Evolution of the Dutch Empire

The Evolution of the Dutch Empire can be traced through the history of the various territories which it comprised. This list gives a brief history of the various territories and trading factories that were under the political control of the Netherlands or of the Dutch East and West India Companies. Collectively, these territories are referred to as the Dutch Empire.

Dutch East Indies
The Dutch East Indies comprised and formed the basis of the later Indonesia. The first Dutch conquests were made among the Portuguese trading posts in the Maluku "Spice Islands" in 1605. The Spice Islands were out of the way for the Dutch trade routes to China and Japan, so Jayakarta on Java was captured and fortified in 1619. As "Batavia", it became the Asian headquarters of the East India Company (VOC). The company administered the islands directly on a for-profit model that restricted most of its attention to Java, southern Sumatra, and Bangka. English incursions were curtailed by the 1623 Amboyna massacre but the attack left bad blood and prompted a series of Anglo-Dutch wars that ended badly for the Republic. The company and its territories were nationalized during the Napoleonic Wars after British attacks effectively bankrupted it. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Dutch expanded throughout the archipelago. Following the 1940 German occupation of the Netherlands and the 1942 Japanese occupation of Indonesia during World War II, Indonesian independence was declared in August of 1945 and – following a prolonged revolution – recognized in December of 1949.

Dutch New Guinea was retained separately until 1962, when it was transferred to Indonesia under pressure from the United States amid the escalation of the Vietnam War.

Dutch India
Dutch India was also composed of colonies and trading posts administered initially by the East Indies Company (VOC) and then directly by the Dutch government after the VOC's collapse.

Ceylon (Zeylan; modern Sri Lanka) was the principal interest of the Dutch in India: it provided cinnamon and elephants and serviced trade between South Africa and the East Indies. The VOC successfully wrested it from Portuguese control during the 1630s, '40s, and '50s although, like the Portuguese, they were never able control the interior of the island.

Coromandel was the major Dutch colony on the mainland. It grew from the fort at Pulicat (Geldria) captured from the Portuguese in 1609. It comprised India's southeastern Coromandel coast across from Ceylon. Surat (Suratte) administered Dutch outposts in Gujarat after 1616. Outposts in Bengal (Bengalen) were consolidated after Chinsura (Gustavius) was fortified in 1635. Malabar was conquered from the Portuguese in the 1660s and administered from Cochin.

Amid the Napoleonic Wars, Malabar and Suratte were yielded to the British in 1795; Ceylon in 1802; and Bengal and Coromandel in 1824.

Formosa
Formosa was the Dutch colony on Taiwan. It was based at Fort Zeelandia from 1624 to 1662, when Koxinga conquered the island. The island was a source of sugarcane and buckskin, as well as an entrepot for merchants from the Chinese mainland.

Malacca
Malacca was an important port on the western Malay Peninsula controlling the Strait of Malacca. It was seized from the Portuguese in 1641. During the Napoleonic Wars, it was yielded to Britain in 1806; it was later returned in 1816 and finally ceded again in 1824.

Dutch Australia
New Holland was a nominal Dutch claim over western Australia. Although no formal colonization attempt was ever made, many places along the northwest coast retain Dutch names. Numerous Dutch ships on their way to the Dutch East Indies such as the Batavia were wrecked off the coast. Later British explorers also claimed to discover small pockets of aborigines with blonde hair and blue eyes.

Van Diemen's Land was another Dutch claim in Australia, asserted in 1642 by Abel Tasman over the island that now bears his name. It was also never colonized (or even returned to) by later Dutch explorers.

Iran
An asterisk (*) designates a trading post.

Band-e Kong (1690)*

Bandar-e Abbas (1623–1758)* The Dutch East Indies Company founded an office in Gamron in 1623. Here they purchased wool and attar of roses and above all silk. They sold spices, cotton fabrics, porcelain, opium, and Japanese lacquer work. Gamron had a garrison comprising around 20 European employees and 20 Persian staff. In 1729 the Dutch attempted, without success, to move their factory from Bandar-e Abbas to the island of Hormuz. In 1758 the company decided to close the station at Bandar-e Abbas.

Bushehr (1738–1753)*

Esfahan (1623–1747)* In 1623 Huybert Visnich established a trading station in Isfahan and concluded a commercial treaty with the Shah. Esfahan was the capital of the kingdom of Persia. The Dutch East Indies Company bought silk from the Shah in exchange for spices and military protection. They was obliged to maintain an office in Ispahan due to the endless negotiations with the Shah about trading concessions. In 1722 Ispahan was conquered by the Afghans. During this time the Dutch were kept virtual prisoners in their factory. In 1727 the factory had to be abandoned because the inner city was to be reserved for Afghans only. The Dutch staff moved to Jolfa. In 1747 the Dutch East India Company office was closed.

Kerman (1659–1744)* A Dutch trading station was opened at Kerman in 1659. It remained in operation, with interruptions, until 1744. The town of Kerman was known for its wool trade.

