The Dutch Influence

Denise Doring VanBuren, President General

Ahead of my upcoming trip to the Netherlands, I wanted to share this article from the September/October 2020 issue of American Spirit to learn a little more about the Dutch influence on the American Revolution. Subscribe to American Spirit magazine here. Enjoy!

The Netherlands, in decline from its 17th-century heyday as a colonial world power, made major contributions to the American cause via arms merchants and banking houses.

By Jeff Walter

Dutch sympathy. Dutch weaponry. Dutch recognition. Dutch money. American independence. Without the support of our friends in the Netherlands, the outcome of the American Revolution might have been altogether different. While such contributions have been largely overlooked by historians on this side of the Atlantic, they were indispensable to the Patriots’ efforts.

When the war was over, and for years after, the United States of America was deeply indebted—financially and figuratively—to its Dutch allies. The Dutch Republic, on the other hand, paid a heavy price for its assistance.

A Fading Power

During its peak as a major colonial trade influence in the 1600s, the Dutch Republic built a global colonial empire, fostered a vast network of maritime connections, and became an international center of finance and culture. But it had since degenerated into a decentralized state, with political control alternating between the province of Holland and a series of stadtholders, or provincial officers. At the time of the American Revolution, the stadtholder over all seven Dutch provinces was William V, Prince of Orange, who had family ties to the British royal house. But ordinary Dutch citizens, weary of the outmoded and out-of-touch oligarchy, yearned for change.

The writings of the French Enlightenment philosophers Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau—a major influence on America’s Founding Fathers—also found receptive ears in the Dutch Republic. The writers’ views on liberty, separation of powers, the “general will” and related topics resonated with many progressive Dutch, who saw the American rebels as the embodiment of said social theories—and kindred spirits. The Dutch “Patriots,” unfortunately, would fare much worse than their American counterparts.

About 100,000 people of Dutch origin resided in the Colonies, where the Dutch West India Company had carried out 17th-century colonization. Roughly 85% of them remained in what was once New Netherland—comprising parts of modern-day New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Early Dutch settlers suffered under the tyrannical governance of Peter Stuyvesant, who was appointed by the West India Company. After the British freed the settlers from Stuyvesant’s control in August 1664, many of them assumed prominent business and social roles in the Colonies. However, immigration from their mother country all but came to a stop.

Relationship With England

England and the Netherlands, after engaging in three Anglo-Dutch wars (1652–1654, 1665–1667 and 1672–1674), had settled into a long and mutually beneficial friendship. When the Seven Years’ War (known in the American Colonies as the French and Indian War) began in 1756, the Netherlands was content to sit on the sidelines.

As the conflict spread to five continents and embroiled the British, French, Spanish, Prussians, Austrians, Russians and Swedes, the Dutch found neutrality a boon for international trade while doing nothing to jeopardize relations with the English. All that would change with the Revolutionary War.

As early as 1774, Dutch merchants were sending large quantities of war materiel to the Colonial rebels. Two Dutch-owned Caribbean colonies, St. Eustatius in the Leeward Islands and Curaçao off the Venezuelan coast, served as conduits for keeping the Patriots supplied with gunpowder, cannonballs, firearms and naval stores in exchange for American goods such as tobacco and indigo. St. Eustatius, in particular, began provoking British complaints about “subversive” transactions. But Governor Johannes de Graaff, called to explain himself, denied any wrongdoing by his people in connection with the American rebels.

Despite sympathy for the Patriot cause, it was far from pure idealism that fed the development of Dutch relationships with the American Colonies. Amsterdam merchants and bankers saw financial opportunity in these Colonies and intended to capitalize on it, regardless of the consequences of acting counter to the official positions of The Hague, the Dutch seat of government.

The severely divided Netherlands was suffering from not only a declining economy and a paralyzed and inefficient political system, but also from a lack of widespread understanding of what exactly was transpiring across the Atlantic, suggests Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt in his book The Dutch Republic and American Independence (University of North Carolina Press, 1982; translated from Dutch by Herbert H. Rowen).

