V) The Balance of Power
(1702-1763)
Spanish Succession
In 1700, only three years since the end of the Nine Years War, Charles II of Spain died, bequeathing all his possessions to Phillip, Duke of Anjou, and grandson of Louis XIV. The only other option than Phillip V, was the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, the Austrian Habsburg cousin of Charles II. As early as 1668, Leopold agreed to a potential partition of Spanish territory between the Habsburgs and Bourbons. However, Phillip was not a party of the agreement, and disregarded treaties of partition.
Louis’s advisors made the case of accepting the Partition Treaty of 1700, as opposed to risking war by claiming the whole of the Spanish Empire. Arguments within the French court brought forth the idea that war with Austria was inevitable. They would have to fight for their slice of Spanish territory. Upon this revelation, the advisors stood down, leaving the decision effectively in the hands of Louis XIV. On November 24, 1700, Louis declared the Duke of Anjou the new King of Spain, and contrary to partition treaties, Phillip claimed all the inheritance.
The prediction of war came to fruition. Charles II was a Habsburg, and thus his dominion belonged to the family. Austria could not tolerate a Bourbon on the Spanish throne. Early in 1701, Austria, and the Holy Roman Empire, declared war upon the Bourbons. With the Grand Alliance still in effect, Louis cut off both England and the United Provinces from Spanish trade. The Oranges might not care which other family sat upon Spain’s throne, but they do care when their own Kingdom’s trade it threatened.
Could the United Provinces have stayed out of the War of Spanish Succession? Perhaps. By 1701, the English were prepared to recognize Phillip V. That alone might have prevented war, however, the Dutch still had an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire. National honor would be infringed by backing out. It was an early lesson, and warning against entanglement with future alliances. With Europe’s less enlightened nations constantly at war, the Dutch will simply decide that alliances are bad for business.
King Johann I
Born August 4, 1678, Johann Willem van Oranje, was the only child of William III of the United Provinces and Denmark-Norway, and Mary II of England and Scotland. He was born in a position that could potentially inherit all four thrones. By the age of twenty-four he did inherit the thrones of the United Provinces and Denmark-Norway. However, the English-Scottish throne was already promised to Mary’s sister, Anne. That was fine for the Netherlander; Britannia was more trouble than it was worth.
Upon the death of William III, Johann I inherited more than realms. War already exploded across Europe, with the Netherlands placed directly between two large adversaries; one an ally another an enemy. It was not the first time the Provinces were in this position, nor would it be the last. The United Provinces were situated on a location ideal for trade and horrible for land-based defenses. During the War of Spanish Succession, the Dutch would enhance and expand fortifications in the southern Provinces. It was an undertaking started by William III, and would end with William IV.
Almost immediately upon taking the throne, Johann had to contend with Louis XIV declaring war on the Provinces. The Dutch Navy was already active in the English Channel after Louis cut off trade, but the real combat did not begin until 1704. From their hold in Mons, the French launched another invasion of the southern Provinces. It was a two prong attack; one heading east into the Empire via Luxembourg, the second an assault against Antwerp, on a virtually identical course as during the last war.
William III predicted the French would attack Antwerp again. Near the mouth of the Rhine, Antwerp was sort of an obsession for Louis XIV and his descendants. Though the city recovered from the Dutch Revolution, it fell under attack by the French repeatedly during the Eighteenth Century. It is believed the Louis hoped to use Antwerp as an anchor of sorts, to press the French frontier on to the Rhine. If this happened, ten of the United Provinces would fall under French rule.
Invasion of the South
France’s first move in the war was a repeat of years earlier. Instead of sending smaller parties to pillage and plunder, the French King sent an army to plough down the Schelde River towards the Rhein. With richer targets available than the perennially harassed port, it would have made far more logical sense, at least in terms of plunder, to hit Namur or even Brussels. As with wars before, the French hoped to divide and conquer. Louis believed he could split the United Provinces in half if he just held Antwerp.
There was little basis for this hope, for there was no chance of the largely Catholic south suddenly being struck by a revivalist fervor and joining their co-religionists against their fellow countrymen. One would have thought the Sun King would have learned this in the 1690s. Not only that, but the French made the same mistakes as Spain, a century before. Their living off the land deprived the locals of much of their food supplies. Where the French could not live off the land, the burned in an attempt to prevent Johann from supplying his own armies locally. The County of Flanders along with Artois, suffered greatly from French sieges and general mischief.
The case of Ypres, in 1703, proved to be one of the more extreme accounts of French excesses. During the siege of the city, French soldiers systematically stripped surrounding farmlands of all its produce, leaving the natives without. Dutch farmers did not simply lie down as their livelihoods vanished to the French locusts. Though they had no hope in defeating the army, the made valiant efforts to annoy the enemy. Any French officer who stood out from the crowd was a potential target for those farmers with muskets. French reprisals stemmed the effort to an extent, but once all the farmers began to realize they could be executed for the actions of others, all began to resist. Their resistance was hopeless, and once the city fell, the French took a vengeance upon the people that is still a source of bitterness for the people of Ypres.
Blenheim
The reason for an English Duke to lead an army to Luxembourg’s safety came from a burning desire to keep the Austrians in the war. They were, after all, one of the two parties that started the twelve year long conflict. The Staaten-General wished for the Duke to stay in the Netherlands, perhaps in an attempt to regain Mons. Ignoring the wishes of the Dutch, Marlborough lead the army, as well as its Dutch contingents, into southern Germany. Though King Johann was the direct result of the Anglo-Dutch Alliance, he was starting to wonder just why he put up with his mother’s people. Satisfying national honor might not be worth the price of such disrespect.
The goal of Duke’s march was to prevent the Franco-Bavarian armies from marching on Vienna. In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, it was common practice to end a war by taking the opposing side’s capital. This often lead to the side that lost suing for terms. To prevent Austria, and thus the Holy Roman Empire, from capitulating, Marlborough would link up with another army lead by Eugene and block the French.
The Anglo-Dutch-German forces met the French and Bavarians under the command of Tallard at Blenheim. The Battle of Blenheim is said to be the turning point of the War of Spanish Succession. Marlborough won a resounding victory, turning Tallard back and effectively knocking Bavaria out of the war. By 1707, France was one ally short.
However, the French potentially had another ally waiting to board. In the far north, Sweden was at odds with Denmark-Norway and Russia in a grand war waging for control of the Baltic. The Swedish King, Charles XII, had to chose between Denmark-Norway and Russia. Sweden was not the behemoth it is today, and thus could only afford to fight one enemy at a time. In 1705, the pressed the issue with the Danish. With Johann I still King of Denmark-Norway, he would be forced to divide his armies between two enemies. Overall, the Swedes had no quarrel with the Dutch, especially since the Royal Dutch Navy could close the Baltic Sea with ease.
Act of Union
Johann I was willing to come to the aid of his other kingdom in the event of war with Sweden, however, the Staaten-General put a price on the help. The Dutch, a largely middle-class mercantile people, spent the last fifty years supporting the relatively poorer Danes. Nobility in Denmark-Norway racked up large debts by taking out loans from Dutch banks. In total, Amsterdam and the Hague effectively owned Kopenhägen and Bergen.
When war with Sweden loomed on the horizon, Danish nobility pleaded to their King, Johann, to come to their aide. Since William III took the Danish throne, many Dutch have called for unification between the two nations. In 1705, pro-unification factions seized their opportunity. They would allow soldiers and sailors of the United Provinces to protect Denmark-Norway only if the Danes accept full political union, thus Danish and Norwegian defense would become Dutch defense.
The idea was resisted in noble circles in the Nordic states. Denmark had a long, proud history, dating back to the Vikings. At one point, Danes ruled the North Sea, and Norwegians expanded as far as the New World. They were not the only Vikings; the Swedes extended to the east, called the Rus by the natives, they effectively invented Russia. Denmark-Norway spent the years dating back to the Second Anglo-Dutch War in a downward spiral. If not for the Dutch, perhaps Sweden would have absorbed part of, or even all of, the Danish Kingdom.
Negotiations for unification spanned most of 1705. When the deal looked to be faltering, the Staaten-General added a clause that no indebted noble could refuse. If they two kingdoms became one, then not only would defense be united, but so would debt. Large amount of debt would be forgiven once the Treaty of Unification was signed and ratified. Some historians have accused the Staaten-General of buying out Denmark-Norway. Perhaps they are correct, if one discounts the fact that nobles and landed elite of Denmark-Norway retained both titles and land upon unification, for on August 15, 1705, the Danish nobility gave in to Dutch demands. The Staaten-General quickly ratified the treaty.
September 3, 1705, went down in Dutch history, ranking as high as 1609, and 1887, in the annuals of the United Provinces. Signing the treaty was the first step. Over the next three years, reforms swept through Denmark and Norway. Danish nobles, some but not all, were forced to take up part-time residence in the Hague in order to take their rightful place in the First Chamber. Danish and Norwegian representatives took their place, though not as welcomed as the nobility, in the Second Chamber.
The Act of Union was not the unification that England and Scotland would enjoy during 1707. Instead, it was less unification and more annexation. The United Provinces changed little, yet Denmark-Norway was forced to adapt to ways alien to them. The Staaten-General went as far as to appoint governors to former Danish provinces, ‘in order to expedite the transition to a more democratic society’. The transition lasted for a century, until the Age of Napoleon and later the Congress of Vienna.
Danes soon found themselves second-class citizens within their own lands. Dutch companies moved in to take the place of old Danish establishments. Norway itself was treated more along the lines of Brazil or New Amsterdam than an equal Province. In 1738, William IV bestowed the title of Grand Prince of Norway to his first born, and has continued to be the title for the heir-apparent until the present day.
The Act of Union was not the only ground-shaking change to strike the United Provinces in the first decade of the Eighteenth Century. Only a few years after unification, the Dutch people were presented the horrors of their own colonial institutions, and the consequences would topple one of the most powerful companies in Dutch history.
Fall of the Dutch South Atlantic Company
Founded in 1605, the Dutch South Atlantic Company was granted a monopoly on trade in the South Atlantic, and contracted to administer the colonies in Brazil and Angola. Brazil was a jewel in the Dutch Empire’s crown, producing nearly every luxury crop the New World has to offer. Angola remained a backwater for centuries, viewed as little more than impenetrable jungle. At first glance, it had little to offer the Dutch. Timber for certain, yet Brazil had its own share of forests as did New Amsterdam. However, the South Atlantic Company found one resource in Angola, a resource the plantations in Brazil desperately needed; manpower.
For a century, the South Atlantic Company monopolized Brazilian Slave Trade. How a nation like the United Provinces, the freest in Europe at the time, could have more slave ships registered beneath its flag than any other nation is a bit of a paradox. The Dutch people claimed to embrace democracy and love liberty, yet allowed hundreds of thousands of people to be enslaved in its distant colonies. As long as coffee, sugar and tobacco flowed into Dutch ports, the people were content to turn a blind eye to slavery. All except one group.
One of the most sacred principles of the Buddhist monks and followers was to cause no harm. For decades, monks struggled against the institution of bondage, though they managed little more than protests in Amsterdam, the largest home to slavers in the world. To the average Netherlander, the ways of the East were curiosities, though not taken serious by the mainstream. In 1700, less than one percent of the population of the United Provinces were Buddhists, and none of the members of the Staaten-General followed the path of the Buddha.
Change had not happened, even after decades of attempting to expose the Dutch people to the truth of slavery. The various churches of the United Provinces held their own debates on the issue, resolving nothing decisively. In 1708, a group of adhered monks of the Western Buddhist Templar, boarded several ships bound for Angola. They arrived in Luanda at roughly the same time. Donning disguises, the monks managed to land jobs as sailors on three slave ships destined to Natal and Salvador. According to the monks’ own principles, violence is forbidden. However, in the light of what they viewed as the most terrible of man’s crimes, these monks used limited force in order to take over all three ships. The captain and anyone who refused to cooperate, were lowered into boats while the ships were still along the African coast, and it is not known whether any of them survived.
Months after the hijacking, all of Amsterdam was surprised by the arrival of three ships laden with slaves. Though it housed the most slave ships in terms of registration, few of them ever ventured to the United Provinces. The monks brought prominent leaders of the community onto the ship to see the real cost of cheap sugar. Hundreds of slave crammed into the hold, with barely enough room to move. Many were suffering from malnutrition, and many more died, despite the monks’ efforts to keep them alive.
The South Atlantic Company demanded authorities arrest these ‘pirates’, which was precisely what the city watch did. The monks knew the risks of hijacking ships, especially company ships, and accepted the fate handed down by local judges. All were sentenced to prison, and more than half were executed for the crime of piracy. It pleased the South Atlantic Company, but even in death, the monks still managed to complete their mission.
The damage was done, and all of Amsterdam knew about the conditions in slave ships, conditions no human should ever have to endure. Soon after, pamphlets rose up all across the Provinces, preaching the evils of the slave trade and condemning the slavers. The South Atlantic Company was not without options. Seeing how all the pamphlets and books were printed and published by the Buddhist Templars, the Company attempted to turn its fellow Christians against them.
They were heathens, foreigners with their godless religion. Yes, Buddhism is without gods, and the Buddhists are quite proud of their faith. The South Atlantic Company called for to every law-abiding and god-fearing Netherlander to rise up and cast out the non-believers. The Company did all it could to place the Religion card, and rally the population into an anti-Dharmic frenzy. They reasoned that even the Church would aid them in doing God’s work.
The South Atlantic Company made the same mistake that both Louis XIV and Oliver Cromwell made in dealing with the Provinces. Instead of unleashing a storm against all things Buddhists, the Dutch people instead turned on the Company. How dare these businessmen, these same people who profit off the misery of their fellow man violate the most sacred of all Dutch percepts. In going against the Founders’ wishes and the Pacification of Ghent, the South Atlantic Company managed to united all the faiths of the United Provinces against them.
