The Dutch colonial empire comprised the overseas territories and trading posts

controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies�mainly the Dutch West

India Company and the Dutch East India Company�and subsequently by the Dutch
Republic (1581�1795), and by the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1815.[1]
It was initially a trade-based system which derived most of its influence from
merchant enterprise and from Dutch control of international maritime shipping
routes through strategically placed outposts, rather than from expansive
territorial ventures.[2][1] The Dutch were among the earliest empire-builders of
Europe, following Spain and Portugal.

With a few notable exceptions, the majority of the Dutch colonial empire's overseas
holdings consisted of coastal forts, factories, and port settlements with varying
degrees of incorporation of their hinterlands and surrounding regions.[2] Dutch
chartered companies often dictated that their possessions be kept as confined as
possible in order to avoid unnecessary expense,[3] and while some such as the Dutch
Cape Colony and Dutch East Indies expanded anyway (due to the pressure of
independent-minded Dutch colonists), others remained undeveloped, isolated trading
centres dependent on an indigenous host-nation.[2] This reflected the primary
purpose of the Dutch colonial empire: commercial exchange as opposed to sovereignty
over homogeneous landmasses.[2]

The imperial ambitions of the Dutch were bolstered by the strength of their
existing shipping industry, as well as the key role they played in the expansion of
maritime trade between Europe and the Orient.[4] Because small European trading-
companies often lacked the capital or the manpower for large-scale operations, the
States General chartered larger organisations�the Dutch West India Company and the
Dutch East India Company�in the early seventeenth century.[4] These were considered
the largest and most extensive maritime trading companies at the time, and once
held a virtual monopoly on strategic European shipping-routes westward through the
Southern Hemisphere around South America through the Strait of Magellan, and
eastward around Africa, past the Cape of Good Hope.[4] The companies' domination of
global commerce contributed greatly to a commercial revolution and a cultural
flowering in the Netherlands of the 17th century, known as the Dutch Golden Age.[5]
In their search for new trade passages between Asia and Europe, Dutch navigators
explored and charted distant regions such as New Zealand, Tasmania, and parts of
the eastern coast of North America.[6] During the period of proto-
industrialization, the empire received 50% of textiles and 80% of silks import from
the India's Mughal Empire, chiefly from its most developed region known as Bengal
Subah.[7][8][9][10]

In the 18th century, the Dutch colonial empire began to decline as a result of the
Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of 1780�1784, in which the Dutch Republic lost a number of
its colonial possessions and trade monopolies to the British Empire, along with the
conquest of the Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey by the East India Company.
[11][12][13] Nevertheless, major portions of the empire survived until the advent
of global decolonisation following World War II, namely the East Indies and Dutch
Guiana.[14] Three former colonial territories in the West Indies islands around the
Caribbean Sea�Aruba, Cura�ao, and Sint Maarten�remain as constituent countries
represented within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.[14]

Contents
1 Former Dutch colonial possessions
2 History
2.1 Origins (1543�1602)
2.2 Rise of Dutch economic hegemony (1602�1652)
2.3 Iberian-Dutch conflicts
2.3.1 Asia
2.3.2 Americas
2.3.3 Southern Africa
2.4 Rivalry with Great Britain and France (1652�1795)
2.5 Napoleonic era (1795�1815)
2.6 Post-Napoleonic era (1815�1945)
2.7 Decolonization (1942�1975)
2.7.1 Indonesia
2.7.2 Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles
3 Legacy
3.1 Dutch diaspora
3.2 Dutch language
3.2.1 Dutch in Southeast Asia
3.2.2 Dutch in South Asia
3.2.3 Dutch in the Americas
3.2.4 Dutch in Africa
3.3 Placenames
3.4 Architecture
3.5 Infrastructure
3.6 Agriculture
3.7 Scientific discoveries
3.8 Sport
3.8.1 Suriname
3.8.2 South Africa
3.8.3 Indonesia
4 Territorial evolution
5 See also
6 Notes
6.1 Citations
7 References
8 Further reading
9 External links
Former Dutch colonial possessions
This list does not include several former trading posts stationed by dutch, such as
Dejima in Japan.

