ENGLAND AND THE

DUTCH REPUBLIC IN

THE SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY

England and the Dutch Republic were anomalies in the seven­
teenth century. At a time when aggressive European monarchs were forg­
ing absolute states (see Chapter 7), these two seafaring, trading nations
maintained representative governments.
The Stuart monarchs’ flirtation with absolutism in England brought bit­
ter discord, resistance, and civil war. In the Dutch Republic, which had
earned its independence in 1648 after a long war against Spanish absolute
rule, the prosperous merchants who dominated the economic and political
life of the country brushed aside the absolutist challenge of the House of
Orange, which wanted to establish a hereditary monarchy.
In both England and the Netherlands, religious divisions accentuated the
struggle between absolutism and constitutionalism. Both the protracted
revolt of the largely Protestant Dutch against Catholic Spain and the Eng­
lish Civil War echoed the religious struggles between Catholics and Protes­
tants during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) in Central Europe (see
Chapter 4). The Dutch had risen up in open rebellion in 1566 in part
because the Spanish Habsburgs attempted to impose the Catholic Inquisi­
tion on what had become a Protestant country. In England, Kings James I
and Charles I attempted to return the English Church to the elaborate ritu­
als that many people associated with Catholicism, thereby pitting the
monarchy against Parliament. This constitutional crisis led to the defeat and
execution of Charles I in 1649, the fall of the monarchy, and in 1688, to the
“Glorious Revolution,” which brought King William III and Queen Mary to
the throne. Parliament, which historically represented landed interests, suc­

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