In the year 1621 the Dutch formed a West India Company:  their first objects were to reduce Brazil and Peru:  in the latter they were utterly unsuccessful.  By the year 1636 they had conquered the greater part of the coast of Brazil:  they lost no time in reaping the fruits of this conquest:  for in the space of thirteen years, they had sent thither 800 ships of war and commerce, which were valued at 4-1/2 millions sterling; and had in that time taken from Spain, then sovereign of Portugal, 545 ships.  In the year 1640 the Portuguese shook off the Spanish yoke, and from this event may be dated the decline of the Dutch power in Brazil:  in 1654 they were entirely expelled from this country.

In the year 1651, they colonized the Cape of Good Hope; and in the same year, began the obstinate and bloody maritime, war between Holland and England.  This arose principally from the navigation act, which was passed in England in 1650:  its object and effect was to curtail the commerce between England and Holland, which consisted principally of foreign merchandize imported into, and English merchandize exported from, England in Dutch vessels.  In this war, the Dutch lost 700 merchant ships in the years 1652 and 1653.  In 1654, peace was made.  The object of the navigation act, at least so far as regarded the Dutch acting as the carriers of the English trade, seems to have been completely answered, for in 1674, after a great frost, when the ports were open, there sailed out of the harbour of Rotterdam above 300 sail of English, Scotch, and Irish ships at one time.  The example of the English being followed by the nations of the north, the Dutch carrying trade was very much reduced.  Between the years 1651 and 1672, when Holland was overrun by the French, their commerce seems to have reached the greatest extent, which it attained in the seventeenth century; and perhaps, at no subsequent period, did it flourish so much.  De Witt estimates the increase of their commerce and navigation from the peace with Spain in 1648 to the year 1669, to be fully one-half.  He adds, that during the war with Holland, Spain lost the greater part of her naval power:  that since the peace with Spain, the Dutch had obtained most of the trade to that country, which had been previously carried on by the Easterlings and the English;—­that all the coasts of Spain were chiefly navigated by Dutch shipping:  that Spain had even been forced to hire Dutch ships to sail to her American possessions; and that so great was the exportation of goods from Holland to Spain, that all the merchandize brought from the Spanish West Indies, was not sufficient to make returns for them.

The same author informs us, that in the province of Holland alone, in 1669, the herring and cod fisheries employed above one thousand busses, from twenty-four to thirty lasts each; and above 170 smaller ones:  that the whale fishery was increased from one to ten; that the cod and herring, when caught, were transported by the Hollanders in their own vessels throughout the world; thus obtaining, by means of the sea alone, through their own industry, above 300,000 lasts of salt fish.