At the war’s onset, England repeatedly requested the Dutch Republic to lend military support, citing multiple treaties between the two nations, but these requests were refused. A handful of events, combined with the ongoing trade with American rebels, incrementally goaded the British toward action.

On November 16, 1776, Dutch in St. Eustatius’ Orange Bay saluted the starless “Grand Union” American flag when the brigantine Andrew Doria arrived. That salute, considered the first recognition of the first American flag, was viewed in England as an acknowledgment of the Colonies’ independence. The following summer, in retaliation, Great Britain seized 54 ships in transit between the Netherlands and St. Eustatius.

Subsequently, U.S. naval officer John Paul Jones, after orchestrating an American victory over British ships off England’s eastern coast in September 1779, took shelter in the Netherlands and was embraced as a hero. The Dutch refused England’s demands that Jones be turned over.

English ire over Dutch behavior came to a head in August 1780 when a British ship captured diplomat Henry Laurens, a former president of the Continental Congress, who was on his way to Amsterdam to negotiate a $10 million loan for the American war effort. Among Laurens’ papers his captors discovered a draft of a proposed American-Dutch treaty. On December 20, 1780, Britain declared war on the Netherlands.

The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War

The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, overlapping the Revolutionary War, was an entirely naval conflict that continued until 1784. It was a debilitating military, political and economic loss for the Netherlands.

In one sea battle, the British managed to disable the Dutch naval fleet for the rest of the war. They targeted Dutch colonial interests, paralyzing the republic’s overseas commerce. They seized control of Dutch ports and colonies in India, Ceylon, Guiana and West Africa. Especially harsh punishment was reserved for St. Eustatius, hub of the military transactions with the American Colonies. In February 1781, a British naval force led by Admiral George Rodney devastated the island, thus ending trade with the rebels, and confiscated ships, cash and property.

As Rodney’s force was wreaking havoc on St. Eustatius, a French fleet led by François Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse, set sail from the Caribbean for Virginia. In September 1781, it routed a British fleet in the Battle of the Chesapeake. That triumph led directly to the decisive American victory at the Battle of Yorktown, the last major land battle of the war in North America.

Money and Recognition

As Revolutionary War military clashes raged on land and at sea, diplomatic battles were waged in The Hague. John Adams, the future second president of the United States, was dispatched to the Netherlands (with young sons John Quincy and Charles in tow), after already having been involved in ongoing Paris negotiations to end the war. The Dutch diplomacy paid off on three major fronts in 1782:

  • On April 19, the Netherlands formally recognized the independence of the United States of America, becoming the second nation to do so, after France. This action included accepting Adams’ credentials as first U.S. minister to the Netherlands.
  • On May 17, Adams secured a loan totaling 5 million guilders, or $2 million, from three Amsterdam banking houses. This investment was the first of many: Dutch bankers alone financed the American national debt well into the 1790s, and by 1794 the U.S. had borrowed the equivalent of 30 million guilders, or $12 million.
  • On October 8, the United States and the Netherlands signed a Treaty of Amity and Commerce.

“American historians have never given the Dutch role in the American Revolution the attention that it deserves,” wrote James H. Hutson, in his article “John Adams and the Birth of Dutch-American Friendship, 1780–82” (Low Countries Historical Review, 1982). The Amsterdam loans from 1782 to 1788 “prevented a national bankruptcy.”

The American Revolution drew to a close in 1783, but the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War continued for another year. The peace treaty between England and the Netherlands forced the Dutch to surrender Nagapattinam off the coast of India, yet another casualty stemming from their aiding and abetting the rebel cause.

The political instability that had roiled the Netherlands since around 1780 continued to fester, with the progressive Dutch Patriots opposing stadtholder William V and his “Orangist” supporters. Fueled by the support of the middle class, the unrest grew, with armed civilians taking over several cities and regions in an attempt to force new elections. But the revolt was ultimately quashed in 1787 with the intervention of troops from neighboring Prussia.

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