THE DUTCH AND TAIWAN

But the The Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC) did.

They sent 10 ships and 700 sailors to help during the siege of Fort Zeelandia.

Obviously, it was not enough as many other ships of the fleet were engaged in the war against the Portuguese empire.

And actually, it was the Dutch East India Company, who ruled over Taiwan, because they got granted from the States-General of the Netherlands a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia. (Staten Island, however, was governed by ... the States-General and not by the Dutch West India Company. )

it is hard to imagine the VOC sending such a "backup" to help to fight with 400 warships and 25000 men lying siege to the fortress (defended by 2,000 Dutch soldiers)

Only if you see it with modern eyes.

At the time, number was not regarded as excessively important.

Take, for example, Joseon Admiral Yi Sun-sin:


Obviously, that's not what happened at Fort Zeelandia, but it could.

It is also important to remember that the VOC was not a national government, and their primary purposes were commercial. I suspect they used what resources were available to them, while keeping sufficient force to protect their commercial interests.

That's obvious from their whole record..

It would help to put all of this into a more global perspective. The Dutch rebelled against their Spanish masters in 1564, and fought an 84 year war of independence which was only finally resolved as part of the Westphalia settlement of 1648. Without going into a lot of circumstantial detail, to do that they needed a lot of cash. They employed German, Danish and Swiss mercenaries, and in those days that meant paying, in cash, up front. In the beginning, they financed this with the revenues from the Baltic carrying trade, which they had taken over from Hansa. Later, as the conflict grew, their need for revenues grew, too. VOC and other chartered commercial enterprises, such as the Baltic trade, the Russian trade (a separate trade from the Baltic trade), the West Indies colonies and the North American colony--were all sources for the necessary revenues.

The Durch people demonstrated a willingness to riot, sometimes murderously, if they felt their government was not handling their affairs competently. There were also sharp divisions along political and religious lines. In the 1650s, government had attempted to attack English shipping, as the English were infringing their Baltic carrying trade, alleging that the English were trying to take the carrying trade away from them (which was perfectly true). But Parliament and the Protectorate had maintained the navy well, not the least of the reasons for which derived from the political origins of the civil wars in England in the mid-17th century. The Dutch suffered a quick and humiliating defeat. Many among the Dutch people accused government of acting only to protect their personal, commercial interests--which is understandable as a list of the members of the States General and a list of the principal share holders in overseas companies would be nearly identical.

That was stark political foolishness, because Holland could only survive on overseas trade. But politics is never about reality, it's about perception. In the beginning of The Influence of Sea Power upon World History, A. T. Mahan states that the English operational policy in the Anglo-Dutch wars was to protect their trade, and that the Dutch policy was to go after the Royal Navy aggressively, in default of protecting their trade. This can readily be understood--the English were trying to take over the Baltic carrying trade, and trade was England's lifeblood; the men in Dutch government feared any taint of using the navy to protect trade for their personal benefit. (Trade was also Holland's lifeblood, but there's that problem with political perception.)

So, when considering the behavior of the Dutch government and the VOC in 1660-61, one cannot ignore that the national government was not going to and would never again give direct aid to a commercial enterprise like the VOC. More importantly, however, was that the Dutch were engaged in a massive and expensive naval war with England. They simply didn't have the resources to spare to send around the world in an operation which the Dutch people would justifiably see as benefiting a wealthy coterie of members of the government. Historical events don't take place in local vacuums.

The Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War. Was this a Protestant versus Catholic conflict?

Shut up Miller, you ******* idiot.

The Eighty Years' War (aka Dutch War of Independence) between the Seven Provinces and Philip II of Spain ended 1648 with the Peace of Münster.

Which was one of the series of treaties generally referred to as the Peace of Westphalia. Obviously, Miller/Foofie believes that there actually was a single, discrete event called the Thirty Years War, and that it was about Protestants and Catholics, and only about Protestants and Catholics. She will probably be shocked to learn that Catholic France paid Protestant Sweden to stay in the war and fight Catholic Austria. This is just one of the many reasons that i call Miller/Foofie an idiot.

Yes ... and there's quite a bit more, like the treaty was signed in Osnabrück (Instrumentum Pacis Osnabrugensis), and Münster (Instrumentum Pacis Monasteriensis), the Swiss Confederation became officially independent from the Roman Empire's courts, ... ... ... which, as you said, ended a couple of different wars fought for various reasons between 1618 and 1648.

Europe became a really unstable, unpleasant place from about 1520 onward--but they cleared that all up in 1992 . . . i think . . .

Don't ever hammer some papers on a church door!

No kiddin' . . . i blame Martin and his fecal fixations for the religious nut bags in the New Nited States, and therefore, i blame him for the teabaggers.

Do you have some bad history with Miller, since accusing her of having me (Foofie) as a sock puppet is not a compliment? I would only be guessing what that bad history might be, if you did have bad history?

What is funny is that you seem to give no concern to possibly being wrong in your accusation. Meaning you do not care if you are wrong. I know you find me (Foofie) detestable, and wouldn't care if your accusation offended Foofie (me); however, why Miller?

This is the downside of the internet. People that could be previously intimidated to stay out of one's presumed neighborhood, can now show their presence, and apparently ruin the homogeneousness of one's virtual neighborhood. Tough noogies.

[Foofie raises his thumb to his nose and wags his extended fingers at the screen.]

I thought the Thirty Years War was from 1618 to 1648, ending in the Treaty of Westphalia? It was a war between Protestants and Catholics, having begun with the Defenstration of Prague, I thought? The armies stripped land of all edibles, to the point of anecdotal history of cannabalism in Northern Germany, I read.

That's how world history was taught in the 1960's in high school. The emphasis was on the Defenestration of Prague and how a manure pile saved the lives of some Protestant clergy.

Some people don't think their education has ended just because they've left high school.