The Framework of Casualty Care during the Anglo-Dutch Wars

The framework of casualty care during the Anglo-Dutch Wars has been found severely wanting by historians of naval medicine. This judgement is grounded on the fact that naval hospitals were constructed eventually in the 1750s, and because the hospitalization of sick and hurt mariners conforms better to a Weberian model of state and military modernization. This article argues that the measures for casualty care erected during the Dutch wars adhered to an early modern model of state formation. The framework of care extended the scope and social depth of politically involved people. It failed because the carers were consistently underfunded, not because locally based care was inherently unworkable or insufficiently bureaucratic and centralized.