Dutch East Indies with company rule (1603�1949), and Dutch New Guinea (until 1962)
Dutch India (1605�1825)
Dutch Gold Coast (1612�1872)
New Netherland (1614�1667, 1673�1674)
Dutch Guianas (1616�1975)
Dutch Formosa (1624�1662), and Keelung (Fort Noord-Holland; 1663�1668)
Dutch Bengal (1627�1825)
Dutch Brazil (1630�1654)
Dutch Mauritius (1638�1710)
Dutch Ceylon (1640�1796)
Dutch Malacca (1641�1795, 1818�1825)
Dutch Cape colony (1652�1806)
Dutch Surinam (1667�1954)
Dutch Malabar (1665-1795)
History
Origins (1543�1602)

The formal declaration of independence of the Dutch provinces from the Spanish
king, Philip II
Part of a series on the
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vte
The territories that would later form the Dutch Republic began as a loose
federation known as the Seventeen Provinces, which Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
and (as "Carlos I") King of Spain, inherited and brought under his direct rule in
1543. In 1566, a Protestant Dutch revolt[note 1] broke out against rule by Roman
Catholic Spain, sparking the Eighty Years' War. Led by William of Orange,
independence was declared in the 1581 Act of Abjuration. The revolt resulted in the
establishment of an de facto independent Protestant republic in the north by Treaty
of Antwerp (1609), but the Dutch were never able to successfully remove the Spanish
foothold in the southern Netherlands. The eight decades of war came at a massive
human cost, with an estimated 600,000 to 700,000 victims, of which 350,000 to
400,000 were civilians killed by disease and what would later be considered war
crimes.[15]

The coastal provinces of Holland and Zeeland had been important hubs of the
European maritime trade network for centuries prior to Spanish rule. Their
geographical location provided convenient access to the markets of France,
Scotland, Germany, England and the Baltic.[16] The war with Spain led many
financiers and traders to emigrate from Antwerp, a major city in Flanders and then
one of Europe's most important commercial centres, to Dutch cities, particularly
Amsterdam,[17] which became Europe's foremost centre for shipping, banking, and
insurance.[18] Efficient access to capital enabled the Dutch in the 1580s to extend
their trade routes beyond northern Europe to new markets in the Mediterranean and
the Levant. In the 1590s, Dutch ships began to trade with Brazil and the Dutch Gold
Coast of Africa, towards the Indian Ocean, and the source of the lucrative spice
trade.[19] This brought the Dutch into direct competition with Portugal, which had
dominated these trade routes for several decades, and had established colonial
outposts on the coasts of Brazil, Africa and the Indian Ocean to facilitate them.
The rivalry with Portugal, however, was not entirely economic: from 1580, after the
death of the King of Portugal, Sebastian I, and much of the Portuguese nobility in
the Battle of Alc�cer Quibir, the Portuguese crown had been joined to that of Spain
in an "Iberian Union" under the heir of Emperor Charles V, Philip II of Spain. By
attacking Portuguese overseas possessions, the Dutch forced Spain to divert
financial and military resources away from its attempt to quell Dutch independence.
[20] Thus began the several decade-long Dutch-Portuguese War.

In 1594, the Compagnie van Verre ("Company of Far Lands") was founded in Amsterdam,
with the aim of sending two fleets to the spice islands of Maluku.[21] The first
fleet sailed in 1596 and returned in 1597 with a cargo of pepper, which more than
covered the costs of the voyage. The second voyage (1598�1599), returned its
investors a 400% profit.[22] The success of these voyages led to the founding of a
number of companies competing for the trade. The competition was counterproductive
to the companies' interests as it threatened to drive up the price of spices at
their source in Indonesia whilst driving them down in Europe.[22]