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98-726: The guilder is also the name of several currencies used in Europe and the former colonies of the Dutch Empire . The guilder or gulden was the name of several gold coins used during the Holy Roman Empire . It first referred to the Italian gold florin , introduced in the 13th century. It then referred to the Rhenish gulden ( florenus Rheni ) issued by several states of the Holy Roman Empire from

196-584: A Dutch pidgin , to its subsequent creolisation and use as "Kitchen Dutch" by slaves and serfs of the colonials, and its later use in Cape Islam by them when it first became a written language that used the Arabic letters . By the time of British rule after 1795, the sociopolitical foundations were firmly laid. In 1795, France occupied the Dutch Republic . This prompted Great Britain , at war with France, to occupy

294-593: A colony at the Cape of Good Hope on the southern African coast, as a victualing station for its ships on the route between Europe and Asia. Dutch immigration in the Cape rapidly swelled as prospective colonists were offered generous grants of land and tax exempt status in exchange for producing the food needed to resupply passing ships. The Cape authorities also imported a number of Europeans of other nationalities, namely Germans and French Huguenots , as well as thousands of slaves from

392-526: 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. The war was largely fought on the European continent, but war was also conducted against Phillip II's overseas territories, including Spanish colonies and the Portuguese metropoles, colonies, trading posts and forts belonging at that time to

490-570: A new guilder currency unit of 60 kreuzer was defined. The latter gulden was then defined over the succeeding centuries as a currency unit worth a fraction of the silver Reichsthaler . In 1753, Austria-Hungary and Bavaria agreed to the Conventions monetary standard which resulted into two differently valued gulden: the Austro-Hungarian florin of the Austrian Empire from 1754 to 1892, and

588-571: A series of successful expeditions, he gradually extended the Dutch possessions from Sergipe on the south to Maranhão in the north. The WIC also succeeded in conquering Gorée , Elmina Castle , Saint Thomas, and Luanda on the west coast of Africa. Both regions were also used as bases for Dutch privateers plundering Portuguese and Spanish trade routes. The dissolution of the Iberian Union in 1640 and Maurits's recall in 1643 led to increased resistance from

686-563: A series of three wars which took place between the English and the Dutch from 1652 to 1674. The causes included political disputes and increasing competition from merchant shipping. The English in the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–54) had the naval advantage with larger numbers of more powerful " ships of the line " which were well suited to the naval tactics of the era. The English also captured numerous Dutch merchant ships. Holmes's Bonfire

784-654: A settlement in the ruins of the Spanish settlement of Valdivia , in southern Chile . The purpose of the expedition was to gain a foothold on the west coast of the Americas, an area that was almost entirely under the control of Spain (the Pacific Ocean , at least most of it to the east of the Philippines, being at the time almost a "Spanish lake"), and to extract gold from nearby mines. Uncooperative indigenous peoples, who had forced

882-462: A significant proportion of marriages were interracial, this is at least partially attributed to a lack of 'White' or 'Christian' women within the colony. What later became the racial division between 'White' and 'non-White' populations originally began as a division between Christian and non-Christian populations. The Geslags-registeers estimated that seven percent of the Afrikaner gene pool in 1807

980-453: A year before it was recaptured by a joint Spanish-Portuguese expedition., In 1630, the Dutch occupied the Portuguese sugar-settlement of Pernambuco and over the next few years pushed inland, annexing the sugar plantations that surrounded it. In order to supply the plantations with the manpower they required, a successful expedition was launched from Brazil to capture the Portuguese slaving post of Elmina in 1637, and successfully captured

1078-533: 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 . 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. The success of these voyages led to the founding of a number of companies competing for

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1176-848: The American Revolutionary War , Britain declared war on the Netherlands, the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War , in which Britain seized the Dutch colony of Ceylon. Under the Peace of Paris (1783), Ceylon was returned to the Netherlands and Negapatnam ceded to Britain. In 1795, the French Revolutionary Army invaded the Dutch Republic and turned the nation into a satellite of France, named the Batavian Republic . Britain, which

1274-579: The Amersfoort in 1658. Later on, the school was also attended by the children of the indigenes and the Free Burghers. The Dutch language was taught at schools as the main medium for commercial purposes, with the result that the indigenous people and even the French settlers found themselves speaking Dutch more than their native languages. The principles of Christianity were also introduced at the school resulting in

