Although the Navigation Act made no distinction between nations, it was understood to be aimed primarily at the Dutch. It stipulated that goods could be imported into territories of the English Commonwealth only by English ships, or by ships of the country originally producing the goods being carried. This was intended to cripple the freight trade, upon which Dutch commerce depended. Dutch ships would only be able to import the produce of Holland (primarily butter and cheese) into England and her colonies. The Dutch fishing industry was also affected because the Act stipulated that salt-fish and fish-oil could only be imported or exported from Commonwealth territories in English vessels.
The 1651 Act banned foreign ships from transporting goods from outside Europe to England or its colonies and banned third party countries' ships from transporting goods from a country elsewhere in Europe to England. These rules specifically targeted the Dutch who controlled a large section of Europe's international trade and even much of England's coastal shipping. It excluded the Dutch from essentially all trade with England, since the Netherlands produced very few goods itself. This trade, however, constituted only a small fraction of total Dutch transportation. It is common to mention the Act as a major cause of the First Anglo-Dutch War, though it was only part of a larger British policy to engage in war after the negotiations had failed. The English naval victories in 1653 (the Battle of Portland, the Battle of the Gabbard and the Battle of Scheveningen) forced the Dutch to acknowledge the Act in the Treaty of Westminster (1654). The Act seems to have had very little influence on actual Dutch trade practices.
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