By 1709, the whole Catholic community was behind the Buddhist Templars. Though they do not share the same faith, they share the same language, the same food, and, with the exception of the first monks to arrive, the same blood. The Bishop of Utrecht himself stood up before his congregation and condemned the slave trade, declaring it an affront to God. Though the Vatican agreed, on principle anyway, they made no official stance one way or the other.
Soon churches held rallies, Catholic, Lutheran and even Calvinist, against the evils of trading in human flesh. The people soon began to act with their pocket book along with their voice. Brazilian sugar, coffee and tobacco were boycotted in favor of the VOC or England’s American Colonies. VOC products were preferred, not only because they were Dutch, but also because the British colonies found themselves enthralled by what future Englanders would call a ‘peculiar institution’. It might cost more, but to force a man into servitude– was that not what the Dutch fought against when they rebelled against Spanish rule?
With the public so ardently against the South Atlantic Company, shareholders, and especially speculators, began selling off their holdings. It soon became better (and more profitable) to invest in a venture that did not presume to dictate proper religious attitudes to a people who valued their freedom to worship God, or in the case of the Buddhist, not to worship Him, above most others. Share prices fell, profits bottomed out, and by 1710, the Dutch South Atlantic Company was forced to declare bankruptcy. Never before or since has the public of any nation toppled such a large corporation, and never before had a boycott been so absolute.
However, the company’s fall was not the end. The people, and churches, continued to rally around abolition of the trade. They started asking the same questions that historians ask today; how could a nation built on person freedom allow for another person to be held in bondage. When public opinion blows one way, the elected official bend to the wind. Delegates in the Second Chamber began to debate the slavery issue in earnest, and not just because an election was rapidly approaching. In 1711, Johann I, made on of his last decrees. He called for the Staaten-General to abolish the slave trade. Before his death, the abominable practice legally vanished across all of the Netherlander colonial possessions nearly a century before the British. Slave smuggling continued, but only as long as the practice of bondage continued. Up to, and well past the last minute, the colonial sugar lobby battled against the rising public opinion tide.
As for the South Atlantic Company, when it went bankrupt, it folded shortly afterwards. The Staaten-General, and King Johann I, seized the lands after the monopoly was revoked. Brazil and Angola both became crown colonies, soon subject to governor-generals and other official appointed at the whim of the Hague. In Brazil, slavery was phased out over the following decades. Those slaves that did not leave the plantation to build farms and homes of their own, were issued wages and paid rent. It was similar to the estate system in feudalism, except these workers could, in theory, leave whenever they pleased. Prices rose, but not so much as to topple the large farming interests in Brazil. With the end of slavery, indentured servitude saw a sharp rise, as a way for the poorer Netherlanders to afford their way to a new life.
Oddly enough, the biggest winner over the abolition of the slave trade were not the slaves, but rather the VOC. The Dutch East India Company backed both the Buddhists Templars and all the protesters throughout 1709-10. They donated to rallies and churches, and pressed for their representatives in the Second Chamber to act. They even managed to secure the release of the monks who started the whole abolition movement. 1709 saw the fall of one Company and the security of another for the remainder of the century.
However, companies were not the only ones rising and falling in 1709. To the United Provinces’ north and east, to regional powers were locked in a titanic struggle in the northern branch of the War of Spanish Succession. By the same time as the Dutch slaves saw manumission, Eastern Europe saw the fall of one empire and the rise of another in the Great Northern War.
The Tsar is Dead, Long Live the Tsar
Once the Act of Union between the United Provinces and Denmark-Norway was finalized, Charles XII of Sweden had little choice but to turn his attention away from the North Sea and throw Sweden’s full might against the Russian Bear. From the time between 1705 and 1709, Sweden fought Russia with less than stellar effort, and Charles failed to bring the war to conclusion before the Summer of 1709. The war itself was started mostly over the establishment of Petrograd, a Russian city in Swedish Baltic territory.
In 1709, the Swedish armies marched through the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, another nation with no love for the Tsar, and attacked Russia along its souther border. The reason for such a round about invasion came from negotiations between Charles XII and the Cossacks. In return for their freedom, the Cossacks would ally with Sweden against their own hated oppressors. However, the invasion was not without its problems, one involving a thousand soldiers and a pillaged stockpile of vodka.
On June 28, 1709, Tsar Peter personally lead the Russian Army to lift the Swedish siege around the town of Poltava. At the start of the battle, the Russians held a two-to-one numerical advantage. Peter pressed the attack, believing he could quickly roll up the Swedes. He was not totally oblivious to Sweden’s plans, but believed a second army, under the command of General Roos, was some three days out. In reality, they were only three hours away. The Swedes at Poltava held off the Russian advances long enough for a second Swedish army of equal size to march on Peter’s flank. Trapped between two armies, the Tsar ordered a frontal assault against the army closest to Poltava. It had been battered for three hours and must be low on ammunition.
What happened after the charge occurred is not quite clear. What is known is that an anonymous Swedish solider, firing in a volley, managed to pierce the Tsar’s chest, and toppling the great Russian leader in his saddle. The shot went clean through his heart, killing Peter in a matter of minutes. With the Tsar dead, the Russian charge faltered. The Russians were unsure how to move, or who was even in charge. Their hesitation was all the Swedes required. In the space of another hour, ten thousand Russians lay dead, and twenty more thousand wounded and now prisoners. The ensuing chaos caused by the Tsar’s death allowed the Swedes a route.
Upon hearing of the turn of events, Charles recalled the armies north and personally launched an assault on Petrograd. The city, filled with Russian Boyas who built homes in the city by Peter’s command, was sparely defended and fell before the day was out. Charles contemplated burning the city, but decided it might be a useful port after all. Following Petrograd, the Russian Army, put up one last act of resistance at Novgorod.
Against the Swedes alone, the Russians could have still won. However, Charles used the Cossacks, sending them to attack the Russian’s flanks. Russian lines collapsed and the road to Moscow was open. Moscow did not fall as much as it was sacked. For days, Swedish and Cossacks alike took whatever they desired. Without a Tsar or even a Regent, it was unclear who to negotiate with. Lack of negotiators did not detour the King of Sweden. The power vacuum presented a golden opportunity.
It remains unclear if the crown was ever Charles’s intent. Initial war aims were targeted around Peter’s new city, which Sweden claimed violated their own territory. Simply taking disputed lands would have saved Sweden more than a century of strife across the Russian countryside. Nonetheless, in the Spring of 1710, Charles XII walked into St. Basil’s Cathedral, and walked out as Tsar Charles I. He cemented his control over Russia by emancipating the serfs and removing Russian nobility from its land. In return for helping them free their brethren in the south, the Cossacks swore an oath of undying loyalty to Tsar Charles and the Swedish Royal Family. In the following three centuries, the Cossacks were at the forefront of Sweden’s wars.
Tsar Charles’ Reforms
Upon seizing the Russian crown in 1712, Tsar Charles had one problem; what to do with his new kingdom. He knew he would have to placate millions of new, and potentially hostile subjects. Some in the Swedish court suggested Charles should abdicate his Tsardom and establish a puppet upon the Russian throne. Charles feared that would cause future problems and only increase the likelihood of rebellion. After years of war, the Swedes knew that it was better to keep the Russians under control, or else they might grow in power until they can overcome Sweden itself. Charles could not contemplate surrendering the Baltic Coast or even Finland to a revitalized Russia.
The first issue addressed was that of the millions of Russian and Ukrainian serfs. Sweden Proper, with its ancient Viking traditions, never had serfdom. Slavery was known to the Vikings, but never did the Swedes adopt the same feudal practices as more southernly regions of the continent. In that, Charles decided to free the serfs of Russia. In doing this, he would also have to free those in the Baltic lands that have been under the Swedish crown for decades. The serfs would become simple wage-earning and rent-paying peasants. In order to work the estates, the lords must pay their workers, and if they do not pay enough, then the peasants can up and move.
Charles would not be sad to see have the Russians move eastwards, across the Urals and into the uncharted lands of Siberia. Fortunately, that was not to be. The Russian peasants and their economic producing potential, remained on their lands. The peasants were also given their own plots, which they could farm tax-free for three years. Addition lands would also be taxed, and the peasantry was subjected to money taxes.
The peasantry was divided on their new lord. On one hand, the Russian Orthodox Church continued to incite the population against the heretics. Religion was deeply important in the Russian peasant’s life, but a large percentage were rather indifferent if their Tsar was in Moscow, Petrograd or Stockholm. For them, 1711 and 1712 saw one despot replaced by another. Yes, he was a Protestant, but he also did not tax them as bad. Not only that, but the dread army levee was no longer in effect. For decades, a balance would be maintained between those who were for their new freedoms, those against the foreigners, and the majority simply disinterested in distant politics and more worried about working their own fields. This apathy was one of the contributing factors for Swedish control over Russia.
Other ethnic groups proved to be less docile than the large population of Russian former-serfs. By the start of the Eighteenth Century, the Russian Empire was beginning its own southernly push against the Ottoman Empire, chasing after the dream of a warm water port. Being a land of coasts, Sweden had no immediately demand for the Black Sea’s coast. Charles spent all his energy just keeping the Russians from rising up against him, and required no extra headaches. Crimea and the Caucasus were left to the Turks’ devices. With their own tide having already reached its zenith, the Ottomans made only occasional attempts to push into Swedish Ukraine.
Dozens of various tribes further east, some only recently subjugated by the Russians, sought to gain their freedom at the fall of their former masters. Charles might not have much immediate interest in the Muslim southern frontier, but he had a great interest in the open lands to the east. Where most Europeans would head west across the ocean to start new lives, Sweden would have its Wild East to serve as a release for possible population spikes. To hold down such a vast prize required a drastic militarization of Swedish society, with every available man soon finding himself serving in the Army. The Russian peasantry might be safe from conscription, but ethnic Swedes were subject to a more modern form of compulsory service.
Swedes were not the only ones to spend the next century battling minorities. Given the population differences between Sweden and Russia, the Swedish Crown was forced to rely heavily upon mercenaries to control their empire. German states proved to be the largest source of hired arms, with various states even hiring out their own soldiers. Independent companies were attracted to the east not only for the gold, but for payment in land for Protestant soldiers. This was in hopes of watering down the Orthodox nature of Russian culture. This was nothing but a pipe dream, for tens of thousands of new colonists could never make a dent in the millions of already existing peoples.
Germans were not the only source of new soldiers. The Cossacks were made an autonomous part of the Swedish Army. Charles was very pleased with their service in the Great Northern War, and their loyalty. Cossacks, when not in active service, were granted their own Cossack colonies, largely tax-free. Generals within the Swedish Army were not as enthusiastic as their king. They viewed the Cossacks as unreliable, and justifiably so. Cossacks tend to attack only when they know they can win, and retreat when they can not. They lack the military discipline required in an Eighteenth Century Army. The Cossacks, in turn, resented the attempt to impose said discipline upon them. For the entire century, tension would remain between Swedish Generals and Cossack Chiefs.
Russian nobility was systematically dispossessed. Borås were either killed or exiled to Siberia. In 1713, fifty Borås and their loyal men attempted to organize a rebellion against the Swedes. Their plot was discovered and the Swedish Army descended upon them, massacring the plotters. Others simply fled, most into Poland-Lithuania, though some entered Prussian, Austrian and even Ottoman service. Officers of the Swedish Army that conquered Russia were granted the Boras’s former estates. With the Russian nobles removed, there was little threat from a largely unmotivated and unarmed peasantry.
The Patriarch of the Orthodox Church was deposed by Charles and replaced by somebody he considered more reliable. The priesthood was purged of those with clear loyalties to the Romanovs and replaced with those who were more sympathetic to their new overlords. Charles left the Russians to their own religion, under the advice of his court. It was feared that converting them too soon after conquest might only spark off a fire that would take years and cost thousands of soldiers’ lives to extinguish.
Cost of holding Russia down with such a large army daunted the new Tsar. As he would soon discover, Russia could pay for itself. Unlike the more developed nations of Europe, Russia had a vast amount of untapped wealth. Before gold, gems and oil, there was fur. Furs were one of the driving forces in the colonization of North America, and the biggest factor in the lands that would one day be known as Canada. Instead of sailing across the ocean, which was admittedly faster, Swedish fur companies navigated first the lands of northern Russia, then those east of the mighty Urals. Trade in furs did not completely fund the occupation and colonization efforts, but went a long ways in terms of revenue generation.
The largest problem with holding on to the Russian Empire was not its population nor the cost, but its size and infrastructure. Or rather lack there of. Communications across the Russian Empire was slow and not always reliable. Such poor communications forced Sweden to decentralize, to grant broader mandates for distant governors, especially those east of the Urals. Months could pass for messages to reach governors and reports to return to Stockholm. The Swedes made great use of Russia’s rivers, and the Arctic Coast, but winter effectively shut down communication. These areas would remain isolated until the advent of the Age of Steam, one hundred and fifty years in the future.
Peace of Utrecht
By 1713, Europe’s Great Powers have had enough of war. Deficits had risen, and Spain even went bankrupt in the course of a war to determine its King. The only nation not to end up broke were the United Provinces. Austria and the newly formed United Kingdom took out loans from large banks in Amsterdam. Though war has often been described as ‘bad for business’, the world’s largest banks often profit greatly from them. Without loans, waging modern war would be next to impossible.
In the end, the nations of Europe recognized Phillip V as King of Spain. The Bourbons took control of the Spanish throne, but not all of its territory. Milan and Naples were ceded to Austria. Furthermore, Gibraltar and Minorica ended up in British hands. The Bourbons were also forced to give up land in exchange for the new throne. The United Provinces regained Mons, along with trade concessions in France’s colonies. France also ceased its support for the Stuart pretenders to the British throne.
