10 - Securing Outposts and Colonial Possessions (1654–1780)

Summary

From the 1640s onwards, the States General had to intervene militarily to safeguard Dutch mercantile and maritime interests in the Atlantic area. The culmination of the conflict in Brazil marked the final turning point for the wic: the State, rather than the Company, would henceforth be responsible for large-scale Dutch military operations there. The wic would be limited to defending a small number of trading posts and colonies against attacks from without and within. The Company's military weakness was not immediately apparent. Overt hostilities in the Atlantic area came to an end, with Spain thanks to the Peace of Münster, and with Portugal under a separate peace settlement. Occasional pinpricks aside, relative calm prevailed for a time. Nor did the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–1654) affect the balance of power in this region. Unlike in Asia, however, the confrontations with European rivals England and France in the last decades of the seventeenth century would have major consequences for Dutch power in the Atlantic region.

The great turnaround came during the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667), in which France and the Dutch Republic were officially allies in the struggle against England. During that war, the contours of a new Atlantic reality emerged, leaving no scope for the pursuit of extensive colonial possessions in West Africa and the Americas. Besides retaining a few plantation colonies on the Wild Coast, the littoral between the mouths of the Amazon and the Orinoco, the military policy of the Republic would mainly focus on protecting its trading interests. Trade hubs like Elmina in Africa and Curaçao and Sint-Eustatius in the Caribbean had become important to the Republic's economy.

This chapter will consider the impact of the Second Anglo-Dutch War on the Dutch position in the Atlantic area at some length, before focusing on the subsequent military operations of the period 1672–1678, in which the Dutch Republic faced both England and France. Which factors explained Dutch successes and, increasingly, failures in these confrontations? The final part of the chapter looks at the Republic's military efforts to consolidate its Atlantic trade and possessions between 1678 and the outbreak of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784).