During the Dutch Golden Age, the "carriers of the sea" transported goods from all over the world to Europe, but the Dutch East India Company's foremost objective was, of course, profit, and the best way to ensure profit was through monopoly.
But the seas were vast, and there were many competitors. Achieving a monopoly was far from simple.
Before long, some Dutch men discovered the importance of their wives. These colonial or foreign women held a low legal status in the Netherlands, but enjoyed higher standing locally. The men could use their social connections and familiarity with local markets to take part in local trade.
Once they had saved enough money, they would return home and marry a "respectable" wife. At first, this was fairly easy, but later these shrewd businesswomen also learned how to use their behind-the-scenes influence to manage their assets well, even obtaining legally recognized marriages in the Netherlands. The men might not necessarily get their way. There had once been a case in which a husband eventually gained control over his wife's property, but the legal process took nineteen years. By the time he got it, he was practically on his deathbed.
Europeans abroad often died young. Few Dutch men in Batavia lived to old age, and women of this kind often became the eagerly pursued targets of the next wave of European adventurers.
Some married three or four times in their lives, helping their younger husbands attain high positions in the Dutch East India Company. After becoming wealthy, the men divorced and remarried. By then, they no longer needed to marry women with particularly strong local connections or great wealth. Thus, when they died, they left behind exceedingly rich widows. The excesses of these women often disgusted Dutch men steeped in Calvinist doctrine. But men