Re: Chapter of the Week - The Hobbit, Chapter 13 - Not At Home

<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > The Dutch also have a tradition of being good at "ship
> > biscuits" which last almost indefinitely and are quite tasty.
>  Now comes a serious OT question: what reasons were there for
>  the rise to prominence of Britain in place of the Pays-Bas as
>  a maritime and colonial power? This question has been raised
>  recently (last 10 yrs) in quite a few economics papers, but
>  since the authors are Brits or Americans I don't think they're
>  unbiased. Maybe you can direct me to some Dutch books/authors
>  writing on the topic (I'd look them up for English
>  translations in the LC and British Library catalogues). TIA.

My history on the 17th century is a bit shaky, but perhaps the
main reason was that the Dutch were not very interested in
colonial power per se, it was merely a way to make profit; which
is nicely illustrated by the fact that most Dutch colonies in
that period were established by a company - the Dutch East Indies
Company - instead of by the Republic itself. Indeed, it has been
said that in fact the Republic was run by the company board of
directors (the "Lords seventeen") instead of by the
States-General (parliament).

This situation resulted in short-sightedness on the part of the
Dutch Powers-that-Be: if it didn't turn a direct profit, they
didn't want to invest in it.  England developed its maritime
power and its colonial empire 'for king and country', as a status
symbol as much as anything. The Dutch lost their naval supremacy
primarily because they didn't feel like spending too much money
on their navy. 

With naval supremacy lost, the Republic was still rich from the
profits the established colonies brought. But when the prices of
the goods brought from the far east went down in the 18th century
(because of competition, presumably), the Dutch economy went down
the drain.

That, and it's a small pimple of a country of course, compared to
England. It could never have hoped to compete in earnest for a
long time - they fought four wars in that period, only the first
one went well for the Dutch if I remember correctly[1].

Jeen
[1] Remember from history class, of course. I wasn't there. Duh.
-- 
Jeen Broekstra                http://www.cs.vu.nl/~jbroeks/

"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"
                -- Time Bandits