In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the relations, and especially the economic relations, between states were particularly hostile and harsh, because the new economico-political creations were for the first time trying their strength, and because it was the first time that such considerable political forces were available for the pursuit of commercial, agricultural, and industrial ends,forces which might seem, if only properly employed, to promise untold wealth to every state. In all ages history has been wont to treat national power and national wealth as sisters; perhaps they were never so closely associated as then. The temptation to the greater states of that time to use their political power for conflict with their economic competitors, and when they could, for their destruction, was too great for them not to succumb time after time, and either to set international law at naught or twist it to their purposes.
Commercial competition, even in times nominally of peace, degenerated into a state of undeclared hostility: it plunged nations into one war after another, and gave all wars a turn in the direction of trade, industry, and colonial gain, such as they never had before or after.
It has been often enough remarked that the period of the wars of religion was followed by one in which economic and commercial interests governed the whole foreign policy of European states.
It is true that even the expedition of Gustavus Adolphus to Germany was a move in the game which was being played for the trade of the Baltic. In like manner, the later wars of Sweden, aiming at the conquest of Poland, and the aggressive movements of Russia towards the Swedish and German provinces on the Baltic, were all directed towards the acquisition and domination of the Baltic trade.
As in the East Indies, the ancient source of supply for Oriental wares, for pearls and spices, the Portuguese violently pushed their way in first, annihilated Arabian trade with unheard-of brutality, and imposed upon all the Asiatic tribes and states the rule that they should carry on trade with Portuguese alone; so in later times the Dutch were able to drive the Portuguese out, to get for themselves a like monopoly of the spice trade, to keep other Europeans away by craft and by mercantile talent, - if need were, by insolent violence and bloodshed, and to hold the people of the East in commercial subjection. The heroic struggle of the Dutch for religious liberty and for freedom from the Spanish yoke displays itself, when looked at in a "dry light," as a century-long war for the conquest of East Indian colonies, and an equally long privateering assault on the silver fleets of Spain and the Spanish-American colonial trade. These Dutch, so lauded by the naif free-trader of our day on account of the low customs-duties of their early days, were from the first the sternest and most warlike of monopolists after the mercantilist fashion that the world has ever seen. As they suffered no trading ship, whether European or Asiatic, in East Indian waters, without a Dutch pass to be bought only with gold; as by force of arms and by treaty they kept the Belgian port, Antwerp, shut up against commerce; as they crushed the Prussian colony in Africa, and countless other settlements of other nations; so at home they forbade all herring-fishers to take their wares to any but the Dutch market, and prohibited their passing into foreign service, or taking to foreign countries the implements of their craft. Although at the beginning they had low duties on imports and exports, they resorted constantly to arbitrary prohibitions whenever they thought they could thereby further Dutch interests; in 1671 they imposed the heaviest duties on French goods; and, in the eighteenth century, when they had become too pusillanimous to wage war for their commercial ends, they resorted to the extremest protectionism. In the time of their prosperity they were carrying on war well-nigh all the time, and war for commercial ends; and they shewed more skill than any other state, in the seventeenth century, in getting out of their wars fresh commercial advantages. Their obstinate pursuit of monopoly gave rise to England's navigation law and Colbert's tariff; and attracted England and France themselves towards a like policy of pursuing narrowly mercantilist objects by force of arms. The bloody and costly wars of England with the Dutch were, Noorden tells us, at bottom nothing but a duel over the maintenance of the Navigation Acts. The French invasion of Holland (1672) was an answer to their foolish and extravagant reprisals against Colbert's tariff.
The War of the Spanish Succession, like the War of the Grand Alliance in 1689-1697, was, primarily, the struggle of England and Holland, in concert, against the growing industrial and commercial preponderance of France, and against the danger of the union of French trade with the colonial power of Spain.(34*) It was a struggle for the lucrative Spanish-American trade which mainly occasioned the antagonism of England and France till after the middle of the eighteenth century. The supply of the Spanish-American colonies with European manufactures could only take place by means of the great West Indian smuggling trade, or through Spain, i.e. the Spanish port-towns. As Spanish industry supplied only a part of the need, the question was, whom Spain.
