Treaty of Breda (1667)
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- For other meanings, see Treaty of Breda (disambiguation).
The Treaty of Breda was signed at the Dutch city of Breda, July 31, 1667, by England, the United Provinces (the Netherlands), France, and Denmark. It brought a hasty and inconclusive end to the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667), as Louis XIV's forces began invading the Spanish Netherlands, but left many territorial disputes unresolved. It was thus a typical quick uti possidetis treaty. In the latter stages of the war, the Dutch had prevailed. Admiral de Ruyter virtually controlled the seas around the south coast of England, following his successful Raid on the Medway, and his presence encouraged English commissioners to sue for peace quickly. Negotiations, long protracted before the raid, took only ten days after resuming them.
During the negotiations, the English commissioners offered to return New Netherland in exchange for their sugar factories on the coast of Surinam. The Dutch side declined. In the East Indies, the Dutch secured a worldwide monopoly on nutmeg by forcing England to give up their outpost on Run, the most remote of the Banda Islands.
In North America, Acadia was returned to France, without specifying what territories were actually involved on the ground. Thomas Temple, the proprietor, residing in Boston, had been given a charter by Cromwell, which was ignored in the Treaty, and the actual handing off was delayed at the site until 1670.
In the Caribbean, the island of Saint Kitts was re-partitioned between English and French forces.
The most complete contemporary account of the war was published first in Dutch, then in French in 1668 as a Description exacte de tout ce qui est passé dans les guerres. It contains a list of Dutch vessels and goods lost in North America, an account of the 1664 capture of New Amsterdam (New York City today) with the articles of surrender to Governor Richard Nicolls, and Michiel de Ruyter’s voyage to the West Indies. The Dutch commemorated the Treaty of Breda with a patriotic engraving.
The treaty refers to the pawnings of Orkney (1468) and Shetland (1469) as 'unprescribed and imprescribable'. In other words, those agreements were still in force and could not be abrogated by one side, as James III had attempted to do in 1472. Two years after the treaty, in 1669, Charles II made the islands a direct dependency of the Crown, seemingly in an attempt to regularise the position.
The Surrender of Breda (1625), a separate event in the Dutch wars of liberation: the Siege of Breda, was painted by Diego Velasquez in 1634.
