Relations between our two countries go back to the Middle Ages when the booming Flemish cloth trade became dependent upon supplies of wool from England, and Dutch weavers were invited by Edward III to settle in the towns of Eastern England. 

 

A shared belief in Protestantism later promoted strong political ties.  In the 16th century, England and the Northern Provinces of the Low Countries were firm allies against Catholic Spain.  Queen Elizabeth I described the Dutch then as our “most ancient and familiar neighbours”.  During this time many Dutchmen fled religious persecution to settle in England, notably in East Anglia (a quarter of the population of Norwich at this time spoke Dutch).  Academic links were forged too.  In 1510 the great Dutch theologian Erasmus left Rotterdam to teach in Cambridge.

 

In the 17th century the Dutch and the English were Europe’s dominant trading nations.  This was the Dutch “Golden Age.”  The Dutch navy was the biggest in the world.  The Dutch East India Company - probably the world’s first multinational company - was at the height of its commercial power.  Dutch science and art flourished.  This was the age of Rembrandt and Vermeer.  Dutch painters and architects were lauded by the English nobility (Chatsworth and Burghley House were designed by Dutchmen).  But mercantile and colonial rivalry was fierce and lead to the outbreak of three Anglo-Dutch wars in the space of 20 years (1652-1674).  Each war was short but hard-fought.  In the second war the Dutch navy, under the command of Admiral de Ruyter (as famous in the Netherlands as Lord Nelson is in England) sailed up the Medway as far as Chatham, destroying English warships along the way and returning home victorious with the British flagship as a trophy. 

 

 

At the end of the 17th century, once peace had returned, Prince Willem III (then “Stadhouder” of the Northern Provinces) married King Charles II’s niece, Mary.  To assure Protestant succession, William and Mary were invited to the English throne.  They accepted and ruled England (and Scotland) and the Netherlands for 12 years until William’s death in 1702.  They lived in Hampton Court Palace, near London, and at Loo Palace on the outskirts of Apeldoorn.

 

The Dutch later supported the rebel colonies in the American War of Independence at the end of the 18th century.  This lead to the fourth and final Anglo-Dutch war.  But these wars were the exception.  The two countries have more often than not been military allies rather than enemies.  During the Hundred Years War between England and France (1338-1453) Dutch soldiers and sailors fought alongside the English to protect their trade routes.  Scottish forces helped fight the Spanish in the Dutch War of Independence (1568-1648).  And the Dutch fought alongside Wellington’s army to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. 

 

Relations between our two countries were particularly strong in the period following the end of the Second World War.  After the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 Queen Wilhelmina and her government escaped to England, where they remained in exile (at Stratton House in Piccadilly, London) until their country was liberated in 1945 by the Allied Forces.  It is thought that around 220,000 Dutch civilians died during the occupation, many from starvation during the appalling “hunger winter” of 1944-45.  The total includes around 100,000 Jews who perished in Nazi concentration camps.  The liberation is thought to have cost the lives of around 13,000 British servicemen. 

 

 

The immaculately kept allied war cemeteries across the Netherlands, and the many moving war memorial services, such as the one which takes place every September in Oosterbeek (to commemorate those who died in the Battle of Arnhem), demonstrate the deep gratitude still felt by the Dutch people for the sacrifices made more than half a century ago by British servicemen.