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Review of - Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory
History is often told from a national perspective, but big ideas usually have cross-border entanglements. Lisa Jardine's carefully crafted and highly readable book describes how people and concepts from the Netherlands percolated English high culture in the seventeenth century, influencing early science. Going Dutch may unsettle those raised on the parochial view of the English as driving their own independent destiny.
Historian Jardine begins with the Dutch invasion of England known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89. No blood was shed, yet England was subjected to a massive coup d'etat at the point of a foreign prince's sword. The head of the Dutch army, Prince William of Orange (also the nephew of England's King James II), gathered a fleet of more than 500 ships to convey his battle-hardened troops across the water, an operation the size of which was not repeated until D-Day in 1944.
Marching on London, the prince was greeted by cheering crowds. Meanwhile, James II's army withdrew rather than offering battle. A cabal of Protestant lords provided political cover by inviting William to take over the English government. The imprisoned James II was allowed to escape to France, while a hastily convened Parliament pronounced William and his wife Mary (daughter of James II) as joint sovereigns, giving legitimacy to the new regime. But William's Dutch guard garrisoned an occupied London for years afterwards, just to make sure.
Why was this quiet coup seen as importing a king rather than suffering a conquest? Jardine argues that Dutch victory was subverted by English opportunism. By 'going Dutch' and adopting the commercial and administrative methods of their new masters, the English quickly gained the upper hand, replacing the Netherlands as the major international power. Jardine suggests that a common cause was possible between the sometime enemies because the countries were culturally close.
Providing a family history of the English and their Dutch first cousins, Jardine explores personal networks between influential characters. The main vehicle is the Huygens family, including elder statesman Constantijn and two of his sons Constantijn and Christiaan, the notable scientist. Constantijn Huygens junior accompanied William during the invasion of England, whereas Constantijn senior, a long-lived Anglophile, had served as the principal secretary to the house of Orange for many decades before.
The two chapters concerning the scientific work of Christiaan Huygens and Robert Hooke are the most original. Jardine emphasizes the exchanges between the virtuosi of England and the Netherlands that amounted to an international scientific forum, even through the period of the Second Anglo–Dutch War of 1665–67. Two case studies form the book's core: the debates about the accuracy of Huygens's pendulum clock for finding longitude in the 1660s and his balance-spring watch of the mid-1670s, and the discussions around Robert Hooke's famous book Micrographia, reproducing microscopic biological observations in exquisite detail.
The careful reconstruction of events surrounding the adaptation of Huygens's clock shows how much he depended on the innovations and experiments of his English friends. Jardine discovered new evidence in Samuel Pepys's papers about how sea-trial reports to the Royal Society regarding the pendulum clock were exaggerated by Admiral Robert Holmes. In doing so, Holmes, who helped to start the Second Anglo–Dutch War, ironically gave the Dutchman Huygens a claim to priority that obscured the contributions of the English.
Showing the further intertwining of Anglo–Dutch intellectual networks with those of France, Jardine demonstrates how in the mid-1660s, Henry Oldenburg, the first secretary of the Royal Society, tried to raise doubts about Hooke's Micrographia internationally. This helped to undermine Hooke's reputation, contributing to the later failures of Huygens and Isaac Newton to acknowledge his contributions. Jardine remains one of Hooke's chief advocates, placing him and Huygens on the international stage.
Jardine's circles move outwards beyond the Huygens family and science to links between the house of Orange and the Stuarts, and to the lives of English royalists in exile in the Low Countries during Cromwell's government. Although this creates the impression that both countries were tied by conversations and intermarriages among the great and the good (genealogical tables are supplied in the book's appendix) rather than by the connections of ordinary people, Jardine's strategy lets her highlight many topics without resorting to generalizations. She addresses fine art (mostly painting), music, gardening and botany, science and commerce, accompanied by colour illustrations.
Going Dutch is richly evocative. One feels present at a masque in The Hague sponsored by nobles of the Winter Queen's court, with dancing until 4 a.m., or walking through the estate garden of the elder Huygens, or accompanying his third son Lodewijk through Somerset House in London after the execution of Charles I to view the impressive royal art collection.
