Geopolitics Because of the inherently competitive nature of
Citations (1)
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers whole source · open book
Hence the justifiable alarm, during the fierce toe-to-toe battles of the War of Spanish Succession (1702–1713), at the heavy losses caused by Marlborough’s willingness to launch the Anglo-Dutch armies into bloody frontal assaults against the French.23 The English alliance which William III had cemented in 1689 was simultaneously the saving of the United Provinces and a substantial contributory factor in its decline as an independent great power—in rather the same way in which, over two hundred years later, Lend-Lease and the United States alliance would both rescue and help undermine a British Empire which was fighting for survival under Marlborough’s distant relative Winston Churchill. The inadequacy of Dutch resources in the various wars against France between 1688 and 1748 meant that they needed to concentrate about three-quarters of defense expenditures upon the military, thus neglecting their fleet—whereas the British assumed an increasing share of the maritime and colonial campaigns, and of the commercial benefits therefrom. As London and Bristol merchants flourished, so, to put it crudely, Amsterdam traders suffered.
chapter: Geopolitics