United States or Azerbaijan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the memorable period of Frederick Henry the foundations were laid of an empire overseas; Dutch seamen and traders had penetrated into every ocean and had almost monopolised the carrying-trade of Europe; and at the same time Holland had become the chosen home of scholarship, science, literature and art.
Before 1581 Lisbon had been a great centre of the Dutch carrying-trade; and many Netherlanders had taken service in Portuguese vessels and were familiar with the routes both to the East Indies and to Brazil. It was the closing of the port of Lisbon to Dutch vessels that led the enterprising merchants of Amsterdam and Middelburg to look further afield.
Lowndes then sounded the alarm that the New England states would monopolize the carrying-trade and charge ruinous freights, and he drew a harrowing picture of warehouses packed to bursting with rice and indigo spoiling because the owners could not afford to pay the Yankee skippers' prices for carrying their goods to market.
The claim of England to seize enemy's goods in neutral ships bore hard upon neutral powers, and especially upon those of the Baltic and upon Holland, into whose hands, and those of the Austrian Netherlands, the war had thrown much of the European carrying-trade; while the products of the Baltic, naval stores and grain, were those which England was particularly interested in forbidding to her enemies.
By a further provision, although American ships might take goods to England, the carrying-trade between the different colonies was strictly confined to British ships. Next, in order to protect British manufacturers from competition, it was thought necessary to prohibit the colonists from manufacturing.
The English had a small number of vessels in the Mediterranean and the Levant, and frequented the Spanish and Portuguese harbours, but as yet they hardly interfered with the Dutch carrying-trade in those waters.
It is only fair, however, to the arbitrary king to point out how earnestly he endeavoured to promote the material and industrial welfare of the whole land, and to encourage to the best of his power literary, scientific and educational progress. In Holland the carrying-trade, which had so long been the chief source of the country's wealth, had been utterly ruined by Napoleon's Continental System.
The exigencies of her continental position had led to the neglect of her navy, which in those days of war and privateering involved a loss of carrying-trade and commerce: and although she held her head high through the war, the symptoms of weakness were apparent in her failing armaments.
The British merchant-ships, being better protected than those of the Dutch, gained the reputation of being far safer carriers, and the carrying-trade naturally passed more and more into their hands; while the habit of employing them in preference, once established, was likely to continue.
Agriculture, which increases the products of the earth, and manufactures, which multiply the products of man's industry; internal trade routes and regulations, by which the exchange of products from the interior to the exterior is made easier; shipping and customs regulations tending to throw the carrying-trade into French hands, and so to encourage the building of French shipping, by which the home and colonial products should be carried back and forth; colonial administration and development, by which a far-off market might be continually growing up to be monopolized by the home trade; treaties with foreign States favoring French trade, and imposts on foreign ships and products tending to break down that of rival nations, all these means, embracing countless details, were employed to build up for France Production; Shipping; Colonies and Markets, in a word, sea power.
Word Of The Day