This fascinating book is an excellent introduction to seventeenth-century Anglo–Dutch relations. Jardine does not try to summarize the whole field. She avoids, for instance, examining the Anglo–Dutch wars of the period or the bitter rivalries abroad, gives much more space to royalists than republicans, scarcely deals with religion, and treats the formative period of English philosopher John Locke's exile in the Netherlands very lightly. She does not develop fully an account of how the Dutch coup launched the Bank of England, nor how it affected Scotland and Ireland. These subjects are left to other works, many of them cited in her bibliography. Jardine presents the view from England more than that from across the North Sea, and her subtitle is perhaps more relevant to the eighteenth century than the seventeenth. Yet by exploring pertinent examples, Going Dutch demonstrates that personal connections helped to shape the cultures of both countries.
https://www.nature.com/articles/452937a
From Old World To New: How We Got To Where We Are Today
The Changing Of The World, 1500-1800
Steve first asked Jonathan what prompted him to write a book about this particular period of world history. Jonathan replied, “It’s the last period before, as it were, we began to live the way that we do now. And one of the arguments of my book is that it involved the greatest amount and range of changes to human life in all of recorded history.” Steve noted that it was a period filled with major wars, mass migrations, revolutions, and major shifts in political landscapes that included the destruction of many European monarchies and the creation of republics, all of which combined to, ultimately, produce the modern miracle of economic plenty that exists today.
Jonathan’s research revealed that “The most interesting thing about the whole transition from agricultural economies to the Industrial Revolution is that it could so easily not have ever happened.” He characterized the shift that changed the Old World into the New World as “extraordinarily unlikely, almost impossible, and somewhat accidental.”
The European world in 1500 was a world of agricultural economies. Jonathan explained that the relatively low yields of grain agriculture significantly limited the world because there simply wasn’t enough food produced to, for example, support the existence of cities with very large populations. Another key limiting factor was that the success or failure of the economy wasn’t within human control. It was, instead, determined by the weather. The Industrial Revolution changed the economy by bringing control of the economy much more directly under human direction, rather than it being dictated by the cycle of the seasons
It Began In The Netherlands
While many people think of the Industrial Revolution beginning in England and America, according to Jonathan, the initial seeds of change blossomed—out of necessity—in the Netherlands. He said, “The situation there was, essentially, that the geography of the Netherlands was not that well-suited for agriculture but was dominated by rivers, canals, and the surrounding ocean. And so it happened that in a place where agriculture was extraordinarily difficult, water made other ways of sustaining a living uniquely possible.”
Steve noted that the waterways, by providing for the cheap transportation of goods, significantly improved the financial capabilities of the people who began focusing on earning their living through transportation and trade. He informed listeners, “In fact, for a time, during the 150-year span from 1500 to 1650, the Netherlands became the richest country, per capita, in all of Europe.”
England’s Edge And Empire
England started to take note of the wealth that was being created in the Netherlands and began to emulate what the Dutch were doing. Unlike the situation in the Netherlands that was created from necessity, the motivation to shift toward a more trading and shipping economy in Britain was more purely an economic motivation, the desire for greater economic wealth. England was more well-blessed with natural resources, not only better land for farming, but also land richer in resources such as timber, coal, and metals, particularly tin, lead, and iron. That advantage in natural resources—along with important political, social, and military factors—was what ultimately led to the English, rather than the Dutch, to usher in the Industrial Revolution.
Another important factor was the difference in the nature of the colonization between the English and the Dutch. Again, as in the move toward more seaborne shipping, the Dutch had the early lead, provided by their spice-rich colonies in the Dutch East Indies. They were nearly a full century ahead of the British in terms of developing a rich trading economy.
But the British were eventually able to overcome the Dutch head start and emerge a larger, stronger, and wealthier empire, primarily because of the nature of their colonies. The colonies of the British empire—North America, India, and Africa—were much larger, not only in terms of land but also in terms of population. That meant that not only did they have access to more resources, such as tobacco and cotton in America, but they also gained an advantage because their colonies also became major trading partners. The Dutch colonies mainly provided only resources for the Dutch, whereas the English colonies provided both new resources and an ever-growing population of consumers. The importance of the rise of consumerism was a key factor in fueling the Industrial Revolution through what Jonathan has termed “the alchemical power of American shopping.”
