A bit about Early Modern Europe,

and a lot about…

And its place in

Early Modern Dutch History
The time of Early Modern Europe was rife with change,
innovation, and social upheaval.
Often characterized as starting with
Gutenberg’s printing press, or
perhaps the end of the Byzantine
Empire, this period was the
beginning of the rise of
mercantilism and many of the
political and economic concepts
we experience today.

The emergence of many modern

scientific concepts did not set well
with the Church. After all, things
ought to be the way they’ve always
been, right? Right!
 Secularized politics became a reality, the
Protestant Revolution began to take hold, and
feudalism began to give way to capitalism.

to fade…
i c b e gan
Mag

New ideas of how our world is put

together spread concurrently with
savage witch-hunts, and Europeans
circumnavigated the globe…
Things were changing in a hurry.
 The harsh climate of the Little Ice Age forced the farmers
of the Netherlands to drastically change their agricultural
methods in the 15-1600s.

Windmills and dikes were used

to drain areas filled with fresh and salt
water, creating a unique landscape.

They called them

“polders”, and grass,
clover, and other types of
animal fodder grew very well there.
The farmers raised many cows, who thoroughly
approved of all that great fodder, and produced
large quantities of milk, which was made into
lots and lots of cheese at places like Gouda and
Edam. Kind of became one of the mainstays
of the Dutch economy.

There was a lot of cheese!

So the Dutch exported a
great deal of that lovely
cheese to England and
other countries, at a
very reasonable price.
Too reasonable, the
British thought. So, they
enacted the Navigation Act of 1651.
The Dutch felt that the main purpose of said Navigation Act
(and others that followed) was to cripple the freight trade
on which Dutch commerce depended. They were right.

War was declared on 8 July 1652, after numerous incidents

between Dutch shipping and English privateers.
The conflict lasted from 1652 to 1654, and was the first of three Dutch-
English wars to be fought in the 17th Century, basically over…
you guessed it!

Oh, ok, it was about butter, too…

 ss.com/e-books/db08oct.pdf
om/content/european-agriculture-a114546
st.org/f2/K/history/universe_to_man/Uv_1500s_agriculture_KH.htm
il-wars.co.uk/glossary/navigation-act.htm
il-wars.co.uk/military/first-anglo-dutch-war.htm
.edu/courses/westciv/science/03.shtml
rlin.mpg.de/en/research/projects/amuletsEarlyModernEurope http://www.eh-resources.org/timeli