1372-509: The Boers , and the Cape Dutch who collectively became modern-day Afrikaners . At the time of first European settlement in the Cape, the southwest of Africa was inhabited by Khoikhoi pastoralists and hunters. Disgruntled by the disruption of their seasonal visit to the area for which purpose they grazed their cattle at the foot of Table Mountain only to find European settlers occupying and farming

1470-514: The Cape of Good Hope , from where it derived its name. The original colony and the successive states that the colony was incorporated into occupied much of modern South Africa . Between 1652 and 1691, it was a Commandment, and between 1691 and 1795, a Governorate of the VOC. Jan van Riebeeck established the colony as a re-supply and layover port for vessels of the VOC trading with Asia. The Cape came under VOC rule from 1652 to 1795 and from 1803 to 1806

1568-636: The Dutch East Indies . Anglo-Dutch rivalry in Southeast Asia continued to fester over the port of Singapore , which had been ceded to the British East India Company in 1819 by the sultan of Johore. The Dutch claimed that a treaty signed with the sultan's predecessor the year earlier had granted them control of the region. However, the impossibility of removing the British from Singapore, which

1666-535: The Dutch Gold Coast of Africa, towards the Indian Ocean, and the source of the lucrative spice trade . 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

1764-575: The Dutch Republic . The Second Anglo-Dutch War was precipitated in 1664, when English forces moved to capture New Netherland . Under the Treaty of Breda (1667), New Netherland was ceded to England in exchange for the English settlements in Suriname, which had been conquered by Dutch forces earlier that year. Though the Dutch would again take New Netherland in 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, it

1862-647: The Edict of Fontainebleau in October 1685 (revoking the Edict of Nantes of 1598), thereby ending protection of the right of Huguenots in France to practise Protestant worship without persecution from the state, the colony attracted many Huguenot settlers , who eventually mixed with the general Vryburgher population. Due to the authoritarian rule of the company (telling farmers what to grow for what price, controlling immigration , and monopolising trade), some farmers tried to escape

1960-438: The Rhenish gulden ( Rheinischer Gulden ) in 1524. It also defined a silver Guldengroschen of equal value to the gulden . The standards of the Rhenish gulden has changed over the centuries, as follows: With increasingly standardized currencies in the early modern period, gulden or guilder became a term for various early modern and modern currencies, detached from actual gold coins. The Dutch guilder first emerged as

2058-732: The South German gulden of the Southern German states from 1754, until German unification in 1871. Currencies identical to the South German gulden include the Bavarian gulden , Baden gulden & the Württemberg gulden . A Danzig gulden was in use from 1923 to 1939. Other coin names that are derived from the gold of which they were once made: Dutch Empire 18th century 19th century 20th century The Dutch colonial empire ( Dutch : Nederlandse koloniale rijk ) comprised

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2156-634: The Straits of Magellan . The directors of the company, the " Heeren XVII ", were given the legal authority to establish "fortresses and strongholds", to sign treaties, to enlist both an army and a navy, and to wage defensive war. The company itself was founded as a joint stock company , similarly to its English rival that had been founded two years earlier, the English East India Company . Dutch enterprise, companies and government institutions were inspired by their English counterparts. Shortly after

2254-529: The loss of Ormuz to England in 1622, but the Dutch Empire was the main beneficiary. The VOC began immediately to prise away the string of coastal fortresses that, at the time, comprised the Portuguese Empire. The settlements were isolated, difficult to reinforce if attacked, and prone to being picked off one by one, but nevertheless, the Dutch only enjoyed mixed success in its attempts to do so. Amboina

2352-404: The 14th century. The Rhenish gulden was issued by Trier, Cologne and Mainz in the 14th and 15th centuries. Basel minted its own Apfelgulden between 1429 and 1509. Bern and Solothurn followed in the 1480s, Fribourg in 1509 and Zürich in 1510, and other towns in the 17th century. The Reichsmünzordnung or imperial minting ordinance of the Holy Roman Empire first defined standards for

2450-706: The 1560s, the Eighty Years' War broke out in the Habsburg Netherlands . A coalition of rebel provinces united in the Union of Utrecht declared independence from the Spanish Empire with the 1581 Act of Abjuration , in 1588 establishing the de facto independent northern Dutch Republic (alias the United Provinces), whose sovereignty was recognised by the Treaty of Antwerp (1609) . The eight decades of war came at

