ABSTRACT
By the early seventeenth century it was clear to many, and not only Iberians, that what Spain and Portugal lost, Holland gained, just as it was soon apparent to English patriots that the Dutch were the main threat to their country’s economic survival. In the mid-1600s Holland controlled perhaps 500,000t of shipping, constituting a maritime strength of an order never previously approached and inspiring in Germanic imagination the spectre of the Flying Dutchman roaming the oceans forever. By and large, Holland’s struggle for independence from Spain aided rather than retarded its economic advance. The needs of both Iberia and Holland were too great, and the weaknesses of Spanish naval and administrative resources too many, for such disruptions to be more than temporary. By 1600 Holland, considering its resources, had achieved remarkably little in the east, and certainly nothing comparable to what the Portuguese had accomplished in their first few years there.
