America's Dutch Heritage

• The Second Anglo-Dutch War ended with the Peace of Breda in July 1667.
• The Netherlands placed a stranglehold on England, nearly bankrupting King Charles II, and sent a fleet up the Thames through the Medway to Chatham, destroying shoreline warehouses and the Chatham Naval Yard, which caused panic in London.
• The blockade brought London’s commerce to a standstill during the first half of the summer of 1667, severely reducing Charles II’s revenue.
• The Peace of Breda ended Dutch control over British commerce, granted the Dutch Suriname and other concessions, but did not return New Netherland.
• The Triple Alliance of 1668 between England, Sweden, and Holland reaffirmed cooperation among these Protestant states.

Charles II's humiliation was so thorough, however, that within two years he entered into a secret alliance with France's Louis XIV to once and for all crush the Dutch Republic.

• Over 100,000 French soldiers invaded the Netherlands and rapidly captured a succession of cities and provinces, all the way up to, and including, Utrecht.
• A joint English-French seaborne invasion fleet, however, was stymied at sea by Dutch naval fleets and never affected the activity on land.
• What was worse for England was that Charles II was about to see his revenue sources dry up suddenly, and this would directly affect the outcome of the new war.

After the disastrous (in the eyes of the British) end of the second Anglo-Dutch war, the merchant community (whose warehouses had been destroyed) could not nearly provide sufficient tax support to the British crown. Charles II's remaining revenue depended first on the Virginia tobacco trade, second, upon taxes and duties from the New World, and thirdly from revenue derived from the Newfoundland fisheries. The Dutch would swiftly move to end all three.

• In July of 1673, a combined Dutch fleet under Cornelius Evertsen and Jacob Benckes captured almost half of the annual Virginia tobacco fleet, and sank or scuttled half of the remainder.
• They then sailed north and quickly recaptured New Netherland and proceeded to lay waste to the coastal fishing towns in Newfoundland. (For additional detail, see "The Legacy of Peter Stuyvesant" elsewhere on this website.
• All British ships in the former New York (now renamed New Orange) were captured.
• British merchantmen that could escape Boston quickly did so, as rumors of an incredibly large Dutch fleet spread throughout New England.
• The Newfoundland fishing grounds were effectively shut down, while trade and commercial activity ceased.
• Most importantly, Charles II's revenue stream ground to a halt. From the perspective of the British crown, the whole of North America was threatened.

• Charles II couldn't release the fleets guarding the Thames for fear of a repeat performance of 1667, and the Dutch, in fact, tried to capture Sheerness at the mouth of the Thames again in 1672, but this time its defenses had been improved.
• The few reports that were received from the New World probably exaggerated the scope of the disaster, but New Netherland was again firmly in Dutch hands, and the reality of revenue loss was certain.
• When the first ship sent to inform the Dutch back at home was inadvertently intercepted and captured by the English, Charles realized the extent of the losses and, more importantly, could take advantage of a window of opportunity to conclude a peace with the Netherlands before the full impact of their victory in the New World could be realized by the Dutch negotiators.

The French, poised on the outskirts of Amsterdam, had been temporarily halted by the defenders breaking open the dikes and flooding the fields through which the armies had to cross. When the Treaty of Westminster was signed in 1674, English support of the French disappeared, and France advanced no further, eventually withdrawing. Thus, the Netherlands and the House of Orange were saved, but the New Netherland settlement again reverted to British control.

Fourteen years later, when William of Orange triumphantly accepted the British throne in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, Dutchmen again assumed control of New Netherland, this time under Protestant Jacob Leisler. William of Orange, however, interested in securing peace and cooperation among the English, allowed control of New Netherland to revert to their corrupt former governor, and in 1691, Leisler's rebellion, or King William's war, ended with the English again in authority over the region.

Having changed hands five times within a quarter century, the region's inhabitants were poised for the sixth change of control for the next two or three generations. This stimulated the former Dutch and English inhabitants to treat each other with enhanced respect, civility, and cooperation, greatly extending the length of Dutch influence in the New York area. Families such as the van Rensselaers, having survived the five transitions intact, wielded unusual influence well into the next two centuries.

The Dutch love for tolerance, free enterprise, free trade, and freedom of religion soon became entwined into the Colonial psyche that set the foundation for the American spirit of 1776. The "Apology" of William the Silent of Orange to Philip of Spain in 1581 blueprint the Declaration of Independence that followed almost two hundred years later, and the Dutch Republic that William headed was the only model available for the American patriots to follow. Thus, its preservation in the latter half of the 1600s would keep the model intact for Franklin, Paine, Jefferson, Adams, and Washington's benefit.

Some provisions of the surrender documents of Peter Stuyvesant in 1664 (e.g., prohibiting the quartering of soldiers in civilian homes) even found their way into the Constitution of the United States over 100 years later. What began with Henry Hudson's Halve Maen in 1609 ended up fully integrating into and inordinately influencing the future United States of America, while simultaneously contributing to the preservation of the House of Orange-Nassau and the Kingdom of the Netherlands.