With the Peace of Utrecht, the wars to prevent French domination of Europe during the Seventeenth Century finally came to an end. With Bourbons on both thrones, Spain and France remained allied for the remainder of the century, however with the loss of so much land, Spain lost much of its power and was reduced to a second-rate nation. It was so broke, that during negotiations, the King of Prussia offered to purchase one of Spain’s American colonies. Strapped for cash, Phillip V agreed to sell Prussia the Viceroyalty of Rio del la Plata, despite its wealth. The war that saw Spain’s final downward spiral, also saw the rise of the German states.
King William IV
In the trailing days of the war, King Johann I road into the southern Provinces to inspect defensive positions built throughout Liege, Artois and Luxembourg. Tragically, the King never reached his first destination. When crossing the Hollands Diep one stormy afternoon, rough waters capsized the ferry upon which he road. The King, along with most passengers, drowned attempting to escape the sinking ship. It was one of many historical ironies that the King of a world-spanning maritime empire died while trying to cross a river.
His death came over a year after the birth of his first child, Anna Charlotte, and just weeks before the birth of his heir, Karel Hendrick. His mother served as regent until Karel reached fifteen years of age, when the Staaten-General would allow him to ascend the throne, though he was King in title since his birth. It was not uncommon for Dutch heirs to be born after their predecessor met untimely fates.
He was crowned William IV, King of the United Provinces of the Netherlands in 1726, by the Bishop of Liege, like all but one of the monarchs, Maurice II. He considered taking the regal name of Karl I. It would have set well with the new Provinces of Norway and Denmark. However, he opted William, in honor of his grandfather. In 1734, he married Anne of Great Britain, daughter of George II, thus extending the Anglo-Dutch alliance, much to the displeasure of Dutch businessmen and politicians.
They attempted to block it, and even succeeded in denying Anne any sort of title. She was unofficially known as the Princess-Consort. However, William made the case that if a man could not decide who he would marry, then were the Provinces really free. Under normal circumstances this is true, however by a Dutch King marrying into the new royal house of Britain, the British could very well drag the Dutch into another one of its wars with France. For the early years of William IV, the Netherlands enjoyed peace, but knew it would not be permanent.
Profit Margins
The Dutch varied in their sectarian beliefs greatly, but there was one issue they could all agree upon; profit. Of all the commercial enterprises of its day, not even Britains’s own India Company proved to be as ruthless in its pursuit of the all-mighty guilder. The tactics that the VOC used to keep on the top of their business varied during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Their size permitted them to simply undercut their smaller competition, buy paying more for spices in the East and selling it for less. This means of competing with what we would now call “the little guy” tend to cut into profits. Instead of lowering their prices, the VOC preferred to simply sink independent and small traders. The VOC’s private navy was also used to clean out pirates, which indirectly benefitted the small business ventures, as well as do battle with rival national monopolies, most notably the English (and later British) East India Company.
The VOC was a quasi-nation in its own rights. The monopoly granted by the Staaten-General allowed the VOC to sign its own treaties. The VOC signed exclusive trading treaties with states such as Kandy and Sultanates across the East Indies. In other cases, such as western Ceylon and Java, the VOC simply marched in and conquered their sources of spices and trading partners. Many of the independent states soon found themselves dependent upon the VOC. With the Company lending credit and minting coin, all of which the VOC forced its trading partners to accept. Back home, the VOC bankrolled many members of the Second Chamber of the Staaten-General, and flat out bribed those in the First Chamber. With this, and national interest, the VOC insured its exclusive trade monopoly was renewed time and again.
Their biggest threat came from other national monopolies. To battle these, the VOC and its navy took control over entire trading lanes. In the Indian Ocean, the Dutch discovered that sailing eastward across the Indian Ocean from around Forty Degrees allowed them to bypass the mercies of the seasonal monsoon patterns; flowing southwest during one part of the year and northeast during another. By taking control of the best route and currents directly across the Indian Ocean, along with the Cape of Good Hope, the VOC was able to trade year round. Those who either did not know about the currents, or were banned from them, had to wait months in India until the monsoon winds shifted and allowed for a return trip to India.
Austrian Succession
By 1740, succession crisis struck Europe again, this time in the Central Europe. Upon the death of the last Archduke of Austria, his daughter, Maria Theresa attempted to succeed him as Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Archduchess of Austria and Duchess of Parma. Her plan was to succeed to the hereditary Habsburg domains, while her husband, Duke Francis I of Lorraine, would be elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The issue of succession was greatly complicated by Salic law, which prohibited any female descendant from inheriting the throne.
The matter came to a head when Prussia’s King Frederick II launched an invasion of Silesia, using a variety of minor unsettled dynastic claims as a pretext. More over, being a woman, Maria Theresa was viewed as a weak ruler, and one better replaced by a strong male heir, such as Charles Albert of Bavaria. The war between Austria and Prussia started merely over the possession of Silesia. However, with France as an ally of Prussia, and the United Kingdom supporting Austria, other powers were soon drawn into a war that had little to do with succession.
Due to William IV’s marriage to Princess Anne, the United Provinces were honor bound to enter the war on the side of both British and Austrians. The Staaten-General drug its feet in declaring war, but not it declaring defense. It allowed William IV to call up militia and send the standing army into the southern Provinces, the inevitable invasion route of the French. He was also allowed to deploy the Royal Dutch Navy. As soon as the Navy went to sea, the navies of the companies, most notably the VOC, followed. Declared war or not, they would defend company assets from any aggressor.
Once France joined Bavaria against Austria, the United Kingdom declared war upon France. Again, the Staaten-General did not get half way through its deliberation when word of a French declaration of war reached the Hague. Unlike previous wars, France did not immediately invade the southern Provinces. Instead, it linked up with its Bavarians allies and attacked Austria. This gave the United Provinces an opportunity to move first. The attack would not come across the border, but rather on the island-kingdom of a trading partner in the middle of the Mediterranean.
The Sardinian Expedition
In mid-1741, a Dutch expeditionary force of some twelve thousand soldiers, the largest European overseas landing until the British land in Connecticut in 1776, landed on the shores of Sardinia. Under the command of Hendrick van Soot, the army’s objective was to secure the United Provinces’ position in Mediterranean trade, and secondary to aid a long standing trading partner. Like the United Provinces, the Kingdom of Sardinia was once ruled by Spain. When the Netherlands launched their revolution, Sardinians did the same. Unlike the Dutch, Sardinia did not succeed, at least not the first time. It was not until the end of the Thirty Years War that Sardinia gained its independence.
When Buddhist monks hitched a ride across the ocean in the VOC’s ships, many of them took a liking to the island nation. Monasteries dot the hills of Sardinia, mixing with Benedictine and other such Catholic abbeys. While on the island, both religions shared ideas and learned from each other. Many European monks were fascinated by the East, while many Ceylonese monks were equally fascinated by the West. The two brands of Monasteries even managed to find some equal grounding in their faiths, mainly; peace, compassion and love— though the Buddhists would never be as evangelistic as their Catholic colleagues.
However, the Catholic kings of France did not look too kindly on the Sardinian Buddhists. A few of the locals, a lesser percentage than of the Dutch, converted to the alien faith, brought in by the allure of equality. Kings of Spain and France were loath to tolerate apostates, and where Spain was inept, France was capable. By the End of the Austrian Succession, the only Buddhists in the Mediterranean would be under Turkish rule, where the Turks simply taxed different religions instead of trying to stamp them out.
Though a few of the soldiers in Soot’s expedition where no doubt Buddhists, they were still Dutch, and still very nationalistic. They were here not to aid their spiritual brethren, but in defense of their homelands’s interests. In the United Provinces, commerce is the homeland. Sardinia was the leading exporter of olive oil to the Netherlands, and a top supplier of wine. France had a vaster supply of wine, but continuous designs on the Rhine River made trade with the French difficult.
French soldiers, along with seven thousand Sicilian allies, made their own landing further north, at modern-day Oristano. Dutch forces marched north from Arborea to force a battle with the Franco-Sicilian invasion. The fact the French landed at all was planned in advance. Soot believed that defeating the army on land and forcing it to surrender would strip France of prestige. He did correctly predict the invading army would be trapped; no French admiral would dare meet the Dutch navy in open combat.
However, the rest of his strategy was flawed from day one. Soot failed to trap the French, and each time he attempted to engage them, the French would slip away. He continued to pursue French and Sicilians, not realizing he was being lead into a trap. While the Dutch Navy dominated the world’s oceans, the Dutch Army was no better or worse than the European average. The further away from the Dutch navy he could be led, the easier Soot would be to defeat.
In October of 1741, the Franco-Sicilian Army engaged the Dutch on the banks of the Tirso River. What resulted was an unmitigated disaster, and taught in the modern Commonwealth Military Academies as what not to do. Soot lead his own army into a valley ambush, with the French on one slope, the Sicilians on the other. Worse yet, the Dutch were cut off from retreat less than an hour after the battle began. In the end, Soot was forced to surrender, to rather generous terms. The Dutch would be disarmed, and allowed to leave the island. The entire episode remains required studying at the various Dutch military academies, as a textbook example of what not to do.
After Soot left the army, it was the United Provinces who lost face. Such an easy defeat only emboldened the French, and led them to invade the southern Provinces with even higher morale. The disaster on Sardinia also allowed the French to sever trade between the two nations. Furthermore, the French removed Sardinia’s King and installed his cousin, a man more friendlier to the Christian cause. Giovanni I remained King until his own untimely death in 1744, which lead to civil war on the island. During the ‘French reign’ and following into the civil war, French forces on the island persecuted the local Buddhists, often giving them the choice to convert or die. Most of the island’s Buddhist population fled Sardinia to the New World, settling on land between Baltimore and Philadelphia.
The Southern Provinces
The Dutch people waited for an invasion, waiting until 1746, when the French launched their invasion. Instead of trying to take back Mons, the French moved along a different route, invading Liege. So set in belief that the French would try again for the cities in the west, the Staaten-General, as well as the King, were taken by surprise at this new tactic. It would seem that even the French could learn from their previous mistakes. The French defeated a combined army of the United Provinces and Lorraine at Raucourt, near the city of Liege. The loss of Liege shook the Staaten-General. For the first time in over a century, the Dutch failed to turn back an invasion. Old Provincial tendencies began to resurface, with each of the members of the First Chamber wondering if their Province would be next.
The French handed the Dutch its biggest political crisis since the Revolution and until Napoleon. Strong Kings and common causes served well in the past to hold the nation together. While the nobles squabbled, the French struck again, this time north towards Maastricht. A victory here would allow the French to invade the northern Provinces. None of the northern Provinces had faced foreign invaders since the Spanish, over one hundred fifty years before.
Though he was not as good a general as previous kings, William IV rallied militia from Holland, Zeeland, Brabant and Gelderland, along with twenty thousand regular soldiers and marched towards the Maas River. William faced the French Marshall on the banks of the Maas, early morning on September 27, 1747. William decided to make a forced march through the night, in hopes of catching the French while they were just starting to stir. He was often criticized for attacking a sleeping enemy, to which he could only reply that chivalry was not a luxury the United Provinces had in 1747.
In truth, the French were not asleep. They were just sitting down to breakfast when lines of orange uniformed soldiers bared down upon them. William, though not a great general, had able commanders beneath him. They convinced him to make a sweeping attack, one to trap the French with their backs to the Maas. After a full day of battle, no conclusion was drawn, and by nightfall, the French commander decided to attempt to withdraw during the night. His attempt to cross the Maas nearly ended in disaster. The Marshall and many of his key officers managed to escape, but twenty thousand French soldiers were trapped between the Dutch and the Maas, and were forced to surrender. The United Provinces were saved more by luck than leadership.
Despite this partial defeat, the French were not forced from Dutch territory. When negotiations began in 1748, the French refused to settle for anything less than Mons. French delegates knew there was no way the United Provinces would surrender Liege, and entire Province, so decided to settle for Mons. With that city fortified and manned by the French Army, should war come again, the French would be poised to strike. The Staaten-General had little choice but to surrender the city, not knowing if they could muster a second Miracle on the Maas should the French decide to renew the attack.
New Antwerp
Cities along the Rhein and other Netherlander Rivers were no stranger to flooding. For many Antwerpers, 1753 was one flood too many. The flood hit not only during a war, but following an economic slump in the port town. Before the Spanish Fury, Antwerp was home to an estimated hundred thousand peoples. By 1740, the population was only half of its former glory. More hopeful destinations were plentiful, and many of the Antwerpers relocated to more prosperous cities within the Provinces, as well as swarmed to New Amsterdam and Brazil. During the Eighteenth Century, Brazil remained a prime target for emigration. Over the past century, Brazil accepted refugees from every corner of Europe. Huguenots from France, dispossessed nobility from fallen Russia, Catholics from Britain and even serfs escaping the Portuguese provinces of Spain. It was only logical that a Dutch colony should accept Netherlands seeking a new start.
However, the East India Company offered many of Antwerp’s inhabitants an alternative for relocation. For over a century, the VOC ruled the island of Formosa and profited vastly from trade with both China and the isolationist island nation of Japan. In that time, natives and imported laborers from China sufficed to work the VOC’s tea plantations, silk production along with rice farms and sugar fields. However, the workers came from the mostly peasant lot and offered little in the way of skilled labor.
Thousands of Antwerpers were offered the chance to start over, to become the thriving middle class on Formosa. The VOC wished to create a market a little closer to the source. Carpenters, artisans, merchants and shipwrights were all granted land in the VOC’s new colony, in exchange for work. The VOC offered generous loans to all who wish to travel, all of which were paid off before the end of the colonist’s third year. The VOC did not want to exploit the displaced Antwerpers, but rather use them for the betterment of the company. The VOC was a company that aimed for the long-term, a view which would aid it greatly in recovery in the next century.
