Establishment of the Dutch Dominion

The Dutch were the people of Holland (now the Netherlands) and were the second Europeans to set foot in India after the Portuguese. The Dutch government granted the United East India Company of the Netherlands license to trade in the East Indies, including India, in 1602. The Dutch East India Company, also known as the United East India Company or the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, was a trading company established in 1602 in the Dutch Republic (modern-day Netherlands) to protect the Dutch Republic's trade in the Indian Ocean and to aid the Dutch in their war of independence from Spain. Throughout most of the 17th century, the firm thrived as a tool of the great Dutch East Indian economic empire (present-day Indonesia). In 1799, it was discontinued.

History of Dutch in India 

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The Dutch colonies in India consisted of settlements and trading posts under the control of the Dutch East India Company. Dutch India was more of a geographical location than political authority. In comparison to the Portuguese and the English, the Dutch had the shortest presence in India of all the European colonial powers that came.

When Dutch came to India, the Dutch East India Company first developed a presence in the Indian subcontinent by establishing a reading post in Dutch Coromandel, specifically Pulicat. They primarily dealt in textiles and real estate. In 1616 and 1627, they established themselves in Surat and Bengal, respectively.

It's worth noting that the dutch first factory in India was established in Masulipatnam in 1605.

In 1656, the Dutch East Indies defeated the Portuguese in Sri Lanka. They then built a chain of forts along the Malabar coast to protect themselves from invasion. The Dutch government authorized the company a trade monopoly in the waters between the Cape of Good Hope at Africa's south end and the Straits of Magellan connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as the right to resolve treaties with native princes, build castles and retain armed forces, and carry out management services through officials who were required to take a pledge of loyalty.

The following were the main factories of the Dutch East India Company in India towards the end of the 17th century.

• Surat in 1616

• Bimlipatam in 1641

• Karaikal in 1645

• Chinsurah in 1653

•  Baranagar, Kasimbazar (near Murshidabad), Balasore, Patna and Nagapatam in 1658 

• Cochin in 1663

Main Dutch Trading Centres

1. Konkan (Northern part of Westcoast India)

2. Surat (1616-1795)

3. Agra (1621-1720)

4. Burhanpur.

5. Kanpur (1650-1685)

6. Ahmadabad (1617-1744)

7. Bharuch (of Brochia, Broach)

8. Vengurla (1637-1685)

9. Kundapura (1667- ca.1682)

Dutch Expansion in India 

Indonesia was the location of the Dutch East India Company's first permanent trade base. They started their first factory in India in Masulipattanam in 1605. Also, they had started more factories, followed by factories in Pulicat in 1610, Surat in 1616, Bimilipatam in 1641, and Chinsura in 1653.

The Dutch government granted the United East India Company of the Netherlands license to trade in the East Indies, including India, in 1602. In the year 1605, the Dutch established their first factory in Masaulipatam, Andhra Pradesh. They built trading centres in various parts of India as a result.

The following goods were exchanged from their outposts in the aforementioned locations:

• Indigo is made in the Yamuna Valley in Central India.

• Silk and textiles were popularly found in Bengal and Gujarat.

• Bihar saltpetre is a mineral that is found in the state of Bihar.

• Rice and opium from the Ganga Valley.

Due to their British rivals' aggressive colonial endeavours, the Dutch began to lose power in the Indian subcontinent by the middle of the 18th century. When the Travancore army beat a Dutch East India company army at the Battle of Colachel in 1741, it effectively ended Dutch presence in South India. This was called the Dutch invasion of India. 

The Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 exacerbated the fall of dutch colonies in India as the Dutch began to cede their holdings to the British. Following the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, the Dutch and English Asia Holdings ratified their additional possessions. A series of confrontations between the English and Dutch East India Companies led to the pact.

All properties and establishments were to take place on March 1, 1825, according to the conditions of the treaty. The Dutch East India Company had lost most of its trading sites in India by the middle of 1825.

Dutch Coinage

During their time in India, the Dutch experimented with money minting. They established mints in Cochin, Masulipattam, Nagapatam Pondicherry, and Pulicat as their trade grew. Furthermore, the Pulicat mint issued a gold pagoda with an image of Lord Venkateswara (god Vishnu). The Dutch minted coins that were all based on local coinages.

Facts about the Dutch Rule in India 

• In 1602 the Dutch East India Company made the world's first known Initial Public Offering, establishing the world's first Stock Exchange.

• The Dutch East India Company was more concerned with retaining its monopoly than with imperialism. Empire was created later, in the 18th century, to protect a monopoly.

• The Dutch East India Company was a proto-conglomerate that diversified into many commercial and industrial operations, including international trading, and was earlier than a usual corporate model of a fully connected global supply chain.

• The Dutch were revolutionary capitalists in the early modern era, boosting the commercial and industrial capabilities of undeveloped or unexplored regions whose resources they exploited, for the benefit or worse.

• Modern companies are all "direct progeny" of the Dutch East India Company model in many ways. It was its 17th-century institutional innovations and economic practices that created the groundwork for the ensuing decades' emergence of massive worldwide enterprises.

• They created a factory in Pipli, Bengal, but it was eventually abandoned. The Dutch's major goal remained to eliminate the Portuguese and British mercantile powers from India and Southeast Asia, and they were successful in displacing the Portuguese as the most powerful power in European trade.

• In 1610, they established a factory in Pulicat, which became their major hub of activity. Fort Geldria was the name given to it subsequently. While the Portuguese were harmed by Albuquerque's terrible successors and their harshness and intolerance, the Dutch were defeated by the rising English and French forces and their corruption. The Dutch government also interjected heavily, resulting in the Dutch being driven out of India.

• The Dutch were able to drive the Portuguese out of Ceylon between 1638 and 1658.

• They were successful in capturing the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. The Dutch East India Corporation reached its pinnacle in 1669, when it was the world's richest private company, with 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50 thousand employees, and a ten-thousand-strong army. The Battle of Colachel, fought between the Dutch East India Company and the State of Travancore army in 1741, was the most significant event in India. This was a major European power's defeat in India, and it signalled the end of the Dutch hegemony.

The Dutch East India Company was formally liquidated in 1800 as a result of corruption and bankruptcy. Although the Dutch influence in India had faded, they remained powerful in Indonesia. Later, the Dutch government established the Dutch East Indies as a nationalised colony, which was roughly within the limits of modern-day Indonesia.

Decline of Dutch Power

From 1605 to 1825 AD, the Dutch occupied the Indian subcontinent. The expansion of British supremacy in the Eastern trade posed a severe threat to the Dutch commercial interests, resulting in brutal combat between them, with the British coming out on top due to their vast resources. The Dutch brutally murdered some English tradesmen at Amboyna in 1623, worsening the situation. The British took up the Dutch fortresses one by one.