More Images Dutch colonial empire
Overseas territories controlled by the Dutch Republic and the Netherlands
The Dutch colonial empire comprised the overseas territories and trading posts controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies—mainly the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company—and subsequently by the Dutch Republic, and by the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1815. By Jan van Riebeeck's landing at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, it had colonial provinces in eastern North America, the Caribbean, South America, Africa, mainland India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Taiwan. It also chartered new lands of Australia and New Zealand. It was initially a trade-based system which derived most of its influence from merchant enterprise and from Dutch control of international maritime shipping routes through strategically placed outposts, rather than from expansive territorial ventures. Wikipedia