2548-656: The 1580s, the Eighty Years' War led many financiers and traders to emigrate from Antwerp , a major city in Brabant and then one of Europe's most important commercial centres, to Dutch cities, particularly Amsterdam , 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

2646-602: The 17th century, known as the Dutch Golden Age . In their search for new trade passages between Asia and Europe , Dutch navigators explored and charted distant regions such as Australia , New Zealand , Tasmania , and parts of the eastern coast of North America . 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 . In

2744-660: The 18th century, the Dutch colonial empire began to decline as a result of being overwhelmed from 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 and French colonial empire , along with the conquest of the Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey by the British East India Company . Nevertheless, major portions of

2842-628: The Banda Islands was a process of military conquest from 1609 to 1621 by the Dutch East India Company of the Banda Islands . The Dutch, having enforced a monopoly on the highly lucrative nutmeg production from the islands, were impatient with Bandanese resistance to Dutch demands that the Bandanese sell only to them. Negotiations collapsed after Bandanese village elders deceived and murdered

2940-572: The Batavian Republic (which he would replace with a monarchy later that year). The British established their colony to control the Far East trade routes. In 1814 the Dutch government formally ceded sovereignty over the Cape to the British, under the terms of the Convention of London . The Dutch Cape Colony was divided into four districts. In 1797 their "recorded" populations were: During this period

3038-485: The Batavian Republic, led the British to hand the Cape Colony over to the Batavian Republic in 1803, under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens . In 1806, the Cape, now nominally controlled by the Batavian Republic, was occupied again by the British after their victory in the Battle of Blaauwberg . The peace between Britain and Napoleonic France had broken after one year, while Napoleon had been strengthening his influence on

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3136-497: The British retook the Cape Colony and the Dutch West Indies. The British also invaded and captured the island of Java in 1811 . In 1806, Napoleon dissolved the Batavian Republic and established a monarchy with his brother, Louis Bonaparte , on the throne as King of the Netherlands. Louis was removed from power by Napoleon in 1810, and the country was ruled directly from France until its liberation in 1813. The following year,

3234-507: The Cape initiated the decline of the nomadic lifestyle of the Khoi and Tuu speaking peoples since food was produced at a fixed location. Thus by 1672, the permanent indigenous residents living at the Cape had grown substantially. The first school to be built in South Africa by the settlers were for the sake of the slaves who had been rescued from a Portuguese slave ship and arrived at the Cape with

3332-647: The Caribbean , South America ( Suriname and Brazil ), Africa (on the Gold Coast and at the Cape ), mainland India , Sri Lanka , Indonesia and Taiwan . It also chartered new lands of Australia and New Zealand . 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. Because small European trading-companies often lacked

3430-471: The Company station, nomadic European livestock farmers, or Trekboeren, moved more widely afield, leaving the richer, but limited, farming lands of the coast for the drier interior tableland. There they contested still wider groups of Khoe-speaking cattle herders for the best grazing lands. The Cape society in this period was thus a diverse one. The emergence of Afrikaans reflects this diversity, from its roots as

3528-557: The Dutch Republic about the legality, utility, and moral permissibility of this act. As a result, in September 1604 jurist Hugo Grotius wrote a treatise titled De Jure Praedae Commentarius ("Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty"), later published in 1609 as Mare Liberum, sive de jure quod Batavis competit ad Indicana commercia dissertatio ("The Freedom of the Seas, Or, The Right Which Belongs to

3626-649: The Dutch Second Fleet sent to the Spice Islands were blown off course in a storm and landed there in 1598. They named it in honour of Prince Maurice of Nassau , the Stadtholder of the Netherlands. The Dutch found the climate hostile and abandoned the island after several further decades. The Dutch established a colony at Tayouan (present-day Anping ), in the south of Taiwan , an island then largely dominated by Portuguese traders and known as Formosa ; and, in 1642

3724-680: The Dutch by 1648. On the north-east coast of North America, the West India Company took over a settlement that had been established by the Company of New Netherland (1614–1618) at Fort Orange at Albany on the Hudson River , relocated from Fort Nassau which had been founded in 1614. The Dutch had been sending ships annually to the Hudson River to trade fur since Henry Hudson 's voyage of 1609. To protect its precarious position at Albany from

