Abstract
The Treaty of Breda brought to an end an era of more than half a century during which hostility to the Dutch had become a habit of thought with Englishmen, cutting across differences of birth, class, occupation, and outlook. Translated into action, this hostility had become a pivot upon which a large section of national policy turned. In this connexion there was not much difference between James I, his son, and his grandson, nor between them and Sir Harry Vane. Seiden wrote his Mare Clausum in 1634 to refute the Dutch claims as to their freedom to operate in English waters, but it was used gratefully by James, Duke of York, as Lord Admiral. Andrew Marvell’s extended caricature of the Dutch, The Character of Holland, was written during the first Dutch War, but with suitable adjustments its rough satire came in equally useful for the second and third Dutch Wars, and it was accordingly republished in 1665 and again in 1672. The Barebones Parliament was on this issue at one with the Cavalier Parliament.
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References
S. P. Dom, 1650, p. 178, No. 61. See also T. Violet: A True Discovery to the Commons of England How they have been cheated of allmost all the Gold and Silver Coin of the Realm (1651).
S. P. Dom, December 1651 (p. 88).
W. R. Scott: The Joint Stock Companies (1910–12), Vol. I, Ch. XIII.
M. P. Ashley, op. cit., p. 175. The Customs yield did not, however, rise as Mr. Ashley suggests, but fell. This is shown by the figures printed on p. 57 of his study. See below.
G. N. Clark: Guide to English Commercial Statistics 1696–1782 (1938), pp. 32–42.
See the article by Dr. J. G. Westerman in Zeven Eeuwen Amsterdam (ed. A. E. d’Ailly), Vol. II. Also the same author’s article ‘Statistische Gegevens over den Handel van Amsterdam in de 17de Eeuw’ in Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis (1948), with a comment by Prof, van Dillen.
Posthumus: Leidsche Lakenindustrie (1939), Vol. III, p. 1136, and Ch. IX, passim.
Scott, op. cit., Ch. XIII.
Ashley, op. cit., Ch. XIV; Westerman, op. cit.; Scott, op. cit., Ch. XIII.
G. N. Clark: The Later Stuarts (1934), pp. 59 ff.
E. B. Schumpeter: ‘English Prices and Public Finance 1660–1822’ in The Review of Commercial Statistics (1938).
See W. A. Shaw: Introduction to Calendar of Treasury Books (1904-).
Posthumus, op. cit., Ch. IX.
Journal of the Earl of Sandwich (Navy Records Society, 1929), p. 228.
An interpretation of ‘mercantilism’ which has been widely accepted designates it as a system aimed at promoting ‘the power of the state’ (e.g. Introduction to E. Heckscher’s Mercantilism (1955)). However appropriate this may be to (say) eighteenth-century Prussia, it seems to me too abstract to be valid for seventeenth-century England, where powerful private economic interests represent one of the driving forces behind the ‘system’. Most mercantilist writers were merchants; the ideas they expressed and the schemes they helped to promote were such as they believed to be to the economic advantage of themselves and, when there was no conflict of interests, of others. In this context the ‘State’ was a means not an end.
Elias: De Tweede Engeische Oorlog als Keerpunt in Onze Betrekkingen met Engeland, passim. G. N. Clark: The Later Stuarts, p. 66.
In The King My Brother, Mr. G. H. Hartmann has praised Charles II for his ‘brilliant foreign policy’ carried out in ‘the teeth of opposition from many of his purblind subjects’. Thus the French Alliance and the third Dutch War are represented as necessary to stem the peril from Dutch maritime rivalry. Sir Arthur Bryant supports this view in an Introduction. As far as I can judge, this justification rests upon one piece of evidence only: Charles’s own statement in 1672 that France would have an alliance with England or Holland, and ‘if we take them not, Holland will have them’ This contradicts the whole of the rest of the strategic and diplomatic evidence. Materialist and prevaricating the Dutch policy may have been, it was not aggression in Europe. There is no reason to disbelieve de Witt’s own evidence. Charles had sensibly resisted the hysterical clamour of the war party for five years after the Restoration: to have given in as he did was an understandable concession to a powerful if misguided body of opinion. In 1670 there was no such party, and the Dutch had the experience of the unsatisfactory French alliance of the second war behind them. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Charles was deceiving either himself or others in his self-justification. In the absence of more convincing evidence than has been produced, we must conclude that the third Dutch War was fought because Charles could see no objection to becoming a Roman Catholic in exchange for a handsome bribe from Louis.
Considerations of the East India Trade (1701); reprinted in Early English Tracts on Commerce (1954), ed. McCulloch, p. 616.
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© 1978 Curtis Brown Academic Ltd.
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Wilson, C. (1978). Conclusion. In: Profit and Power. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-9762-5_10
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