DUTCH -NETHERLAND ,COLONIES HISTORY

DUTCH -NETHERLAND ,COLONIES HISTORY 

Until the 16th century, the Low Countries – corresponding roughly to the present-day Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg – consisted of a number of duchies, counties, and prince-bishoprics, almost all of which were under the supremacy of the Holy Roman Empire, with the exception of the county of Flanders, which was under the Kingdom of France.

Most of the Low Countries had come under the rule of the House of Burgundy and subsequently the House of Habsburg. In 1549 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which further unified the Seventeen Provinces under his rule. Charles was succeeded by his son, King Philip II of Spain. In 1568 the Netherlands, led by William I of Orange, revolted against Philip II because of high taxes, persecution of Protestants by the government, and Philip's efforts to modernize and centralize the devolved-medieval government structures of the provinces.[5] This was the start of the Eighty Years' War

During the Anglo-French war (1778), the internal territory was divided into two groups:

 the Patriots, who were pro-French and pro-American, and the Orangists, who were pro-British.[6]

 The Republic of the United Provinces faced a series of republican revolutions in 1783–1787. 

During this period, republican forces occupied several major Dutch cities. Initially on the defence, the Orangist forces received aid from Prussian troops and retook the Netherlands in 1787. The republican forces fled to France, but then successfully re-invaded alongside the army of the French Republic (1793–95), ousting stadtholder William V, abolishing the Dutch Republic, and replacing it with the Batavian Republic (1795–1806). After the French Republic became the French Empire under Napoleon, the Batavian Republic was replaced by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Holland (1806–1810)

The Netherlands regained independence from France in 1813. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 the names "United Provinces of the Netherlands" and "United Netherlands" were used. In 1815 it was rejoined with the Austrian Netherlands and Liège (the "Southern provinces") to become the Kingdom of the Netherlands, informally known as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, to create a strong buffer state north of France. On 16 March 1815, the son of stadtholder William V crowned himself King William I of the Netherlands. Between 1815 and 1890 the King of the Netherlands was also in a personal union the Grand Duke of the sovereign Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. After Belgium gained its independence in 1830, the state became unequivocally known as the "Kingdom of the Netherlands", as it remains today.

The Dutch Empire (Dutch: Het Nederlandse Koloniale Rijk) comprised the overseas colonies, enclaves, and outposts controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies, mainly the Dutch West India and the Dutch East India Company, and subsequently by the Dutch Republic (1581–1795), and the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands since 1815.
It was initially a trade-based entity which derived most of its influence from merchant enterprise and Dutch control of international maritime shipping routes through strategically placed outposts, rather than expansive territorial ventures.[3][2] With a few exceptions, the majority of the Dutch Empire's overseas holdings consisted of coastal forts, factories, and port settlements with varying degrees of incorporation of their hinterlands and surrounding regions.[3] Dutch chartered companies often dictated that their possessions be kept as confined as possible to avoid unnecessary expense,[4] and while some such as the Dutch Cape Colony (modern South Africa) and Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia) expanded anyway due to the pressure of independently minded Dutch colonists, others remained undeveloped, isolated trading centres dependent on an indigenous host nation

Because small European trading companies often lacked the capital or the manpower for large scale operations, the States General chartered the Dutch West India Company and the Dutch East India Company in the early seventeenth century.[5] 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.[5] The companies' brief domination of global commerce contributed greatly to a commercial revolution and a cultural flowering in the Netherlands known as the Dutch Golden Age.

 the Dutch Empire began to decline as a result of the several Anglo-Dutch Wars, in which it lost many of its colonial possessions and trade monopolies to the British Empire.[8] Nevertheless, some portions of the empire survived until the advent of global decolonisation following World War II (1939–1945), namely the East Indies (Indonesia) and Dutch Guiana (Surinam).[9] Three former colonial territories in the West Indies islands around the Caribbean Sea—Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten—are retained as constituent countries represented within the Kingdom of the Netherlands

Rise of Dutch economic hegemony (1602–1652)
See also: Evolution of the Dutch Empire
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 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.[17] 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. In 1621, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) was set up and given a 25-year monopoly to those parts of the world not controlled by its East India counterpart: the Atlantic, the Americas and the west coast of Africa.[18] The Dutch also established a trading post in Ayutthaya, modern day Thailand during the reign of King Naresuan, in 1604

Phillip II-Dutch conflicts

DUTCH PORTUGHESE WAR

São Luís, Maranhão, Dutch Brazil
The Spanish-Dutch War was for the Dutch part of their struggle for independence and religious freedom, during the Eighty Years' War. It 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 the King of Spain and Portugal.The Netherlands became part of the domains of the 'Spanish branch' of the Habsburg dynasty when Emperor Charles V divided the holdings of the Habsburg Empire following his abdication in 1555. In 1566, the Dutch revolt erupted and in 1568 the Dutch Republic embarked on the long, torturous path of the Eighty Years' War 

From 1517, the port of Lisbon in Portugal was the main European market for products from India that was attended by other nations to purchase their needs. 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 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 joining of the two crowns deprived Portugal of a separate foreign policy, with King Phillip II's enemies becoming Portugal's enemies as well. War with the Dutch led to attacks on 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 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 both France and the United Provinces.

Asia

The primary Dutch and Portuguese settlements in Asia, c. 1665. With the exception of Jakarta and Deshima, all had been captured by the Dutch East India Company from Portugal.[20] War between Phillip II's possessions and other countries led to a deterioration of Portugal's Empire, as with the loss of Hormuz to England, 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.[21] 
Amboina was captured from the Portuguese in 1605, 
.[22] The Dutch found what they were looking for in Jakarta, conquered by Jan Coen in 1619, later renamed Batavia after the putative Dutch ancestors the Batavians, and which would become 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, Nagappattinam 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 the Dutch were unable in four attempts to capture Macau[23] from where Portugal monopolized the lucrative China-Japan trade, the Japanese 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.
The Dutch colonised Mauritius in 1638,

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 the Dutch took northern Formosa from the Spanish by force.Between 1602 and 1796, the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade.[24] The majority died of disease or made their way back to Europe, but some of them made the Indies their new home.[25] Interaction between the Dutch and native population mainly took place in Sri Lanka and the modern Indonesian Islands. 

Membership	29 countries Colonies:  Netherlands  Belgium  Brazil  Ivory Coast  French Guiana  Ghana  Guyana  India  Indonesia  Luxembourg  Mauritius  United States  South Africa  Sri Lanka  Taiwan  Suriname Trading Posts:  Angola  Australia  Bangladesh  Canada  Chile  China  Japan  Kuwait  Malaysia  Morocco  Namibia  São Tomé and Príncipe  Senegal  Thailand[1]  Western Sahara  Yemen