
Contemporary engraving of the conclusion of the peace at Breda Castle
The
Treaty of Breda was signed at the Dutch city of
Breda,
July 31 (
Gregorian calendar),
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 as part of the
War of Devolution, 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.
Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel 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, which had been long protracted, and had actually begun in Breda before the raid, took only ten days to conclude after resumption of talks.
During the negotiations, the English commissioners (
Denzil Holles and
Henry Coventry) offered to return
New Netherland in exchange for their sugar factories on the coast of
Surinam, that had been taken by
Abraham Crijnssen earlier in 1667. The Dutch side declined. In the
East Indies, the Dutch secured a worldwide monopoly on
nutmeg by forcing England to give up their claim on
Run, the most remote of the
Banda Islands. The
Act of Navigation was moderated in that the Dutch were now allowed to ship German goods, if imported over the
Rhine, to England.
As communications were slow, special dates were established for the different parts of the world, on which legal hostilities would end: 5 September for the
English Channel and the
North Sea, 5 October for the other European seas, 2 November for the African coast north of the equator and 24 April 1668 for the rest of the world.
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 addition, the conquest of
New Netherland by the
English was confirmed on
1667-07-21, producing the Colonies of
New York,
New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and
Delaware.
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 s'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 parties agreed to postpone a discussion of the pawnings of
Orkney (1468) and
Shetland (1469) until a future occasion.
The
Siege of Breda (1624) was a separate event, in the Dutch wars of liberation, that was commemorated by
Diego Velázquez's
The Surrender of Breda, painted in 1635.