Dutch Empire: Did you mean...?

Blue and white Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC) logo from 1650-1674. Made in Japan to order by the company's directors in Batavia (Jakarta). Date between 1615 and 1674.

Battle between Dutch and Spanish ships on the Haarlemmermeer, 26 May 1573, oil on canvas by Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom, c. 1629. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Pieter de Carpentier (1586-1659) - Governor General of the Dutch East Indies.

A 17th-century painting by Reinier Nooms showing Dutch and Spanish ships fighting at the Battle of the Downs in the English Channel in 1639. (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich)

Dutch whalers off Spitsbergen, oil on canvas by Abraham Storck, c. 1690. Collectie Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam.

Replica of the Dutch Halve Maen ("Half Moon"), which English navigator Henry Hudson (c. 1570-1611) captained on his third voyage in 1609 in search of a northwest passage. Photographic print by Stereo-Travel Co., c. 1909. Library of Congress...

The establishment of the Middle and Southern English Colonies of North America was encouraged by the earlier English settlements of Jamestown Colony of Virginia in the south (founded 1607) and Plymouth Colony and, especially, Massachusetts...

Detail of Practice fight on the IJ in honour of Tsar Peter the Great on 1 September 1697, oil on canvas, by Abraham Storck, c. 1700. Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam.

While the English were falling apart a little, with their civil war and their restoration and their succession problems, the Dutch were getting their act together. They were throwing off the yoke of the Spanish Empire, uniting their provinces...

Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean on the northwest corner of the Barents Shelf. It is 800 kilometres (497 mi) north of mainland Norway and sits roughly midway between the top of Norway and the North Pole. It is bordered by Greenland...