The influence of Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that lays in western europe, the border Belgium, Germany and France (Sint Marten). The Netherlands has a square km of around 45.000 square kilometers. That is the 134 largest country of 196 countries, pretty small right. The Netherlands has a population  of around 18 million people. The capital is Amsterdam and Amsterdam is home to sex, beautiful canals and partying. The Netherlands is one of the flattest countries in the world with the highest point (vaalserberg in Limburg) of roughly 350 meters. Netherlands is also part of Alliances such as EU, NATO and the whole western world. Alright, i can talk for hours about the info of the Netherlands but these were the most important ones. Now let's talk about the influence the Netherlands has or had.

Let's start with the history of the royal Netherlands, the Netherlands was founded in 1581, but the Frisian tribes (current Friesland) already existed since the 700s. In the early 15th century the colonial period began in Europe, Portugal and Spain started conquering the Americas. And in the late 16th century the French, English and also the Dutch began to colonize.

The Netherlands started with Indonesia and Ghana and expanded their empire to an empire of over 2,200,000 square kilometers. And that for a country of 45,000 square kilometers. If you add Australia and New Zealand, because the Netherlands was the first to discover that and also claimed the countries as territory. If you include that, the Netherlands had more than 10,000,000 square kilometers of their empire, which is almost 2% of the entire world with and it is almost 8% of all the livable land in the world. In the early 17th century, the Netherlands reached its peak in colonial territory. They had no less than 35 countries in their possession, the total number of countries that the Netherlands ever had in its possession was 64 countries. That is 1/3 of all countries.

The Netherlands was the strongest country in the world from 1620 to 1640, the richest country in the world from 1610 to 1750. So the Netherlands was a superpower for almost the entire 17th century. In 1621, the Netherlands was declared the most powerful country in the world. That continued until about the end of the 17th century. But in the second half of the 17th century, the Netherlands had a lot of power with their competitor France and the Ottoman Empire. I will talk about the wealth of the Netherlands in the 17th century in the next heading.

The colonial period of the Netherlands continues until now. Now the Netherlands has a few islands in the Caribbean Sea. The country that the Netherlands owned the longest was Indonesia, they were owned from 1602 to 1949, the Netherlands had to depose Indonesia because otherwise the United Nations would attack the Netherlands, the Netherlands did not want that.

The Netherlands is therefore known as a country with many colonial times. And that with only 1.4 million inhabitants who lived in the Netherlands at that time. Just imagine.

The Netherlands is known as a rich small country, but do you also know how rich the Netherlands was and how rich the Netherlands is now.

Let's start with the economy of the past. Maybe you know that the richest company is the VOC, and no, the VOC was not the one that traded in slaves, the VOC was trading in goods and spices. The VOC belongs to the Netherlands and is Dutch. At its peak, the VOC had 7.9 trillion dollars, which was about % of the world economy at the time. And that with only 130 million inhabitants in the world, while the Netherlands had more than 1 million at the time.

Just imagine, now the Netherlands has 18 million inhabitants and the world has more than 8 billion inhabitants. If we look at now, the Netherlands is in 17th place with a GDP of 1.1 trillion, ahead of Turkey and Saudi Arabia and behind Indonesia.

If we look at the GDP per capita of the Netherlands, the Netherlands is in 10th place in the world with 69,577$.

if you look at how many Dutch people there are in the world, i have an answer to that. i will say here per continent how many people are dutch:

North America

6.300.000 dutch people --> 0.88%

South America

1.100.000 dutch people --> 0.25%

Oceania

500.000 dutch people --> 1.08%

Europe

23.000.000 dutch people --> 3.09%

Asia

1.500.000 dutch people --> 0.032%

Africa

8.000.0000 dutch people --> 0.53%

Dutch is a popular language in the world. 30 million people speak dutch as their first language and tens of millions more speak dutch as their second language.

if we talk about cultural influence in the world, you see a lot of place names in the world that are dutch and have been renamed to something from the Netherlands. Popular dutch place names or something like that can be found on this site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_place_names_of_Dutch_origin

If you look at the companies that the netherlands has abroad you see a lot of things. for example in many countries they have heineken, the headsponsor of the Champions league is heineken. And for example every country is dependent on dutch chips. Every country has dutch chips, dutch agricultural products or other things.

Dutch people in the United States of America:https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandse_Amerikanen

when it comes to trade in the world, the netherlands is number 4 in exports, in surpluses a big number 1, in exports in agriculture the netherlands is number 2 with the us in 1st place. In imports the netherlands is number 4.

Biggest Agriculture export countries:

1. United States with $118.300.000.000

2. Netherlands with $79.000.000.000

3. Germany with $70.800.000.000

4. France with $68.000.000.000

5. Brazil with $55.400.000.000

Source:  Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.