In 1755, the first colonists arrived at a small bay southwest of Taipei. They did not find paradise, but nor did they find mosquito-infested swamps, similar to the ones dotting the Brazilian landscape. Instead they found a relatively flat land, already stripped of its former forests. Little in the way of game lived in the area, and for the first year, colonists were forced to rely upon the Company for its food sources.
At first, the colonists did little more than the workers already on the island, that is grow crops. Obtaining jobs from the Company was difficult; manager and foreman positions were already filled with able natives and Chinese. To the colonists’ surprise, most of the employees already spoke Dutch, passable if not fluently. To some of the colonists, it was starting to look like they were duped by the VOC.
However, after only two years, the Dutch did what they did best, reclaim. The land stripped of forests soon blossomed with mulberry and tea. Looms powered by water wheels soon churned out excessive quantities of silk bolts. The colonists even learned to like rice, the only food crop grown extensively. As with everywhere else they colonized, the Dutch introduced the tulip to Formosa. The locals, who were already settled into their own homes, soon found room for turban-shaped flower.
By 1775, when Antwerp’s population fell to forty thousand, New Antwerp began to surpass its namesake. Where Dutch headed west to get rich off sugar, they headed east to get rich off tea. The Dutch themselves were not big tea drinkers, cafes in the United Provinces served far more coffee. However, their old enemy and ally, the United Kingdom, simply could not get enough of the drink.
Along with becoming the tea-producing center of Formosa, New Antwerp also became its shipyard. At first, the immigrants wished to build the same types of ships they always built, sloops and the like, that is until shipwrights fully inspected VOC ships. The ships that transported the colonists were mostly of European design, sailed by Dutch crews. They were ships that seldom made cargo runs across the Indian Ocean, preferring to transport lighter loads instead. The VOC freighters dwarfed most of what sailed in European waters.
The freighters borrowed heavily from Chinese ship designs. The biggest difference between the two designs lay in compartmentalized hulls, an innovation dating back the Han Dynasty. At first, the shipwrights considered the bulkhead cumbersome, and a waste of space. That is, until they saw one in action. Off the coast of New Antwerp, many shipwrights and dockhands watched as a lumbering VOC freighter ran aground on a small coral reef. Seeing the large gouge in the hull, the colonists assumed the ship would sink in short order and prepared to send out rescue parties. The seasoned shipwrights were astonished to see the ship not only survive the impact, but sail into harbor without even listing. When they inspected the ship, they discovered the same bulkheads they complained about saved the ship. A few sailors downed in the flooded compartment, but the ship and its cargo largely survived.
New Antwerp served as a beacon for many in the southern Provinces hoping to escape any future French invasions. Brewers from Hainaut introduced hops to the island, and farmers from Flanders brought cattle and cheese. What was commonplace to the Dutch was absolutely exotic to the nations of East Asia. Traders from China and Korea traded in New Antwerp, and the VOC saw to it these commodities were exported to nations around Formosa.
The Enlightenment
It is often said that the Enlightenment arrive a century too late for the Dutch. Ideas of science and liberty spread throughout the British Isles and the newly formed Swedish Empire in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, over a century after they were accepted in the Provinces. However, while New Antwerp blossomed, the United Provinces saw a refinement of their own ideas of liberty.
To a Netherlander around 1750, liberty simply meant they could travel unmolested, worship as they please and even elect their own delegate (crocked or not) to speak for them in the Staaten-General. By 1750, that was no longer enough to satisfy the masses. Netherlanders soon wanted the right to petition the King and the Staaten-General directly. Though they had the right to protest, local constabulary forces often curtailed the masses, fearing a riot could break out. Netherlanders did not want the right to riot, just to assemble peacefully.
Liberty was not just a generalized subject. Printers and publishers wanted to print without having the Staaten-General looking over the shoulder. More than one newspaper in the Provinces was shut down when it made known its blunt opinion of policies made by the Hague. At the time, publishers in both Amsterdam and New Amsterdam spoke of the right to print whatever they wished, short of bald-faced lies.
Liberty was not just spoken of by the well-to-do. The wars with France during the Eighteenth Century put a drain on Dutch society, created a dip in the middle class. It was not so much a class of poor, but rather what would today be optimistically called ‘lower-middle class’. The commonfolk as it were. Whereas businessmen and merchants had the means, the less fortunate of the Netherlands’ larger cities wanted a piece of the action. In the cities, it was the Companies that dominated politics, and often crowded out the poorer man.
The masses of Amsterdam, Utrecht and Brussels wanted to have their own say. They wanted that every man, no matter his income, should have an equal say in the future of the community. Equality was the song of the typical United Province pub. They reasoned ‘are we not the same, created by the same creator?’ Why should income decide one’s place in Eighteenth Century United Provinces. It was a difficult transition in a mercantile society, where the golden rule is; he who has the gold makes the rules.
Equality in vote and rights would not be fully achieve until Post-Napoleonic Europe, nor would the rights of printers or the right to assemble peacefully. The Post-Napoleonic Constitution would borrow much from the American Bill of Rights. For the time being, libertarian ideals would have to wait. What would not wait was advancement in the sciences.
By 1750, concepts of gravity and motion were already widely understood in academia. Universities popped up across the United Provinces like mushrooms after a storm. By the same year, the United Provinces sported the highest literacy rate in all of Europe. With the concepts of caste long since abolished, even the simplest of farmers desired to elevate himself in society. In a society where competition is the norm, a man required every advantage he could muster. The inability to read prevented that same man from gaining more profit that he otherwise would have. Without the potential to advance, it is doubtful that the United Provinces would ever have become the power they are.
Astronomy was a boon to the United Provinces, the top exporter of quality optics in Europe, from the invention of the telescope until today. Little did early astronomers, such as Galileo and Huygens that the simple invention they used to observe Jupiter and Saturn would one day orbit Earth and see galaxies at the edge of space and time. An entire industry of precision instruments took up three percent of the work force in Groningen.
Inventions from around the world, primarily China, found their way into the markets and universities of the United Provinces. Compartmentalized hulls was already explained, and gunpowder and the magnetic compass are already known, however less known Chinese inventions, such as the blast furnace, cast iron and advancements in agriculture were all adapted by the Dutch. The United Provinces used each of these inventions to give it an edge over its own competitors, one of which refused to leave the Dutch alone.
King William V
In 1751, William IV died when his oldest son and heir was but thirteen. Unlike previous young monarchs, Willem Batavius van Oranje was old enough to make decisions and understand what happened around him. However, Dutch tradition stipulates a King must be at least fifteen years of age. His mother, Anne of Great Britain served as official regent for the first two years of his reign. Unofficially, William was already calling the shots, and the regent mostly passed along his command.
Instead of taking a British wife, William V took Wilhelmina of Prussia as hid bride, the sister of Wilhelm II of Prussia. The marriage represented a reversal of alliances, where technically Prussia was now an ally of the United Provinces, where it was an enemy during the War of Austrian Succession. The Staaten-General blocked any attempt at a formal alliance between the two states. After being dragged into two wars by their ‘ally’ Britain, the Dutch decided they were better off alone and neutral. Neutrality was far better for business.
Unfortunately, the marriage did not occur until 1767. By the time William V reached his eighteenth birthday in 1756, Europe was at war again. At the time, they were still allied with the British, and once the United Kingdom declared war on France, the French King automatically declared war upon the Dutch. It was this blind automation that prompted William’s decision to forego a British wife. The French had their eyes upon the Provinces, British consort or not.
Seven Years War
The war between the British and French actually started in 1754, in North America. Both British and French colonist fought extensively for control over the Great Lakes region. The Dutch hoped the war would be contained, but by 1755, the Staaten-General knew war would be around the corner. After the previous defeat, the Dutch plotted revenge. In a way, the campaigns of the Seven Years War were an Eighteenth Century replay of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Both came after humiliating defeats, with Dutch soldiers and sailors eager to redeem national honor.
When war was declared, the Dutch Army and Navy was in position. Though they could not act until the Staaten-General, or the French as it were, declared war, they could move into position by edict of the King. As soon as the declaration reached the Dutch fleet, Admiral Cornelius van der Moor acted. William V personally told Moor that he should enact the plan as soon as word reached him.
What was the plan? It certainly was not a head-on charge at Mons as the French predicted. Instead, Moor landed twenty thousand soldiers at the mouth of the Seine River. Not a terribly gigantic army, but a great deal larger than overseas expeditions of its day. When word reached Versailles, the French King made the same mistake as James II, he believed it was an invasion headed directly at Paris. Orders went out recalling the French Army at Mons, along with forces along Rhein frontier.
Was it an invasion? No, Moor landed his force as a feint, an attempt to draw off the French from the Dutch border, and it worked. Moor’s ‘invasion’ force maneuvered along the French coast for two days before embarking. By the time the French realized it was a rouse, William V not only sent the army to retake Mons, but pressed further to lay siege to Calais. Only a short time after declaring war, the French quickly found themselves on the defensive.
France could sparsely rely on its own allies to help defend France. The Seven Years War saw the rise of Prussia, and its own defeat against Austria, and a half-hearted struggle by Sweden. Neither nation, though large enough to stomp out Prussia could contend against the greatest military mind of the day, Frederick the Great, future brother-in-law of William V. Sweden dropped out of the war by 1758, having its own problems consolidating control over its lands in the east, allowing the Prussians to once again invade Silesia. Austria called to France for aid, and France was forced to give up any plans against the United Provinces for the time being.
French Amazonia
When war was imminent, the Staaten-General and William V decided that this would be the final war. Like other European powers, France drew much of its wealth from overseas colonies and trade in sugar and spice. Fur from Quebec and sugar from French Amazonia filled the coffers in Versailles, and funded consecutive invasions. Dutch colonists joined with British colonists and regulars in the invasion of Quebec, which was largely a British affair.
The Dutch focused on the lands north of Brazil. For a century and a half, the Dutch occupied the Brazilian coast and largely ignored the Amazon Basin. There was nothing but impenetrable jungle, disease and headhunters along its banks. No markets, and no profits. However, the French laid claim to the Amazon River and all the land it touched. This brought them into conflict with Dutch colonists, who only extended at most two hundred kilometers from the coast.
The French did nothing with the Amazon, instead focusing their colonization effort on the area around Cayenne. The city of Cayenne produced the majority of France’s sugar, more so than the Carribean islands under their rule. The Dutch have never been particularly interested in a few small islands, but Cayenne and its wealth drew the attention of entrepreneurs. In Eighteenth Century Dutch society, there was no such thing as too much wealth.
Brazilians had their eyes upon Cayenne since well before the Seven Years War. During the War of Spanish Succession, little French activity occurred within Dutch reach. By the Austrian War, the United Provinces were in too desperate a straight to send an expedition. By 1756, all that had changed. The Staaten-General sent thousands of soldiers to reinforce the Brazilian militia. Early in 1758, enough men and ships were massed in both Recife and Natal that action was possible.
The Brazilian governor-general appointed the Duke of Pernambuco as General of the Amazonian Expedition. Pernambuco left Recife at the end of January and sailed up past the Amazon delta with more than seven thousand soldiers. The amount seemed ridiculously small in comparison with grand battles of Europe, but more than sufficed for the action at hand. In truth, the French had only enough soldiers to keep the restless natives at bay, and foolish as it seemed, the Governor of French Amazonia never anticipated an attack by the Dutch. Why would Brazil attack Cayenne? Do they not already have enough land?
To the Brazilians, and the Staaten-General, Cayenne was not about land, but about beating the French down so badly that they could never threaten the United Provinces again. A pipe dream perhaps, for France had several times the population of the Netherlands, though far more dispersed than their Dutch counterparts, whom even then lived on top of each other. For all the land that was in Brazil, Netherlander middle-class were not quite wealthy enough to acquire it.
By April of 1758, Cayenne was under the control of Pernambuco. After firing a few shots for French honor, the Governor surrendered to the vastly superior invasion force. Controlling Cayenne was parallel to Controlling New Orleans or Quebec. Controlling either city left the occupier effectively in control of Louisiana and New France respectively. Only a scattering of towns and large plantations accounted for the rest of South America’s French population. By surrendering Cayenne, the French Governor in essence ended French colonial activities in South America.
Treaty of Petrograd
By 1763, France was beaten to a standstill. All of its mainland colonies in the New World were under foreign occupation, and the Dutch still held on to Calais. Austria was forced to sue for peace against its German cousins to the north, which meant France was on its own. The French King desired to hold on to some colonies, and knew if he continued the war he would lose them all.
Sweden, who played a brief and minor role in the war, hosted the peace negotiations in the city named after the last of the Russians Tsars. For dropping out of the war early, Sweden only had to part with some of it Pomeranian holdings, which was fine, because the Swedes were not interested in them anyway. Why fret over some Baltic coast when they had vast steppes still in need of colonization.
The United Provinces pressed for harsh terms against France, including limiting the size of its army and navy. It was willing to trade some concession (not Amazonia though) including Mons for future security. However, the United Kingdom was more interested in building a better future for itself than for Europe. George II’s envoys dominated the talks. Though France lost many of its colonies, it was better than what the Dutch were preparing to offer.
In conclusion, the Dutch were awarded French Amazonia and the city of Mons. The British partitioned Louisiana between itself and long time ally of the French, Spain. To this, the Dutch were opposed. In principle they were opposed to anything that elevated Spain. The British were not content with the vast emptiness of the American plains. They annexed all of New France, booting the French from American shores for the time being.
France was allowed to keep its large army, one that it could no longer afford, certainly a hollow victory at the negotiating tables. The Staaten-General was pleased that France would not be able to invade Dutch soil for quite some time, however that did not equate trust. As soon as Mons was formally in Dutch hands, Dutch soldiers fortified it, along with the southern Border. If– when war came again, they wanted to be prepared. Though the government worried, the people rejoiced. As far as they were concerned, the hated enemy was vanquished, and the people could get back to the business at hand. With new acquisitions and one enemy out of the way, business was looking good.
