Prudent Idealism: An Interlude (1654–60)

Abstract

The distinctive feature of the quarrels of the first half of the century was their parochial character. The psychological importance of the friction in the East should not be underestimated, but the quarrels were fundamentally about European problems—even, one might say, about problems arising in those areas which the English liked to claim as ‘the British Seas’. The commercial problems were likewise mainly those which arose directly out of Anglo-Dutch economic relations—as in the cloth trade, for example. The nature of the problems was closely reflected in the character of the first war itself, which was fought exclusively in local waters. Yet the first Navigation Act, with its attention to extra-European trade, and the potential problems of visit and search, were an indication that the nature of the conflict was changing. The changes that can be discerned in the years after the Treaty of Westminster are directly related to the growth of England’s naval strength. In the years between the first Navigation Act and the Restoration, more than 200 ships were added to the English Navy, making it up to a strength roughly ten times what it had been under Charles I.