A Short Sketch of Dutch dha.la.ssocra.cy

During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was the odd man out in the family of European nations.^[2103] Starting as a league of provinces (Union of Utrecht, 1579) that were revolting for reasons of freedom and religion—libertatis et religionis ergo—against their sovereign Philip II, this confederation was transformed into a self-declared republic, ruled by the States-General of the Seven United Provinces and protected by the stadtholder of the forsworn Spanish king, William the Silent, Prince of Orange.

Just a few years later a struggle for sovereignty at sea broke loose with the other emerging European sea power, England, strategically situated at the Channel and thus in virtual control of the Dutch sea lanes to the south. No less than three Anglo- Dutch wars were fought over free navigation of the seas, in 1652-1654, 1664-1667 and 1672--1674, respectively with Cromwellian England and the English mon­archy under Charles II. The tiny Dutch Republic experienced its most harrowing moments during the Rampjaar (year of disaster) of 1672, when it faced a concerted attack by its English, French, and German neighbors. It managed to survive thanks to the military genius of its army commander Prince William III of Orange, who retreated behind the waterlinie, inundating the approaches to the low-lying prov­ince of Holland, and a handful of legendary admirals, such as De Ruyter and Tromp, who managed to keep the seaways open.

Despite these years of combat, the Republic succeeded in maintaining, as Jonathan Israel has shown, its primacy in world trade through to the first decades of the eighteenth century. After the sacking of Antwerp by Spanish troops in 1585, Amsterdam became in effect the financial capital of Europe, a position that it only lost to London in the 1730s. Starting out as the staple town of the so-called moeder negotie (“mother trade”), the bulk trade in grain, timber, and tar with the Baltic—in the sixteenth century half of all shipping passing through the Sound was Dutch—Amsterdam soon drew all European and intercontinental trade to its port. In the 1630s more than 40 percent of the 30 million guilders of European imports in Amsterdam came from the Baltic. The annual investment of six million guilders in the Baltic trade was slightly higher than that in the trade with Asia. Recognizing its vested interests in the Baltic, the Dutch Republic dispatched in 1658 a huge fleet of 75 ships and 15,000 soldiers to keep the Sound open for free traffic and to counter the attempts to conquer Denmark of the Swedish king Charles X, who thereby sought to gain control over this important thoroughfare. Mare Liberum, freedom of the sea, as postulated by the famous Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius, was the call to arms for the Dutch seafarers.^[2104]

After more than a century of peaceful relations with Britain, a fourth Anglo- Dutch war was fought between 1780 and 1784 when the Dutch sided with France in saluting the flag of the young American Republic. By then the Dutch Republic was only a shadow of its former self as a military power. Thanks to the skillful and courageous maneuvers by the French admiral Suffren de Saint Tropez, strategic Cape Town and the rich colony of Ceylon were saved, and only a few establishments on the Indian coast were lost.^[2105] However, owing to the seizure of most of its ship­ping by the English navy, the VOC was dealt a heavy financial blow from which it never recovered, despite generous loans from the States General and the City of Amsterdam.