Spanish Succession
In 1700, only three years since the end of the Nine Years War, Charles II of Spain died, bequeathing all his possessions to Phillip, Duke of Anjou, and grandson of Louis XIV. The only other option than Phillip V, was the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, the Austrian Habsburg cousin of Charles II. As early as 1668, Leopold agreed to a potential partition of Spanish territory between the Habsburgs and Bourbons. However, Phillip was not a party of the agreement, and disregarded treaties of partition.
Louis’s advisors made the case of accepting the Partition Treaty of 1700, as opposed to risking war by claiming the whole of the Spanish Empire. Arguments within the French court brought forth the idea that war with Austria was inevitable. They would have to fight for their slice of Spanish territory. Upon this revelation, the advisors stood down, leaving the decision effectively in the hands of Louis XIV. On November 24, 1700, Louis declared the Duke of Anjou the new King of Spain, and contrary to partition treaties, Phillip claimed all the inheritance.
The prediction of war came to fruition. Charles II was a Habsburg, and thus his dominion belonged to the family. Austria could not tolerate a Bourbon on the Spanish throne. Early in 1701, Austria, and the Holy Roman Empire, declared war upon the Bourbons. With the Grand Alliance still in effect, Louis cut off both England and the United Provinces from Spanish trade. The Oranges might not care which other family sat upon Spain’s throne, but they do care when their own Kingdom’s trade it threatened.
Could the United Provinces have stayed out of the War of Spanish Succession? Perhaps. By 1701, the English were prepared to recognize Phillip V. That alone might have prevented war, however, the Dutch still had an alliance with the Holy Roman Empire. National honor would be infringed by backing out. It was an early lesson, and warning against entanglement with future alliances. With Europe’s less enlightened nations constantly at war, the Dutch will simply decide that alliances are bad for business.
King Johann I
Born August 4, 1678, Johann Willem van Oranje, was the only child of William III of the United Provinces and Denmark-Norway, and Mary II of England and Scotland. He was born in a position that could potentially inherit all four thrones. By the age of twenty-four he did inherit the thrones of the United Provinces and Denmark-Norway. However, the English-Scottish throne was already promised to Mary’s sister, Anne. That was fine for the Netherlander; Britannia was more trouble than it was worth.
Upon the death of William III, Johann I inherited more than realms. War already exploded across Europe, with the Netherlands placed directly between two large adversaries; one an ally another an enemy. It was not the first time the Provinces were in this position, nor would it be the last. The United Provinces were situated on a location ideal for trade and horrible for land-based defenses. During the War of Spanish Succession, the Dutch would enhance and expand fortifications in the southern Provinces. It was an undertaking started by William III, and would end with William IV.
Almost immediately upon taking the throne, Johann had to contend with Louis XIV declaring war on the Provinces. The Dutch Navy was already active in the English Channel after Louis cut off trade, but the real combat did not begin until 1704. From their hold in Mons, the French launched another invasion of the southern Provinces. It was a two prong attack; one heading east into the Empire via Luxembourg, the second an assault against Antwerp, on a virtually identical course as during the last war.
William III predicted the French would attack Antwerp again. Near the mouth of the Rhine, Antwerp was sort of an obsession for Louis XIV and his descendants. Though the city recovered from the Dutch Revolution, it fell under attack by the French repeatedly during the Eighteenth Century. It is believed the Louis hoped to use Antwerp as an anchor of sorts, to press the French frontier on to the Rhine. If this happened, ten of the United Provinces would fall under French rule.
Invasion of the South
France’s first move in the war was a repeat of years earlier. Instead of sending smaller parties to pillage and plunder, the French King sent an army to plough down the Schelde River towards the Rhein. With richer targets available than the perennially harassed port, it would have made far more logical sense, at least in terms of plunder, to hit Namur or even Brussels. As with wars before, the French hoped to divide and conquer. Louis believed he could split the United Provinces in half if he just held Antwerp.
There was little basis for this hope, for there was no chance of the largely Catholic south suddenly being struck by a revivalist fervor and joining their co-religionists against their fellow countrymen. One would have thought the Sun King would have learned this in the 1690s. Not only that, but the French made the same mistakes as Spain, a century before. Their living off the land deprived the locals of much of their food supplies. Where the French could not live off the land, the burned in an attempt to prevent Johann from supplying his own armies locally. The County of Flanders along with Artois, suffered greatly from French sieges and general mischief.
The case of Ypres, in 1703, proved to be one of the more extreme accounts of French excesses. During the siege of the city, French soldiers systematically stripped surrounding farmlands of all its produce, leaving the natives without. Dutch farmers did not simply lie down as their livelihoods vanished to the French locusts. Though they had no hope in defeating the army, the made valiant efforts to annoy the enemy. Any French officer who stood out from the crowd was a potential target for those farmers with muskets. French reprisals stemmed the effort to an extent, but once all the farmers began to realize they could be executed for the actions of others, all began to resist. Their resistance was hopeless, and once the city fell, the French took a vengeance upon the people that is still a source of bitterness for the people of Ypres.
Blenheim
The reason for an English Duke to lead an army to Luxembourg’s safety came from a burning desire to keep the Austrians in the war. They were, after all, one of the two parties that started the twelve year long conflict. The Staaten-General wished for the Duke to stay in the Netherlands, perhaps in an attempt to regain Mons. Ignoring the wishes of the Dutch, Marlborough lead the army, as well as its Dutch contingents, into southern Germany. Though King Johann was the direct result of the Anglo-Dutch Alliance, he was starting to wonder just why he put up with his mother’s people. Satisfying national honor might not be worth the price of such disrespect.
The goal of Duke’s march was to prevent the Franco-Bavarian armies from marching on Vienna. In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, it was common practice to end a war by taking the opposing side’s capital. This often lead to the side that lost suing for terms. To prevent Austria, and thus the Holy Roman Empire, from capitulating, Marlborough would link up with another army lead by Eugene and block the French.
The Anglo-Dutch-German forces met the French and Bavarians under the command of Tallard at Blenheim. The Battle of Blenheim is said to be the turning point of the War of Spanish Succession. Marlborough won a resounding victory, turning Tallard back and effectively knocking Bavaria out of the war. By 1707, France was one ally short.
However, the French potentially had another ally waiting to board. In the far north, Sweden was at odds with Denmark-Norway and Russia in a grand war waging for control of the Baltic. The Swedish King, Charles XII, had to chose between Denmark-Norway and Russia. Sweden was not the behemoth it is today, and thus could only afford to fight one enemy at a time. In 1705, the pressed the issue with the Danish. With Johann I still King of Denmark-Norway, he would be forced to divide his armies between two enemies. Overall, the Swedes had no quarrel with the Dutch, especially since the Royal Dutch Navy could close the Baltic Sea with ease.
Act of Union
Johann I was willing to come to the aid of his other kingdom in the event of war with Sweden, however, the Staaten-General put a price on the help. The Dutch, a largely middle-class mercantile people, spent the last fifty years supporting the relatively poorer Danes. Nobility in Denmark-Norway racked up large debts by taking out loans from Dutch banks. In total, Amsterdam and the Hague effectively owned Kopenhägen and Bergen.
When war with Sweden loomed on the horizon, Danish nobility pleaded to their King, Johann, to come to their aide. Since William III took the Danish throne, many Dutch have called for unification between the two nations. In 1705, pro-unification factions seized their opportunity. They would allow soldiers and sailors of the United Provinces to protect Denmark-Norway only if the Danes accept full political union, thus Danish and Norwegian defense would become Dutch defense.
The idea was resisted in noble circles in the Nordic states. Denmark had a long, proud history, dating back to the Vikings. At one point, Danes ruled the North Sea, and Norwegians expanded as far as the New World. They were not the only Vikings; the Swedes extended to the east, called the Rus by the natives, they effectively invented Russia. Denmark-Norway spent the years dating back to the Second Anglo-Dutch War in a downward spiral. If not for the Dutch, perhaps Sweden would have absorbed part of, or even all of, the Danish Kingdom.
Negotiations for unification spanned most of 1705. When the deal looked to be faltering, the Staaten-General added a clause that no indebted noble could refuse. If they two kingdoms became one, then not only would defense be united, but so would debt. Large amount of debt would be forgiven once the Treaty of Unification was signed and ratified. Some historians have accused the Staaten-General of buying out Denmark-Norway. Perhaps they are correct, if one discounts the fact that nobles and landed elite of Denmark-Norway retained both titles and land upon unification, for on August 15, 1705, the Danish nobility gave in to Dutch demands. The Staaten-General quickly ratified the treaty.
September 3, 1705, went down in Dutch history, ranking as high as 1609, and 1887, in the annuals of the United Provinces. Signing the treaty was the first step. Over the next three years, reforms swept through Denmark and Norway. Danish nobles, some but not all, were forced to take up part-time residence in the Hague in order to take their rightful place in the First Chamber. Danish and Norwegian representatives took their place, though not as welcomed as the nobility, in the Second Chamber.
The Act of Union was not the unification that England and Scotland would enjoy during 1707. Instead, it was less unification and more annexation. The United Provinces changed little, yet Denmark-Norway was forced to adapt to ways alien to them. The Staaten-General went as far as to appoint governors to former Danish provinces, ‘in order to expedite the transition to a more democratic society’. The transition lasted for a century, until the Age of Napoleon and later the Congress of Vienna.
Danes soon found themselves second-class citizens within their own lands. Dutch companies moved in to take the place of old Danish establishments. Norway itself was treated more along the lines of Brazil or New Amsterdam than an equal Province. In 1738, William IV bestowed the title of Grand Prince of Norway to his first born, and has continued to be the title for the heir-apparent until the present day.
The Act of Union was not the only ground-shaking change to strike the United Provinces in the first decade of the Eighteenth Century. Only a few years after unification, the Dutch people were presented the horrors of their own colonial institutions, and the consequences would topple one of the most powerful companies in Dutch history.
Fall of the Dutch South Atlantic Company
Founded in 1605, the Dutch South Atlantic Company was granted a monopoly on trade in the South Atlantic, and contracted to administer the colonies in Brazil and Angola. Brazil was a jewel in the Dutch Empire’s crown, producing nearly every luxury crop the New World has to offer. Angola remained a backwater for centuries, viewed as little more than impenetrable jungle. At first glance, it had little to offer the Dutch. Timber for certain, yet Brazil had its own share of forests as did New Amsterdam. However, the South Atlantic Company found one resource in Angola, a resource the plantations in Brazil desperately needed; manpower.
For a century, the South Atlantic Company monopolized Brazilian Slave Trade. How a nation like the United Provinces, the freest in Europe at the time, could have more slave ships registered beneath its flag than any other nation is a bit of a paradox. The Dutch people claimed to embrace democracy and love liberty, yet allowed hundreds of thousands of people to be enslaved in its distant colonies. As long as coffee, sugar and tobacco flowed into Dutch ports, the people were content to turn a blind eye to slavery. All except one group.
One of the most sacred principles of the Buddhist monks and followers was to cause no harm. For decades, monks struggled against the institution of bondage, though they managed little more than protests in Amsterdam, the largest home to slavers in the world. To the average Netherlander, the ways of the East were curiosities, though not taken serious by the mainstream. In 1700, less than one percent of the population of the United Provinces were Buddhists, and none of the members of the Staaten-General followed the path of the Buddha.
Change had not happened, even after decades of attempting to expose the Dutch people to the truth of slavery. The various churches of the United Provinces held their own debates on the issue, resolving nothing decisively. In 1708, a group of adhered monks of the Western Buddhist Templar, boarded several ships bound for Angola. They arrived in Luanda at roughly the same time. Donning disguises, the monks managed to land jobs as sailors on three slave ships destined to Natal and Salvador. According to the monks’ own principles, violence is forbidden. However, in the light of what they viewed as the most terrible of man’s crimes, these monks used limited force in order to take over all three ships. The captain and anyone who refused to cooperate, were lowered into boats while the ships were still along the African coast, and it is not known whether any of them survived.
Months after the hijacking, all of Amsterdam was surprised by the arrival of three ships laden with slaves. Though it housed the most slave ships in terms of registration, few of them ever ventured to the United Provinces. The monks brought prominent leaders of the community onto the ship to see the real cost of cheap sugar. Hundreds of slave crammed into the hold, with barely enough room to move. Many were suffering from malnutrition, and many more died, despite the monks’ efforts to keep them alive.
The South Atlantic Company demanded authorities arrest these ‘pirates’, which was precisely what the city watch did. The monks knew the risks of hijacking ships, especially company ships, and accepted the fate handed down by local judges. All were sentenced to prison, and more than half were executed for the crime of piracy. It pleased the South Atlantic Company, but even in death, the monks still managed to complete their mission.
The damage was done, and all of Amsterdam knew about the conditions in slave ships, conditions no human should ever have to endure. Soon after, pamphlets rose up all across the Provinces, preaching the evils of the slave trade and condemning the slavers. The South Atlantic Company was not without options. Seeing how all the pamphlets and books were printed and published by the Buddhist Templars, the Company attempted to turn its fellow Christians against them.
They were heathens, foreigners with their godless religion. Yes, Buddhism is without gods, and the Buddhists are quite proud of their faith. The South Atlantic Company called for to every law-abiding and god-fearing Netherlander to rise up and cast out the non-believers. The Company did all it could to place the Religion card, and rally the population into an anti-Dharmic frenzy. They reasoned that even the Church would aid them in doing God’s work.
The South Atlantic Company made the same mistake that both Louis XIV and Oliver Cromwell made in dealing with the Provinces. Instead of unleashing a storm against all things Buddhists, the Dutch people instead turned on the Company. How dare these businessmen, these same people who profit off the misery of their fellow man violate the most sacred of all Dutch percepts. In going against the Founders’ wishes and the Pacification of Ghent, the South Atlantic Company managed to united all the faiths of the United Provinces against them.
