This important contribution to the study of Anglo-Dutch national rivalry in the seventeenth century emerged from two conferences held in 2017, one in Britain and one in the Netherlands. They commemorated not the anniversary of the Glorious Revolution, however, but the successful raid on the English fleet at the Medway in 1667. Ominously published during Brexit negotiations, the volume's subject matter focuses on the three Anglo-Dutch wars (the last concluding in 1674), which saw the evolution of naval warfare into line-ahead tactics of massive warships purpose-built for fearsome broadside battering. It also treats the earlier overseas low-intensity conflicts of the company states that helped to provoke open warfare between their sovereign governments, and some later events looking toward 1688–89, which can be seen as a successful invasion-coup resulting from an alliance of the governing patricians and William III of Orange (and Stuart). But the overall focus remains on the methods of funding, administering, negotiating, and attacking employed in the high-tech, capital-intensive, and infrastructure-dependent conflicts of the two greatest “fiscal-naval” states of the period (a recent variation on John Brewer's better-known “military-fiscal state”).

Since the rivalries of the two states also helped to foster a powerful version of the war capitalism that now haunts many visions of modernity, Ormrod and Rommelse's introduction sees the conflicts as provoked by the shifting of locations of capitalist domination. They take their lead from the work of Fernand Braudel, Giovanni Arrighi, and the early twenty-first-century debates about the great and little divergences in global political economies, also adding the sub-themes of military-fiscal states and national identity formation. A group of six very well-informed stock-taking papers follows, attending to the wars in the North Sea: Rommelse and Roger Downing look at the conflicts as represented in the diplomatic information networks of Europe; Paul Seaward explores interpretations of the English aims, placing political Anglican Royalism ahead of commercial interests; Elizabeth Edwards examines diplomatic maneuvering, pointing to the significance of the (Stewart-related) Orangeists; John B. Hattendorf studies the tactics and strategies of the two navies, along with their sometimes disrupted supply chains; Richard J. Blackmore and Pepijn Brandon step back to compare the general structures and aims of the two fiscal-naval states; and Ann Coats and Alan Lemmers dive into the dockyards and coastal defenses on each side.

Yet another group of papers takes a look at the global reach of the conflicts: Nuala Zahedieh gives an account of the confrontations in the Atlantic and Caribbean, focusing on the second war (1665–67); Jaap Jacobs explores the early establishment and final subjection of New Netherlands; Erik Odegard studies the conflicts in the Indian Ocean, seeing each East India Company learning from the example of the other; and Martine Julia van Ittersum focuses on the wrangling over the Banda Islands (from where nutmeg was sourced), highlighting the diplomatic and legal strictures that framed both negotiations over paper documents and facts on the ground. Since the overseas aspects of the wars have not formerly been thought to be of much significance to European events, the last three pieces in this group also dig into primary sources for fresh narratives more than most of the other contributions. Finally, two studies of public histories see the events in historical memory: Remmelt Daalder surveys the enduring treatment of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter as a singularly popular hero of his country, while David Ormrod reviews previous Anglo-Dutch commemorations, mainly from a British viewpoint.

One might like to see both the fiscal systems and the geopolitical situation developed a little more clearly (Spain and Portugal, for instance, are seldom a presence), while the military and financial interests and methods of non-European peoples are hardly evident. On the other hand, personal ambitions like those of the British admiral of the fleet—James, Duke of York—can be read into the violent episodes provoking the Second Anglo-Dutch war: the Royal Africa Company's actions on the Slave Coast and the fleet sent to claim New Netherland. Apparently some interests of state remained framed in terms of personal glory and reputation. But anyone thinking about the fiscal-naval states of the period will find these careful and thoughtful studies of the conflicts between the two leading examples very rewarding.