Dunkirk, Tangier, the Dutch and the French, 1660-1690
England had strong trading interests in Europe; but its intercontinental trade was beginning to grow, especially in the East Indies and the Caribbean, and its colonies in America were expanding. By 1660, England, with its powerful army and navy, was a new force to be reckoned with in Europe. The Interregnum regimes had already used them in clashes with the Netherlands, France and Spain during the 1650s. Although a large part of the army was disbanded in 1660, Charles II retained some of it, though mainly for domestic use, and kept the navy.Charles II’s inclination to alliance with France was unsurprising, given his family relationship with its king. It was confirmed in his decision to sell England’s 1657 acquisition, Dunkirk, to France, and to marry the infanta of the crown of Portugal, France’s ally. Through it, England acquired a base at Tangier, on the North coast of Africa, and involvement in the contests of the European countries with the African states and piracy in the Mediterranean.
Charles also had a family relationship with the leaders of the Dutch republic, with his sister’s marriage to Prince William II. However, Anglo-Dutch competition for international trade which had helped to cause the war of 1652-4 remained strong, and royalist hostility to the republican party created further tensions. The re-enactment of the Rump Parliament’s Navigation Act in 1660 stressed English national interests in foreign trade, and the creation of new trading companies, to Africa (166?), emphasised the court’s interest in generating wealth from foreign trading ventures. England and the Dutch republic went to war in 1664-7; France, dragged reluctantly into the war in 1666 through its alliance with the republic, ensured an English defeat.
During the war, English popular concern about the ambition of France and its young king Louis XIV grew. Despite his anger at French intervention in the war of 1664-7, Charles did not share it. While he responded publicly to France’s attack on the Spanish Netherlands in 1668 with formal support for it and its allies in the Triple Alliance, he carried on secret negotiations with Louis aimed at the partition of the Netherlands. France and England commenced their war against the Dutch in 1672. Vigorous Dutch opposition created a stalemate, however, and Charles, finding it difficult to obtain funding for the war against strong opposition in Parliament, pulled out of it in 1674. Over the next four years, under parliamentary pressure, he tried to broker a peace treaty and eventually intervened in the war on the Dutch side. The marriage of Mary, the daughter of his brother James, to Prince William of Orange in 1677, suggested that Charles had accepted a new alignment with the enemies of France. The Treaty of Nijmegen brought the war to an inconclusive end in 1679.
Plunged into domestic political crisis over the next five years, England had little impact in continental politics, and the lack of parliamentary funding contributed to a decision to withdraw from Tangier in 1684. But a fear that James II would support a renewed assault on the Dutch republic helped to prompt Prince William’s invasion of England in 1688 and his acceptance of the English and the Scottish thrones in 1689. Very soon afterwards, both countries were at war with France.
