II.

The Foundations of the Empire

The Dutch Empire began as an extension of existing trading activities and as an additional element of economic warfare against the overlord Spain in the Dutch Revolt, when Dutch merchant-venturers went out to plunder Spanish fleets (especially the gold and silver fleets from Spain’s American possessions) and take over Spanish markets abroad. The crucial year was probably 1585, when Dutch ships were banned from the harbours of the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire; the year before, the main rival of the trading northern Dutch, the great port of Antwerp, had fallen to the Spanish, thus removing the local mercantile competition. Closed off from the lucrative trade in exotic goods from the eastern empires of Spain and Portugal, which they had specialized in distributing around Europe, the Dutch decided to go to the source of production themselves: the Spice Islands (see Moluccas) in the East Indies. For these reasons, the decade of Dutch penetration in the East was the 1590s. The first Dutch expedition was led by Cornelis de Houtman in 1595-1597, using charts obtained from the Iberians, and soon after this first success a number of small fleets set out, some of them realizing enormous profits.

However, Dutch expansion was not initially a question of military or naval conquest, for motives were primarily commercial. Military confrontation with the Portuguese was generally avoided; rather, treaties were signed with indigenous princes on fairly remote islands. There was little or no occupation at this early stage: a trading post or “factory” would be set up on the coast, sometimes defended by a small fort. Overheads were kept to a minimum: the Dutch were generally able to flit in between the large and unwieldy Spanish and Portuguese empires and snatch business from under their noses by virtue of their financial strength, their technological prowess in navigation and munitions, and their business acumen, rather than by force of massed arms.

By the early years of the 17th century, the small beginnings had spawned rivalries among the Dutch, and in 1602 Jan van Olden Barneveldt set up the Dutch East India Company (VOC; Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie) as a foil to the English one founded in 1600. It was structured as a shareholders’ company, with most of the capital and control in the hands of 17 directors (the “Seventeen Gentlemen”). Under the approving eye of the Dutch state, the VOC enjoyed great autonomy in its remit, running from the western coast of the Americas to the eastern coast of Africa: it could sign treaties, raise troops, and exercise sovereignty.

Similarly, in the West Indies the critical decade was the 1590s, for the same reasons. There was a more overt anti-Spanish military element in this region, but the underlying motives were also commercial. With the Iberian entrepôts closed to them, the Dutch headed for the sources of salt for their herring (the Windward Islands), the sites for trade with Guyana and Brazil, and furs from the eastern seaboard of North America. In 1621 the myriad strands of private enterprise were bound together in the Dutch West India Company (WIC), with 19 directors and a very similar structure to the VOC. Again, the technique was to take over existing forts and infrastructure from the Spanish and Portuguese, and to harry the Spanish wherever possible. The year 1621 marked the renewal of war between the Dutch Republic and Spain, and the WIC inflicted massive damage on the Spanish Main, culminating in the capture by Piet Hein of the Spanish silver fleet from Mexico in the Bay of Matanzas in 1627.