By 1709, the whole Catholic community was behind the Buddhist Templars. Though they do not share the same faith, they share the same language, the same food, and, with the exception of the first monks to arrive, the same blood. The Bishop of Utrecht himself stood up before his congregation and condemned the slave trade, declaring it an affront to God. Though the Vatican agreed, on principle anyway, they made no official stance one way or the other.
Soon churches held rallies, Catholic, Lutheran and even Calvinist, against the evils of trading in human flesh. The people soon began to act with their pocket book along with their voice. Brazilian sugar, coffee and tobacco were boycotted in favor of the VOC or England’s American Colonies. VOC products were preferred, not only because they were Dutch, but also because the British colonies found themselves enthralled by what future Englanders would call a ‘peculiar institution’. It might cost more, but to force a man into servitude– was that not what the Dutch fought against when they rebelled against Spanish rule?
With the public so ardently against the South Atlantic Company, shareholders, and especially speculators, began selling off their holdings. It soon became better (and more profitable) to invest in a venture that did not presume to dictate proper religious attitudes to a people who valued their freedom to worship God, or in the case of the Buddhist, not to worship Him, above most others. Share prices fell, profits bottomed out, and by 1710, the Dutch South Atlantic Company was forced to declare bankruptcy. Never before or since has the public of any nation toppled such a large corporation, and never before had a boycott been so absolute.
However, the company’s fall was not the end. The people, and churches, continued to rally around abolition of the trade. They started asking the same questions that historians ask today; how could a nation built on person freedom allow for another person to be held in bondage. When public opinion blows one way, the elected official bend to the wind. Delegates in the Second Chamber began to debate the slavery issue in earnest, and not just because an election was rapidly approaching. In 1711, Johann I, made on of his last decrees. He called for the Staaten-General to abolish the slave trade. Before his death, the abominable practice legally vanished across all of the Netherlander colonial possessions nearly a century before the British. Slave smuggling continued, but only as long as the practice of bondage continued. Up to, and well past the last minute, the colonial sugar lobby battled against the rising public opinion tide.
As for the South Atlantic Company, when it went bankrupt, it folded shortly afterwards. The Staaten-General, and King Johann I, seized the lands after the monopoly was revoked. Brazil and Angola both became crown colonies, soon subject to governor-generals and other official appointed at the whim of the Hague. In Brazil, slavery was phased out over the following decades. Those slaves that did not leave the plantation to build farms and homes of their own, were issued wages and paid rent. It was similar to the estate system in feudalism, except these workers could, in theory, leave whenever they pleased. Prices rose, but not so much as to topple the large farming interests in Brazil. With the end of slavery, indentured servitude saw a sharp rise, as a way for the poorer Netherlanders to afford their way to a new life.
Oddly enough, the biggest winner over the abolition of the slave trade were not the slaves, but rather the VOC. The Dutch East India Company backed both the Buddhists Templars and all the protesters throughout 1709-10. They donated to rallies and churches, and pressed for their representatives in the Second Chamber to act. They even managed to secure the release of the monks who started the whole abolition movement. 1709 saw the fall of one Company and the security of another for the remainder of the century.
However, companies were not the only ones rising and falling in 1709. To the United Provinces’ north and east, to regional powers were locked in a titanic struggle in the northern branch of the War of Spanish Succession. By the same time as the Dutch slaves saw manumission, Eastern Europe saw the fall of one empire and the rise of another in the Great Northern War.
The Tsar is Dead, Long Live the Tsar
Once the Act of Union between the United Provinces and Denmark-Norway was finalized, Charles XII of Sweden had little choice but to turn his attention away from the North Sea and throw Sweden’s full might against the Russian Bear. From the time between 1705 and 1709, Sweden fought Russia with less than stellar effort, and Charles failed to bring the war to conclusion before the Summer of 1709. The war itself was started mostly over the establishment of Petrograd, a Russian city in Swedish Baltic territory.
In 1709, the Swedish armies marched through the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, another nation with no love for the Tsar, and attacked Russia along its souther border. The reason for such a round about invasion came from negotiations between Charles XII and the Cossacks. In return for their freedom, the Cossacks would ally with Sweden against their own hated oppressors. However, the invasion was not without its problems, one involving a thousand soldiers and a pillaged stockpile of vodka.
On June 28, 1709, Tsar Peter personally lead the Russian Army to lift the Swedish siege around the town of Poltava. At the start of the battle, the Russians held a two-to-one numerical advantage. Peter pressed the attack, believing he could quickly roll up the Swedes. He was not totally oblivious to Sweden’s plans, but believed a second army, under the command of General Roos, was some three days out. In reality, they were only three hours away. The Swedes at Poltava held off the Russian advances long enough for a second Swedish army of equal size to march on Peter’s flank. Trapped between two armies, the Tsar ordered a frontal assault against the army closest to Poltava. It had been battered for three hours and must be low on ammunition.
What happened after the charge occurred is not quite clear. What is known is that an anonymous Swedish solider, firing in a volley, managed to pierce the Tsar’s chest, and toppling the great Russian leader in his saddle. The shot went clean through his heart, killing Peter in a matter of minutes. With the Tsar dead, the Russian charge faltered. The Russians were unsure how to move, or who was even in charge. Their hesitation was all the Swedes required. In the space of another hour, ten thousand Russians lay dead, and twenty more thousand wounded and now prisoners. The ensuing chaos caused by the Tsar’s death allowed the Swedes a route.
Upon hearing of the turn of events, Charles recalled the armies north and personally launched an assault on Petrograd. The city, filled with Russian Boyas who built homes in the city by Peter’s command, was sparely defended and fell before the day was out. Charles contemplated burning the city, but decided it might be a useful port after all. Following Petrograd, the Russian Army, put up one last act of resistance at Novgorod.
Against the Swedes alone, the Russians could have still won. However, Charles used the Cossacks, sending them to attack the Russian’s flanks. Russian lines collapsed and the road to Moscow was open. Moscow did not fall as much as it was sacked. For days, Swedish and Cossacks alike took whatever they desired. Without a Tsar or even a Regent, it was unclear who to negotiate with. Lack of negotiators did not detour the King of Sweden. The power vacuum presented a golden opportunity.
It remains unclear if the crown was ever Charles’s intent. Initial war aims were targeted around Peter’s new city, which Sweden claimed violated their own territory. Simply taking disputed lands would have saved Sweden more than a century of strife across the Russian countryside. Nonetheless, in the Spring of 1710, Charles XII walked into St. Basil’s Cathedral, and walked out as Tsar Charles I. He cemented his control over Russia by emancipating the serfs and removing Russian nobility from its land. In return for helping them free their brethren in the south, the Cossacks swore an oath of undying loyalty to Tsar Charles and the Swedish Royal Family. In the following three centuries, the Cossacks were at the forefront of Sweden’s wars.
Tsar Charles’ Reforms
Upon seizing the Russian crown in 1712, Tsar Charles had one problem; what to do with his new kingdom. He knew he would have to placate millions of new, and potentially hostile subjects. Some in the Swedish court suggested Charles should abdicate his Tsardom and establish a puppet upon the Russian throne. Charles feared that would cause future problems and only increase the likelihood of rebellion. After years of war, the Swedes knew that it was better to keep the Russians under control, or else they might grow in power until they can overcome Sweden itself. Charles could not contemplate surrendering the Baltic Coast or even Finland to a revitalized Russia.
The first issue addressed was that of the millions of Russian and Ukrainian serfs. Sweden Proper, with its ancient Viking traditions, never had serfdom. Slavery was known to the Vikings, but never did the Swedes adopt the same feudal practices as more southernly regions of the continent. In that, Charles decided to free the serfs of Russia. In doing this, he would also have to free those in the Baltic lands that have been under the Swedish crown for decades. The serfs would become simple wage-earning and rent-paying peasants. In order to work the estates, the lords must pay their workers, and if they do not pay enough, then the peasants can up and move.
Charles would not be sad to see have the Russians move eastwards, across the Urals and into the uncharted lands of Siberia. Fortunately, that was not to be. The Russian peasants and their economic producing potential, remained on their lands. The peasants were also given their own plots, which they could farm tax-free for three years. Addition lands would also be taxed, and the peasantry was subjected to money taxes.
The peasantry was divided on their new lord. On one hand, the Russian Orthodox Church continued to incite the population against the heretics. Religion was deeply important in the Russian peasant’s life, but a large percentage were rather indifferent if their Tsar was in Moscow, Petrograd or Stockholm. For them, 1711 and 1712 saw one despot replaced by another. Yes, he was a Protestant, but he also did not tax them as bad. Not only that, but the dread army levee was no longer in effect. For decades, a balance would be maintained between those who were for their new freedoms, those against the foreigners, and the majority simply disinterested in distant politics and more worried about working their own fields. This apathy was one of the contributing factors for Swedish control over Russia.
Other ethnic groups proved to be less docile than the large population of Russian former-serfs. By the start of the Eighteenth Century, the Russian Empire was beginning its own southernly push against the Ottoman Empire, chasing after the dream of a warm water port. Being a land of coasts, Sweden had no immediately demand for the Black Sea’s coast. Charles spent all his energy just keeping the Russians from rising up against him, and required no extra headaches. Crimea and the Caucasus were left to the Turks’ devices. With their own tide having already reached its zenith, the Ottomans made only occasional attempts to push into Swedish Ukraine.
Dozens of various tribes further east, some only recently subjugated by the Russians, sought to gain their freedom at the fall of their former masters. Charles might not have much immediate interest in the Muslim southern frontier, but he had a great interest in the open lands to the east. Where most Europeans would head west across the ocean to start new lives, Sweden would have its Wild East to serve as a release for possible population spikes. To hold down such a vast prize required a drastic militarization of Swedish society, with every available man soon finding himself serving in the Army. The Russian peasantry might be safe from conscription, but ethnic Swedes were subject to a more modern form of compulsory service.
Swedes were not the only ones to spend the next century battling minorities. Given the population differences between Sweden and Russia, the Swedish Crown was forced to rely heavily upon mercenaries to control their empire. German states proved to be the largest source of hired arms, with various states even hiring out their own soldiers. Independent companies were attracted to the east not only for the gold, but for payment in land for Protestant soldiers. This was in hopes of watering down the Orthodox nature of Russian culture. This was nothing but a pipe dream, for tens of thousands of new colonists could never make a dent in the millions of already existing peoples.
Germans were not the only source of new soldiers. The Cossacks were made an autonomous part of the Swedish Army. Charles was very pleased with their service in the Great Northern War, and their loyalty. Cossacks, when not in active service, were granted their own Cossack colonies, largely tax-free. Generals within the Swedish Army were not as enthusiastic as their king. They viewed the Cossacks as unreliable, and justifiably so. Cossacks tend to attack only when they know they can win, and retreat when they can not. They lack the military discipline required in an Eighteenth Century Army. The Cossacks, in turn, resented the attempt to impose said discipline upon them. For the entire century, tension would remain between Swedish Generals and Cossack Chiefs.
Russian nobility was systematically dispossessed. Borås were either killed or exiled to Siberia. In 1713, fifty Borås and their loyal men attempted to organize a rebellion against the Swedes. Their plot was discovered and the Swedish Army descended upon them, massacring the plotters. Others simply fled, most into Poland-Lithuania, though some entered Prussian, Austrian and even Ottoman service. Officers of the Swedish Army that conquered Russia were granted the Boras’s former estates. With the Russian nobles removed, there was little threat from a largely unmotivated and unarmed peasantry.
The Patriarch of the Orthodox Church was deposed by Charles and replaced by somebody he considered more reliable. The priesthood was purged of those with clear loyalties to the Romanovs and replaced with those who were more sympathetic to their new overlords. Charles left the Russians to their own religion, under the advice of his court. It was feared that converting them too soon after conquest might only spark off a fire that would take years and cost thousands of soldiers’ lives to extinguish.
Cost of holding Russia down with such a large army daunted the new Tsar. As he would soon discover, Russia could pay for itself. Unlike the more developed nations of Europe, Russia had a vast amount of untapped wealth. Before gold, gems and oil, there was fur. Furs were one of the driving forces in the colonization of North America, and the biggest factor in the lands that would one day be known as Canada. Instead of sailing across the ocean, which was admittedly faster, Swedish fur companies navigated first the lands of northern Russia, then those east of the mighty Urals. Trade in furs did not completely fund the occupation and colonization efforts, but went a long ways in terms of revenue generation.
The largest problem with holding on to the Russian Empire was not its population nor the cost, but its size and infrastructure. Or rather lack there of. Communications across the Russian Empire was slow and not always reliable. Such poor communications forced Sweden to decentralize, to grant broader mandates for distant governors, especially those east of the Urals. Months could pass for messages to reach governors and reports to return to Stockholm. The Swedes made great use of Russia’s rivers, and the Arctic Coast, but winter effectively shut down communication. These areas would remain isolated until the advent of the Age of Steam, one hundred and fifty years in the future.
Peace of Utrecht
By 1713, Europe’s Great Powers have had enough of war. Deficits had risen, and Spain even went bankrupt in the course of a war to determine its King. The only nation not to end up broke were the United Provinces. Austria and the newly formed United Kingdom took out loans from large banks in Amsterdam. Though war has often been described as ‘bad for business’, the world’s largest banks often profit greatly from them. Without loans, waging modern war would be next to impossible.
In the end, the nations of Europe recognized Phillip V as King of Spain. The Bourbons took control of the Spanish throne, but not all of its territory. Milan and Naples were ceded to Austria. Furthermore, Gibraltar and Minorica ended up in British hands. The Bourbons were also forced to give up land in exchange for the new throne. The United Provinces regained Mons, along with trade concessions in France’s colonies. France also ceased its support for the Stuart pretenders to the British throne.
