Dutch Empire (jan 1, 1595 – jan 1, 1975)

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1601 Dutch defeat the Portuguese in a naval battle in the Indonesian Archipelago (the Spice Islands).

1602 The Dutch government (United Netherlands) grants the Dutch East India Company a monopoly to pursue trade in Asia.

1607 The Dutch defeat a Spanish fleet at Gibraltar.

1609 Henry Hudson, employed by the Dutch East India Company, anchors off Manhattan Island and trades with local Indians. He then sails up the river to be named after him, to look for but not find a water way to the Far East.

1609 The Dutch have ended Portugal's domination of the Indian Ocean, and they establish a trading outpost on the western coast of India.

1611 The Dutch East India Company builds a factory on India's coast in the southeast, at Pulicat, to make gunpowder.

1613 Dutch arrive at the island of Timur, previously claimed by Portugal and now claimed by the Dutch.

1619 Forces of the Dutch East India Company conquer the city of Jayakarta and rename it Batavia (Latin for the Netherlands). They make it their capital in the Spice Islands. Also this year, the Dutch East India Company and the Britain's East India Company agree to cease all fighting, to return each other's captured ships and prisoners and to create a joint fleet (one-third English, two-thirds Dutch) to expel Spain and Portugal from the Spice Islands, China, the Philippines, and the Malay Peninsula.

1619 African slaves are being transported to the West Indies to replace those Africans who have died there. The sugar industry is killing them faster than they can be replaced by procreation.

1619 To work their tobacco fields, colonists in Virginia buy 20 blacks from a Dutch ship that arrives for supplies.

1624 The Dutch establish a fur trading post, Fort Orange, at what today is Albany, New York.

1626 Dutch establish New Amsterdam (New York). With fish hooks and trinkets, the Dutch buy Manhattan Island from Canarsie chiefs of the Wappinger Confederacy.

1652 The Dutch East India Company establishes a toe hold in southern Africa, near the Cape of Good Hope, to serve Dutch ships passing to and from the East.

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