Reports of a French agreement with the Netherlands Overseas Trust

The British chronology of the war records under 7 December 1915 the conclusion of an agreement between the government of France and the Netherlands Overseas Trust (Nederlandsche Overzee Trustmaatschappij, NOT). In the other available works and documents, however, it has not been possible to confirm that such an agreement was signed on that day, or to learn its content. It is not mentioned even in the chronological table of Archibald Bell’s British official history of the blockade. The Dutch historian Charlotte van Manen, author of a multi-volume history of the trust published in 1935, wrote only that after its first agreement with the British commercial attaché the NOT concluded similar agreements with France and Italy, and later also with Russia. What is certain, on the other hand, is what Paris’s cooperation with the trust looked like in 1915.

French rules

France, like Britain, had banned the export of many goods and allowed it only by way of exception. The French Ministry of Commerce, after consulting the Committee for Restricting the Supplies and Trade of the Enemy (Comité de restriction des approvisionnements et du commerce de l’ennemi), decided that goods on the prohibited lists would not receive export licences to the Netherlands unless the exporter proved that they were consigned to the NOT. For other goods the government advised merchants to use the trust as intermediary, warning that other consignments might be detained. Circulars setting out these rules were sent to chambers of commerce, in the colonies as well. In the autumn of 1915, for example, they were published in the official gazette of Martinique, and on 6 December the chamber of commerce in Haiphong reminded its members of them. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated in the “Orange Book” published in mid-December that French contraband policy had so far run parallel to the British.

A difficult December

The report of the agreement falls in difficult weeks for the trust. On 26 November its executive committee declared to the Dutch government that under present conditions it could no longer take responsibility, because the government in The Hague was still unwilling to introduce export bans that would make control easier. At the beginning of December the trust was criticised in the British House of Commons, and some members who were demanding a tighter blockade even regarded it as a firm riddled with German influence. The French press was equally hostile. On 9 December Georges Clemenceau’s newspaper wrote that the trust maintained relations with both Germany and the Entente, and that the Dutch government was “on its knees before the Boche”. The Dutch envoy in Paris had to deny publicly reports that the Netherlands had broken its agreement with the British. Van Manen wrote that the French side wanted to throw the Netherlands only “alms”, enough for it to survive, although the French legation usually put its arguments more calmly than the British.

Cooperation with the trust nevertheless remained the only practical way for Paris to control trade with the Netherlands. In March 1916 the French went further. A decree of 14 March made the export to the Netherlands even of goods that were not on the prohibited lists conditional on their being consigned to the NOT.