The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Paul Kennedy
the military predominance that it had briefly held under Gustavus Adolphus. In the coming decades, in fact, it would have its work cut out merely seeking to arrest the advances of Prussia in the south and Russia in the east.
The final example, that of Dutch power in this period, offers a remarkable contrast to the Swedish case. Here was a nation created in the confused circumstances of revolution, a cluster of seven heterogeneous provinces separated by irregular borders from the rest of the Habsburg-owned Netherlands, a mere part of a part of a vast dynastic empire, restricted in population and territorial extent, which swiftly became a Great Power inside and outside Europe for almost a century. It differed from the other states – although not from its Italian forerunner, Venice – in possessing a republican, oligarchic form of government; but its most distinctive characteristic was that the foundations of its strengths were firmly anchored in the world of trade, industry, and finance. It was, to be sure, a formidable military power, at least in defence; and it was the most effective naval power until eclipsed by England in the later seventeenth century. But those manifestations of armed might were the consequences, rather than the essence, of Dutch strength and influence.
It was hardly the case, of course, that in the early years of their revolt the 70,000 or so Dutch rebels counted for much in European affairs; indeed, it was not for some decades that they regarded themselves as a separate nation at all, and not until the early seventeenth century that the boundaries were in any way formed. The so-called Revolt of the Netherlands was in the beginning a sporadic affair, during which different social groups and regions fought against each other as well as opposing – and sometimes compromising with – their Habsburg rulers; and there were various moments in the 1580s when the Duke of Parma’s superbly conducted policy of recovering the territories for Spain looked on the verge of success. But for the subsidies and military aid from England and other Protestant states, the importation of large numbers of English guns, and the frequent diversion of the Spanish armies into France, the rebellion then might have been brought to an end. Yet since the ports and shipyards of the Netherlands were nearly all in rebel hands, and Spain found it impossible to gain control of the sea, Parma could reconquer only by slow, landward siege operations which lost their momentum whenever he was ordered to march his armies into France.82
By the 1590s, then, the United Provinces had survived and could, in fact, reconquer most of the provinces and towns which had been lost in the east. Its army was by that stage well trained and led by Maurice of Nassau, whose tactical innovations and exploitation of the watery terrain made him one of the great captains of the age. To call it a Dutch army would be a misnomer: in 1600 it consisted of forty-three English, thirty-two French, twenty Scots, eleven Walloon, and nine German companies, and only seventeen Dutch companies.83 Despite this large (but by no means untypical) variety of nationalities, Maurice moulded his forces into a coherent, standardized whole. He was undoubtedly aided in this, however, by the financial underpinning provided by the Dutch government; and his army, more than most in Europe, was regularly paid, just as the government continually provided for the maintenance of its substantial navy.
It would be unwise to exaggerate the wealth and financial stability of the Dutch Republic or to suggest that it found it easy to pay for the prolonged conflict, especially in its early stages. In the eastern and southern parts of the United Provinces, the war caused considerable damage, loss of trade, and decline in population. Even the prosperous province of Holland found the tax burdens enormous; in 1579 it had to provide 960,000 florins for the war, in 1599 almost 5.5 million florins. By the early seventeenth century, with the annual costs of the war against Spain rising to 10 million florins, many wondered how much longer the struggle could be maintained without financial strain. Fortunately for the Dutch, Spain’s economy – and its corresponding ability to pay the mutiny-prone Army of Flanders – had suffered even more, and at last caused Madrid to agree to the truce of 1609.
Yet if the conflict had tested Dutch resources, it had not exhausted them; and the fact was that from the 1590s onward, its economy was growing fast, thus providing a solid foundation of ‘credit’ when the government turned – as all belligerent states had to turn – to the money market. One obvious reason for this prosperity was the interaction of a growing population with a more entrepreneurial spirit, once the Habsburg rule had been cast off. In addition to the natural increase in numbers, there were tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of refugees from the south, and many others from elsewhere in Europe. It seems clear that many of these immigrants were skilled workers, teachers, craftsmen, and capitalists, with much to offer. The sack of Antwerp by Spanish troops in 1576 gave a boost to Amsterdam’s chances in the international trading system, yet it was also true that the Dutch took every opportunity offered them for commercial advancement. Their domination of the rich herring trade and their reclamation of land from the sea provided additional sources of wealth. Their vast mercantile marine, and in particular their fluyts (simple, robust freighters), earned them the carrying trade of much of Europe by 1600: timber, grain, cloth, salt, herrings were transported by Dutch vessels along every waterway. To the disgust of their English allies, and of many Dutch Calvinist divines, Amsterdam traders would willingly supply such goods to their mortal enemy, Spain, if the profits outweighed the risks. At home, raw materials were imported in vast quantities and then ‘finished’ by the various trades of Amsterdam, Delft, Leyden, and so on. With ‘sugar refining, melting, distilling, brewing, tobacco cutting, silk throwing, pottery, glass, armament manufacture, printing, paper making’84 among the chief industries, it was hardly surprising that by 1622 around 56 per cent of Holland’s population of 670,000 lived in medium-sized towns. Every other region in the world must have seemed economically backward by comparison.
Two further aspects of the Dutch economy enhanced its military power. The first was its overseas expansion. Although this commerce did not compare with the humbler but vaster bulk trade in European waters, it was another addition to the republic’s resources. ‘Between 1598 and 1605, on average twenty-five ships sailed to West Africa, twenty to Brazil, ten to the East Indies, and 150 to the Caribbean every year. Sovereign colonies were founded at Amboina in 1605 and Ternate in 1607; factories and trading posts were established around the Indian Ocean, near the mouth of the Amazon and (in 1609) in Japan.’85 Like England, the United Provinces were now benefiting from that slow shift in the economic balances from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic world which was one of the main secular trends of the period 1500–1700; and which, while working at first to the advantage of Portugal and Spain, was later galvanizing societies better prepared to extract the profits of global commerce.86
The second feature was Amsterdam’s growing role as the centre of international finance, a natural corollary to the republic’s function as the shipper, exchanger, and commodity dealer of Europe. What its financiers and institutions offered (receiving deposits at interest, transferring monies, crediting and clearing bills of exchange, floating loans) was not different from practices already established in, say, Venice and Genoa; but, reflecting the United Provinces’ trading wealth, it was on a larger scale and conducted with a greater degree of certainty – the more so since the chief investors were a part of the government, and wished to see the principles of sound money, secure credit, and regular repayment of debt upheld. In consequence of all this, there was usually money available for government loans, which gave the Dutch Republic an inestimable advantage over its rivals; and since its credit rating was firm because it promptly repaid debts, it could borrow more cheaply than any other government – a major advantage in the seventeenth century and, indeed, at all times!
This ability to raise loans easily was the more important after the resumption of hostilities with Spain in 1621, for the cost of the armed forces rose steadily, from 13.4 million florins (1622) to 18.8 million florins (1640). These were large sums even for a rich population to bear, and the more particularly since Dutch overseas trade was being hurt by the war, either through direct losses or by the diversion of commerce into neutral hands. It was therefore politically easier to permit as large a part of the war as posible to be financed from public loans. Although this led to a massive increase