A New Way Of Life
Steve interjected information about the great upheavals, militarily and socially, that were occurring as the English began to rise to ascendancy in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Thirty Years’ War, 1618 to 1648, was primarily a religious war between Protestant and Catholic countries. By the end of that conflict, an estimated eight million people had died from a combination of war, famine, and disease. Steve related the stark fact that “41% of the Irish population was wiped out.” This decimation was a major cause of the beginning of a vast migration of Irish people to the New World, one that would continue for the next 250 years.
During this time period, America was settled primarily by various religious groups, such as the Pilgrims and the Quakers, who saw the New World as a place that offered them religious freedom In Jonathan’s opinion, it was this huge stirring and flourishing of new ways of life, religious beliefs, and cultural changes that ultimately gave rise to the transition from the Old World to the Modern World.
Jonathan believes that a particularly crucial event was the Republican Revolution of 1649 in England, led by Oliver Cromwell. Although the monarchy was eventually restored after a 10-year conflict, it was now a constitutional monarchy, one in which Parliament held much more power than it ever had before. This move to a representative form of government was a monumental shift in political thinking, a shift that eventually gave rise to a genuinely constitutional, republican government in the newly-formed United States of America.
A New World Of Finance
These huge political changes, centered primarily in England and America, were also accompanied by an explosion in population. England’s rise to being a world superpower and worldwide empire, in which global trade expanded exponentially, also gave rise to important, new financial products. Once again, the Dutch initially led the way, creating limited liability corporations, developing stock exchanges, and creating insurance companies, which were a critical facilitating tool of trading that was dependent on long and uncertain ocean voyages.
And once again, the British followed the Dutch lead but eventually moved past the Dutch with their own innovations. The London Stock Exchange, originally formed in 1571 and undergoing important structural upgrades in 1669 and again in 1773, became the financial trading center of the world until overtaken by the New York Stock Exchange in the 20th century. The formation of the East India Company as a joint-stock company in Britain in 1657 was a major step in establishing the British Empire. The Dutch East India Company and a French East India Company were formidable but both together were eventually dwarfed by the size and power of the British firm, which led the colonization of both India and Hong Kong. At one time, the East India Company had a private army much larger than that of the actual British Army.
Another key economic innovation of the Dutch was the practice of lending money to the government, the loans being guaranteed by a local legislature. Vast sums of money could now be lent to the monarchy because the republican legislature was guaranteeing that the money would be repaid. Previously, no one ever trusted or expected monarchs to repay loans. But when republican, representative institutions began to guarantee the loans, everything changed as far as the public willingness to lend huge sums of money to the government.
The English copied that idea from the Dutch, and then went a big step further by creating a national bank, the Bank of England, and linked that central bank to Parliament as the guaranteeing institution. Jonathan explained, “What that, the forerunner of the modern government bond market, created was an incredible new instrument of public credit that enabled the British government to obtain much more money to spend on trade, on war, on everything, than just the amount of money that the government took in through tax revenue.” Basically, the British government gained the advantage of financial leverage. That kind of financial leverage, along with the other financial innovations, was key in making possible the Industrial Revolution as it enabled the rise of large corporations and the funding of government projects such as the building of the transcontinental railroad in the United States following the Civil War.
Jonathan’s book covers much more than he and Steve could discuss in one conversation, as it details the intricate history of how the interaction of the Dutch, the English, and America changed the face of the world economy.
https://stevepomeranz.com/radio/guests/from-old-world-to-new-how-we-got-to-where-we-are-today/
How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution 1500-1800
Jonathan Scott
Jonathan Scott, Professor of History at the University of Auckland, in his recent book, How the Old World Ended (2019), has provided an intellectual bridge between the early modern period and the modern world, which was born out of the Industrial Revolution. This comprehensive study aims to explain why the Industrial Revolution started in England and how that connected to England’s relationships with the Netherlands and their former colonies in the United States. What emerges is a fascinating analysis into three countries that throughout the 300 years concerned were intertwined by politics, economics, and religion.
The rise of England (and later the British Empire) is very much at the forefront of Scott’s research. In some respects the book, contrary to the title, is less about the Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution and is, rather, an explanation of how the British century came to fruition. As such, the book can be viewed as a sequel to Scott’s pivotal work England’s Troubles (2000), and both pieces bookmark what has been a turbulent two decades in the UK’s (primarily England’s) relationship with the European Union. What started as a debate around the common currency has ended in Brexit and, just as it would be a mistake to view these events in isolation, so too does Scott argue that the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent British century have to be viewed within their wider European and transatlantic context.
