A major distribution channel for imported books was the book sale. During the first half of the eighteenth century, the Continent, and the Dutch Republic in particular, continued to send vast numbers of books, old and new, to the British Isles. This phenomenon can be partly explained by the long-lasting isolation of the British publishing industry with regard to mainland Europe, partly by the unique position of the United Provinces as the 'intellectual entrepot of Europe'. This situation changed slowly: the most important development during the second half of the century was the slow decline of the Dutch dominance of the British market for imported books to the benefit of French and German, and to a lesser degree Flemish and Italian, booksellers. As readers on the Continent were becoming increasingly interested in English-language British books, opportunities were finally created for a redress, however modest at first, of the long-standing imbalance in the Anglo-continental book trade.