Anglo-Dutch War (1652-1654)
Battle of Scheveningen (1653)
| date | 1652-1654 |
|---|---|
| place | English Channel , North Sea |
| output | Commonwealth victory |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
Maarten Tromp |
Robert Blake (Admiral)
|
Dover - Plymouth - Elba - Kentish Knock - Dungeness - Portland - Livorno - Gabbard - Scheveningen
The First Anglo-Dutch War, from 1652 to 1654, was fought at sea by the naval forces of the Commonwealth of England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands. It was the first of four Anglo-Dutch Wars .
The causes lay in disputes over trade and the war began with attacks on merchant shipping. However, there were also major clashes between the war fleets of England and the Netherlands. The English Navy was able to gain control of the sea areas around England, and the Dutch were forced to recognize the English monopoly over trade with the English colonies.
prehistory
( Note: Calendar dates in this article refer to the Gregorian calendar , which was ten days ahead of the Julian calendar used in England at the time .)
In the sixteenth century, England and the Netherlands had been close allies against the Habsburg struggles for power . Together they defeated the Spanish Armada , and England supported the Dutch in the Eighty Years' War by sending money and soldiers. There was a permanent English representative in the Dutch government to coordinate cooperation in the joint war effort. However, the collapse of Spanish power at the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648 resulted in the colonial possessions of the Portuguese and Spanish being redistributed. The subsequent race to build empires turned the former allies into competitors. After making peace with the Spanish, the Dutch quickly ousted the English traders from their strong position in trade with the Iberian Peninsula .
By the middle of the 17th century, the Dutch had by far the largest merchant fleet in Europe, with more ships than any other nation combined. Their economy was based almost entirely on maritime trade. In European trade, especially with the Baltic States , they had achieved supremacy. They had also taken over almost all of the Portuguese possessions in Southeast Asia . This gave them control of the enormously profitable spice trade. They were even able to gain significant influence over English maritime trade with their North American colonies when England was distracted by the chaos in the wake of the English Civil War . After the decisive Dutch victory over the Spanish invasion fleet in the Battle of the Downs ( Battle of the Downs ) in 1639, the other war on the country shifted. That is why the Dutch navy was neglected from then on. The Dutch had many independent admiral staffs who, after 1648, sold large stocks of their fleets to save money. By 1652 fewer than 50 ships were seaworthy, and these deficits had to be compensated for by arming the merchant ships. However, these merchant ships were far inferior in firepower to the largest English warships, first and second class.
The Commonwealth of England Navy was in better shape. She had emerged victorious from the English Civil War, supported Oliver Cromwell's invasions in the wars in Scotland and Ireland, and blocked Prince Ruprecht's fleet in Lisbon . They organized a convoy system to protect their merchant ships from the swarms of privateers who were after the ships in front of all European ports. On September 24, 1650, General zur See, Robert Blake, defeated the Portuguese fleet in a violent storm. He sank the ship of a Portuguese vice admiral and captured seven enemy ships. Thereby he persuaded Portugal not to protect Prince Ruprecht any further. In 1651 the English navy had taken the royalist bastions on the Isles of Scilly , the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands . In 1652 General George Ayscue had regained the English colonies in the Caribbean and North America. The English Navy was put on a solid financial footing by a law of November 10, 1650, imposing a 15% tax on merchant shipping. The proceeds were to be used to finance the naval forces protecting the convoys.
Course of war
French support for the English royalists had led the Commonwealth to issue letters of reprisal against French ships and French goods on neutral ships. These letters gave the right to search neutral ships. Such ships mostly came from the Netherlands. The British Parliament adopted the first of the Navigation Act ( Navigation Acts ) in October 1651. It ordered that only ships from England and the country of origin of the goods, the same could introduce to England. The Dutch were further angered when, in the spring of 1652, George Ayscue landed 27 Dutch ships trading with the royalist colony of Barbados . The Commonwealth had previously imposed an embargo on the royalists. In addition, the Dutch governor was by the death of William II. The foreign policy of the United Netherlands in the hands of large commercial companies and the leading city of regents of Amsterdam and Rotterdam from the families De Witt , Huydecoper van Maarsseveen , Lampsins , trip , Bicker or the De Graeff fall . Accordingly, the States General decided on March 3, 1652 to enlarge the fleet by hiring 150 merchant ships and equipping them as warships.
News of this decision reached London on March 12, 1652, and the Commonwealth also began to prepare for war. Since both nations were still insufficiently prepared for war, the outbreak of war would normally have dragged on. However, on May 29, 1652 there was an unfortunate clash between the fleets of the Dutch Admiralty Lieutenant Maarten Tromp and General Robert Blake in the English Channel near Dover . One of Cromwell's instructions required all foreign fleets in the North Sea or the Channel to lower their flags in greeting. When Tromp refused, however, Blake opened fire. This led to the brief naval battle at Dover . Tromp lost two ships, but was able to get his convoy to safety.
