The essays which follow sprang from two conferences, Dutch and British, arranged to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Dutch raid on the Medway of June 1667. The first was arranged jointly in Amsterdam by the Dutch historical association, De Vrienden van De Witt, and the British Naval Dockyards Society. The second conference, one week later, took place at the Historic Dockyard, Chatham, arranged by the University of Kent at Medway.

The 1667 raid is conventionally seen in Dutch historiography as a great victory marking the high water mark of Dutch naval power. For many, the exploits of the De Witt brothers and Admiral De Ruyter compare with those of Nelson at Trafalgar, as Remmelt Daalder explains below. In Britain, on the other hand, the episode is remembered, if at all, as an embarrassment for Charles II and his circle rather than a moment of national humiliation. Nevertheless, the initiative for commemoration sprang as much from the British as the Dutch, through a shared passion for naval and maritime history. For the former, it is fair to say that enthusiasm for local history and heritage compensated for the lack of any sense of national pride, or indeed shame. As they gazed across the Medway towards Upnor Castle, participants attending the Chatham conference were acutely conscious of the benefits of doing ‘history where it happened’. The position of the dockyard defences, the narrowness of the fairway, and the long winding course of the river beyond added new dimensions of understanding: the enterprise was indeed een tocht, a hazardous amphibious expedition rather than een strijd or a conventional battle.

Leaving aside differences embedded in language and popular preconceptions, one of our challenges was to select and reshape a series of varied conference contributions within a wider perspective, that of Anglo-Dutch conflict running from the outbreak of war in 1652 to its resolution in 1689. Our starting point, set out by Gijs Rommelse and Roger Downing, is to emphasise the European context as distinct from the traditional bilateral treatment of the three Anglo-Dutch Wars. Our aim has been to produce not another survey of the course of these wars but rather to explore the broader dimensions of conflict, of which war and armed struggle were only one, albeit the most significant, aspect.