest and most lucrative merchant fleet, they naturally opposed any move by foreign powers to impose protectionist measures on sea trade.6 Yet when it came to defending that superiority, the Dutch could be as high-handed (and mercantilist) as anyone. Through a treaty arrangement with Denmark, a very weak power at this juncture, the tolls which that country imposed on ships passing through the Kattegat from the Baltic to the North Sea were waived for Dutch vessels. Similarly, military forces were twice dispatched to Sweden to ensure that “best-favoured” status was bestowed upon Dutch shipping trading with her.7

It was over issues surrounding freedom of the seas that most of the quarrels and wars of the period between England and the Netherlands emerged. Despite the many similarities between the two nations, they were nonetheless rivals, perhaps all the more so because of that similarity. That rivalry can be seen emerging as far back as the 1590s when the Dutch began trading beyond their accustomed sphere of the North European bulk coastal trade. This occurred during the War of Independence against Spain when the Spanish closed off the River Scheldt, and then later when Antwerp was lost altogether, becoming part of the separate Spanish Netherlands. Within twenty years Dutch ships, now sailing out of the northern provinces of Holland and Zeeland, successfully moved in on the highly profitable spice trade to the East Indies, the Russian fur trade, Arctic whaling, Guinea gold and West Indian sugar. It can be argued that conflict might well have broken out earlier between England and the Netherlands if it had not been for the resumption of hostilities between  the Dutch and Spanish in 1621. England took advantage of Dutch exclusion from trade with Spain, Portugal, the Spanish Netherlands and the Mediterranean. What shipping remained to the Dutch was further hampered by increased insurance costs resulting from the risks of Spanish depredations.8

In the 1640s all this changed. Portugal broke from the Spanish crown and began trading with the Dutch, England was plunged into civil war and lasting peace between Spain and the Netherlands was concluded by the Treaty of Westphalia. With the world once more open to them, Dutch merchants found that insurance and freight charges now dropped dramatically, while the traditionally low rate of interest in Amsterdam gave them a further advantage over their competitors. The huge capital accumulation which had built up over the previous century began to circulate once more and once again power up the Dutch economy.9 The  resultant impact upon England was swift, deep and cumulative. Within two years of the Treaty of Westphalia, Dutch merchants had cornered 80% of high quality Spanish wool exports at the expense of English traders, the knock-on effect of which damaged the production of fine cloth in England. Since much of this luxury material went for re-export, this further undermined exports. Soon Dutch shipping was even displacing English carriers bringing goods from the East Mediterranean, such as olive oil and dried fruits, destined for England itself.10 This was too much for the regime of Oliver Cromwell, in power after the execution of Charles I. However, Cromwell’s first move was not an immediate assault upon Dutch maritime commerce. He had others aims besides economic ones. He was looking for a way to forge an alliance of Protestant powers in the face of much Catholic hostility to his rule, magnified hugely by the perception in many countries that England was now a dangerous republican regime of regicides posing a threat to all monarchs. Consequently Cromwell sent an embassy to Amsterdam in 1650 with a proposal for an “alliance and union” between the two nations. The Dutch were correctly suspicious of the motives behind this unexpected offer and feared not only for limitations upon their more efficient trading, but for their very sovereignty. They quickly rejected the overture.11 

Repudiation of Cromwell’s offer of union led swiftly to the introduction of the Navigation Act of 1651. This stated that all goods imported into England must be transported by ships of the exporting nation or in English vessels. While this restored  much of her shipping trade with the Levant, it did little else to boost her maritime commerce. However, what it did lead to was a virtual pirate’s charter to attack Dutch merchantmen at will and bring them into English-controlled ports as prizes on the pretext that they were carrying illegal goods bound for the British Isles.12 This infuriated the Dutch, as did another provision of the Act which demanded that all foreign shipping dip their flags in salute to any English vessel which they encountered, even on the high seas, even indeed in foreign ports. This Act was squarely aimed at the Dutch and rarely pursued against other nations’ ships.13 Although it may have seemed like a trivial act of of puffed-up chauvinism, it was in fact a wedge designed to gain recognition that the English were “lords of the sea”. It sought to lay claim to sovereignty over the oceans, which had wide implications for the right to impose tariffs on vessels passing through international waters, and it would drive the Dutch fishing fleets out of their rich herring fisheries in the North Sea and off the west coast of Scotland if successfully enacted.14

