Dutch Republic: Did you mean...?

Artist's impression of Dutch explorers meeting a French ship near the coastline, with a port town and mountains in the background. Created by Amplitude Studios for the video game Humankind.

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.

A c. 1640 painting showing a Dutch ship in the harbour of Recife, Portuguese Brazil. Painted by Abraham Willaerts. (Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Amsterdam)

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

Map of East India, taken from the Atlas van der Hagen, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague Part 4. This map of South East Asia was published by Nicolaas Visscher II (1649-1702). The map shows the entire trading...

A Swiss plantation in the Dutch East Indies bought in 1881 by Karl Krüsi (1855–1925) and named after Mary, his wife. In 1893, he sold it for a fortune and built the Villa Sumatra Zurich’s Sumatrastrasse. Manager House...

With a wealth of natural resources, Brazil was by far the most important colony in the Portuguese empire and was, at one time or another, the world’s leading producer of sugar, diamonds, and tobacco. Colonised from the 1530s...

Henry Hudson (c. 1570-1611) was an English navigator and maritime explorer. He is known for his four voyages between 1607 and 1610 in search of a northwest passage via the Arctic Ocean to the Far East. The lure of a northwest passage...

Louis XIV (1638-1715) reigned as King of France from 1643 to 1715. Known as Le Roi Soleil ('the Sun King'), he fervently believed in the concept of the 'divine right' of kings and is remembered for ruling as an absolute...

From a humble beginning as a sweet treat grown in gardens, sugar cane cultivation became an economic powerhouse, and the growing demand for sugar stimulated the colonization of the New World by European powers...