3822-539: The Dutch proved unable to control their own settlers, who disregarded the agreement and crossed into Xhosa territory, sparking one of Southern Africa's longest colonial conflicts: the Xhosa Wars . In 1651, the English parliament passed the first of the Navigation Acts which excluded Dutch shipping from the lucrative trade between England and its Caribbean colonies, and led directly to the outbreak of hostilities between

3920-454: The Dutch representative Pieter Willemsz Verhoeff . Under the command of Jan Pieterszoon Coen the Dutch resorted to a forcible conquest of the islands, which became severely depopulated as a result of Coen’s massacres, forced deportations, and the resulting starvation and disease. The Dutch East India Company, which was founded in 1602 as an amalgamation of 12 voorcompagnies , had extensive financial interests in maritime Southeast Asia ,

4018-414: The Dutch to Take Part in the East Indian Trade"), in which the act of aggression was justified. In the meantime, the States-General had already passed a resolution on 1 November 1603, authorising VOC ships "to damage the enemies and inflict harm on their persons, ships and goods by all means possible, so that they may with reputation not only continue their trade, but also expand it and make it grow". This

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4116-429: The Dutch took northern Formosa from the Spanish by force. The Dutch colonisation of the Americas started with many mixed results. In the Atlantic, the West India Company concentrated on wresting from Portugal its grip on the sugar and slave trade, and on opportunistic attacks on the Spanish treasure fleets on their homeward bound voyage. Bahia on the north east coast of Brazil was captured in 1624 but only held for

4214-410: The Dutch were disrupting the Spanish-Portuguese trade, and they eventually ranged as far afield as the Philippines. The Dutch sought to dominate the commercial sea trade in Southeast Asia, going so far in pursuit of this goal as to engage in what other nations and powers considered to be little more than piratical activities. During the negotiations for and implementation of the Twelve Years' Truce in

4312-418: The Dutch were reunited with the Southern Netherlands in a constitutional monarchy, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands . The union lasted just 15 years. In 1830, a revolution in the southern half of the country led to the de facto independence of the new state of Belgium . The bankrupt Dutch East India Company was liquidated on 1 January 1800, and its territorial possessions were nationalized as

4410-456: The Dutch were unable in four attempts to capture Macau , from where Portugal monopolized the lucrative China-Japan trade , the Tokugawa shogunate 's increasing suspicion of the intentions of the Catholic Portuguese led to their expulsion in 1639. Under the subsequent sakoku policy , from 1639 till 1854 (215 years), the Dutch were the only European power allowed to operate in Japan, confined in 1639 to Hirado and then from 1641 at Dejima . In

4508-417: The East Indies, to bolster the local Dutch workforce. Nevertheless, there was a degree of cultural assimilation between the various ethnic groups due to intermarriage and the universal adoption of the Dutch language, and cleavages were likelier to occur along social and racial lines. The Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope expanded beyond the initial settlement and its borders were formally consolidated as

4606-429: The King of Spain and Portugal. The port of Lisbon in Portugal had since 1517 been the main European market for products from India, drawing merchants from across Europe to purchase exotic commodities. But as a result of Portugal's incorporation in the Iberian Union with Spain by Philip II in 1580, all Portuguese territories were thereafter Spanish Habsburg branch territory, and thus all Portuguese markets were closed to

4704-449: The Northern open frontier war above the Great Escarpment. Some worked for the colonists, mostly as shepherds and herdsmen. The VOC favoured the idea of freemen at the Cape and many settlers requested to be discharged in order to become free burghers; as a result, Jan van Riebeeck approved the notion on favorable conditions and earmarked two areas near the Liesbeek River for farming purposes in 1657. The two areas which were allocated to

4802-412: The Portuguese colonists who still made up a majority of the Brazilian settlers. The Dutch were finally overcome during the 1650s but managed to receive 4 million reis (63 metric tons of gold) in exchange for extinguishing their claims over Brazil in the 1661 Treaty of the Hague . The war between Phillip II's possessions and other countries led to a deterioration of the Portuguese Empire, as with

