Dutch

The Dutch established trading factories – as on Curaçao – rather than colonies, but they founded one major colony, Dutch Guiana, taken from the British in 1665 (//pages 122–23//). Established by Estates-General of the Netherlands in 1602 as the first national joint stock company for international mercantile enterprise, the Dutch East India Company was a dominant global commercial force for nearly two centuries until it was dissolved in 1798 after declaring bankruptcy. The formation of stockholding corporations of shared risk and reward revolutionized global commerce, generating unprecedented pools of capital to fund continuing cycles of enterprise. The British East India Company, Dutch and British West India Companies, the Hudson Bay Company, and other joint venture trading companies were formed to capitalize commercial colonization throughout the world. The Dutch introduced top masts and sails, as well as the //fluytschip// (a flat-bottomed cargo carrier), and these advances certainly facilitated commercial exploitation and colonization of a type that was markedly different from the plundering of the //conquistadores// and the privateering expeditions of Drake. However, the idea of European settlement in the Americas in order to exploit fully the land’s natural resources was surprisingly slow to win acceptance and, when it did, was invariably difficult to sustain.

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