When Admiral Maarten Tromp failed to display due deference to an English fleet which he encountered, a skirmish ensued leading to the First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652-54. Despite some notable Dutch victories, the English proved superior in this all-naval war which was concluded by the first Treaty of Westminster. The terms were lenient towards the Dutch, claims to lordship of the seas being dropped and deferential salutes now only being required in the Straits of Dover. However, the Navigation Laws remained in force and a secret clause was agreed in the Treaty forbidding William III of Orange from succeeding to the stadtholdership of Holland when he came of age. This was on account of the refuge given to Charles Stuart by the family of Orange and would cause future trouble for Anglo-Dutch relations.15

For the next ten years both sides simmered and provoked each other, the English parliament passing another Navigation Act, while the Dutch more pragmatically strengthened their navy. England was once more a monarchy with the restoration of Charles II, and a wave of patriotic jingoism was fanned by the anti-Dutch prejudices of George Downing, a powerful figure at the Exchequer, leading to the Second Anglo-Dutch war of 1665-67.16 This time the result was quite different. The Dutch inflicted several heavy naval defeats upon the English, but their greatest triumph occurred in 1667 when a fleet of 80 ships sailed up the River Medway to Chatham, burned the royal dockyard and most of the English ships, took two prestigious vessels as prizes, and sat at anchor for several days without fear of attack or reprisal.

England had effectively been invaded, a repeat of the symbolic landing of Dutch troops at Sheerness the previous year. That same fleet then twice sailed into the Thames unopposed, leading the English to sue for peace. The terms of the subsequent Treaty of Breda were again lenient towards the vanquished. The Navigation Laws were relaxed somewhat and each side was allowed to retain the colonial conquests they had made from each other. At the time everyone agreed that the Dutch got the better of the deal with the acquisition of Surinam in South America and the Moluccas Islands in the East Indies. Yet hindsight suggests that English possession of Delaware and Nieuw Amsterdam (renamed New York) was a far bigger prize in the long run.17

The Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-74) looked like it must be an easy victory for England since she was in alliance with Louis XIV’s mighty France and several German states in accord with the Treaty of Dover which Charles II had signed in secret with the Sun King. Sure enough, by June 1672, half of the Netherlands was overrun and panic hit Amsterdam, but then the polderdams were opened, the land approach to the northern provinces flooded, and the invading French forces had to retreat back into the Spanish Netherlands. At sea the Dutch proved just as resilient, defeating Anglo-French fleets on four occasions and seizing somewhere in the region of 1,000 English merchantmen which yielded enormous booty. In the face of mounting losses across the globe, Parliament forced Charles to sign the Second Treaty of Westminster, once more a peace accord putting no great burden or penalties on either side.18

Simon Schama has argued that the causes of the Third Anglo-Dutch War were not primarily economic despite the views of many historians.19  While recognising that there were indeed long-standing economic grievances, he sees the casus belli as one of honour. Where once the English had seen the Dutch as stalwart Protestants standing against the menace of iniquitous Catholicism and the overmighty empire of Spain, by the latter half of the 17^th century they had formed a much more negative opinion. Charles II’s propagandist, Henry Stubbs, wrote that the cause of the war was “the unavoidable necessity of reducing these insolent, treacherous Dutchmen into a posture as they may not only pay their due submissions with reparations of honour unto our king, but be obliged to continue them by a treaty. They have no honour to lose, no conscience to stain, no certain principles to recede from.”20

Stubbs’ vitriolic prose can be seen as unremarkable 17th-century xenophobia, but there is more to it. The Dutch held the English to be poor losers in both their trading rivalry and in the matter of warfare, and they were not shy about letting this opinion be known. Tracts, paintings and even public architecture portrayed Englishmen as rapacious, bullying, envious boors and this most certainly caused offence at the highest level of court, political and diplomatic cirles. Always uneasy at the idea of a republic, Charles’ restored monarchy was even more touchy on the subject due to the interregnum which came after the defeat and execution of his father. Furthermore, whatever toleration of the Dutch accumulation of wealth that there had been in the past, it was premised upon a patronising view of Netherlanders as parsimonious misers, coarse and uncultured, cheesemongers and herring picklers; consolation was had by seeing them as unsophisticated rustics who could never aspire to the prodigal, splendid ostentation which reflected the glory of monarchy, a system superior in worth and morality to any rabble-run republic.21

