Fourth Anglo-Dutch War

The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War was fought between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic from 1780 to 1784, and it ran alongside the American Revolutionary War. It began over disputes about whether Dutch merchants could lawfully trade with Britain's enemies during that conflict, and about how that trade was policed at sea. Most of the fighting took the form of British operations against Dutch colonial and commercial interests overseas, with only one fleet engagement off the Dutch coast, at Dogger Bank in 1781. The Dutch Republic never formed a formal alliance with the Americans, but it did receive John Adams as ambassador in 1782, becoming the second European state to recognize the United States. The war ended badly for the Dutch and exposed how weak the republic's political and economic foundations had become, while confirming Britain as the leading commercial power of the two. The peace settlement followed the wider Peace of Paris of 1783.