Scott is not the first New Zealander to explore this subject matter. His work differs from that of J. G. A. Pocock, however, in the focus that it gives to the influence of the Dutch. Pocock coined the phrase Atlantic Archipelago as an attempt to reframe our understanding of the history of the British Isles. Pocock argued that the British Isles should be studied as a unique entity within Europe due to their connection with America. (1) In contrast, Scott expands this concept to the Anglo-Dutch-American Archipelago, arguing that, in order to appreciate the transatlantic relationship between Britain and America, the British Isles’s role as a fully integrated European nation must be understood. Scott acknowledges that How the World Ended is not a monograph of archival research, and this is not surprising, given the scope of discussion covered. In fact, considering the breadth of topics which are examined across 300 years and three nations, it is remarkably impressive that Scott managed to condense it to 392 pages. Rather than view the lack of archival research as a drawback, it is more productive to see this work as a launchpad for further research. It is a rallying cry to historians who share Scott’s outlook—on bottom-up history and the importance of international links—to pick up on the numerous areas he has outlined in this book.
Part one explains how the Netherlands emerged as the economic powerhouse of 17th-century Europe, and how unlikely its foundations for the Industrial Revolution were within early modern society. Myriad circumstances combined to result in what is now known as the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history which saw the Dutch secure their independence from the Spanish Empire and become the urban centre of Europe. Scott argues, however, that this outcome was not planned, and was by no means guaranteed. Instead, an essential factor here was the geographical shift in the centre of political, religious, and economic power during the 16th and 17th centuries, away from the Mediterranean into north western Europe. On this point, Scott provides a refreshingly transnational perspective on an issue which is too often treated in national isolation: why did the Mediterranean powers perish on the world stage and the north western European countries prosper? Much of the technology that enabled the rise of early modern Europe, including printing, navigation, and gunpowder, was developed first in Asia, particularly in China. Scott argues, however, that a restrictive Chinese society supressed these advancements. It was in Europe, without a central power to prevent their proliferation, that these technologies were able to fulfil their potential. Scott could go into greater detail about whether the Roman Catholic Church acted as a restrictive central power in the Mediterranean, therefore explaining why the predominantly Calvinist states of north western Europe were able to capitalise on the new advancements.
Nowhere was this more the case than in the United Provinces of the Netherlands, where Calvinist beliefs combined with geography and a political struggle for independence to create a perfect storm for technological progress. Water, Scott contends, forced the Dutch to constantly innovate, helping them withstand the Spanish. Additionally, the Dutch waterways and access to the North Sea allowed bulk trading of essentials, such as grain from the Baltic, which in turn enabled the Dutch to move away from demographic constraints and to produce market-oriented agriculture. Meanwhile, the succession of Philip II in Spain and the rise of Calvinism, influenced by the influx of Huguenot refugees from France, sparked religious and political revolt. It is against this backdrop of urbanisation and the defence of Protestant republicanism that the destinies of the Netherlands and England became intertwined. During their struggle for independence, the Dutch had asked Elizabeth I to become their sovereign in 1584. After she declined, the revolt adopted a unique republican stance. Religious tolerance and localised authority empowered the Dutch provinces to become economic hubs, and when Spain threatened this with embargoes, they adapted. In response to Spanish aggression, the Dutch invested in advancing long-range trade voyages to the East Indies to overcome the sanctions imposed on Mediterranean goods. Scott concludes part one by explaining how England, fundamentally different to the Netherlands during the 16th century, came to use the Dutch as a model for advancement in the first half of the 17th. For example, Scott highlights how economic policy in England after 1649 was designed along Dutch lines, utilising excise levies to build a fiscally solvent state and a modern economy. According to Scott, essential to this transformation was a shared belief in Calvinist doctrine, which sought to break the oppression of religious compulsion as well as economic and social restrictions. The result was a reorganisation of English society that institutionally and morally followed the Dutch model.
