Dutch Commerce the Golden Age of Dutch Essay

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Dutch Commerce

The Golden Age of Dutch Commerce

Few powers from the age of colonialism would ascend with such speed, would proliferate so extensive an influence and would decline with such rapidity as would the Dutch in the 17th Century. A period often identified as a Dutch Golden Age, a duration initiating around the turn of the century and lasting under a century, the 1600s would be distinguished by a global dominance by the emergent Dutch Empire. The text by McKay et al. (2003) is particularly instructive on the role played by the Dutch in shaping global economic and military conditions during its brief but prodigious reign.

The forces that would first distinguish the Dutch from their competitors in a highly contentious period of European expansionism would be their superior naval and maritime capabilities. Prolific shipbuilders with tremendous seafaring and war-making capabilities, the Dutch succeeded in building their empire not by discovering and colonizing lands but by following on the heels of the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors of the preceding generation.

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According to Harreld (2010), "The ability of Dutch shippers to effectively compete with entrenched merchants, like the Hanseatic League in the Baltic, or the Portuguese in Asia stemmed from their cost cutting strategies (what de Vries and van der Woude call "cost advantages and institutional efficiencies," p. 374). Not encumbered by the costs and protective restrictions of most merchant groups of the sixteenth century, the Dutch trimmed their costs enough to undercut the competition." (Harreld, p. 1)

This would allow the Dutch not only to stimulate a period of rapid expansion in its maritime exploits, but also to effectively wage wars of occupation against the Spanish and the Portuguese in Africa and the Americas, and with England and France in Asia. In all of these contexts, the Dutch would establish a new model for colonial expansion and, in doing so, would create a powerful template to be followed….....

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