Navigation Acts - Navigation Ordinance 1651

Navigation Ordinance 1651

For more details on this topic, see First Anglo-Dutch War.

The Navigation Act bill was passed in October 1651 by the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England led by Oliver Cromwell, reinforcing a longstanding principle of government policy that English trade should be carried in English vessels. It was a reaction to the failure of an English diplomatic mission to The Hague seeking a joining of the Commonwealth by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, after the States of Holland had made some cautious overtures to Cromwell to counter the monarchal aspirations of stadtholder William II of Orange. The stadtholder had suddenly died however and the States were now embarrassed by Cromwell taking the idea quite too seriously. The English proposed the joint conquest of all remaining Spanish and Portuguese possessions. England would take America and the Dutch Africa and Asia. As the Dutch, however, had just ended their war with Spain and already taken over most Portuguese colonies in Asia, they saw little advantage in this grandiose scheme and proposed a free trade agreement as an alternative to a full political union. This again was unacceptable to the British, who would be unable to compete on such a level playing field, and was seen by them as a deliberate affront.

The Act banned foreign ships from transporting goods from outside Europe to England or its colonies and banned third-party countries' ships from transporting goods from a country elsewhere in Europe to England. These rules specifically targeted the Dutch who controlled a large section of Europe's international trade and even much of England's coastal shipping. It excluded the Dutch from essentially all trade with England, as the Dutch economy was competitive, not complementary with the English, and the two countries therefore exchanged few commodities. This Anglo-Dutch trade, however, constituted only a small fraction of total Dutch trade flows. The Act is often mentioned as a major cause of the First Anglo-Dutch War, though it was only part of a larger British policy to engage in war after the negotiations had failed. The English naval victories in 1653 (the Battle of Portland, the Battle of the Gabbard and the Battle of Scheveningen) showed the supremacy of the Commonwealth navy in home waters. However, farther afield the Dutch predominated and were able to close down English commerce in the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Both countries held each other in a stifling embrace.

The Treaty of Westminster (1654) ended the impasse. The Dutch acknowledged the Act in this peace, but it seems to have had very little influence on their trade. The Act offered England only limited solace. It could not limit the deterioration of England's overseas trading position, except in the cases where England herself was the principal consumer, like the Canaries' wine trade and the trade in Puglian olive oil. In the trade with the West Indies the Dutch kept up a flourishing "smuggling" trade, thanks to the preference of English planters for Dutch import goods and the better deal the Dutch offered in the sugar trade. The Dutch colony of New Netherland offered a loophole (through intercolonial trade) wide enough to drive a shipload of Virginian tobacco through.