In part two, Scott advances this view, stating that 1649 represented a turning point in not just British and European, but global history. Arguably, it is in this section that Scott reveals the true purpose of this book. Rather than purely an explanation for why Britain emerged as the first industrialised nation, it is also a redemptive piece for the English Republic (1649–53). The English Republic, according to Scott, has been unfairly maligned as ineffective, and consequently written out of its rightful place in history. Partly responsible for this is a misunderstanding of Oliver Cromwell’s role during the interregnum—Scott argues that many of the achievements of this period were in spite of Cromwell and inspired by Dutch republicans. However, Scott is potentially too dismissive of Cromwell, failing to thoroughly explore why the Republic collapsed in 1653. Despite the focus on the Republic and its achievements, the dissolution of the Rump Parliament and the introduction of Cromwell’s Protectorate are granted less than two pages’ coverage. This is a missed opportunity, as it could be argued that the history of the Protectorate complements elements of Scott’s overall argument. For example, Paul Lay, in his recent book, Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate (2020), argues that Cromwell’s attempt to encourage religious toleration was inspired by the Dutch. This can be seen in his decision to allow the readmission of Jews to the Protectorate; in addition to a religious motivation (the hope that they could be converted to Christianity) this act had an economic motive. Cromwell had seen how key the Jewish community had been to the economic success of the Netherlands and wanted to utilise their skills. (2) Arguably one of the most successful achievements of Cromwell was the unification, albeit forced, of England and Scotland, which helped establish the British Isles as a continental power. Scott recognises that the creation of Great Britain as a political entity was pivotal in the development of the British Empire. However, the collapse of the Protectorate undid this and it would be another half century before the Act of the Union created the Kingdom of Great Britain. As such, while Scott is right to highlight history’s tendency to overstate Cromwell, one should be careful not to dismiss him either.
Scott attempts to redeem the historical importance of the English Republic by focusing on the importance of its imitation of the Dutch. What is not clear, however, is which Scott believes to be more important—and most responsible for shaping the events of the late 17th century: religion or commerce? On the one hand, Scott buttresses Christopher Hill’s argument that England’s experiment with republicanism made the nation a haven for capitalism, which Scott contends they learnt from imitating the Dutch. The English had copied the Dutch economic models to such an extent that, by the 1650s, they viewed the Dutch as sufficient threat to their emerging maritime economy to warrant going to war. On the other hand, Scott also argues that for the 17th-century Dutch and English, religion permeated all aspects of society, from economics to politics. This can be seen in the English Civil Wars through to the deposing of the Catholic King James II in favour of William of Orange in the Glorious Revolution. Moreover, on both a domestic and international level, religious conviction led Cromwell to seize control and to institute many of the infrastructural changes which turned the British Isles into a modern state.
Throughout his account, Scott echoes the voices of historical figures who share his view that the English Republic played a more important role than the one history has granted it. The most prominent of these was Algernon Sidney, for whom the years of the English Republic were solely responsible for transforming a failed state into Europe’s foremost power. In addition to Sidney, the 17th-century essayist William Temple argued that not only did the English need to imitate the Dutch; they needed to surpass them as the economic power house of Europe. This process was started by the English republicans, and was sufficiently successful to ensure that it survived the restoration, eventually resulting in the Dutch Stadtholder becoming the King of England, thus securing adherence to the Dutch model.
In the final section, Scott brings his thinking together and concludes his argument that the Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution brought about not just the Industrial Revolution but also a new age: the Anglo-Dutch-American Enlightenment. Despite being one third of the title, America is not granted the same level of attention which Scott warrants for England and the Netherlands. This is possibly intentional, as Scott aims to reduce the exceptionalism of the American Revolution and place it within the broader context of the Anglo-Dutch-American Archipelago. Rather than a novel, standalone event, the American War of Independence was the culmination of a series of precedents that the Dutch and English Revolutions had started. While each revolution was unique in its context, they all shared a desire to establish a particular type of liberty: the freedom to advance a form of capitalism established by the Dutch, perfected and exported by the English, but now under threat from a tyrannical parliament which had lost sight of its origins.
Scott makes hardly any mention of the French Revolution, despite arguing that it is intertwined with the others described. The lack of focus on the French Revolution can perhaps be explained by the fact that, unlike the Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution, it was based on the secular ideology of radical equality rather than on Protestant capitalism. Nevertheless, as one of the most important events of the early modern period, more attention could be given to how the French Revolution ties into the formation of the modern world according to Scott’s model.