4900-406: The Portuguese had never been able to capture the entire island of Ceylon, they had been able to keep the coastal regions under their control for a considerable time before the coming of the Dutch in war. Portugal's South American colony, Brazil , was partially conquered by the United Provinces. In 1621, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) was set up and given a 25-year monopoly to those parts of

4998-453: The Portuguese in Brazil and Africa were short-lived. Years of settlement had left large Portuguese communities under the rule of the Dutch, who were by nature traders rather than colonisers. In 1645, the Portuguese community at Pernambuco rebelled against their Dutch masters, and by 1654, the Dutch had been ousted from Brazil. In the intervening years, a Portuguese expedition had been sent from Brazil to recapture Luanda in Angola, expelling

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5096-406: The Portuguese settlements in Angola in 1641. In 1642, the Dutch captured the Portuguese possession of Axim in Africa. By 1650, the West India Company was firmly in control of both the sugar and slave trades, and had occupied the Caribbean islands of Sint Maarten , Curaçao , Aruba , and Bonaire in order to guarantee access to the islands' salt-pans . Unlike in Asia, Dutch successes against

5194-423: The Spanish to leave Valdivia in 1604 contributed to get the expedition to leave after some months of occupation. This occupation triggered the return of the Spanish to Valdivia and the building of one of the largest defensive complexes of colonial America. By the middle of the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company had overtaken Portugal as the dominant player in the spice and silk trade, and in 1652 founded

5292-422: The Straits of Singapore". Thus the archipelago was divided into two spheres of influence: a British one, on the Malay Peninsula , and a Dutch one in the East Indies. For most of the Dutch East Indies history, and that of the VOC before it, Dutch control over their territories was often tenuous, but was expanded over the course of the 19th century. Only in the early 20th century did Dutch dominance extend to what

5390-402: The United Provinces. Thus, in 1595, the Dutch decided to set sail on their own to acquire products for themselves, making use of the "secret" knowledge of the Portuguese trade routes, which Cornelis de Houtman had managed to acquire in Lisbon. The coastal provinces of Holland and Zeeland had been important hubs of the European maritime trade network for centuries prior to Spanish rule. By

5488-412: The VOC agreed in 1780 to make the Great Fish River the boundary of the colony. In 1795, after the Battle of Muizenberg in present-day Cape Town , the British occupied the colony. Under the terms of the Peace of Amiens of 1802, Britain ceded the colony back to the Dutch on 1 March 1803, but as the Batavian Republic had since nationalized the United East India Company (1796), the colony came under

5586-408: The VOC was founded, the problem of justifying attacks on Spanish and Portuguese ships became more acute when in February 1603, the Portuguese carrack Santa Catarina was captured off the coast of Singapore by three VOC ships under the command of Jacob van Heemskerck . When Heemskerck returned to Amsterdam in 1604 with the enormous booty from the Santa Catarina , this caused a major controversy in

5684-422: The baptisms of many slaves and indigenous residents. Conflicts with the settlers and the effects of smallpox decimated their numbers in 1713 and 1755, until gradually the breakdown of their society led them to be scattered and ethnically cleansed beyond the colonial frontiers: both beyond the Eastward-expanding frontier (to form eventually the future resisting population of the frontier wars ), as well as beyond

5782-428: The capital of the Dutch East Indies . Meanwhile, the Dutch continued to drive out the Portuguese from their bases in Asia. Malacca finally succumbed in 1641 (after a second attempt to capture it), Colombo in 1656, Ceylon in 1658, Nagapattinam in 1662, and Cranganore and Cochin in 1662. Goa , the capital of the Portuguese Empire in the East, was unsuccessfully attacked by the Dutch in 1603 and 1610. Whilst

5880-412: 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, based on England's model that was slowly developed a century before. The companies' domination of global commerce contributed greatly to a commercial revolution and a cultural flowering in the Netherlands of

5978-400: The colony proved to be unprofitable. It was recaptured by the Dutch in 1676, but was returned again a year later, this time permanently. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 saw the Dutch William of Orange ascend to the throne, and win the English, Scottish, and Irish crowns, ending eighty years of rivalry between the Netherlands and England, while the rivalry with France remained strong. During

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6076-404: The command of Jan van Riebeeck , were the first people to establish a European colony in South Africa. The Cape settlement was built by them in 1652 as a re-supply point and way-station for United East India Company vessels on their way back and forth between the Netherlands and Batavia (Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies . The support station gradually became a settler community, the forebears of

