The story of this expansion of commerce is a striking record. The grain and timber of the Baltic, the wines of France and Spain, the salt of the Cape Verde Islands, the costly wares of the east, came to the ports of the Meuse and Zuyder Zee. In 1590 the first Dutch traders entered the Mediterranean, securing, eight years later, the permission of the Sultan to engage in Constantinople trade. In 1594 their ships reached the Gold Coast, and a year later four vessels visited Madagascar, Goa, Java, and the Moluccas or Spice Islands. A rich Zealand merchant had a factory at Archangel and a regular trade into the White Sea. Seeking a reward of 25,000 florins offered by the States for the discovery of a northeast passage, Jacob van Heimskirck sailed into the Arctic and wintered in Nova Zembla; Henry Hudson, in quest of a route northwestward, explored the river and the bay that bear his name and died in the Polar Seas.
Statistics, while not very trustworthy and not enlightening unless compared with those for other nations, may give some idea of the preponderance of Dutch shipping. At the time of the truce she is said to have had 16,300 ships, about 10,000 of which were small vessels in the coasting trade. Of the larger, 3000 were in the Baltic trade, 2000 in the Spanish, 600 sailed to Italy, and the remainder to the Mediterranean, South America, the Far East, and Archangel. The significance of these figures may be made clearer by citing Colbert's estimate that at a later period (1664) there were 20,000 ships in general European carrying trade, 16,000 of which were Dutch. Throughout the 17th century Dutch commerce continued to prosper, and did not reach its zenith until early in the century following.
In the closing years of the 16th century several private companies were founded in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Zealand to engage in eastern trade. These were combined in 1602 into the United East Indies Company, which sent large fleets to the Orient each year, easily ousted the Portuguese from their bases on the coast and islands, and soon established almost a monopoly, leaving to England only a small share of trade with Persia and northwest India. The relative resources invested by English and Dutch in Eastern ventures is suggested by the fact that the British East Indies Company founded in 1600 had a capital of £80,000, while the Dutch Company had £316,000. By 1620 the shares of the Dutch company had increased to three times their original value, and they paid average dividends of 18 per cent for the next 200 years.