Scott’s How the Old World Ended is fascinating, and draws on
myriad primary and secondary sources to help explain the circumstances which
caused the Industrial Revolution, providing a fresh insight into how the
early modern world interconnected across national borders. In particular,
his focus on the influence of the Dutch on the English and American
Revolutions is welcome, as it could be argued that this vital link has been
written out of popular history on both sides of the Atlantic. This book also
serves as a means of redemption for the place of the Republic, in not just
English and European, but global history. Much of the focus is on how the
Industrial Revolution and the establishment of the British Empire were due
to the achievements made during the four years when England was ruled by the
republican Rump Parliament. How the Old World Ended presents a
provoking challenge to early modern historians—Scott’s argument is
transnational and multi-faceted, encompassing economic, political, social,
and religious history. His bold claim that 1649 and the republic which
followed was responsible for the modern world as we know it is deliberately
challenging. As stated at the start of this review, Scott’s book covers
extensive ground and it will be interesting to see what further study it
provokes and whether it is successful in redeeming the English Republic.
Notes:
G. A. Pocock, The Discovery of Islands: Essays in British History (Cambridge, 2005)Lay, Providence Lost: The Rise and Fall of Cromwell’s Protectorate (London, 2020)
The author has received the review and appreciates the full and careful discussion of his book.
July 2020
https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2406
Review - Jonathan Scott: How the old world ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American revolution, 1500-1800
https://caans-acaen.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/CJNS41-1-21-p119-122-Hubner.pdf
The Dutch Influence
Relationship With England
England and the Netherlands, after engaging in three Anglo-Dutch wars (1652–1654, 1665–1667 and 1672–1674), had settled into a long and mutually beneficial friendship. When the Seven Years’ War (known in the American Colonies as the French and Indian War) began in 1756, the Netherlands was content to sit on the sidelines.
As the conflict spread to five continents and embroiled the British, French, Spanish, Prussians, Austrians, Russians and Swedes, the Dutch found neutrality a boon for international trade while doing nothing to jeopardize relations with the English. All that would change with the Revolutionary War.
As early as 1774, Dutch merchants were sending large quantities of war materiel to the Colonial rebels. Two Dutch-owned Caribbean colonies, St. Eustatius in the Leeward Islands and Curaçao off the Venezuelan coast, served as conduits for keeping the Patriots supplied with gunpowder, cannonballs, firearms and naval stores in exchange for American goods such as tobacco and indigo. St. Eustatius, in particular, began provoking British complaints about “subversive” transactions. But Governor Johannes de Graaff, called to explain himself, denied any wrongdoing by his people in connection with the American rebels.
Despite sympathy for the Patriot cause, it was far from pure idealism that fed the development of Dutch relationships with the American Colonies. Amsterdam merchants and bankers saw financial opportunity in these Colonies and intended to capitalize on it, regardless of the consequences of acting counter to the official positions of The Hague, the Dutch seat of government.
The severely divided Netherlands was suffering from not only a declining economy and a paralyzed and inefficient political system, but also from a lack of widespread understanding of what exactly was transpiring across the Atlantic, suggests Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt in his book The Dutch Republic and American Independence (University of North Carolina Press, 1982; translated from Dutch by Herbert H. Rowen).
At the war’s onset, England repeatedly requested the Dutch Republic to lend military support, citing multiple treaties between the two nations, but these requests were refused. A handful of events, combined with the ongoing trade with American rebels, incrementally goaded the British toward action.
On November 16, 1776, Dutch in St. Eustatius’ Orange Bay saluted the starless “Grand Union” American flag when the brigantine Andrew Doria arrived. That salute, considered the first recognition of the first American flag, was viewed in England as an acknowledgment of the Colonies’ independence. The following summer, in retaliation, Great Britain seized 54 ships in transit between the Netherlands and St. Eustatius.
Subsequently, U.S. naval officer John Paul Jones, after orchestrating an American victory over British ships off England’s eastern coast in September 1779, took shelter in the Netherlands and was embraced as a hero. The Dutch refused England’s demands that Jones be turned over.
