Profit and Power : A Study of England and the Dutch Wars

Historical explanations need to keep step with the march of research if they are not to degenerate into empty cliches. It has long been a commonplace of 17th century history that the Anglo-Dutch Wars were the product of 'commercial rivalry'. This essay, first published twenty years ago, attempted to analyse and redefine this overworked traditional concept so as to explain more precisely how it led to naval wars between the Dutch and the English. Two idees fixes of contemporary English thought seemed especially significant; one was the persistent consciousness of English inferiority and backwardness in economic affairs when compared with the Dutch; the other, compounding this, was the equally persistent conviction that strategically, England seemed well placed to wreck the Dutch maritime economy and bring the Republic to her knees in a naval war. These obsessive beliefs combined naturally with the specific influences and motives of powerful political and commercial lobbies to stoke the fires of aggression. Failing over several decades to make any visible progress by more or less peaceful policies, they turned, first, to economic warfare by means of propaganda and pseudo-legal claims to maritime sovereignty; finally (in 1652) to all-out eco­ nomic and naval warfare. Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Profit and Power....Pages 1-10 Representative Thought and National Policy....Pages 11-24 Economic Relations and the Sources of Tension in the First Half of the Century....Pages 25-47 War in Embryo....Pages 48-60 The First Dutch War....Pages 61-77 Prudent Idealism: An Interlude (1654–60)....Pages 78-89 Foreign Trade and Domestic Politics at the Restoration....Pages 90-110 The Colonial Prelude and the Approach of the Second Dutch War....Pages 111-126 A War of Tradesmen....Pages 127-142 Conclusion....Pages 143-158 Back Matter....Pages 159-169 Charles Wilson. First Published 1957, Second Printing 1978--t.p. Verso. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. [159]-164.