Challenge; Dutch Republic stays the leading sea power

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
The challenge is to have the Dutch Republic stay the leading sea power in the world, survive Napoleon and keep being the greatest maritime power in the 1800s.
 
For me, Netherlands cannot stay a powerful sea leader with French Revolution

-Batavian Republic, puppet state of République Française
-Invasion of Dutch colonies (like the Cape) by United Kingdom because the french domination of Netherlands

In fact, it would be preferable if Dutch keep a part of Brazil against portugese views and most important, New Amsterdam and New Netherland against England

So it's necessite at last three POD
 

MrP

Banned
ISTR watching a documentary once that suggested a prime problem with the Netherlands staying at the top was a lack of coal native to the country. Now, please pull me up if I'm misremembering, but the suggestion was that the peat used by the Dutch couldn't reach temperatures as high as the coal used by other nations, allowing them to produce higher quality metal than the Dutch.

So perhaps the Dutch expand to snare some coalfields?
 
ISTR watching a documentary once that suggested a prime problem with the Netherlands staying at the top was a lack of coal native to the country. Now, please pull me up if I'm misremembering, but the suggestion was that the peat used by the Dutch couldn't reach temperatures as high as the coal used by other nations, allowing them to produce higher quality metal than the Dutch.

So perhaps the Dutch expand to snare some coalfields?

Belgium has coals fields and so does the Ruhr area in Germany which is close to the Netherlands. So if the Netherlands can incorporate them it could solve that problem.

In my opinion one of the majaor disadvantages the Netherlands has as oposed to England and France is the smaller population. The other is its government. The rulers of the Netherlands were the merchants in Holland and only interested in making a whole lot of money. They hardly cared for the rest of the country (I vaguely remember they even tried to sell it). Because they only cared for money they didn't bothered with things that cost money. So they disbanded the army after the Eighty year war and reformed the fleet with as only funtion to defend merchants vessels. This let to the defeat of the navy in the first Anglo-Dutch war and the defeat of the army in the Franco-Dutch war. It also meant they didn't care for any enlargement of the Netherlands. i believe that the southern Netherlands could have been incorporated into the rest of the Netherlands if the regents had wanted to.

So my suggestion for the Netherlands which remains a stronger seapower would be this.
A more succesful Eighty year war/Dutch revolt, which includes Flanders and Antwerp, which remain protestant. Remaining protestant is important and possibly even crucial. Not because protestantism always lead to stronger nation or something like that (because that isn't true), but because protestantism leads Flanders and Antwerp to being equals to Holland. This breaks the enourmous power Holland had in the republic. Another way would be equality for Catholics, but that seems hard to me in those days.
This Netherlands is willing to expand and get the rest of the southern Netherlands (Wallonia) and part of northwestern Germany, including the Ruhr area and maybe East-Frisia, Munster (maybe it gets it during the Clevian succesian struggle or in the Thirty year war).
This would mean that the Netherlands has the coal supplies MrP claimed it needed and a larger population base.
 
What about no Navigation Acts in England? The british would hardly became a naval power without those acts.
 
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The rulers of the Netherlands were the merchants in Holland and only interested in making a whole lot of money. They hardly cared for the rest of the country (I vaguely remember they even tried to sell it). Because they only cared for money they didn't bothered with things that cost money.

What else should they have cared about? It seems odd to me to say that the British didn't care about money, after all.
 
What else should they have cared about? It seems odd to me to say that the British didn't care about money, after all.

For merchants and traders it is ok to only care about money, for rulers of a country it isn't. There are such things as national security or other things. I blame the Dutch regents and their shortsightness (is this a word?) that they completely neglected the Dutch army and navy after the Dutch war of independence ended. This lead to the defeat of the Dutch navy in the first Anglo-Dutch war and the defeat of the Dutch armies in the year of disaster when the French (and Munster and Cologne) overran half of the Netherlands. If we hadn't had the Dutch waterline this would have been the end of the Netherlands. There is a reason de Witt was lynched by a angry mob.
 
Guys

There are a couple of other problems that the Dutch face in trying to remain a primary naval power. Along with a couple of other ones that while less crucial mitigate against continued Dutch naval strength.

a) They would have to get pretty damned large, at least as large as France, to avoid France's fate. Being unable to maintain both the world's largest/most powerful fleet and successfully defending their land borders and interests. Some expansion as suggested could actually make this worse. Both because a large reasonably wealthy Netherlands is a bigger target for rivals and because it takes them further from the natural defences of their heartland, which enabled them to survive both the war of independence against Spain and then the crisis in the 1680's when they faced both France and Britain.

b) The shallow waters of the Dutch coast made it difficult to build ships large enough to compete with rivals. They were still able to produce tough sailors, the battle in 1798 at the Texel [sp?] was a tough one. However most of the Dutch ships by that time had no more than 50-60 cannon and they simply won't have been able to compete against the larger ships of the other powers.

c) Come to think about it the intensely settled and flat homeland has another problem in terms of a distinct shortage of high quality timber. Britain and France were having problems by the end of the Napoleonic period themselves in this but had decent stocks of natural timber still and access to the big trees needed for the masts and the like elsewhere.

d) Another geographical problem, as Germany found in the 20thC was that they are too easily isolated from the wider ocean. Britain is in an ideal position for this but if somehow it was irrelevant and France was the main rival to the Dutch say they still have a decent change to restrict Dutch access to the ocean and hence ability to use maritime power.

Steve
 
Dutch naval dominance was knocked out by the one-two punch of the War of the League of Augsburg and the War of Spanish Succession.

In the both wars, the Republic had to field a 100,000 men army in the Spanish Netherlands to defend against the French. During that time, investments in the navy were much less than they could have been.

In fact, during the Nine Years War, William III ordered that the combined Anglo-Dutch fleet would always be commanded by an Englishmen, despite the fact that in 1688, the Dutch fleet was superiour to the English one (otherwise there would obviously not have been a Glorious Revolution).

After the end of the War of Spanish Succession, the English/British had taken over naval supremacy and the Republic was almost broke from wars that were beyond its strength. Money for the navy was in short supply and Britain was an ally anyway.

Absent these wars, Dutch naval dominance could have maybe lasted till ~1750, but afterwards, the beginning Industrial Revolution and the population disparity would have been too big to keep up with the Royal Navy.
 
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