6174-448: The company, an employee could lease a piece of land in the colony as a Vryburgher ('free citizen'), on which he had to cultivate crops that he had to sell to the United East India Company for a fixed price. As these farms were labour-intensive, Vryburghers imported slaves from Madagascar , Mozambique and Asia ( Dutch East Indies and Dutch Ceylon ), which rapidly increased the number of inhabitants. After King Louis XIV of France issued

6272-525: The composite Dutch Cape Colony in 1778. At the time, the Dutch had subdued the indigenous Khoisan and San peoples in the Cape and seized their traditional territories. Dutch military expeditions further east were halted when they encountered the westward expansion of the Xhosa people . Hoping to avoid being drawn into a protracted dispute, the Dutch government and the Xhosa chieftains agreed to formally demarcate their respective areas of control and refrain from trespassing on each other's borders. However,

6370-407: The currency of the Burgundian Netherlands after the monetary reforms of 1435, under Philip the Good . It remained the national currency of the Netherlands until it was replaced by the euro , on 1 January 2002. The Reichsmünzordnung of 1524 defined fixed standards for the gold Rhenish gulden and the Guldengroschen of equal value. By 1551, however, both coins were valued at 72 kreuzer , and

6468-432: The death of the King of Portugal, Sebastian I , and much of the Portuguese nobility in the Battle of Alcácer 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. Thus began

6566-441: The direct rule of The Hague. Dutch control did not last long, however, as the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars (18 May 1803) invalidated the Peace of Amiens. In January 1806, the British occupied the colony for a second time after the Battle of Blaauwberg at present-day Bloubergstrand . The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 confirmed the transfer of sovereignty to Great Britain. Traders of the United East India Company ( VOC ), under

6664-460: The empire survived until the advent of global decolonisation following World War II , namely the East Indies and Dutch Guiana . Three former colonial territories in the West Indies islands around the Caribbean Sea — Aruba , Curaçao , and Sint Maarten —remain as constituent countries represented within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This list does not include several former trading posts stationed by Dutch , such as Dejima in Japan. In

6762-420: The enemies and inflict harm on their persons, ships and goods by all means possible, so that they may with reputation not only continue their trade, but also expand it and make it grow, otherwise by neglecting this they will certainly lose it. For this was the principal reason why the Gentlemen States General have undertaken the union of the Companies and awarded them a charter and authorisation to inflict damage on

6860-430: The enemies." – States-General resolution 1 November 1603 As a result of the problems caused by inter-company rivalry, the Dutch East India Company ( Dutch : Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie , VOC) was founded in 1602. The charter awarded to the company by the States-General granted it sole rights, for an initial period of 21 years, to Dutch trade and navigation east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of

6958-403: The freemen, for agricultural purposes, were named Groeneveld and Dutch Garden. These areas were separated by the Amstel River (Liesbeek River). Nine of the best applicants were selected to use the land for agricultural purposes. The freemen or free burghers as they were afterwards termed, thus became subjects, and were no longer servants, of the company. After the first settlers spread out around

7056-585: The independent Netherlands signed the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 with Britain. All the colonies Britain had seized were returned to the Netherlands, with the exception of the Dutch Cape Colony , Dutch Ceylon , and part of Dutch Guyana . After Napoleon's defeat in 1815, Europe's borders were redrawn at the Congress of Vienna . For the first time since the declaration of independence from Spain in 1581,

7154-581: The islands to the United States or Latin America, leaving behind small populations with little income and which required subsidies from the Dutch government. The Antilles were combined under one administration with Suriname from 1828 to 1845. Dutch Cape Colony The Dutch Cape Colony ( Dutch : Kaapkolonie ) was a Dutch United East India Company (VOC) colony in Southern Africa , centered on

7252-414: The land, leading to the first Khoi-Dutch War as part of a series of Khoikhoi–Dutch Wars . After the war, the natives ceded the land to the settlers in 1660. During a visit in 1672, the high-ranking Commissioner Arnout van Overbeke made a formal purchase of the Cape territory, although already ceded in 1660, his reason was to "prevent future disputes". The ability of the European settlers to produce food at

