During the 17th century, the Netherlands, despite having only 1.5 million people in 1600, became a global maritime and trading power. By contrast, France at the time had 20 million people, Spain had 8 million, and England had 5 million. Nevertheless, Amsterdam became one of the most important urban centers in the world. It was the location of the world’s first stock market, and Dutch merchant ships and pirates plied the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean. The Dutch acquired colonies in the East Indies, where they seized control of the spice trade from the Portuguese, and in the West Indies, they acquired a number of islands from the Spanish (several of which are still Dutch today). They became the only Westerners who were allowed to trade with Shogunate Japan from a small island next to Nagasaki, and they settled the town that ultimately became New York City. Naturally, all of this imperialism generated enormous amounts of wealth that flowed into the Netherlands.

The Netherlands has had a complex and turbulent history involving the interplay of multiple political entities, ethnicities, and languages. The term "Netherlands" (Nederland in Dutch, Pay-Bas in French) refers to the low-lying topography of the region and today is used specifically to describe the country bordering Germany and Belgium, but historically it referred to the entire region occupied by Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. What made the Netherlands’ global influence in the 17th century all the more remarkable is that the Dutch had only recently achieved political independence through the process of fighting a long and brutal war of resistance against rule by the Spanish Hapsburgs, starting in 1568. In 1581, the seven northern provinces–Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijssel, Friesland, and Groningen–declared their independence, and fighting took place back and forth on land and sea for decades, with the Dutch receiving some much-needed assistance from England’s Queen Elizabeth I. Thousands of civilians were massacred by the rampaging Spanish armies, and on the water, Dutch “sea beggars” attacked and harassed the Spanish fleet. Pro-Spanish privateers operating out of Dunkirk did the same against Dutch shipping.

All of this positioned the Dutch to wield massive imperialistic influence across the world, and a Dutch company dominated international waters while searching for conquest and riches. The Dutch East India Company, also known as VOC, was established around the beginning of the 17th century, and this nautical behemoth of a corporation was determined to squeeze everyone else out of the market. Vested with the power to wage war and exterminate any who dared stand in their way, the rest of the world stood by as the unstoppable force took over the whole of international maritime trade. The company would fight opponents across the globe, establishing a monopoly on the global spice trade that would not only rock the world, but forever change the course of modern business history.

Naturally, not everybody welcomed the Europeans, and some of the fiercest opposition came from the Sultanate of Aceh. Aceh is now a part of Indonesia, but the people have stubbornly maintained a unique sense of self-identity based on a quite distinct and separate history. Once a major political and military power in the Indian Ocean, its power gradually declined over a period of several centuries, but Aceh successfully maintained its independence until 1873, when the Dutch invaded. The war between the Dutch and the Acehnese was the longest and bloodiest of the many Dutch military campaigns in Indonesia. Even after the Dutch technically subdued them, insurgency campaigns would last well into the 20th century, and sporadic fighting was still ongoing as the Japanese pushed across the Pacific in the 1930s and 1940s.