To Shake Off the British Shackle Forever: The Political Economy of the Dutch Republic during the American Revolution

Abstract

abstract: In the 1780s, Dutch Patriot revolutionaries celebrated the independence of the United States as an event that would revitalize their downtrodden economy and society at large. Why would they believe that the newly independent United States could resurrect the Dutch Golden Age? This article demonstrates that, from the Seven Years' War onward, political and economic thought and practice in the Dutch Republic became deeply entangled with the unfolding of the American Revolution. Ideas about commerce and innovative practices that emerged in the context of a rapidly changing Atlantic world proved foundational to the Dutch Patriot Revolution of the 1780s. In this way, the transatlantic connections between the American and Dutch Patriots were longer and more complex than previously argued. As a result of these connections, the American Revolution forged the political and economic program of the Dutch Patriot Revolution, which would ultimately signal the beginning of the end of the two-hundred-year-old Dutch Republic. Abstract: In the 1780s, Dutch Patriot revolutionaries celebrated the independence of the United States as an event that would revitalize their downtrodden economy and society at large. Why would they believe that the newly independent United States could resurrect the Dutch Golden Age? This article demonstrates that, from the Seven Years' War onwards, political and economic thought and practice in the Dutch Republic became deeply entangled with the unfolding of the American Revolution. Ideas about commerce and innovative practices that emerged in the context of a rapidly changing Atlantic world proved foundational to the Dutch Patriot Revolution of the 1780s. In this way, the transatlantic connections between the American and Dutch Patriots were longer and more complex than previously argued. As a result of these connections, the American Revolution forged the political and economic program of the Dutch Patriot Revolution, which would ultimately signal the beginning of the end of the two-hundred-year-old Dutch Republic.