Despite the direct conflict between the English and the Dutch in the colonial era, nowadays the UK and the Netherlands have very close ties in a number of respects (I imagine aided significantly due to geography and the increasing ease of travel between the countries) even to the point of the Dutch Royal Marines forming part of an overall British unit in joint operations. When did this partnership come about?
This is, perhaps a simplified answer, but much of it is due to the fact that although trade rivalries certainly had an effect upon English and Dutch relations in the seventeenth century, the two countries were religiously compatible given that Holland was religiously tolerant and therefore a center for the Protestant Reformation. With the leeriness expressed by many Englishmen toward political and/or royal marital alliances with Europe's Catholic powers, Holland presented a more acceptable option. Thus, Charles I's daughter, Mary, the Princess Royal, was married to the Prince of Orange in 1641 while their son, William, married his first cousin, daughter of his mother's brother, James, Duke of York (later James VII/II), Mary. Together, this couple became King William III and Mary II who were crowned after James VII/II was deposed during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Although William and Mary did not have children, Britain remained on good terms with the House of Orange through the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries and beyond.