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Historical explanations need to keep step with the march of research if they are not to degenerate into empty cliches. It has long been a commonplace of 17th century history that the Anglo-Dutch Wars were the product of'commercial rivalry'. This essay, first published twenty years ago, attempted to analyse and redefine this overworked traditional concept so as to explain more precisely how it led to naval wars between the Dutch and the English. Two idees fixes of contemporary English thought seemed especially significant; one was the persistent consciousness of English inferiority and backwardness in economic affairs when compared with the Dutch; the other, compounding this, was the equally persistent conviction that strategically, England seemed well placed to wreck the Dutch maritime economy and bring the Republic to her knees in a naval war. These obsessive beliefs combined naturally with the specific influences and motives of powerful political and commercial lobbies to stoke the fires of aggression. Failing over several decades to make any visible progress by more or less peaceful policies, they turned, first, to economic warfare by means of propaganda and pseudo-legal claims to maritime sovereignty; finally (in 1652) to all-out eco­ nomic and naval warfare.

My first thanks must go to the Electors to Ford's Lectureship in English History in the University of Oxford, who honoured me with the invitation to discharge that formidable responsibility in 1969, generously interpreting the statute so as to allow me to deal with a subject which contained nearly as much Netherlands as it did English history. To Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford, and his fellow­ Electors, I am grateful for much encouragement, guidance and hospitality. The colleagues and pupils upon whom I have from time to time inflicted discussion of problems arising from my subject are far too numerous to be thanked individually. Two must nevertheless be singled out. Vivian Fisher of Jesus College, Cambridge, very kindly read the completed manuscript, and I have benefited by a number of characteristically penetrating comments and suggestions which he made. Geoffrey Parker, Fellow of Christ's College, generously allowed me to make use of his unique knowledge of the Spanish, French and Italian archives to check and supplement my own information. I am deeply grateful to both. Finally, it will be evident that quite apart from my own researches these lectures owe a heavy debt to many scholars, Dutch, Belgian, American and British especially, who have worked in this or related fields of inquiry. I am not less indebted to those from whose interpretations I have ventured to differ than to those with whom I have found myself in agreement.