Caribbean Rivalry and the Anglo‐spanish Peace of 1604

An association for the West Indies? English plans for a West India Company 1621–29

“…This colonial development, moreover, was complicated by rival interests at court and in the city, involving the Anglo-Dutch firm headed by Sir William Courteen, whose patron was the Earl of Pembroke, a London merchant syndicate led by Thomas Warner and Ralph Merifield, who looked to the Earl of Carlisle for support, as well as the Earl of Warwick and his group. 60 Indeed, as Newton appreciated, the English presence in the West Indies was largely due to the activities of the fleets of the Dutch WIC, whose attacks on Spanish shipping in the Caribbean decisively weakened the defences of the imperial power, and helped to pave the way for settlement and plantation by others. Despite the evident interest of the English monarchy in a West India Company, practical support for its formation -or for colonization in general -remained exceedingly limited and was an incidental by product of the war with Spain.…”

“…Despite earnest efforts by the Spaniards to exclude English interests from the Caribbean, the peace treaty left the question of the Indies trade studiously vague. 6 Thereafter English trade in the West Indies grew, often with unofficial support and encouragementalbeit erratic and uncertain in nature. Commercial expansion was by no means uniform; rather it remained piecemeal and faltering as the Spanish monarchy made repeated, yet increasingly unsuccessful attempts, to reassert its former monopoly in the area.…”

Why Did the Dutch Revolt Last Eighty Years?

“…Oldenbarnevelt made full use of this precedent and, in the end, the same solution had to be adopted in the Netherlands. 31 In February 1608 the States-General 'roundly' informed the Spanish delegation to the peace talks, 'that they intended to continue their trade with the East and the West Indies by means of a general peace, truce or war, each on its own merits.' 32 It was this attitude which determined that there would be a truce and not a peace in the Low Countries' War in 1609: Spain was not prepared to abandon for ever her monopoly status in the New World, but neither was she prepared to continue fighting in the Netherlands for the sake of the Portuguese Indies (the Dutch had been chased out of the Caribbean-albeit temporarily-by a Spanish fleet in 1605).…”