The Apprentice Diplomat

Abstract

In the period between 1618 and 1624, when Huygens made his first journeys to England, Anglo-Dutch relations were under considerable strain. Economic pressure from within was exercised in both countries: when they came into contact with each other their economic aims conflicted severely, and they quickly found that they had far too much in common. Throughout the seventeenth century and well into the next, England and Holland were in sharp competition for the same things, and neither country gave in to the other any more than expediency required. In the first place, they were to some degree in competition over the cloth trade, and the difficulties over imposts on dyed cloth were finally arbitrated by the English merchants. More far-reaching than the cloth trade and far more significant in the development of Anglo-Dutch affairs was the problem of sea rights. Hugo Grotius’ book Mare Liberum proclaimed the natural freedom of the seas; the English scholar John Selden answered the Hollander’s book with his Mare Clausum, or closed sea, an expression of the policy James chose to take in order to help the English fisheries. James declared the North Sea closed to all but English shipping; the Hollanders were then cut off from the Dogger Bank, long a source of wealth to the Netherlands herring-fisheries. The sea quarrel between the two countries extended beyond the North Sea; for Dutch and English ships found themselves rivals in both the northern whaling areas and in the Russian trade. In the East Indies the English and Dutch Companies clashed over both trade and settlement, and Dutch success in 1623 in removing the English settlement on the island of Amboina gave the English the moral excuse they needed to demand increased trading rights in the Indies.