In the seventeenth century, the Dutch arrived in Luzon and established their first colonial outpost in Java: Batavia, at the site of present-day Jakarta. From Java, they expanded westward to occupy Sumatra, then eastward to seize the Spice Islands from the Portuguese. They even began taking Malacca and Ceylon one after another, engaging in increasingly fierce competition with the Portuguese Malayan governor, Duarte Lopes de Pereira, and his trading company.
In the waters of the Great Ming, the Dutch had once invaded the Ming territory of Little Ryukyu. They had also tried to attack the Portuguese in Macau, and even established a trading post in Nagasaki, on the Japanese island of Kyushu.
By now, the Dutch had established a Cape of Good Hope colony in South Africa, giving their colonial expansion in Asia a powerful staging post. In North America, they had founded the colony of New Netherland along the Hudson River, and seized Manhattan Island at the river's mouth to establish New Amsterdam.
In South America, Dutch colonists had occupied several important islands in the Antilles.
In short, the Dutch were unquestionably a powerful maritime trading and colonial nation. Their shipbuilding industry ranked first in the world. Amsterdam alone, their capital, had at least a hundred shipyards, and the country could build several hundred wooden sailing ships at once. Its shipbuilding technology was the most advanced in the world.
This was the Dutch at the height of their glory. Their merchant fleet accounted for more than three quarters of Europe's total shipping tonnage at the time, and they owned over fifteen thousand ocean-going merchant ships of all kinds, almost monopolizing the world's maritime trade.
It was no exaggeration to say that Norwegian timber, Danish fish, Polish grain, Russian furs, Southeast Asian spices, Indian cotton textiles, and the exquisite silk,