7350-585: The mid-17th century, the Dutch also explored the western Australian coasts, naming many places . The Dutch tried to use military force to make Ming China open up to Dutch trade but the Chinese defeated the Dutch in a war over the Penghu islands from 1623 to 1624, forcing the VOC to abandon Penghu for Taiwan. Then Chinese defeated the Dutch again at the Battle of Liaoluo Bay in 1633. The Dutch colonised Mauritius in 1638, several decades after three ships out of

7448-448: The nearby English and French, the Company founded the fortified town of New Amsterdam in 1625, at the mouth of the Hudson, encouraging settlement of the surrounding areas of Long Island and New Jersey . The fur trade ultimately proved impossible for the company to monopolize due to the massive illegal private trade in furs, and the settlement of New Netherland was unprofitable. In 1655,

7546-644: The nearby colony of New Sweden on the Delaware River was forcibly absorbed into New Netherland after ships and soldiers were sent to capture it by the Dutch governor, Pieter Stuyvesant . Since its inception, the Dutch East India Company had been in competition with its counterpart, the English East India Company , founded two years earlier, for the same goods and markets in the East. In 1619,

7644-478: The overseas territories and trading posts controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies —mainly the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company —and subsequently by the Dutch Republic (1581–1795), and by the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1815. By Jan van Riebeeck 's landing at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, it had colonial provinces in eastern North America ,

7742-606: The rivalry resulted in the Amboyna massacre , when several English Company men were executed by agents of the Dutch. The event remained a source of English resentment for several decades, and indeed was used as a cause célèbre as late as the Second Anglo-Dutch War in the 1660s; nevertheless, in the late 1620s the English Company shifted its focus from Indonesia to India. In 1643, the Dutch West India Company established

7840-539: The rule of the company by moving further inland. The company, in an effort to control these migrants, established a magistracy at Swellendam in 1745 and another at Graaff Reinet in 1786, and declared the Gamtoos River as the eastern frontier of the colony, only to see the Trekboers cross it soon afterwards. In order to keep out Cape native pastoralists, organised increasingly under the resisting, rising house of Xhosa,

7938-421: The several decade-long Dutch–Portuguese War . In the 1590s, the voorcompagnie ën ("pioneer companies") emerged, which were given "express instructions to focus on trade and engage in violence only in self-defense". The Dutch took inspiration from England's many joint-stock companies and private investment, including Muscovy Company , Eastland Company , Levant Company , and East India Company . In 1594,

8036-401: The source of highly profitable spices which were in high demand in Europe. A Dutch expedition had already made contact with the islands in 1599, signing several contracts with Bandanese chiefs. The profitability of the spices was heightened by the fact that they grew nowhere else on Earth, making them extremely valuable to whoever controlled them. As the Dutch attempted to form a monopoly over

8134-564: The spices and forbid the Bandanese from selling to any other group, they resisted, and the Dutch decided to conquer the islands by force. With the aid of Japanese mercenaries , the Dutch launched several military expeditions against the Bandanese. The Dutch attacked most of Portugal's far-flung trading network in and around Asia , including Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka ), and Goa , as well as attacks upon her commercial interests in Japan , Africa (especially Mina ), and South America . Even though

8232-583: The sugarcane plantations and the slave ports needed to resupply their labour. Although weakened by the Iberian Union with Spain, whose attention was focused elsewhere, the Portuguese were able to fight off the initial assault before the Battle of Matanzas Bay provided the WIC with the funds needed for a successful operation. Johan Maurits was appointed governor of " New Holland " and landed at Recife in January 1637. In

8330-542: The territory that same year as a way to better control the seas on the way to India . The British sent a fleet of nine warships which anchored at Simon's Town and, following the defeat of the Dutch militia at the Battle of Muizenberg , took control of the territory. The United East India Company transferred its territories and claims to the Batavian Republic (the Dutch sister republic established by France) in 1798, then ceased to exist in 1799. Improving relations between Britain and Napoleonic France , and its vassal state

8428-623: 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. "The present deputies of the East India Company are seriously admonished to look into and give orders to the effect that the ships, which are already equipped or afterwards shall be equipped to sail to the East Indies, can have charge and instruction to damage