War was declared on July 10, 1652. The Dutch saw what was at stake when one of the departing ambassadors said: “ The English are about to attack a mountain of gold; we are about to attack a mountain of iron. "
The first months of the war consisted of English attacks on Dutch convoys. Blake was sent out with 60 vessels to interrupt Dutch fisheries in the North Sea and trade with the Baltic States. Ayscue stayed behind with a small naval force to protect the English Channel. On July 12, 1652, Ayscue intercepted a Dutch convoy returning from Portugal. He was able to capture seven merchant ships, three more were sunk. Tromp assembled a fleet of 96 ships to attack Ayscue, but adverse winds from the south prevented him from entering the canal from the North Sea. So he turned north to pursue Blake. Tromp caught up with the English fleet off the Shetland Islands , but a storm scattered his ships and there was no fight. On August 26, 1652, Ayscue attacked a departing Dutch convoy under the command of Commodore Michiel de Ruyter . In this sea battle at Plymouth , however, he was repulsed and then replaced as commander. In the Mediterranean, the Dutch achieved another victory on September 8, 1652 in the sea battle near Elba .
Tromp had also been replaced after the failure at the Shetland Islands. His command was transferred to Vice Admiral Witte de With . The Dutch convoys were temporarily safe, and so de With saw an opportunity to join forces and try to gain control at sea. During the sea battle at Kentish Knock on October 8, 1652, the Dutch attacked the English fleet near the Thames estuary. However, they were repulsed with heavy losses. The English parliament believed that the Dutch were almost defeated and sent twenty ships to the Mediterranean to strengthen their position there. After this division of the fleet, Blake only remained 42 warships as of November, while the Dutch made every effort to strengthen their fleet. This led to the English defeats in the sea battle at Dungeness in December against the Dutch under Tromp and the sea battle at Livorno in March 1653. After that, the Dutch had gained control of the Channel, the North Sea and the Mediterranean. The English ships were blocked in the ports.
Despite these successes, the Dutch republic was poorly prepared for a sea war. Because it was forbidden to conscript seafarers into military service, enormous sums of money had to be expended to recruit enough seamen. The situation worsened when political dispute broke out over the right course of action: should the Dutch navy be expanded or should defensive measures against an invasion on land be given priority? Unable to support all of their colonies, the Portuguese were able to recapture the Dutch colony of Dutch Brazil in Brazil.
Over the winter of 1652–1653 the English repaired their ships and analyzed the situation. Robert Blake wrote the manual " Sailing and Fighting Instructions ", a fundamental renewal of naval warfare tactics. It contained the first description of ship of the line tactics . In February 1653 the English were ready to challenge the Dutch to battle. In the three-day sea battle at Portland in March and the two-day sea battle at Gabbard in June, the Dutch were driven back to their home ports.
The last naval battle of the war was the costly naval battle near Scheveningen in August. The Dutch tried to break the English blockade, but after heavy fighting with great damage on both sides, the Dutch withdrew to Texel . But the English were forced to break off the blockade. Tromp was killed shortly after the sea battle began. This weakened the morale of the Dutch and demands to end the war began to take hold. Something similar happened in England when Oliver Cromwell dissolved the rump parliament that had previously been vehemently in favor of war.
consequences
The peace negotiations ended on May 8, 1654 with the signing of the Treaty of Westminster , in which the Dutch recognized the Commonwealth and agreed to respect the Navigation Acts in future. The treaty had a secret annex, the Act of Exclusion, in which the Dutch were forbidden forever, the son of the late governor, who later became Wilhelm III. of England to ever succeed his father. In fact, this clause was introduced at the request of the leading Dutch clique around Johan de Witt and Cornelis de Graeff , who were both staunch Republicans. However, the trade disputes between the two nations were not settled with this peace agreement. The hostilities between the English and Dutch trading companies, which themselves had troops and warships, continued particularly in the extensive overseas colonies. The Dutch launched a major shipbuilding program to compensate for their disadvantage in the ships of the line, which they had felt in the sea battles of Kentish Knock, Gabbard and Scheveningen. The admiral staff was now prohibited by law from selling the 60 new ships. The second Anglo-Dutch naval war was on its way .
literature
- RC Anderson: The First Dutch War in the Mediterranean. In: The Mariner's Mirror , November 1963, Vol. 49 (No. 4), pp. 241-265.
- Carl Ballhausen: The First Anglo-Dutch Sea War 1652–1654 and the Swedish-Dutch Sea War 1658–1659 , Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1923.
- Charles Ralph Boxer: The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th Century , Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London 1974.
- Conn: Reflections on the first Anglo-Dutch War. In: Marine-Rundschau , Vol. IV / V, 1911.
- Samuel Rawson Gardiner: Letters and Papers relating to the First Dutch War , Navy Records Society, London 1899.
- Roger Hainsworth / Christine Churchers: The Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars 1652–1674 , Sutton Publishing Limited, Thrupp / Stroud / Gloucestershire 1998. ISBN 0-7509-1787-3
- Jonathan Israel: The Dutch Republic - Its rise, greatness and fall 1477-1806 , Clarendon Press, Oxford 1995. ISBN 0-19-873072-1
- From Janson: The Decline of Dutch Maritime Power. In: Marine-Rundschau , Vol. III / IV / V, 1912.
- James R. Jones: The Anglo-Dutch Wars of the Seventeenth Century , Longman House, London / New York 1996. ISBN 0-582-05631-4
- Kurt Kluxen : History of England. From the beginning to the present (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 374). 4th edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-520-37404-8 .
- Alexander Meurer: History of naval warfare in outline , Leipzig 1942.
- Helmut Pemsel : Command of the Sea. Vol. 2. Vienna / Garz 2005. (= Helmut Pemsel: Weltgeschichte der Seefahrt. Vol. 5. )