A Dutch Australia

WI in 1611 Captain Hendrik Brouwer in his attempt to find a faster sea route to Bantam in Java stays too long in the roaring forties and when he turns north finds himself confronted by a large island coastline.

It is at this time that he makes his fateful decision.
Deciding to sail with the winds along the coastline he starts to map the southern australian coast from what we would call Mt Gambier.
Captain Brouwer is amased by what he sees a vast land heavily forested land that is ripe for the taking.
After travelling for a while and with supplies running low he sails into a vast protected bay looking for a place to make land and locate new supplies of food and water.
On making landfall near a large fresh water river Captain Brouwer and his small landing party soon discover a strange animal that hops on its hid legs with a large tail.
They shoot one of these beasts for food and discover that although the meat is tough and stringy with a pungent taste it is edible.
With food and water stocks replemished he continues sailing along the coast in the hope of finding civilization.
The coast suddenly turns northward it is at this point that he realises that this must be the "Great South Land" full of gold and other valuables.
A year and a bit later he and his crew sail into Bantam harbour with stories and a coastal map of a massive island which he calls New Holland.

So what happens now. The Dutch have proof of a vast fertile land just to their south populated only by small numbers of nomadic stone age people.

Do the dutch colonise?
How do they colonise?
How many people in Holland would be willing to travel for a year to get thier hand on large tracts of fertile empty lands?

Lets discuss?

in the OTL the Dutch did discover Australia in 1606, they explored the Australian (western) coastline and didn't decide to settle on it. Probably because it was mainly desert.

I doubt they would settle it, there is just no money to be made there.
I don't see anyone colonising Australia prior to when the British did IOTL due to the logistical difficulties and there being much better land elsewhere.
The Dutch had no need either.

Leej said:

I doubt they would settle it, there is just no money to be made there.
I don't see anyone colonising Australia prior to when the British did IOTL due to the logistical difficulties and there being much better land elsewhere.
The Dutch had no need either.

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Not necessarily, they could have settled it for the same reason the British did - to replace the colonies they had lost in the America's. If we're talking about Dutch settlement in the C17th or early C18th then the puritan ethic is still there to drive people to settle and the Dutch still have the naval capability to settle, supply and defend colonies in Australia.

The fact that the colonies would not be stupendously economically productive may not matter too much, the British originally thought Australia would be loaded with all kinds of valuables that never materialised. Once settlement is firmly established it's unlikely to disappear.

Wouldn't the British seize it during one of the wars in the 17th or 18th centuries?

That might actually be an interesting POD; if the British move against a Dutch Australia, the next logical step would be to head to the northwest and seize the Dutch East Indies. Would possession of that immensely rich area butterfly away British ambitions in India?

The Sandman said:

Wouldn't the British seize it during one of the wars in the 17th or 18th centuries?

That might actually be an interesting POD; if the British move against a Dutch Australia, the next logical step would be to head to the northwest and seize the Dutch East Indies. Would possession of that immensely rich area butterfly away British ambitions in India?

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The Dutch and British were generally allies in the 18thC. Only exception was in the ARW when, thanks to poor diplomacy and fear of our power we got virtually totally isolated. As such in no position to threaten a settled Dutch colony. Especially since it was so are away and not noticeably valuable.

We did take just about all the Dutch colonies during the Napoleonic wars, when they were a satellite of the French empire. Many were returned in 1814, although the Netherlands possibly suffered worse than anyone else in terms of colonial losses. [Britain gained the Cape colony, Ceylon and Malaya]. Even then however I suspect that there would have been relatively little interest in taking the Dutch Australian colonies, unless gold had already been discovered. I think the main reason we took the Cape was because of its strategic position.

Therefore, if you had got enough interest to settle there you might have seen a viable Dutch colony.

A thought just occurred. Presuming Britain seizes the Cape in some Napoleonic equivalent, might at least some of the Boers seek to emigrate to Australia?

Don't know if this play any part in the Anglo-Dutch empire thread as that includes an Australia with something like apartheiht.

Steve

What about the two Anglo-Dutch Wars in the 1600s?

The Sandman said:

What about the two Anglo-Dutch Wars in the 1600s?

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True! Wasn't thinking that far back

Not sure if there would have been enough population to have attracted British interests, or necessarily enough naval strength in Britain to be able to mount an invasion. The wars were pretty close and it was more a matter of strategic position enabling Britain to block Dutch trade that gave us a edge.

Steve

The population thing wouldn't be the interesting bit; honestly, it would be more of a "seizing a staging area to go after the Dutch East Indies" bit. Those would be a prize worth taking.

The naval strength thing might have been a bit of a problem, though; what did the Dutch have based in Asia at the time, and did England have enough spare ships to send some to the Pacific?

Thanks for the comments,

This is an interesting topic.

As I see it The Dutch might settle Australia.

Being quite a distance from British possessions they might be over looked during any wars.