Khark (1753–1766) Khark is an island in the north of the Persian Gulf near Basra. In Khark the Baron Tido von Kniphausen, formerly Dutch East India Company agent in Bassora, built Fort Mosselstein in 1753 where Javanese sugar and Indian textiles were offered for sale. In 1766 the fort was plundered by the Persian army.

Lar (1631)

Qeshm (1685)

Shiraz (???)

Iraq
Al Basrah (1645–1646, 1651)*

Pakistan
The Dutch had a trading office in the city of Sindi (now Thatta) from 1652-1660.

Yemen
Aden (1620)* On 22 August 1620, the Dutch ship 'T Wapen van Zeelandt reached Aden. Here the Dutch immediately rented a house. When the ship left Aden, five servants and a supply of goods (worth about 42.000 guilders) were left in the trading post under the charge of Harman van Gil. Van Gil went to Sana'a where Muhammad Basha granted to the Dutch permission to build a trading office in Mocha. In November/December 1620 Van Gil transferred the Company's goods to Mocha and closed the temporary office in Aden.

Al Mukha (1621–1623, 1639–1739)* Van Gil arrived in Mocha on 28 January 1621 and there he founded a Dutch trading office. Harman van Gil died in July 1621. Willem Jacobsz de Milde was appointed chief of the trading office. The trading office was closed in April 1623 due to problems with the Yemenite governors. It was reopened in 1639-1739.

Ash Shihr (1614–1616)*

Bangladesh
Dhaka(1664–1704)*

Oman
Muscat(1674)*

Burma
Bandel (1608–1631, 1634)*

Syriam (1635–1679)*

Ava (1635–1679)*

Mandalay (1625–1665)*

Martaban (1660)*

Pegu (???)*

Thailand
Ayutthaya*

Bangkok*

Nakon Si Thammarat*

Pattani*

Phuket*

Songkhla*

Malaysia
Melaka*

Kuala Kedah*

Kuala Linggi

Kuala Selangor

Tanjung Putus*

Ilha das Naus

Kota Belanda (1670–1743, 1745–1748) The origins of this fort can be traced back to 1670. At this time, the Dutch had a monopoly on the export of tin in Perak. The fort was built to protect the tin trade. It is located in the fishing village of Teluk Gedung on Pangkor Island. An early fort was built in 1651 but was destroyed. In 1670, Batavia ordered the construction of a new wooden fort. Ten years later it was replaced by a brick one. In 1690, the Malays under the leadership of Panglima Kulup attacked, damaging the fort and killing several Dutchmen. The settlement was temporarily abandoned until 1743, when the Dutch returned and repaired it. The Dutch stationed 60 soldiers here, including of 30 Europeans.

In 1748, the Dutch built another fort near the Perak River. Following this the Dutch administrators ordered the abandonment of this fort. In 1973, the Museums Department rebuilt the fort and it is now a tourist attraction.

Cambodia
Phnom Penh*

Laauweck (1620–1622, 1667)* The town of Lawec in Cambodia was situated halfway along the Mekong River on the way to Phnom Penh. The Dutch East India Company set up a trading post at Lauweck in 1620, but the trade there proved disappointing, and just two years later the company shut the post down. A new Lawec trading post was opened in 1636, and then sold to the British in 1651, with discontinuities corresponding to the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the era. Meanwhile, "From 1636 to 1670 the Dutch merchants lived at Udong on a semi-permanet basis." but in 1667 the Company left Cambodia durably (to continue regional trade from their expanding holdings in what is now Indonesia). Besides deer hides and ray skins, Cambodia functioned mainly as a source of provisions for Batavia such as rice, butter, salted pork, and lard.

Vietnam
Hanoi (1636–1699)* Towards the end of the 1630s, the Company signed an agreement with the king of Tonkin and opened a trading post in or near today's Hanoi. The country was a major silk producer. The silk which the Dutch East India Company bought there was particularly valuable for trade with Japan. The Company maintained a trading post in Tonkin from 1636 to 1699. This trading post was run by an 'opperhoofd' or supervisor.

Hoi An*

China
Fuzhou (????-1681)* After the loss of Taiwan to the Chinese in 1662, the Dutch East India Company tried to gain access to the Chinese porcelain and silk trade at the port of Fuzhou. The Company's attempts to trade there were hampered by a string of bureaucratic restrictions. Although the trading post at Fuzhou barely made a profit, the Company kept it open until 1681.

Huangpu (1728) Whampoa, an island situated in the Zhujiang river, served as the harbour for the city of Canton. A Dutch warehouse was built here.

Canton (1749–1803)* Tea and porcelain were the principal products purchased by the Dutch East India Company in Canton (now known as Guangzhou. In the 18th century the Company rented permanent premises in Canton, next to the building occupied by the British.

Japan
Firando (1609–1641)*

Deshima (1641–1853)* Initially the Dutch maintained a trading post at Hirado, from 1609 to 1641. The Japanese granted the Dutch a trade monopoly in Japan from 1641 to 1853, but solely on Deshima, an artificial island off the coast of Nagasaki. During this period they were the only Europeans allowed into Japan. Chinese and Korean traders were still welcome, though restricted in their movements.

