Dutch trading posts and plantations in the Americas precede the much wider known colonization activities of the Dutch in Asia. While the first Dutch fort in Asia was built in 1600 (in present-day Indonesia), the first forts and settlements on the Essequibo River in Guyana date from the 1590s. Actual colonization,
with Dutch settling in the new lands, was not as common as with other
European nations. Many of the Dutch settlements were lost or abandoned
by the end of the 17th century, but the Netherlands managed to retain
possession of Suriname until it gained independence in 1975, as well as the Netherlands Antilles, which remain within the Kingdom of the Netherlands today.
