Page "Navigation Acts" Paragraph 2

The major impetuses for the Navigation Acts were the ruinous deterioration of English trade in the aftermath of the Eighty Years ' War, and the concomitant lifting of the Spanish trade-embargoes on trade between the Spanish Empire and the Dutch Republic.

The end of the embargoes in 1647 unleashed the full power of the Amsterdam Entrepôt and other Dutch competitive advantages in world trade.

Within a few years, English merchants had practically been overwhelmed in the trade on the Iberian Peninsula, the Mediterranean and the Levant.

Even the trade with English colonies ( partly still in the hands of the royalists, as the English Civil War was in its final stages and the Commonwealth of England had not yet imposed its authority throughout the English colonies ) was " engrossed " by Dutch merchants.

English direct trade was crowded out by a sudden influx of commodities from the Levant, Mediterranean and the Spanish and Portuguese empires, and the West Indies via the Dutch Entrepôt, carried in Dutch bottoms and for Dutch account.