Starting with the defeat of the Spanish, around 1600, Holland advanced to be a major european power. The Dutch had clonies in the New World (New Amsterdam, Surinam, Curacao), in the Far East (Indonesia), Africa (South Africa), and the Dutch East India Company was a major enterprise. For a while, the Dutch challenged England, and they fought several wars with the Portuguese (in Brazil). So what ended their period of world power? Was Holland too small?
I wonder what the USA would have been, had Holland been the major colonizing power in the New World!
Speculation on the tulip market, I think.
(actually, based on a bit of googling, it looks like that is one opinion or one factor leading to a general downturn in the early/mid 1600s for Holland.
They challenged England and overall lost. England had been a minor player in European affairs until the mid-1600s. Then Spain suffered a major decline, leaving a power vacuum. At the same time, England was finally done with it’s internal social/ political upheavals and could turn it’s energies outward, especially after the union with Scotland. England’s geographic position meant that once it became a first-rate naval power it could severely hamper trade in and out of the North Sea. England eventually matched the Netherlands in progressiveness, didn’t have to worry about a land invasion, and was also simply bigger.
Yeah, thats pretty much it. England smacked down the Dutch in the two of the three Anglo-Dutch wars in the second half of the 1600’s.
England also had tons more agriculture - nothing to sneeze at then. This agricultural power directly supported both the Navy and the Army - both used a sophisticated supply system for its time.
Yep. The Netherlands became powerful because of a power vacuum. Once England got its act together, the Dutch were left in the dust. England beat the Dutch by going Dutch. Add into that the Treaty of Breda, which was a bit of a mistake for the Netherlands. One of the provisions of the treaty was an island swap. The Dutch got Ran Island, a nutmeg producer in the Far East, in exchange of a worthless little piece of real estate called Manhattan.
I’m going to suggest something slightly different. The Dutch fell from power not by fighting the English and losing but by fighting the English and winning. The Stadtholder of the Netherlands, William of Orange, pulled off the last successful invasion of England (to date) in 1688 and got himself installed as King. He was able to use his power as leader of both the Netherlands and England to hold off France from overrunning Europe and more specifically to keep England from joining France against the Dutch.
But he didn’t manage to get himself installed as an absolute monarch, and had to negotiate with Parliament in order to get himself in charge with a minimum of fuss (and since the main point was getting English help against France, having a long campaign against England was counterproductive). So the terms of the new Anglo-Dutch alliance guaranteed that the English would have a larger fleet and locked the Dutch into providing most of the land-based power. In the longer term, the alliance became very unbalanced in Britain’s favor but it remained in place until the Dutch pro-American actions in the American Revolution couldn’t be ignored by the British any longer…
So yeah, it was England. But it wasn’t because they were defeated head-to-head.
I pretty much agree with what silenus said. The Dutch were a major power because of certain things they did like limiting the aristocracy, encouraging a business class, seeking trade, and encouraging civil tolerance. But once these things became obviously successful, then they were adopted by other countries. These countries were able to duplicate the advantages that the Dutch had, but they also had advantages like larger populations, more natural resources, and better geography that the Dutch couldn’t duplicate in turn.
Sure, and the Dutch made a lot of money selling nutmeg among other spices from the Dutch East Indies. Not sure what the British got out of Manhattan, but they ended up losing it long before the Dutch got run out of Indonesia.
The Dutch were never interested in colonizing in the British manner or being a world power. Their objective was money from resource extraction and the Dutch East Indies was the big prize.
Now I can’t provide a cite because I saw it on a documentary several years ago but there was some sort of agreement following the third Anglo-Dutch War that the Dutch would not challenge the British Navy in exhange for the security of their shipping.
Essentially true, but when we say “successful invasion” we shouldn’t forget that there was minimal armed opposition (at least in England) and William was as near to welcomed with open arms as any foreign invader could expect to be. So “fighting” is slightly misleading. 
To the other factors listed, I would add the rise of a powerful and aggressive France under Louis XIV. Strong and aggressive governments in France or Germany have always been bad news for the Netherlands. It was the French threat that forced much of the Anglo-Dutch jockeying described above.
France under Louis XIV was very aggressive-they actually invaded the netherlands. What benefit this was to france is an open question. The dutch went into decline, although the Dutch east india company (VOC) stayed in business ti 1930 or so. Its a shame the USA hasn’t more dutch influence-I like windmills and wooden shoes!
From what I’ve read, the Dutch East India Company was out of business by 1815; the British East India Company was wound up in 1874, and the only one of the (Somewhere Foreign & Exotic) Companies founded in Ye Olde Dayes that’s still going in the Hudson Bay Company, which is now primarily a chain of department stores in Canada. The last one to go out of business was The Muscovy Company, which went under in 1917 as a result of the Russian Revolution.
The US has quite some Dutch influence, your decleration of independance was largely copied from the dutch example and I highly suspect that the stripes part of ‘the stars and stripes’ was based on flags flown by Dutch ships.
The Anglo-Dutch wars, btw are not seen as a defeat. They mainly started because Britain wanted to claim the entire North-Sea and Channel as national waters. Other ships were to show honours (strike sail) to British vessels and allow boarding.
In the end Britain did not gain these rights and in the process we did some true arse kicking with de Ruyter’s raid up the Thames and Medway. Blasting their way up to Chatham.
The rise of France and, as a reaction, Germany made Holland too small as a real player in the actual European theatre. From Napoleon on it was clear that the country is just too small to be a decisive force in Europe.
Holland still owned quite a bit of colonial territory up till after WWII.
The reason we lost those?
We were pressured by the US into handing them independance.
Guess who has all them fat oil contracts over there…
Did the influx of gold and silver resulting from English piracy of the Spanish treasure fleets play a significant role in England’s rise?
Probably not - very few were actually taken. In terms of the economic importance of precious metals I’d be more inclined to credit English dominance in the Portuguese ( Brazilian ) gold trade of the 18th century. It has been argued that that was one of the drivers of the Industrial Revolution.
Shell?
I assure you, you would have lost them anyway.
The Truman administration was more worried that, …the overseas venture was draining Holland’s lifeblood and impairing its domestic recovery as well as its contribution to the stability of Europe….
Fact was, the Netherlands was weakening in their “pacification” campaign, with 140,000 troops tied down and losing ground to guerillas and needed outside ( U.S. ) aid to continue fighting its Javanese rebels. The U.S., unlike in the case of France, decided that was counter-productive and not only refused, but did indeed twist arms to come to a settlement. But left to their own devices, the Dutch would have almost certainly have had to cut their losses eventually anyway.
And while American oil companies ( mostly two - Caltex and Stanvac ) did ultimately climb into bed with the regime, as Shibboleth wryly notes, Shell was the third big foreign firm in the country.
Quote from A.J. Stockwell, in the The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Volume Two, Part Two: From World War II to the Present ( 1992, 1999, Cambridge University Press ).
Yes, probably, eventually. This was the period of decolonisation, after all.
But the way it is remembered here is that the independence movement was largely contained, restricted to certain areas. A group of American observers and journalists was sent there to see how the Dutch managed Indonesia.
Those Dutch present felt very confident they had shown the group that Dutch rule was very benevolent and that a positive advice would be given to the US government.
As it was, the plane carrying the group crashed over India, under somewhat mysterious circumstances.
So to this day the Dutch still feel a bit cheated over their loss of Indonesia.