Lot Essay
The Dutch West India Company was founded in 1621 and received a trade monopoly on the West Coast of Africa, the Americas and the islands of the Pacific. Piratery, slave trade and various scattered colonies were the sources of income. The company was finally dissolved in 1795, although a few settlements still survive as Dutch Overseas Territories such as the Carribean islands of Curaçao, Aruba, Saba, Sint Maarten and Bonaire.