With the Peace of Utrecht, the wars to prevent French domination of Europe during the Seventeenth Century finally came to an end. With Bourbons on both thrones, Spain and France remained allied for the remainder of the century, however with the loss of so much land, Spain lost much of its power and was reduced to a second-rate nation. It was so broke, that during negotiations, the King of Prussia offered to purchase one of Spain’s American colonies. Strapped for cash, Phillip V agreed to sell Prussia the Viceroyalty of Rio del la Plata, despite its wealth. The war that saw Spain’s final downward spiral, also saw the rise of the German states.
King William IV
In the trailing days of the war, King Johann I road into the southern Provinces to inspect defensive positions built throughout Liege, Artois and Luxembourg. Tragically, the King never reached his first destination. When crossing the Hollands Diep one stormy afternoon, rough waters capsized the ferry upon which he road. The King, along with most passengers, drowned attempting to escape the sinking ship. It was one of many historical ironies that the King of a world-spanning maritime empire died while trying to cross a river.
His death came over a year after the birth of his first child, Anna Charlotte, and just weeks before the birth of his heir, Karel Hendrick. His mother served as regent until Karel reached fifteen years of age, when the Staaten-General would allow him to ascend the throne, though he was King in title since his birth. It was not uncommon for Dutch heirs to be born after their predecessor met untimely fates.
He was crowned William IV, King of the United Provinces of the Netherlands in 1726, by the Bishop of Liege, like all but one of the monarchs, Maurice II. He considered taking the regal name of Karl I. It would have set well with the new Provinces of Norway and Denmark. However, he opted William, in honor of his grandfather. In 1734, he married Anne of Great Britain, daughter of George II, thus extending the Anglo-Dutch alliance, much to the displeasure of Dutch businessmen and politicians.
They attempted to block it, and even succeeded in denying Anne any sort of title. She was unofficially known as the Princess-Consort. However, William made the case that if a man could not decide who he would marry, then were the Provinces really free. Under normal circumstances this is true, however by a Dutch King marrying into the new royal house of Britain, the British could very well drag the Dutch into another one of its wars with France. For the early years of William IV, the Netherlands enjoyed peace, but knew it would not be permanent.
Profit Margins
The Dutch varied in their sectarian beliefs greatly, but there was one issue they could all agree upon; profit. Of all the commercial enterprises of its day, not even Britains’s own India Company proved to be as ruthless in its pursuit of the all-mighty guilder. The tactics that the VOC used to keep on the top of their business varied during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Their size permitted them to simply undercut their smaller competition, buy paying more for spices in the East and selling it for less. This means of competing with what we would now call “the little guy” tend to cut into profits. Instead of lowering their prices, the VOC preferred to simply sink independent and small traders. The VOC’s private navy was also used to clean out pirates, which indirectly benefitted the small business ventures, as well as do battle with rival national monopolies, most notably the English (and later British) East India Company.
The VOC was a quasi-nation in its own rights. The monopoly granted by the Staaten-General allowed the VOC to sign its own treaties. The VOC signed exclusive trading treaties with states such as Kandy and Sultanates across the East Indies. In other cases, such as western Ceylon and Java, the VOC simply marched in and conquered their sources of spices and trading partners. Many of the independent states soon found themselves dependent upon the VOC. With the Company lending credit and minting coin, all of which the VOC forced its trading partners to accept. Back home, the VOC bankrolled many members of the Second Chamber of the Staaten-General, and flat out bribed those in the First Chamber. With this, and national interest, the VOC insured its exclusive trade monopoly was renewed time and again.
Their biggest threat came from other national monopolies. To battle these, the VOC and its navy took control over entire trading lanes. In the Indian Ocean, the Dutch discovered that sailing eastward across the Indian Ocean from around Forty Degrees allowed them to bypass the mercies of the seasonal monsoon patterns; flowing southwest during one part of the year and northeast during another. By taking control of the best route and currents directly across the Indian Ocean, along with the Cape of Good Hope, the VOC was able to trade year round. Those who either did not know about the currents, or were banned from them, had to wait months in India until the monsoon winds shifted and allowed for a return trip to India.
Austrian Succession
By 1740, succession crisis struck Europe again, this time in the Central Europe. Upon the death of the last Archduke of Austria, his daughter, Maria Theresa attempted to succeed him as Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Archduchess of Austria and Duchess of Parma. Her plan was to succeed to the hereditary Habsburg domains, while her husband, Duke Francis I of Lorraine, would be elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The issue of succession was greatly complicated by Salic law, which prohibited any female descendant from inheriting the throne.
The matter came to a head when Prussia’s King Frederick II launched an invasion of Silesia, using a variety of minor unsettled dynastic claims as a pretext. More over, being a woman, Maria Theresa was viewed as a weak ruler, and one better replaced by a strong male heir, such as Charles Albert of Bavaria. The war between Austria and Prussia started merely over the possession of Silesia. However, with France as an ally of Prussia, and the United Kingdom supporting Austria, other powers were soon drawn into a war that had little to do with succession.
Due to William IV’s marriage to Princess Anne, the United Provinces were honor bound to enter the war on the side of both British and Austrians. The Staaten-General drug its feet in declaring war, but not it declaring defense. It allowed William IV to call up militia and send the standing army into the southern Provinces, the inevitable invasion route of the French. He was also allowed to deploy the Royal Dutch Navy. As soon as the Navy went to sea, the navies of the companies, most notably the VOC, followed. Declared war or not, they would defend company assets from any aggressor.
Once France joined Bavaria against Austria, the United Kingdom declared war upon France. Again, the Staaten-General did not get half way through its deliberation when word of a French declaration of war reached the Hague. Unlike previous wars, France did not immediately invade the southern Provinces. Instead, it linked up with its Bavarians allies and attacked Austria. This gave the United Provinces an opportunity to move first. The attack would not come across the border, but rather on the island-kingdom of a trading partner in the middle of the Mediterranean.
The Sardinian Expedition
In mid-1741, a Dutch expeditionary force of some twelve thousand soldiers, the largest European overseas landing until the British land in Connecticut in 1776, landed on the shores of Sardinia. Under the command of Hendrick van Soot, the army’s objective was to secure the United Provinces’ position in Mediterranean trade, and secondary to aid a long standing trading partner. Like the United Provinces, the Kingdom of Sardinia was once ruled by Spain. When the Netherlands launched their revolution, Sardinians did the same. Unlike the Dutch, Sardinia did not succeed, at least not the first time. It was not until the end of the Thirty Years War that Sardinia gained its independence.
When Buddhist monks hitched a ride across the ocean in the VOC’s ships, many of them took a liking to the island nation. Monasteries dot the hills of Sardinia, mixing with Benedictine and other such Catholic abbeys. While on the island, both religions shared ideas and learned from each other. Many European monks were fascinated by the East, while many Ceylonese monks were equally fascinated by the West. The two brands of Monasteries even managed to find some equal grounding in their faiths, mainly; peace, compassion and love— though the Buddhists would never be as evangelistic as their Catholic colleagues.
However, the Catholic kings of France did not look too kindly on the Sardinian Buddhists. A few of the locals, a lesser percentage than of the Dutch, converted to the alien faith, brought in by the allure of equality. Kings of Spain and France were loath to tolerate apostates, and where Spain was inept, France was capable. By the End of the Austrian Succession, the only Buddhists in the Mediterranean would be under Turkish rule, where the Turks simply taxed different religions instead of trying to stamp them out.
Though a few of the soldiers in Soot’s expedition where no doubt Buddhists, they were still Dutch, and still very nationalistic. They were here not to aid their spiritual brethren, but in defense of their homelands’s interests. In the United Provinces, commerce is the homeland. Sardinia was the leading exporter of olive oil to the Netherlands, and a top supplier of wine. France had a vaster supply of wine, but continuous designs on the Rhine River made trade with the French difficult.
French soldiers, along with seven thousand Sicilian allies, made their own landing further north, at modern-day Oristano. Dutch forces marched north from Arborea to force a battle with the Franco-Sicilian invasion. The fact the French landed at all was planned in advance. Soot believed that defeating the army on land and forcing it to surrender would strip France of prestige. He did correctly predict the invading army would be trapped; no French admiral would dare meet the Dutch navy in open combat.
However, the rest of his strategy was flawed from day one. Soot failed to trap the French, and each time he attempted to engage them, the French would slip away. He continued to pursue French and Sicilians, not realizing he was being lead into a trap. While the Dutch Navy dominated the world’s oceans, the Dutch Army was no better or worse than the European average. The further away from the Dutch navy he could be led, the easier Soot would be to defeat.
In October of 1741, the Franco-Sicilian Army engaged the Dutch on the banks of the Tirso River. What resulted was an unmitigated disaster, and taught in the modern Commonwealth Military Academies as what not to do. Soot lead his own army into a valley ambush, with the French on one slope, the Sicilians on the other. Worse yet, the Dutch were cut off from retreat less than an hour after the battle began. In the end, Soot was forced to surrender, to rather generous terms. The Dutch would be disarmed, and allowed to leave the island. The entire episode remains required studying at the various Dutch military academies, as a textbook example of what not to do.
After Soot left the army, it was the United Provinces who lost face. Such an easy defeat only emboldened the French, and led them to invade the southern Provinces with even higher morale. The disaster on Sardinia also allowed the French to sever trade between the two nations. Furthermore, the French removed Sardinia’s King and installed his cousin, a man more friendlier to the Christian cause. Giovanni I remained King until his own untimely death in 1744, which lead to civil war on the island. During the ‘French reign’ and following into the civil war, French forces on the island persecuted the local Buddhists, often giving them the choice to convert or die. Most of the island’s Buddhist population fled Sardinia to the New World, settling on land between Baltimore and Philadelphia.
The Southern Provinces
The Dutch people waited for an invasion, waiting until 1746, when the French launched their invasion. Instead of trying to take back Mons, the French moved along a different route, invading Liege. So set in belief that the French would try again for the cities in the west, the Staaten-General, as well as the King, were taken by surprise at this new tactic. It would seem that even the French could learn from their previous mistakes. The French defeated a combined army of the United Provinces and Lorraine at Raucourt, near the city of Liege. The loss of Liege shook the Staaten-General. For the first time in over a century, the Dutch failed to turn back an invasion. Old Provincial tendencies began to resurface, with each of the members of the First Chamber wondering if their Province would be next.
The French handed the Dutch its biggest political crisis since the Revolution and until Napoleon. Strong Kings and common causes served well in the past to hold the nation together. While the nobles squabbled, the French struck again, this time north towards Maastricht. A victory here would allow the French to invade the northern Provinces. None of the northern Provinces had faced foreign invaders since the Spanish, over one hundred fifty years before.
Though he was not as good a general as previous kings, William IV rallied militia from Holland, Zeeland, Brabant and Gelderland, along with twenty thousand regular soldiers and marched towards the Maas River. William faced the French Marshall on the banks of the Maas, early morning on September 27, 1747. William decided to make a forced march through the night, in hopes of catching the French while they were just starting to stir. He was often criticized for attacking a sleeping enemy, to which he could only reply that chivalry was not a luxury the United Provinces had in 1747.
In truth, the French were not asleep. They were just sitting down to breakfast when lines of orange uniformed soldiers bared down upon them. William, though not a great general, had able commanders beneath him. They convinced him to make a sweeping attack, one to trap the French with their backs to the Maas. After a full day of battle, no conclusion was drawn, and by nightfall, the French commander decided to attempt to withdraw during the night. His attempt to cross the Maas nearly ended in disaster. The Marshall and many of his key officers managed to escape, but twenty thousand French soldiers were trapped between the Dutch and the Maas, and were forced to surrender. The United Provinces were saved more by luck than leadership.
Despite this partial defeat, the French were not forced from Dutch territory. When negotiations began in 1748, the French refused to settle for anything less than Mons. French delegates knew there was no way the United Provinces would surrender Liege, and entire Province, so decided to settle for Mons. With that city fortified and manned by the French Army, should war come again, the French would be poised to strike. The Staaten-General had little choice but to surrender the city, not knowing if they could muster a second Miracle on the Maas should the French decide to renew the attack.
New Antwerp
Cities along the Rhein and other Netherlander Rivers were no stranger to flooding. For many Antwerpers, 1753 was one flood too many. The flood hit not only during a war, but following an economic slump in the port town. Before the Spanish Fury, Antwerp was home to an estimated hundred thousand peoples. By 1740, the population was only half of its former glory. More hopeful destinations were plentiful, and many of the Antwerpers relocated to more prosperous cities within the Provinces, as well as swarmed to New Amsterdam and Brazil. During the Eighteenth Century, Brazil remained a prime target for emigration. Over the past century, Brazil accepted refugees from every corner of Europe. Huguenots from France, dispossessed nobility from fallen Russia, Catholics from Britain and even serfs escaping the Portuguese provinces of Spain. It was only logical that a Dutch colony should accept Netherlands seeking a new start.
However, the East India Company offered many of Antwerp’s inhabitants an alternative for relocation. For over a century, the VOC ruled the island of Formosa and profited vastly from trade with both China and the isolationist island nation of Japan. In that time, natives and imported laborers from China sufficed to work the VOC’s tea plantations, silk production along with rice farms and sugar fields. However, the workers came from the mostly peasant lot and offered little in the way of skilled labor.
Thousands of Antwerpers were offered the chance to start over, to become the thriving middle class on Formosa. The VOC wished to create a market a little closer to the source. Carpenters, artisans, merchants and shipwrights were all granted land in the VOC’s new colony, in exchange for work. The VOC offered generous loans to all who wish to travel, all of which were paid off before the end of the colonist’s third year. The VOC did not want to exploit the displaced Antwerpers, but rather use them for the betterment of the company. The VOC was a company that aimed for the long-term, a view which would aid it greatly in recovery in the next century.
