Dutch Colonization in Southeast Asia

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The Dutch’s appearance in Southeast Asia was predominantly a two-stage colonization process. The initial stage of this expansion period arose in 1602 with the charter of the Dutch East India Company. The VOC (Dutch East India Trading Company) had been formed by the State-General of the Netherlands to carry out, for a granted 21-year monopolistic control, colonial expansion privileges representing the Dutch in South East Asia. While at first it may have seemed that the VOC were to enlarge the territory size of the Dutch overseas to contest with the other European superpowers, they were in fact predominantly more concerned with maximizing their profits through their many monopolies in the trade system. The most popular products to be exchanged in the trading system taken out of Asian and brought to Europe were spices such as pepper, which were exceedingly valuable for the Europeans and most plentiful in Asia.
From 1602 until the demise of the VOC in 1796, millions of Europeans had been relocated to Asia and almost 5,000 ships had been operating under private control of the VOC in Asian waters bringing back almost 3 million metric tons of Asian products back to Europe. All the other Europeans countries combined would not reach the feats that the Dutch East India Company had accomplished throughout their 194 year trading empire tenure. As like any empire, the VOC had begun to decline during their last 50 years until their eventual shut down in 1796. Even though there are a plethora of reasons for the decline of the VOC, 3 primary reasons are what had truly destroyed this mega-corporation. The first was that during the mid 1600s, there had been a dramatic diminution in trade with China and Japan. While this was not a detri...

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...conomical shape to afford a war after being a main participant in WW2. Even though the Dutch were able to win the major engagements in the almost 5 year long war, the guerrilla warfare strategy deployed by the Indonesians had become too detrimental to the Dutch which eventually led to the assentation to Indonesian Independence in 1949.

Works Cited

2. De, Zum. "The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, 1780-1784." The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, 1780-1784. KMLA, 1 Nov. 2001. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.
3. Brunberg, Jon. "Indonesian Independence - the Polynational War Memorial." Indonesian Independence - the Polynational War Memorial. GNU FDL, Apr. 2004. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.
4. Brinely, Amanda. "The Dutch East India Company." About.com Geography. About.com, May-June 2013. Web. 01 Dec. 2013.
5. "Sands of Time." Short History of Southeast Asia. Destination Asia, Oct. 2003. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.

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