However, by the middle of the century, the Dutch bourgeoisie and gentry had thrown off whatever vestiges of Calvinist self-denial they had once shown during the life-or-death struggle against the Spanish. Now they openly displayed their wealth, and flaunted their power on the international

stage through maritime supremacy. Their system of government had shown itself to be  more efficient and effective by continuously drawing further ahead of England in the realms of trade, finance and industry. Even more galling, while England had been plunged into civil war, the Dutch state had shown an unbroken solidarity for the near-century of its existence. With their wishful-thinking views of the Dutch punctured, the self-doubt which the very existence of the United Provinces generated began to prompt the idea that perhaps the Dutch had no right at all to freedom or statehood. Their ingratitude for past aid from Elizabeth in the Spanish Wars was often cited, while the shortness of their existence as a nation was contrasted unfavourably with “authentic” aristocratic/dynastic realms stretching back into an imagined antiquity. Schama goes on to argue that the unnatural alliance between Louis and Charles in 1672 and the way the war was conducted until the turning point of the inundation of the French armies, demonstrate that the policy of the Netherlands’ foes was to dismember the state and turn the remaining northern provinces into a small, dependent principality.22

 

Following the end of the Third War, two major factors altered the relationship between England and the Netherlands dramatically. The first was an upsurge in British trading fortunes through growth in commerce with the Caribbean, North America, India and the Mediterranean. Economic rivalry cooled as the British expanded into new markets and colonised fresh teritories. Secondly William III of Orange was invited to assume the crowns of Britain when  James II was ousted by Parliament. Previous Stuart indifference to, and sometimes embracing of, Catholicism now gave  way to a soundly Protestant prince ruling over two Protestant societies who approved of his positive support for their faith. From this point onwards a shared head of state did much to rein in the excessive Hollandophobia which had found voice in England in the 1660s and 1670s.23 Despite decreasing in importance as the second half of the century progressed, religious affiliation always tended to favour the Calvinist Dutch and the  Puritan English forming an alliance. However this only came to fruition when the denominationally ambivalent Stuarts were driven out. Overall religion mitigated against ramping up the hostility between these two bickering nations, since both were Protestant states. There were few atrocities or massacres in the course of the three conflicts or the gaps between. Religious fervour was absent from the ideological motivators to war at a macro-level – although at a micro-level it was used to inspire individual combatants by declaring that God was on their side.

While England began to industrialise slowly in the 17^th century, the Netherlands became the predominant commercial and financial hub in Europe, and for a while the world’s most dominant maritime trading power.24 Although mercantilist competiton sometimes degenerated into piracy, colony stealing and warfare, in the longer run the nations shared the same common enemies. First Spain, then later France, were seen as expansionist empires which threatened the very sovereignty of both countries. They were also economic and colonial rivals in an increasingly commercial world. After 1689 England and the Netherlands had a combined navy to protect their huge merchant fleets. Importantly too, each largely kept out of the other’s way in their own empires and trading areas. They became more complementary than competitive, particularly when the Dutch opened their domestic and colonial markets to British manufactures. The practices and organisation of Dutch banks, stock exchanges, corporate forms of organisation, insurance, shipbuilding, nautical techniques, and industrial technology were all put into practice by commercial interests in London and other ports. Even the English taxation and budgetting systems were modelled on those in Holland. With Dutch help, England constructed a fiscal state capable of funding the naval power required to lower protection costs for its merchants and sea traders, and extended this protection to its allies, in particular the Netherlands.25