I don't quite buy the Brits will take it as a staging point against the DEI. The DEI are a long way from OTL Victoria.

I've just been looking at that times of the Anglo-Dutch wars that last of which was in 1673 which is 62 years after the POD.

So if the Dutch take a similar length of time to the British we are looking at the start of colonisation around 1625.

So now it gets interesting it is 27 years before the first Anglo-Dutch war and in OTL gold was discovered 35 years after colonisation or roughly halfway though the A-D wars.
If the Dutch plays it smart they might be able to keep the discovery of gold in their new colony a secret as the gold rush didn't start in the Australia colonies in OTL for about another 25 years after gold was first discovered.

This is interesting as it now takes us past the A-D wars.

I can just see it now the Dutch hurting from having lost control of the english channel decide to bite the bullet and send most of their remaining navy to the new colony to protect the riches they know are there. This would also include the first real mass migration of dutch migrants to the new colony.

With such a change in strategic direction The Dutch might just miss becoming heavily involved in the following european wars although they might have to make concessions to France relating to the Spanish neitherlands.

So who thinks if it's possible for me to make New Holland really NEW HOLLAND the bright star of the Dutch empire like what India was for the British but with more resources and amuch larger Dutch presence.

Might the Dutch State be centered one day on this "Nieuw Holland"?

Wendell said:

Might the Dutch State be centered one day on this "Nieuw Holland"?

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I see it as a possibility, enormous areas of land for farming.

I could see the Dutch government offering Farmers lets say 1000 acres just to move here and start farming after clearing the land.

Australia has lots of land and more importantly resources to fuel an economy.
Another plus is that the local population is not that large compared to say africa or the DEI.

Syphon said:

I see it as a possibility, enormous areas of land for farming.

I could see the Dutch government offering Farmers lets say 1000 acres just to move here and start farming after clearing the land.

Australia has lots of land and more importantly resources to fuel an economy.
Another plus is that the local population is not that large compared to say africa or the DEI.

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Imagine an "Empire of the South Seas." The Dutch lose out in Europe and the New World after Napolon's adventures (if not butterflied away), leading to the Dutch concentrating on a Pacific and Indian Ocean power base.

Wendell said:

Imagine an "Empire of the South Seas." The Dutch lose out in Europe and the New World after Napolon's adventures (if not butterflied away), leading to the Dutch concentrating on a Pacific and Indian Ocean power base.

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Yes, The Dutch get to keep the DEI, add the rest of New Guinea, the solomon islands and of course the eastern islands of Australia AKA New Zealand.

Syphon said:

Yes, The Dutch get to keep the DEI, add the rest of New Guinea, the solomon islands and of course the eastern islands of Australia AKA New Zealand.

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With or without New Zealand, it could be interesting. Maybe the British could be dislodged from Malaya?

One interesting thing is that the bit of the continent that the Dutch apparently charted the northern and western bits, but not the southeast. What might Australia look like if you ended up with a British colony running along the coastline from Adelaide through Brisbane and the rest of the continent under the control of the Dutch?

Also, would the Aborigines have done any better in this situation, or would the Dutch have been worse than the British were?

How about a Scenario where the Pacific is effectively divided between the Dutch and the Americans?

That requires the Dutch to be a major power for longer. Maybe the Dutch do better in their wars with the Spanish and end up claiming the Philippines as a prize?

Syphon said:

The Dutch have proof of a vast fertile land just to their south populated only by small numbers of nomadic stone age people.

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The Dutch found such a land before they got anywhere near Australia. What did they do? Answer: put a fence up and ban any one from colonising the hinterland. For the rest of the time they controlled the land, they maintained the strict policy.

The land was called the Cape Colony. Whilst a little more advanced than the Australian Aborigines, the Khoisan would have been no match for a sustained European invasion. In addition, the Cape has a major advantage of Australia in that it is very much nearer and when you are transporting people by sailing ship that becomes a very significant factor.

Assuming that the Dutch did change their policy on colonisation, some bright boy in the VoC is going to say "Why bother shipping all those rascals to Australia when we can unload them in Africa? After all we are having to stop there anyway to revictual the ship." The board would vote yes because the VoC driven by the bottom line of its accounts and the bright boy gets a promotion.

The problem with colonising Australia when you already control the Cape is that it doesn't make sense unless you have a motive that has little or nothing to do with colonisation.

Leej said:

I doubt they would settle it, there is just no money to be made there.
I don't see anyone colonising Australia prior to when the British did IOTL due to the logistical difficulties and there being much better land elsewhere.
The Dutch had no need either.

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Maybe I'll get them to discover gold ealier. You know an explorer from a private expedition following the yarra valley. hey presto there is gold in them there hills.

I live 12kms from Melbourne and we have abandonded gold mines that were started because somebody found gold in a creek bed and tracked it to it's source.

Gold is a powerfull motivation for any government.
It might even encourage the existing admininstators of the DEI to move to a new colony closer to the gold.