So, this summer while I have been looking for my next corporate role, which I just landed BTW, I have been supporting Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia as one of Historic Philadelphia’s history makers. Not only is this a great way to keep my historical personae sharp, history makers are 1^st person interpreters, but you get to interact with tourist from all over the world and discuss history.  For me, this also means that I get to flex my linguistic talents as well.  One of the side benefits from being the interpreter who will interact in languages other than English is you get some really cool questions.  Saturday, I got an interesting one that required a bit of research…

Why did the Dutch support the American Revolution?  They were a tiny country in internal political uproar, constantly competing with England’s commercial “companies,” and hence always under the threat of war with the British.  Unlike France and Spain who were superpowers and waged a calculated cold war against England (until France sent troops to Rhode Island to support Washington), the Netherlands’ support of the American Revolution was a very dangerous proposition and they had more to lose than to gain in throwing in their hat on the American side.  So why did they do it?

The Dutch Republic (the Netherlands), was a federal republic of united provinces established in 1588, as the world’s first capitalist nation.  They invented the idea of a stock exchange and the world’s oldest is in Amsterdam. The Dutch East India Company (the biggest rival to Britian’s East India Company) and the Dutch West India Company (which dominated the worlds spice and sugar trades) had colonies all over the globe. Dutch settlers even founded cities like New York City (originally New Amsterdam) to secure trading centers in North America. This economic presence persisted long after the British took over former Dutch colonies (like New Castle DE) and American Colonist enjoyed strong trading ties (even if some of these were illegal under the Townsend Acts) with the Netherlands.

When hostilities broke out during the American Revolution, these trading relationships often placed the Dutch Republic in a precarious position. Dutch merchants sent war material to their trading partners in America as early as 1774. Ships full of gunpowder, muskets, and cannonballs sailing from Dutch Harbors to the new world (often through intermediate ports of call in the Caribbean, outraged the British demanding that the Dutch Estates General curtail this trade. 

The Dutch government officially conceded as they could not could not afford a war with Britian, but Dutch merchants did not.  Capitalism won the day and the pursuit of the Gilder meant that trade continued.  Meanwhile the Dutch Republic as officially “Neutral” and the government was supporting neither side of this war.

The Netherlands officially did not choose to support the American Revolution.  They also did not choose to oppose it (which enraged the British).  Individual Dutch merchants continued to sell war materiel to the American Revolutionaries and, more importantly, the French (hence the weapon of choice in the French Arsenal was a musket named for the Dutch/Belgian city of Charleville).

Eventually, Britain responded by aggressively searching and seizing Dutch ships and shipments forcing the Republic to join the Russian-sponsored League of Armed Neutrality.  This league armed ships and took actions to protect all vessels flying the flag of nations neutral in what had become a world war.  Finally, Britain declared war on the Netherlands when France officially entered the conflict in 1778. The resulting Anglo-Dutch War is arguably some of the last global battles of the American Revolution, and did not end until 1784 a year after the formal armistice between the new United States and Great Britain.

170 years later, it will be the American People (not necessarily the Army) who argued to send the 101st to the Netherlands and help them become liberated from German Fascists’. Capitalism is not heartless, in fact, its honest and friends are those who share common goals — political, social, and economic goals. The Dutch PEOPLE are our great allies and here is Philadelphia, we have a city that aspires to be more like the ideals of the Dutch (freedom for each person to live as they please, love who the please, worship as they please, and conduct business with who they please) than the rest of the nation.

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