Despite Simon Schama’s argument about honour being a major cause of Anglo-Dutch warring, it was not as important as commercial rivalry. It was undoubtedly a significant motivator for Charles II and his aristocratic entourage, but it figured only in the Third War; and even then it seems more like a subsidiary force adding wind to the already full sails of mercantilist rivalry. The desire to dismember the Netherlands may have been a war aim of Louis and Charles, but it was as much driven by reasons of national defence as of aristocratic umbrage. Hollandophobia did peak before and during the Third War, but it is hardly surprising given that this was the third conflict in a very short space of time – demonisation of a recurring enemy is fairly normal practice throughout history. Contrasting with Schama’s thesis is the view of John Brewer. In “The Sinews of Power” he sees the conflicts of the later 17^th and early 18^th centuries as part of a transformatory process across Europe. In many nations, the state was becoming increasingly powerful and inteventionist, leading eventually to what Brewer calls the construction of the “fiscal-military” state. Mercantile rivalry of itself did not lead to war between the two nations; it was the financial implications of the revenues and taxes which would accrue from profitable private trading which precipitated armed conflict by the state. War was waged in order to make it possible to wage further wars.26

Whether by design or accident, after the accession of Stadtholder William III to the British thrones, Dutch and English economic activities ceased to exhibit the head-on-collision characteristics of earlier times. Now they became more harmonised and the two countries entered into a long-lasting relationship of peaceful co-existence which was broken only once, during the American Revolution, in all the years following. England/Britain, and the Netherlands too, now had a much more serious rival – France.

 

1 John Brewer, The Sinews of Power, 167-170

2 David Armitage, “The Projecting Age – William Paterson and the Bank of England” in History Today  May 1994, Vol.44, Issue 6

3 Brewer,  Sinews, xiii-xiv

4 Violet Barbour, “Dutch and English Shipping in the Seventeenth Century” in Economic History Review, 1930, 261-290

5 Patrick Brien, “Did Europe’s Mercantilist Empires Pay?” in History Today, Feb 1996, Vol46, Issue 3; Brewer, Sinews, xiv-xv

6 Brewer, Sinews, 11-12

7 Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, 236-238

8 Jonathan Israel, “Competing Cousins – Anglo-Dutch Trade Rivalry” in History Today, June 1998, Vol.38, Issue 7

9 Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money, 74-75 (2008, Penguin, London)

10 Barbour, “Dutch and English Shipping”

11 Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, p.231

12 Israel, “Competing Cousins”

13  JE Farnell, “The Navigation Act of 1651, the First Dutch War and the London Merchant Community” in Economic History Review, 1964, 439-454

14 Charles Wilson, Profit and Power, 12 & 105-107

15 Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, 232

16 Henry Roseveare, “Crafty and Fawning – Downing of Downing Street” in History Today, Mar 1984, Vol.34, Issue 7

17  David Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, 283-321

18  Israel, “Competing Cousins”

19 See, for example, Pierre Goubert, Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen (1970, New York), 127

20 Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, 274

21 Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, 229-230 & 258; Wilson, Profit and Power, 126

22 Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, 258-283

23 Barry Coward, The Stuart Age, 298-302

24  Emmanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System, Vol.2, 35-71.

25 Brien, “Europe’s Mercantilist Empires”

26 Brewer, Sinews, passim, but in particular 21-24, 137-139 & 250-251

 

 

 

Principal Sources

 

Barbour, Violet        “Dutch and English Shipping in the Seventeenth Century” in Economic History Review, Vol.2, Issue 2, 1930

Brewer, John        The Sinews of Power:War, Money and the English       State 1688-1783 (1989, Unwin Hyman, London)

Brien, Patrick        “Did Europe’s Mercantilist Empires Pay?” in     History Today,  Feb 1996, Vol.46, Issue 3

Coward, Barry        The Stuart Age (1st ed, 1980, Pearson, Harlow)

Farnell, JE        “The Navigation Act of 1651, the First Dutch War and the London Merchant Community” in Economic History Review, Vol.16, Issue 3, 1964

Israel, Jonathan        “Competing Cousins – Anglo-Dutch Trade Rivalry” in History Today, Jun 1998, Vol.38, Issue 7

Ogg, David        England in the Reign of Charles II  (1967, Oxford Paperbacks, Oxford)     

Schama, Simon        The Embarrassment of Riches (2004, Harper, London)

Wallerstein, Immanuel         The Modern World System, Vol.2 (1980, Academic Press, New York)

Wilson, Charles        Profit and Power: A Study of England and the Dutch Wars (1957, Longmans, London)