14 - Ships, Forts, and Weapons

Summary

To wage war in the Atlantic area the Dutch Republic had to invest heavily not only in people but also ships, defences and weapons. For only by doing so would it be possible to break into the Spanish and Portuguese domains and establish bridgeheads from which colonies could be conquered or developed. But the fledgling Republic did not itself have the financial means required for equipping military expeditions and therefore turned to private entrepreneurs, men who were willing to invest in military expeditions in exchange for a share of the potential rewards and trade advantages. There was nothing surprising in this, for in the early-modern period the government received little tax revenue and so was limited in what it could do. Until the end of the eighteenth century, the public and the private were heavily dependent on each other and hard to separate. When the wic was founded in 1621 all the costs of the military expeditions in which it was involved were covered by the Company, which was financed with private money. Only when the fighting in Brazil had left the company financially drained did the government provide a large part of the military expense.

This chapter focuses on the numbers and types of ships, fortifications and weapons used by the Dutch to expand and defend their overseas empire. First we discuss the fleets that sailed from the Republic for more than two centuries. Which type of ship made the crossing and how many set sail in the various periods? That number reached a peak between 1600 and 1650, when the Dutch Republic tried to establish an Atlantic empire and used a good deal of violence in doing so. To what extent is the success and eventual failure of the wic and the Dutch fleet attributable to the strength of the naval force and the way in which it was employed?

Once this ambitious project had failed, the emphasis was on preserving the remaining Atlantic possessions and protecting trade. To keep hold of territories, defences were particularly important. We shall look at how defences developed from simple earthen walls surrounded by palisades to complex fortresses which, in the second half of the eighteenth century, gradually began to fall into disrepair. We then examine the different types of weapons that were used in the Atlantic region and the technological developments that took place.