There were two essential motives for Dutch expansion across the oceans: the demand for Asian and Atlantic products and the desire to hurt their Iberian archenemy's revenues. The Dutch began to become active on these distant shores shortly after 1580, when seven provinces in the northern Netherlands sought their independence. The break with their Spanish Habsburg ruler Philip II, lord of the Low Countries, had negative economic side-effects, since Spain and Portugal were the only two powers with an empire outside Europe and were therefore the main sources of Atlantic and Asian products. From 1580 the two were linked in a personal union under the Spanish king. The rift between the Northern Netherlands and the Spanish monarchy caused the supply of overseas products to stagnate, and became one of the reasons for the Dutch themselves to trade directly with markets in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Portugal and Spain had great difficulty parrying Dutch expansion. While they had large colonial empires and trade networks overseas, they still lacked the manpower and resources to control these vast extra-European spaces.

The Dutch Overseas

Political leaders in the nascent Dutch Republic wanted to use military force to hit the Iberian empires in order to damage the economic basis of the enemy war effort. Merchants, meanwhile, were angling for overseas products to maintain their strong trading position within Europe. The ensuing transoceanic expansion was made possible in part by rapid economic growth and innovations in navigation, as well as the development of naval artillery. Because, in the 1580s and 1590s, the State was still heavily engaged in securing its own territory, it was primarily the private sector that took the initiative overseas, sometimes with State support. In the first instance, the Dutch were feeling out the weak spots of the Iberian empires. The Portuguese empire was the most vulnerable due to its ‘open’, maritime locations.

The Dutch Republic itself, in cooperation with England, initially concentrated its attacks on the Iberian peninsula The Iberian routes across the Atlantic were left for the private sector to deal with, whose focus was not only on trade but also privateering. The Dutch established few overseas outposts; the States General were initially cautious in the western hemisphere. In 1595-1596, the Dutch began to take the sea route to Asia via the Cape of Good Hope.