South Africa
In 1652 the Dutch East India Company established a refuelling 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 were 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 involved in the Boer Wars against the British and are now known as Boers.

New Netherland
New Netherland (Nieuw-Nederland) 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 at Fort Nassau (1614–7) in present-day Albany, New York (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.

New Netherland itself formally ended in 1674 after the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Dutch settlements passed to the English crown and New Amsterdam was renamed New York.

The treaty forged by the Dutch and English stated that each party would hold onto any lands held or conquered at the time of the Treaty of Breda which had ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War. There was no exchange of lands. Hence, the English held onto New Amsterdam (including Manhattan Island and the Hudson River Valley), and the Dutch spoils included Dutch Guiana in South America, and the group of islands in the East Indies known as the Spice Islands (now called Maluku Islands) that were the source of the valuable spice nutmeg. These islands were the only place in the world where the nutmeg tree was found at that time.

Dutch West Indies
The Dutch Antilles (Nederlandse Antillen) comprised various islands around the Caribbean principally colonized or seized by the Dutch from the Spanish. The first settlement was at Saint Martin in 1620. Former territories include the Dutch Virgin Islands (Nederlandse Maagdeneilanden) settled in 1648 but seized by the English in 1672 and New Walcheren (Nieuw-Walcheren) on Tobago held at various times between 1628 and 1677.

Six of the original islands remain part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to this day. Three – Aruba, Curaçao, and St. Maarten – are counted as "countries" within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, while the BES Islands – Bonaire, Saba, and St. Eustatius – are counted as special municipalities of the Netherlands proper within the country and overseas territories under the EU.

Suriname
Suriname (Surinam) was originally colonized by the English but was captured from Francis Willoughby on 26 February 1667 during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Under the terms of the Treaties of Breda and Westminster, the British accepted the loss of Suriname's sugar plantations in exchange for receiving New Netherland (thereafter "New York") in North America. Slavery was abolished in 1873, following a decade-long transition period. Suriname remained a Dutch colony until the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, during which the importance of its aluminum mines prompted its occupation by American troops. After the war, Suriname was returned to Dutch rule but promoted to a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1954. It was granted full independence in 1975.

Guyana
Pomeroon was established on its eponymous river in 1581 and destroyed by natives and Spaniards around 1596. Its original colonists fled to the ruins of an old Portuguese settlement on the island of Kyk-Over-Al in the Essequibo River and established New Zeeland (Nova Zeelandia). After a new fort was established in 1616, the colony became known as Essquibo (Essequebo). In similar fashion, settlements along the Berbice River became known as Berbice in 1627 and others along the Demerara River became Demerara (Demerary) in 1745. Pomeroon was briefly refounded in 1650 but destroyed by French pirates in 1689; later settlements were considered part of the other three colonies. Berbice was occupied by the French in 1712 during the War of Spanish Succession. It was also the site of a major slave uprising under Cuffy in 1763 and '64.

All three were repeatedly captured by the British, finally being ceded at the close of the Napoleonic Wars and reformed as Demerara-Essequibo and Berbice and then united as British Guiana.

New Holland (Brazil)
New Holland (Nieuw-Holland) comprised territories captured from the Iberian Union in northern and northeastern Brazil, held between 1630 and 1654, and claimed until the 1661 Treaty of the Hague. The conquest was the culmination of the "Grand Design", a plan by the West India Company to control the sugar trade by seizing the rich Brazilian plantations and the African slave ports necessary to resupply their labor force. A 1624 attempt held the Brazilian capital of Salvador da Bahia for a year but failed in Africa and finally yielded to a combined Luso-Spanish force. The Battle of Matanzas Bay provided the West India Company with a huge windfall of Spanish silver, which it used to successfully renew the plan. At its height, New Holland spread from Sergipe to Maranhão. Governor Maurits successfully managed the colony for years but, upon his recall to the Netherlands in 1643, the Portuguese planters began a long campaign against his successors. This struggle against the Dutch was later considered formative for later Brazilian independence. Newly independent, Portugal finally agreed to pay the Netherlands 4 million reais (63 metric tons of gold) for abandoning its claims to the territory.

Colombia
Santa Marta (1630)

Chile
Brouwershaven was a short-lived settlement on the site of Valdivia in Chile. The Dutch governor of the East Indies Hendrik Brouwer had learnt that the Spanish had abandoned the city and resigned his post to capture it for its presumed gold mines and strategic importance in providing a base for attacks on the Viceroyalty of Peru. He destroyed Fort Carelmapu and the town of Castro but died before reaching his objective. His lieutenant Elias Herckman captured the town and named it for his former commander, but abandoned the site within a few months owing to the lack of gold and abundance of hostile natives.

West Africa
The Dutch had several possessions in Western Africa. These included the Dutch Gold Coast, the Dutch Slave Coast, Dutch Loango-Angola, Senegambia, and Arguin. They built their first two forts on the Gold Coast in 1598 at Komenda and Kormantsil (in present day Ghana). They expanded their presence in the following centuries. In 1872 they sold the Dutch Gold Coast to the British.

Europe
The Netherlands were 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 the new country of 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.