8526-531: The two countries the following year, the first of three Anglo-Dutch Wars that would last on and off for two decades and slowly erode Dutch naval power to England's benefit. In 1661, amidst the Qing conquest of China, Ming general Koxinga led a fleet to invade Formosa. The Dutch defense, led by governor Frederick Coyett , held out for nine months . However, after Koxinga defeated Dutch reinforcements from Java, Coyett surrendered Formosa. The Anglo-Dutch Wars were

8624-653: The world not controlled by its East India counterpart: the Atlantic, the Americas and the west coast of Africa. The Dutch also established a trading post in Ayutthaya, modern day Thailand during the reign of King Naresuan , in 1604. In the 17th century, the " Grand Design " of the West India Company involved attempting to corner the international trade in sugar by attacking Portuguese colonies in Brazil and Africa, seizing both

8722-517: The years 1608–1610, the Dutch sought to secure all sorts of commercially and strategically important positions in Southeast Asia, and the VOC rushed to conclude as many contracts as possible with local monarchs and polities in the so-called frontline regions: the Malay Peninsula (particularly Johor ), Sumatra , the Banda Islands , the Moluccas , Timor and southern India . The Dutch conquest of

8820-605: Was a "critical" event according to several historical studies, with Borschberg (2013) stating it "marked a major shift in policy of the VOC" and "set the cornerstone for the establishment of the Dutch colonial empire in Asia", because the resolution transformed the VOC "into an instrument of war and colonial expansion that was directed against the Iberian powers in Asia and later, of course, also against local Asian rulers and polities." Pursuing their quest for alternative routes to Asia for trade,

8918-512: Was a raid on the Vlie estuary in the Netherlands, executed by the English Fleet during the Second Anglo-Dutch War on 19 and 20 August 1666. The attack, named after the commander of the landing force, Rear-Admiral Robert Holmes , was successful in destroying by fire a large Dutch merchant fleet of 140 ships. During the same action, the town of West-Terschelling was burnt down, which caused outrage in

9016-436: Was abolished in 1791, and its colonies in Suriname and the Caribbean brought under the direct rule of the state. The economies of the Dutch colonies in the Caribbean had been based on the smuggling of goods and slaves into Spanish America , but with the end of the slave trade in 1814 and the independence of the new nations of South and Central America from Spain, profitability rapidly declined. Dutch traders moved en masse from

9114-509: Was at war with France, soon moved to occupy Dutch colonies in Asia, South Africa , and the Caribbean. Under the terms of the Treaty of Amiens signed by Britain and France in 1802, the Cape Colony and the islands of the Dutch West Indies that the British had seized were returned to the Republic. Ceylon was not returned to the Dutch and was made a British Crown Colony . After the outbreak of hostilities between Britain and France again in 1803,

9212-411: Was becoming an increasingly important centre of trade, became apparent to the Dutch, and the disagreement was resolved with the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 . Under its terms, the Netherlands ceded Malacca and their bases in India to the British, and recognized the British claim to Singapore. In return, the British handed over Bencoolen and agreed not to sign treaties with rulers in the "islands south of

9310-516: Was captured from the Portuguese in 1605, but an attack on Malacca the following year narrowly failed in its objective to provide a more strategically located base in the East Indies with favourable monsoon winds. The Dutch found what they were looking for in Jakarta , conquered by Jan Pieterszoon Coen in 1619, later renamed Batavia after the putative Dutch ancestors the Batavians, and which would become

9408-420: Was returned to England the following year, thereby ending Dutch rule in continental North America, but leaving behind a large Dutch community under English rule that persisted with its language, church and customs until the mid-18th century. In South America, the Dutch seized Cayenne from the French in 1658 and drove off a French attempt to retake it a year later. However, it was returned to France in 1664, since

9506-564: Was ruled by the Batavian Republic . Much to the dismay of the shareholders of the VOC, who focused primarily on making profits from the Asian trade, the colony rapidly expanded into a settler colony in the years after its founding. As the only permanent settlement of the Dutch United East India Company not serving as a trading post, it proved an ideal retirement place for employees of the company. After several years of service in

9604-445: Was to become the boundaries of modern-day Indonesia. Although highly populated and agriculturally productive Java was under Dutch domination for most of the 350 years of the combined VOC and Dutch East Indies era, many areas remained independent for much of this time including Aceh , Lombok , Bali , and Borneo . In 1871, all of the Dutch possessions on the Dutch Gold Coast were sold to Britain . The Dutch West India Company

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