SW10: Psychovant Teaches American History #10: What About the Dutch?

[Scott Eiler]

Hi, everybody, it's Psychovant the Duck with this week's American 
history lesson.  Last week, we talked about French colonization.  This 
week...

What about the Dutch?  Holland, a.k.a. the Netherlands, a.k.a. the 
United Provinces (at the time), were the world's first capitalist state. 
  Once they discovered how to make *profits* from doing stuff, not even 
Spain the biggest empire in the world could stop them.  The Dutch did 
stuff on or around six continents back then.  They grabbed a lot more of 
America than we give them credit for.  (They almost kept Brazil!)

Still, they weren't successful everywhere, because capitalists can be 
pretty damn stupid at building a society.  And they couldn't deal with 
how many colonists the English sent to the New World, because paying 
people wasn't the best motivation to send them off to the middle of 
nowhere.  About which, see England (next week).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_colonization_of_the_Americas


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