ABSTRACT
In 1727, the ministry was concerned about the amount of Dutch diplomatic assistance they could expect in pressing Spain to satisfy British demands over Caribbean trading conditions. The reality of commercial rivalry between Britain and the United Provinces, as well as the weakness of the traditional alignment, was revealed in the 1730s. In 1735, the Dutch refused to participate in the British dispatch of a fleet to the Tagus to protect Portugal, and Portuguese trade, from threatened Spanish attack. Relations had been improved by the 1715 commercial treaty negotiated on the British side by George Bubb. In 1727, the influential Queen of Spain, Elisabeth Farnese, attacked the British who ‘pretended to lord it over everybody’. In the late 1730s, Anglo-Austrian commercial relations were marked by both hope and disappointment, the latter owing to clearly differing positions in negotiations on the tariffs in the Austrian Netherlands that began in late 1737.