In 1755, the first colonists arrived at a small bay southwest of Taipei. They did not find paradise, but nor did they find mosquito-infested swamps, similar to the ones dotting the Brazilian landscape. Instead they found a relatively flat land, already stripped of its former forests. Little in the way of game lived in the area, and for the first year, colonists were forced to rely upon the Company for its food sources.
At first, the colonists did little more than the workers already on the island, that is grow crops. Obtaining jobs from the Company was difficult; manager and foreman positions were already filled with able natives and Chinese. To the colonists’ surprise, most of the employees already spoke Dutch, passable if not fluently. To some of the colonists, it was starting to look like they were duped by the VOC.
However, after only two years, the Dutch did what they did best, reclaim. The land stripped of forests soon blossomed with mulberry and tea. Looms powered by water wheels soon churned out excessive quantities of silk bolts. The colonists even learned to like rice, the only food crop grown extensively. As with everywhere else they colonized, the Dutch introduced the tulip to Formosa. The locals, who were already settled into their own homes, soon found room for turban-shaped flower.
By 1775, when Antwerp’s population fell to forty thousand, New Antwerp began to surpass its namesake. Where Dutch headed west to get rich off sugar, they headed east to get rich off tea. The Dutch themselves were not big tea drinkers, cafes in the United Provinces served far more coffee. However, their old enemy and ally, the United Kingdom, simply could not get enough of the drink.
Along with becoming the tea-producing center of Formosa, New Antwerp also became its shipyard. At first, the immigrants wished to build the same types of ships they always built, sloops and the like, that is until shipwrights fully inspected VOC ships. The ships that transported the colonists were mostly of European design, sailed by Dutch crews. They were ships that seldom made cargo runs across the Indian Ocean, preferring to transport lighter loads instead. The VOC freighters dwarfed most of what sailed in European waters.
The freighters borrowed heavily from Chinese ship designs. The biggest difference between the two designs lay in compartmentalized hulls, an innovation dating back the Han Dynasty. At first, the shipwrights considered the bulkhead cumbersome, and a waste of space. That is, until they saw one in action. Off the coast of New Antwerp, many shipwrights and dockhands watched as a lumbering VOC freighter ran aground on a small coral reef. Seeing the large gouge in the hull, the colonists assumed the ship would sink in short order and prepared to send out rescue parties. The seasoned shipwrights were astonished to see the ship not only survive the impact, but sail into harbor without even listing. When they inspected the ship, they discovered the same bulkheads they complained about saved the ship. A few sailors downed in the flooded compartment, but the ship and its cargo largely survived.
New Antwerp served as a beacon for many in the southern Provinces hoping to escape any future French invasions. Brewers from Hainaut introduced hops to the island, and farmers from Flanders brought cattle and cheese. What was commonplace to the Dutch was absolutely exotic to the nations of East Asia. Traders from China and Korea traded in New Antwerp, and the VOC saw to it these commodities were exported to nations around Formosa.
The Enlightenment
It is often said that the Enlightenment arrive a century too late for the Dutch. Ideas of science and liberty spread throughout the British Isles and the newly formed Swedish Empire in the middle of the Eighteenth Century, over a century after they were accepted in the Provinces. However, while New Antwerp blossomed, the United Provinces saw a refinement of their own ideas of liberty.
To a Netherlander around 1750, liberty simply meant they could travel unmolested, worship as they please and even elect their own delegate (crocked or not) to speak for them in the Staaten-General. By 1750, that was no longer enough to satisfy the masses. Netherlanders soon wanted the right to petition the King and the Staaten-General directly. Though they had the right to protest, local constabulary forces often curtailed the masses, fearing a riot could break out. Netherlanders did not want the right to riot, just to assemble peacefully.
Liberty was not just a generalized subject. Printers and publishers wanted to print without having the Staaten-General looking over the shoulder. More than one newspaper in the Provinces was shut down when it made known its blunt opinion of policies made by the Hague. At the time, publishers in both Amsterdam and New Amsterdam spoke of the right to print whatever they wished, short of bald-faced lies.
Liberty was not just spoken of by the well-to-do. The wars with France during the Eighteenth Century put a drain on Dutch society, created a dip in the middle class. It was not so much a class of poor, but rather what would today be optimistically called ‘lower-middle class’. The commonfolk as it were. Whereas businessmen and merchants had the means, the less fortunate of the Netherlands’ larger cities wanted a piece of the action. In the cities, it was the Companies that dominated politics, and often crowded out the poorer man.
The masses of Amsterdam, Utrecht and Brussels wanted to have their own say. They wanted that every man, no matter his income, should have an equal say in the future of the community. Equality was the song of the typical United Province pub. They reasoned ‘are we not the same, created by the same creator?’ Why should income decide one’s place in Eighteenth Century United Provinces. It was a difficult transition in a mercantile society, where the golden rule is; he who has the gold makes the rules.
Equality in vote and rights would not be fully achieve until Post-Napoleonic Europe, nor would the rights of printers or the right to assemble peacefully. The Post-Napoleonic Constitution would borrow much from the American Bill of Rights. For the time being, libertarian ideals would have to wait. What would not wait was advancement in the sciences.
By 1750, concepts of gravity and motion were already widely understood in academia. Universities popped up across the United Provinces like mushrooms after a storm. By the same year, the United Provinces sported the highest literacy rate in all of Europe. With the concepts of caste long since abolished, even the simplest of farmers desired to elevate himself in society. In a society where competition is the norm, a man required every advantage he could muster. The inability to read prevented that same man from gaining more profit that he otherwise would have. Without the potential to advance, it is doubtful that the United Provinces would ever have become the power they are.
Astronomy was a boon to the United Provinces, the top exporter of quality optics in Europe, from the invention of the telescope until today. Little did early astronomers, such as Galileo and Huygens that the simple invention they used to observe Jupiter and Saturn would one day orbit Earth and see galaxies at the edge of space and time. An entire industry of precision instruments took up three percent of the work force in Groningen.
Inventions from around the world, primarily China, found their way into the markets and universities of the United Provinces. Compartmentalized hulls was already explained, and gunpowder and the magnetic compass are already known, however less known Chinese inventions, such as the blast furnace, cast iron and advancements in agriculture were all adapted by the Dutch. The United Provinces used each of these inventions to give it an edge over its own competitors, one of which refused to leave the Dutch alone.
King William V
In 1751, William IV died when his oldest son and heir was but thirteen. Unlike previous young monarchs, Willem Batavius van Oranje was old enough to make decisions and understand what happened around him. However, Dutch tradition stipulates a King must be at least fifteen years of age. His mother, Anne of Great Britain served as official regent for the first two years of his reign. Unofficially, William was already calling the shots, and the regent mostly passed along his command.
Instead of taking a British wife, William V took Wilhelmina of Prussia as hid bride, the sister of Wilhelm II of Prussia. The marriage represented a reversal of alliances, where technically Prussia was now an ally of the United Provinces, where it was an enemy during the War of Austrian Succession. The Staaten-General blocked any attempt at a formal alliance between the two states. After being dragged into two wars by their ‘ally’ Britain, the Dutch decided they were better off alone and neutral. Neutrality was far better for business.
Unfortunately, the marriage did not occur until 1767. By the time William V reached his eighteenth birthday in 1756, Europe was at war again. At the time, they were still allied with the British, and once the United Kingdom declared war on France, the French King automatically declared war upon the Dutch. It was this blind automation that prompted William’s decision to forego a British wife. The French had their eyes upon the Provinces, British consort or not.
Seven Years War
The war between the British and French actually started in 1754, in North America. Both British and French colonist fought extensively for control over the Great Lakes region. The Dutch hoped the war would be contained, but by 1755, the Staaten-General knew war would be around the corner. After the previous defeat, the Dutch plotted revenge. In a way, the campaigns of the Seven Years War were an Eighteenth Century replay of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Both came after humiliating defeats, with Dutch soldiers and sailors eager to redeem national honor.
When war was declared, the Dutch Army and Navy was in position. Though they could not act until the Staaten-General, or the French as it were, declared war, they could move into position by edict of the King. As soon as the declaration reached the Dutch fleet, Admiral Cornelius van der Moor acted. William V personally told Moor that he should enact the plan as soon as word reached him.
What was the plan? It certainly was not a head-on charge at Mons as the French predicted. Instead, Moor landed twenty thousand soldiers at the mouth of the Seine River. Not a terribly gigantic army, but a great deal larger than overseas expeditions of its day. When word reached Versailles, the French King made the same mistake as James II, he believed it was an invasion headed directly at Paris. Orders went out recalling the French Army at Mons, along with forces along Rhein frontier.
Was it an invasion? No, Moor landed his force as a feint, an attempt to draw off the French from the Dutch border, and it worked. Moor’s ‘invasion’ force maneuvered along the French coast for two days before embarking. By the time the French realized it was a rouse, William V not only sent the army to retake Mons, but pressed further to lay siege to Calais. Only a short time after declaring war, the French quickly found themselves on the defensive.
France could sparsely rely on its own allies to help defend France. The Seven Years War saw the rise of Prussia, and its own defeat against Austria, and a half-hearted struggle by Sweden. Neither nation, though large enough to stomp out Prussia could contend against the greatest military mind of the day, Frederick the Great, future brother-in-law of William V. Sweden dropped out of the war by 1758, having its own problems consolidating control over its lands in the east, allowing the Prussians to once again invade Silesia. Austria called to France for aid, and France was forced to give up any plans against the United Provinces for the time being.
French Amazonia
When war was imminent, the Staaten-General and William V decided that this would be the final war. Like other European powers, France drew much of its wealth from overseas colonies and trade in sugar and spice. Fur from Quebec and sugar from French Amazonia filled the coffers in Versailles, and funded consecutive invasions. Dutch colonists joined with British colonists and regulars in the invasion of Quebec, which was largely a British affair.
The Dutch focused on the lands north of Brazil. For a century and a half, the Dutch occupied the Brazilian coast and largely ignored the Amazon Basin. There was nothing but impenetrable jungle, disease and headhunters along its banks. No markets, and no profits. However, the French laid claim to the Amazon River and all the land it touched. This brought them into conflict with Dutch colonists, who only extended at most two hundred kilometers from the coast.
The French did nothing with the Amazon, instead focusing their colonization effort on the area around Cayenne. The city of Cayenne produced the majority of France’s sugar, more so than the Carribean islands under their rule. The Dutch have never been particularly interested in a few small islands, but Cayenne and its wealth drew the attention of entrepreneurs. In Eighteenth Century Dutch society, there was no such thing as too much wealth.
Brazilians had their eyes upon Cayenne since well before the Seven Years War. During the War of Spanish Succession, little French activity occurred within Dutch reach. By the Austrian War, the United Provinces were in too desperate a straight to send an expedition. By 1756, all that had changed. The Staaten-General sent thousands of soldiers to reinforce the Brazilian militia. Early in 1758, enough men and ships were massed in both Recife and Natal that action was possible.
The Brazilian governor-general appointed the Duke of Pernambuco as General of the Amazonian Expedition. Pernambuco left Recife at the end of January and sailed up past the Amazon delta with more than seven thousand soldiers. The amount seemed ridiculously small in comparison with grand battles of Europe, but more than sufficed for the action at hand. In truth, the French had only enough soldiers to keep the restless natives at bay, and foolish as it seemed, the Governor of French Amazonia never anticipated an attack by the Dutch. Why would Brazil attack Cayenne? Do they not already have enough land?
To the Brazilians, and the Staaten-General, Cayenne was not about land, but about beating the French down so badly that they could never threaten the United Provinces again. A pipe dream perhaps, for France had several times the population of the Netherlands, though far more dispersed than their Dutch counterparts, whom even then lived on top of each other. For all the land that was in Brazil, Netherlander middle-class were not quite wealthy enough to acquire it.
By April of 1758, Cayenne was under the control of Pernambuco. After firing a few shots for French honor, the Governor surrendered to the vastly superior invasion force. Controlling Cayenne was parallel to Controlling New Orleans or Quebec. Controlling either city left the occupier effectively in control of Louisiana and New France respectively. Only a scattering of towns and large plantations accounted for the rest of South America’s French population. By surrendering Cayenne, the French Governor in essence ended French colonial activities in South America.
Treaty of Petrograd
By 1763, France was beaten to a standstill. All of its mainland colonies in the New World were under foreign occupation, and the Dutch still held on to Calais. Austria was forced to sue for peace against its German cousins to the north, which meant France was on its own. The French King desired to hold on to some colonies, and knew if he continued the war he would lose them all.
Sweden, who played a brief and minor role in the war, hosted the peace negotiations in the city named after the last of the Russians Tsars. For dropping out of the war early, Sweden only had to part with some of it Pomeranian holdings, which was fine, because the Swedes were not interested in them anyway. Why fret over some Baltic coast when they had vast steppes still in need of colonization.
The United Provinces pressed for harsh terms against France, including limiting the size of its army and navy. It was willing to trade some concession (not Amazonia though) including Mons for future security. However, the United Kingdom was more interested in building a better future for itself than for Europe. George II’s envoys dominated the talks. Though France lost many of its colonies, it was better than what the Dutch were preparing to offer.
In conclusion, the Dutch were awarded French Amazonia and the city of Mons. The British partitioned Louisiana between itself and long time ally of the French, Spain. To this, the Dutch were opposed. In principle they were opposed to anything that elevated Spain. The British were not content with the vast emptiness of the American plains. They annexed all of New France, booting the French from American shores for the time being.
France was allowed to keep its large army, one that it could no longer afford, certainly a hollow victory at the negotiating tables. The Staaten-General was pleased that France would not be able to invade Dutch soil for quite some time, however that did not equate trust. As soon as Mons was formally in Dutch hands, Dutch soldiers fortified it, along with the southern Border. If– when war came again, they wanted to be prepared. Though the government worried, the people rejoiced. As far as they were concerned, the hated enemy was vanquished, and the people could get back to the business at hand. With new acquisitions and one enemy out of the way, business was looking good.