William III and the Northern Crowns during the Nine Years' War, 1689–97

The present thesis, William III and the Northern Crowns during the Nine Years War 1689-97,examines the policy of the stadtholder-king towards Sweden and Denmark- Norway in the years immediately following the English Revolution. His attempts to secure their active assistance against France were thwarted by the Swedish king’s fears of risking the neutrality he needed to complete his domestic reforms and to fulfil his ambitions of mediating in the European conflict and by Denmark’s hopes of French subsidies and support for her territorial ambitions in North Germany; while 6,000 Danish troops were secured for the Allies in 1689,a favourable alliance with Christian V could not be concluded until November 1696. Both northern kingdoms feared the effects of the union of the two Maritime Powers on their plans for commercial expansion, which were further threatened by the Ango-Dutch convention of September 1689 barring all neutral trade with France. This led them to form a League of Armed Neutrality in 1691 which helped to persuade William to abandon the aims of the convention and agree to compensation for seizures of their merchant ships. Negotiations in Stockholm and the Hague in the latter years of the war to persuade Sweden, a guarantor of Westphalia and Nijmijgen, to extract favourable peace terms from Prance continued until and even beyond the acceptance of her mediation at the beginning of 1697. William was also active in preventing the diversion of a Northern war such as was threatened by the disputes between Denmark and the duke of Holstein-Gottorp in 1689 and 1696-7 and by the disputed succession to Saxe-Lauenburg. The study builds on manuscript material in the Public Record Office, the British Museum, the Berkshire Record Office, Nottingham University Library, at Plas-Newydd, Anglesey and in archives in the Hague, Copenhagen and Stockholm as well as on published collections of documents and secondary works.