Dutch Empire: "Trading Legacies: Unveiling the Dutch Empire History"

Dutch Empire

    The Dutch Empire is the name given to the various territories controlled by the Netherlands from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The Dutch followed Portugal and Spain in establishing a colonial global empire outside of continental Europe. Their skills in shipping and trading and the surge of nationalism and militarism accompanying the struggle for independence from Spain aided the venture. Alongside the British, the Dutch initially built up colonial possessions based on indirect state capitalist corporate colonialism, primarily with the Dutch East India Company. Direct state intervention in the colonial enterprise came later. Dutch merchants and sailors also participated in the surge of exploration that unfolded in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, though the vast new territories revealed by Willem Barents, Henry Hudson, Willem Janszoon, and Abel Tasman in the Arctic and in Australasia/Oceania did not generally become permanent Dutch colonies.

    With Dutch naval power rising rapidly as a major force from the late sixteenth century, the Netherlands reigned supreme at sea, and dominated global commerce during the second half of the seventeenth century. A cultural flowering during the century is known as the Dutch Golden Age. The Netherlands lost many of its colonial possessions, as well as its global power status, to the British when Holland fell to French armies during the Revolutionary Wars. The French centralized government in a Dutch client state during this "French period" from 1795 to 1814. The restored portions of the Dutch empire, notably the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) and Suriname remained under The Hague's control until the decline of traditional imperialism in the 20th century. The Netherlands is part of a federacy called the Kingdom of the Netherlands of which its former colonies Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles are also part. One legacy of its colonial past was the development in Holland of openness towards multi-culturalism towards the end of the twentieth century. However, concerns about national cohesiveness and debate about assimilation have led to new laws regarding citizenship to tests related to Holland's cultural and linguistic traditions. The Dutch empire played a significant role in bringing people across the globe into the consciousness of belonging to a single human family and is especially noteworthy as an example of what commerce and trade can achieve.

Colonies

Dutch East India Company and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia)

    In 1605, Portuguese trading posts in the Spice Islands of Maluku, Indonesia fell to the superior firepower of the Dutch. In 1619 a fortified base was established in Batavia (now Jakarta) and became the headquarters of the Dutch East Indies Company. Following the company's bankruptcy in 1800, Indonesian territory under its administration was nationalized as the Dutch East Indies. By the early twentieth century, the Netherlands had under its administration all the territory that now forms Indonesia. Indonesian independence was declared on August 17, 1945, and officially recognized by the Netherlands in December 1949, following the Indonesian National Revolution. During World War II, Holland was occupied by Nazi Germany and Indonesia by Japan. Following Indonesia's liberation, the Dutch attempted to regain control. They fought so tenaciously to keep their colony that after independence, little of the type of cultural and linguistic links between the former colony and the former colonizers survived, unlike in, for example, the former French colonial space. At independence, there were very few Indonesian graduates and no qualified medical doctors at all.
South Africa

    In 1652, the Dutch East India Company under Jan van Riebeeck (1619-1677) established a refueling station at the Cape of Good Hope, situated halfway between the Dutch East Indies and the Dutch West Indies. Great Britain seized the colony in 1797, during the wars of the First Coalition (in which the Netherlands was allied with revolutionary France), and annexed it in 1805. The Dutch colonists in South Africa remained after the British took over and later made the trek across the country to Natal. They were subjected to the Boer Wars and are now known as Boers. Britain regarded the Cape as vital to her supremacy in India. Until the building of the Suez Canal, it was a major port of call on the voyage to and from the jewel in her colonial crown.

New Netherland

    New Netherland comprised the areas of the northeast Atlantic seaboard of the present-day United States that were visited by Dutch explorers and later settled and taken over by the Dutch West India Company. The settlements were initially located on the Hudson River: Fort Nassau (1614–7) in present-day Albany (later resettled as Fort Orange in 1624), and New Amsterdam, founded in 1625, on Manhattan Island. New Netherland reached its maximum size after the Dutch absorbed the Swedish settlement of Fort Christina in 1655, thereby ending the North American colony of New Sweden.

Europe

    The Netherlands was granted control of the Southern Netherlands after the Congress of Vienna. The southern Netherlands declared independence in 1830 (the Belgian Revolution), and its independence was recognized by the Netherlands in 1839, giving birth to Belgium. As part of the Congress of Vienna, King William I of the Netherlands was made Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and the two countries united into a personal union. The independence of Luxembourg was ratified in 1869. When William III of the Netherlands died in 1890, leaving no male successor, the Grand Duchy was given to another branch of the House of Nassau.

Publisher: M. Celio Durrani

Source: New World Encyclopedia