English ire over Dutch behavior came to a head in August 1780 when a British ship captured diplomat Henry Laurens, a former president of the Continental Congress, who was on his way to Amsterdam to negotiate a $10 million loan for the American war effort. Among Laurens’ papers his captors discovered a draft of a proposed American-Dutch treaty. On December 20, 1780, Britain declared war on the Netherlands.
https://blog.dar.org/dutch-influence
When we waived the rules - The commercial imperative in the shaping of Britain.
What if almost everything identifiable as glorious in British history has Dutch origins? Even cricket, Jonathan Scott notes in his fast-paced, fact-packed and readable account of Europe and its empires from Reformation to Enlightenment, was introduced to England by Flemish weavers in the seventeenth century. Scott convincingly argues that this island story has forever been interwoven with events occurring on the other side of the North Sea. Yet the argument of Scott’s book is grander still, extravagantly so. If the English republican experiment of the 1640s was, as Scott asserts, directly following the Dutch model, the goal of true republicans was a commercial as well as a political revolution. The riches and resulting power of the Dutch states attracted and inspired English republicans.
English republicans had far more impact on economy and society than they could ever have imagined, despite their political failure and collapse by 1660. The restored monarchy maintained the navigation acts and the trading objectives initiated by the English Republic. Politicians serving the Stuarts, then William and Mary and finally the Hanoverians, developed trade and empire to such an extent that they caused the economic and political decline of the Dutch Republic to which they owed so much. Scott’s argument is that English and then British superiority over any other power militarily and commercially had its origins in the movement of peoples to North America. This created markets for goods that operated in the same way as the supply of grain from the Baltic to the Dutch in earlier centuries, stimulating domestic trade, facilitating the growth of towns and cities, and fostering a culture of innovation that reinvented every agricultural and manufacturing process.
What the British achieved, because of the resources of North America and their lust for British-made products, was the take-off for the Industrial Revolution, which has transformed and continues to transform the lives of every person on earth. The old, rural, calm and diverse world died because of processes initiated in the Dutch rebellion against Spain, because of the English rebellion against their monarch and Church, and because of the North American rebellion against their putative rulers in London.
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/how-the-old-world-ended-jonathan-scott-review-richard-whatmore/
The Influence of Dutch and Venetian Political Thought on Seventeenth-Century English Republicanism
This thesis explores the engagement of seventeenth-century English republican thinkers, namely John Milton, James Harrington, Marchamont Nedham, Henry Neville and Algernon Sidney, with Dutch and Venetian models, theories, and experiences of republicanism. It challenges J.G.A. Pocock and Quentin Skinner's approach of tracing the origins of political ideas back to the ancient world and instead develops Franco Venturi’s emphasis on the significance of contemporary models to the development of early-modern republicanism. Chronologically the focus is c. 1640-1683 when republican ideas were at their height in England. In spatial terms, however, the approach is broader than traditional accounts of English republicanism, which tend to tell a purely national story. By adopting a transnational perspective this thesis promises to highlight the continuities and points of conflict between different republican thinkers, and in doing so challenges the idea of a coherent republican tradition. It suggests that narrowly defined and distinct definitions of republicanism do not capture the nuances in English republican thought, and that these thinkers engaged with various understandings of republicanism depending upon contextual political circumstances.
The thesis looks at three significant themes. The first is the role of single person rule, an issue which has come to dominate discussions of English republicanism. By examining the ways in which English republicans understood the Dutch and Venetian models, both of which included an individual figurehead within a republican constitution, this thesis suggests that existing historiography places too much emphasis on 1649 as a turning point in English republican thought. Building on this discussion of non-monarchical government, the thesis then explores the constitutional proposals advocated by English republicans. It demonstrates that Venice was actually much less broadly admired and utilised for its constitutional model than has previously been assumed, and that in fact it was the Dutch Republic with which comparisons were more readily drawn. Finally, the thesis delineates a shift towards the end of this period. Post-Restoration, constitutional modelling was largely rejected in favour the practical experiences of the Dutch and Venetian Republics; the strengths, wealth and successes of which demonstrated, to these writers at least, the superiority of republican government over the existing form of monarchy in England.
https://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/bitstream/10443/3840/1/Shields%2C%20A.H.%202017.pdf
