The Dutch describe the stretch of water between England and Holland as the “narrow sea”. And so it has proved. Lisa Jardine begins her study of the intense and intimate relationship between the countries with an account of the invasion of William of Orange in 1688, designed to dislodge the increasingly disliked James II from the throne. It was a contest between Protestant and Catholic, between high-minded seriousness and intemperate extravagance.

William came with 500 ships, 20,000 soldiers and 20,000 seamen. The Dutch had prepared a force four times as large as that of the Spanish Armada. It was an armed invasion as effective as that of another William in 1066. James was captured and then allowed to escape to France. Regicide was not a very Dutch sport. The foreign army then occupied the capital and the seaports for two years. Dutch soldiers guarded the principal spaces of the city. Yet the whole event was very quickly erased from the public memory, and has remained in that mild limbo ever since. It is known, if it is known at all, as the “glorious revolution” - as if the English people were entirely responsible for the change of government. That William's spouse was the daughter of the departed king was a way of suggesting that it was all just another act in a family quarrel.

The peacefulness and ease of the transition may play some part in this bout of forgetfulness. But there were other forces at work that, as Jardine suggests in this meticulous study, helped to render soft and tractable the boundaries between the English and Dutch polities. The countries were close neighbours in more than one sense. During his victory march from Torbay to London, for example, William found time to inspect the gardens of St James's Palace. They now represent St James's Park. He wanted to see them at first hand because they had been inspired by Dutch example. It is one example of the affinities and associations between the nations that cushioned the effects of invasion and occupation.

England and Holland were both defiantly Protestant, facing Catholic France and Spain, but that Protestant spirit manifested itself in more than a diplomatic sense. The scientists and natural philosophers of the period entered what might be called an Anglo-Dutch concord in which inventions and discoveries were passed from one to the other. It might even be said that the high-minded and ethically robust Dutch helped to create the new English seriousness in scientific pursuits. There was what Jardine describes as “long-range collaboration” even when the countries were ostensibly at war. There are more important things than battles, after all. Christiaan Huygens, the Dutch scientist, and Isaac Newton, for example, were working together in the fields of optics and of light.

There were other forces that brought Holland and England together in general amity. Masons and architects and horticultural experts crossed and recrossed the “narrow sea” in search of inspiration or fresh ideas. In the process there was created an Anglo-Dutch aesthetic that helped to shape the buildings and gardens of this country. The Dutch passion for trees and for tree-lined streets materially affected the appearance of the new London streets. The passion for Dutch porcelain was a phenomenon of late 17th and early 18th-century English society. There was even in London a “tulip craze” or “tulip fever” that takes up a chapter of Charles Mackay's brilliant Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, first published in 1841.

And then, of course, there is the art. Some of the greatest artists of the 17th century - Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck among them - were of Netherlandish origin. Theirs was the art that captivated the English connoisseurs. Rubens and Van Dyck were in effect the chief court painters, patronised by the House of Stuart as well as by the House of Orange. To all intents and purposes, in fact, there was just one house - furnished and decorated in the same style. The House of Orange may not have been as grand as the House of Stuart, as the latter never ceased to point out, but it was wealthy and energetic. Its palaces were filled with every extravagance and luxury; according to Jardine, “it set the tone for 17th-century court fashion across Europe”. It is not surprising that, in exile at the time of Cromwell, the Stuart family should reside at The Hague.

The keeper of the royal collection, under Charles I, was a Dutchman. At this point Jardine's distinguished career as a cultural historian allows her to speculate on the intricacies of the Dutch sensibility. She is at home among luxurious objects - as a previous book, Worldy Goods, testifies - and she has no trouble in conjuring up the finer details of the business of art in the world of dealers and collectors. This book itself, with its superior paper and marvellous colour plates, can be viewed as a luxury object

Yet it was principally commerce that oiled the wheels of art. London and Amsterdam were the twin engines of the Western European economy, with vast systems of trade stretching over the known world. Flourishing market conditions prompted the growth of artistic investment. From the flow of merchandise are derived the comforts and pleasures of the world. Trade helped the advance of scientific inquiry, too. It is established upon the constant gathering of news and information. The search for profit becomes part of the search for new ways of doing mundane things. The spring-regulated watch is, in Jardine's account, the fruit of mutual experimentation in Holland and in England.

The essential point of the book, however, lies in its perception of a larger culture that joined Holland and England. They were united both in theory and in practice across a whole range of pursuits, stirred by the same interests and affected by the same sensibility. It is a remarkable phase of 17th-century culture that has generally been overlooked or ignored. In Going Dutch it is brought back to life.

Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory by Lisa Jardine
HarperPress, £25

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