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Letters and Papers Relating to the First Dutch War, 1652-1654
Letters and Papers Relating to the First Dutch War 16521654 Author:Samuel Rawson Gardiner Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PART II THE APPROACH OF WAR INTRODUCTORY a. The Causes of the War THE opinion which for a long time prevailed that the outbreak of war between t... more »he two Republics was the result of the Navigation Act must either be altogether rejected, or at least accepted only under the severest limitations. Though the three Dutch Ambassadors, Cats, Schaef, and Van de Perre, who arrived in England on December f, 1651, to negotiate an agreement with this country, were instructed to do their utmost to obtain a repeal of this Act, there is nothing in their correspondence to show that they were prepared to make a casus belli of the refusal given them, or even that they considered that refusal to stand in the way of a good understanding with the English Parliament. On the other hand considerable allowance must be made for the irritation caused amongst Dutch merchants and seamen by the interruption of trade resulting from the operation of the Act, and this irritation must undoubtedly be taken into account as a predisposing cause of war. That Act forbade importation—not, as the Act of Charles II., exportation also—into England, her colonies and dependencies, of goods not the produce of the country to which the importing vessel belonged. The letter of February T4T from the Board of Admiralty in Zeeland (No. 10), complaining of the seizure of Dutchships at Barbados and the ill-treatment of their crews by Sir George Ayscue, refers not to the Navigation Act passed on October 9, 1651, but to the Act of October 3, 1650, prohibiting all trade, whether in imports or exports, with certain colonies upholding the cause of Charles II. against the Commonwealth.1 Yet, bitter as the complaint was, I have found no evidence of any action being taken on it by the States-General. It may be conjectured that ...« less