Kettle War - Background

Background

After the Dutch Revolt, the northern Netherlands formed their own republic, while the southern Netherlands remained with Spain. Since 1585, the northern Netherlands had closed off the Scheldt, so that the harbours of Antwerp and Ghent could not be reached by trade ships, and this remained so after the Revolt. This gave an enormous impulse to the economy of the northern Netherlands (namely Amsterdam), but the southern cities were dislodged from their important trading position. The closure of the Scheldt was confirmed by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, to which the Spanish agreed. After the War of the Spanish Succession, the Spanish Netherlands had been ceded to Austria by the Treaty of Rastatt in 1714.

Since Europe's "Diplomatic Revolution" of 1756, Austria, and thus the Austrian Netherlands, had been in an alliance with France. Prussia, France's former ally, entered into an alliance with Britain. The change, sensational at the time, made nonsense of all the strategic assumptions and plans, current since 1713, based on the premises that the southern Netherlands would serve as a barrier between the Republic and France and that the Republic's security depended on close ties with Austria and Britain. It was a shift which undoubtedly made it ever more attractive for the Dutch to remain neutral in any conflicts between both Britain and France, and Austria and Prussia.