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Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is rightfully known to be one of the most ingenious and deep-though satirical works in the annals of English literature, and for a good reason too. His bitter irony and burning satire address many issues, from early Modern philosophy to religious differences and human nature. In most cases, Swift’s satire is elaborate and sophisticated to the point of obscure, and a modern reader will have a hard time understanding it without the proper commentary. However, there is one subject in treating where Swift foregoes his usual sophistication and resorts to simple and even heavy-handed criticisms – Gulliver’s apparent hatred for the Dutch. The author spares no effort in portraying the inhabitants of the Low Countries in the worst light possible and depicting them as grotesque caricatures of human beings barely capable of any virtue. This criticism goes so far that both Catholics and even non-Christian Japanese receive better treatment than the Dutch in Gulliver’s Travels. Research suggests that Swift’s consistent and rather ham-fisted treatment of this theme comes from his vigorous antipathy toward the Dutch due to their perceived political unreliability and status as Britain’s colonial competitors.
The theme of the unsavory and detestable features of the Dutch national character resurfaces most often in Part III of the book, which ends with Gulliver’s experiences in Japan. The fact of being set in a real country already differentiates this episode from most others in the book and mandates closer scrutiny in and of itself. Closer to the part’s end, pirates board Gulliver’s ship, and Swift immediately uses the opportunity to develop the theme of the Dutch as utterly repugnant human beings. The Dutch officer among the Pirate crew harbors vicious hate toward the British – having identified Gulliver and his companions as English, he insists on throwing them into the sea (Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels” 142). Gulliver appeals to them both “being Christians and Protestants, of neighboring Countries, in strict Alliance,” referring to the ongoing War of Spanish Succession, whether Britain and Low Countries fought together against Catholic France (Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels” 142). Swift demonizes the Dutch by representing them as utterly indifferent to personal honor and political obligation to the point of murdering their allies.
The development of this theme becomes even more apparent even when it comes to religious matters. To begin with, the only thing that saves Gulliver’s life in his encounter with the Dutch pirate is the Japanese captain who decides to spare the prisoners (Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels” 142). In this regard, Swift portrays a Japanese heathen as more humane than a Protestant Christian, indicating that the Dutchman has neither religious virtue nor common humanity. Moreover, when Gulliver petitions the Emperor of Japan to spare him the dishonor of trampling upon the Crucifix, the latter is surprised because, apparently, the Dutch are perfectly happy about it (Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels” 202). The Emperor even informs Gulliver that, should the Dutch learn about the fact that he did not desecrate the symbols of faith, they will slit his throat (Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels” 202). This passage portrays the Dutch as not merely capable of desecrating the Christian faith but as actively predisposed toward it. Thus, Swift develops the theme by depicting the Dutch as having no regard for either political alliances or religious bonds and trampling upon the covenants of God and man alike.
More importantly, still, the Dutch are definitely the most reviled real people in the entire book. One could assume that Gulliver, being a pious Protestant, would be the most bitter toward Catholics. However, he finds kind words for at least some of them – for instance, Pedro de Mendez, a Portuguese captain who takes Gulliver home from the Houyhnhnm-Land, is “a very courteous and generous Person” (Swift 268). At the same time, one would look in vain for a positive Dutch character on the book’s pages. Even at the height of the War of Spanish Succession, fought against a Catholic power, the book’s character still perceives the Dutch to be worse than the hated Papists.
This approach begs a legitimate question of why and to which purpose Swift satirizes the Dutch so bitterly, and one answer to that lies in the author’s political antipathies. By the mid-1720s, when Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels, he harbored a deep opposition toward the Low Countries. On the one hand, he detested their perceived trickery in the War of Spanish Succession. From Swift’s perspective, the callous and shrewd Dutch manipulated the honorable but gullible Englishmen into bearing the brunt of the long and costly war without receiving much to show for it (Hammond 555). On the other hand, he despised what he saw as the avaricious national character of the Dutch. For instance, he blamed them for counterfeiting debased British coinage, thus instigating inflation in the country (Swift, “Prose Works”). While it usually pays to separate Gulliver as a character from Swift as an author, there is no doubt that the real Swift was as profoundly anti-Dutch as his literary mouthpiece.
The book also suggests that Swift hates the Dutch due to perceiving them as the worst threat to Britain’s overseas enterprise. In Japan, Gulliver impersonates a Dutchman because they are the only Europeans allowed there (Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels” 189). He has to keep pretending, narrowly avoiding a crime against his faith, because the Dutch ship is his only chance of getting home. Adding insult to injury, it is named Amboyna – after the infamous 1623 Dutch massacre of the English traders (Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels” 203). Stepping outside the fantastic countries and entering the boundaries of real geography, Gulliver ends up in the spot that, among all regions colonized by the Europeans, is “the most pronouncedly and determinately Dutch” (Schmidt 82). Even at the farthest reaches of Earth, a proud Englishman and a pious Protestant is at risk of finding himself at the mercy of the unholy Dutch, who already have a foothold there. Hence, one may conclude that the main reason behind Swift’s hate for the Dutch, as relayed in Gulliver’s Travels, is their possession of a global empire that actively threatens English efforts in the same department.
As one can see, Swift’s brutally hateful portrayal of the Dutch in Gulliver’s Travels reveals the author’s perception of the Low Countries as Britain’s worst rival in terms of colonial expansion. There is no nation as vilified as the Dutch in the entire book, and even Catholics and the heathen Japanese are portrayed in a much better light. This openly critical and heavy-handed treatment of the subject, which contrasts with Swift’s usually cunning satire, is likely a reflection of his own political antipathies toward the Dutch. Apart and from the misgivings of the War of Spanish Succession, Swift perceives the Low Countries as Britain’s worst competitors in terms of establishing a global colonial empire. At the end of the day, this bitter rivalry for valuable overseas possessions is likely the main reason for Swift portraying the Dutch in such a negative light in his book.
Works Cited
Hammond, Eugene. Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-In. University of Delaware Press, 2016.
Schmidt, Benjamin. “Hyper-Imperialism: The Dutch Vision of Empire and the Expansion of the European World.” The Dutch Empire Between Ideas and Practice, 1600-2000, edited by René Koekkoek et al., Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 67-88.
Swift, Jonathan D. D. Gulliver’s Travels, edited by Claude Rawson, Oxford UP, 2005.
—. “The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift.”Project Gutenberg, Web.
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