The Rise and Fall of the Dutch Maritime Empire: War, Trade, and Colonization in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World

Although the Netherlands, known as the "Sea Coachman", is a small country, it relied on the establishment of a series of modern financial and commercial systems to make the 17th century the century of the Netherlands. Due to limitations of natural factors such as land area, the Netherlands gradually lost its hegemony in the world at the end of the 17th century, but the business rules pioneered by the Dutch still influence the world today. This book is a light academic book on the history of the Netherlands. The author introduces the history of the Netherlands' expansion of overseas colonial influence in the golden age of the 17th century, from its rapid rise in Africa and America from the 1920s to the mid-1940s, and its gradual decline through the Interprovincial War, the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and the war with Portugal. Through the narration of the lives of Dutch sailors and soldiers, the interactions and trade between Dutch businessmen and other countries, and the immigration and management of Dutch colonies, it shows the unprecedented mark left by the Netherlands on the vast Atlantic world. On the one hand, Dutch colonial rule led to discrimination, slavery and bloodshed, on the other hand it also brought with it their own institutions, legal practices and cultural traditions. This book shows how the "Sea Coachman" Netherlands established and eventually lost an Atlantic empire from multiple perspectives including politics, economy, military, culture, and society.