Introduction
The author of the True Interest of Europe, a pamphlet justifying the Dutch war against France in 1702, dedicated his work to the ‘free fought Batavians’ who had taken up arms in the past against the ‘mighty King of Spain’ to preserve their ‘Liberty and Religion’. And they should do so again, now that the King of France threatened their ‘dearly bought freedom’. The Forty Years’ War, the cluster of wars between the Dutch Republic and France between 1672 and 1713, was interpreted by the Dutch through such narratives. The ‘foreign policy story’ of the defence of liberty against tyranny was rooted in the myth of Batavians revolting against the Roman Empire, but also rehashed Reformation narratives about the defence of true religion against Catholicism. The Forty Years’ War itself saw the emergence of a new ‘story’, the rise of France as a ‘universal monarchy’. The pamphleteer argued that the King of France had attempted to ‘elevate himself as universal monarch of Europe’.1 These foreign policy discourses were thus rooted in identity discourses. The Dutch Republic was represented as a free Protestant state, whereas France was Catholic and tyrannical, intent on enslaving Europe.
The Forty Years’ War against Louis XIV has been primarily studied through the prism of realism and has been explained by scholars such as Joris Voorhoeve as a ‘long battle against French imperialism’.2 According to Johan Aalbers, ‘the Republic was forced…to fight a land war’ between 1672 and 1713.3 This strategic determinism precludes choice and debate and renders foreign policy discourses irrelevant; these are just discourses. Until quite recently, most historians have argued that there was little domestic debate on the direction of foreign policy during this period; in the face of obvious aggression, debate was hardly needed.
This book intends to refute this image. It argues that the historiography of the Forty Years’ War is flawed. The image of the Dutch Republic fighting against ‘French imperialism’ is not an objective interpretation but a selective interpretation of a seventeenth-century narrative which in itself was discursively constructed. Indeed, the very terminology, such as ‘universal monarchy’, used by historians is borrowed directly from seventeenth-century identity discourses. Likewise, the modern realist interpretation of the Forty Years’ War as a conflict to restore the balance of power in Europe is unsatisfactory, as balance of power is not a ‘timeless’ concept of international relations (IR) but simply a discursive prism through which contemporaries viewed the conflict. I thus argue that the modern interpretation of the Forty Years’ War as a major struggle against French expansionism is not in any meaningful way ‘objective’, but rooted in seventeenth-century foreign policy discourses.
This book calls for a reinterpretation of the Forty Years’ War through a methodological reshuffle. I argue that seventeenth-century discourses were not so much a reflection of strategic reality, but were largely responsible for moulding that reality. I take my cue from recent developments in IR theory based in discourse analysis. This book will show how ‘basic discourses’, foundational stories on IR, shaped the debates and the direction of Dutch foreign policy, discourses which were constructed from early modern theories of IR and constructions of identities. The conduct of foreign policy is not studied as a sequence of diplomatic events, but rather as a contest between grand narratives, in which views on foreign policy are intimately connected to representations of identity.
The overall purpose of this book is threefold: first, to reinterpret the Forty Years’ War as a critical event in Dutch history; second, to integrate recent developments in IR theory into the study of early modern history and third, to shed new light on the formative years of international relations in Europe between the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the Peace of Utrecht (1713).
The Forty Years’ War
Before explaining the rationale of this argument, let us first examine the outlines of the Forty Years’ War according to current historiography. The term applies to the conflict between the Dutch Republic and France from 1672 until 1713. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) established Dutch independence from Spain after the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648). In the period that followed (1648–1672), the Dutch Republic reached the zenith of its international status through its military and political power matched by its commercial successes. The Dutch pursued a foreign policy of aloofness and neutrality and concentrated on overseas trade.4 However, during the spring of 1672 the Dutch Republic was attacked by the massed armies of France, Münster, Cologne and the English and French navies. Although England failed to defeat the Dutch fleet, French, Cologne and Münster armies invaded from the east and crushed the small and unprepared Dutch army. Only Holland held out behind the Waterlinie, a defensive string of rivers and inundated lands. This ‘Year of Disaster’ seemed to imply the fall of the Republic altogether, but the Dutch managed to fend off the invasion, thereby safeguarding the integrity of the core provinces of the state. By 1674 England had signed the Peace of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War, but the war against France lasted until 1678. The Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678) was only the start of a prolonged struggle with France. A ‘cold war’ with France lasted throughout the 1680s and lapsed into open conflict in 1688. A conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and France over Cologne in conjunction with the Dutch invasion of England triggered the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697), which saw the emergence of the Grand Alliance of England, the Habsburg Emperor and the Dutch Republic. The coalition war against France, interrupted by the Peace of Ryswick (1697), restarted in 1702. The War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713) witnessed the climax of the struggle that brought the participants, and certainly the Dutch Republic, to exhaustion and ended in 1713. Forty years of almost continuous warfare had fundamentally undermined state solvency, and the Peace of Utrecht (1713) marked the end of the Dutch Republic as a great power.5
In effect, the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713) together seemed to form a struggle that lasted four decades. Modern historians therefore see this conflict as a ‘Forty Years’ War’, a term not used by contemporaries.6 As such it is a conceptual framework; the coherence of this string of conflicts was provided by their root cause: France’s tendency to expand and the response from other European powers to check that expansionism. Since French aggression was axiomatic for Dutch politicians, they had no choice but to resist, and therefore the wars were inevitable and needed no further explanation. Johan Aalbers argued that ‘The march of France aiming for a “universal monarchy and religion” during the forty years after 1672…had forced the Republic more and more to wage a continental war’. Thus, a balance of power against France was formed of which Stadtholder William III became the ‘architect’.7 Although a number of historians have nuanced the image of an aggressive France, the metanarrative of French expansionism remains largely intact in modern historiography. According to Curtis Wood, ‘One of the basic facts of European politics in the period 1688–1714 was the menace posed to the states of Europe by the imperialism of Louis XIV’.8 For Simon Groenveld, ‘The years between 1660 and 1715 form a distinct period in European history: the period of French expansion under Louis XIV.’9
Historians have thus generally presented the war against France as necessary, and therefore differences of opinion in governmental circles were unlikely. This is not to say that criticism against war policy was wholly absent, but it was usually articulated only towards the closing years of the war when economic dislocation and financial exhaustion set in.10 The start of war usually saw consensus about war policy. This view chimes well with the development of revisionist historiography on Dutch domestic policy over the last few decades, which has rejected the traditional view of two national parties, Republicans and Orangists, fighting over the direction of foreign policy and the position of the stadtholder.11 Most historians have argued that at crucial moments, such as 1688 and 1702, the necessity of war silenced debate.12
Revisionist Historiography
This current understanding of a Forty Years’ War is based upon a set of assumptions that need some further exploration. They are rooted in two theories known as structure of politics and realism. The historiography that these theories have produced I describe as revisionist, since it rethought traditional assumptions about political history.13 Revisionism matured in the 1960s and 1970s in the field of early modern European political history and yielded a wave of studies based on thorough archival research as well as new theoretical insights.
The first revisionist trend has been the ascendancy of the structure-of-politics interpretation of Dutch domestic politics. Traditional historiography distinguished two national parties, the Republicans and the Orangists. The Republicans were led by the regents in the Province of Holland and valued free trade, a republican and decentralized state, a neutral foreign policy based on naval strength, and religious tolerance. The Orangists were led by the quasi-monarchical stadtholder (provincial governor) a...