AHC: Prevent the Dutch decline.

The Dutch Republic was one of the foremost powers in Europe during the 17th century, but during the 18th century most of this power was gone and the Republic died during the Flanders Campaign in 1795.

So, the challenge is: with a PoD no earlier than 1635 make the Dutch a great power in Europe and world-wide by 1800.

ps.: Not asking a mega-hyper-duber Superpower that spams from the Seine to the Elbe.
 
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It was always going to decline based on demographics. However the true malaise was lack of political unity and failure to invest capital incountry.

Maybe if some incident centralized the political life. It would have to be major. The provinces were always politically disparite.

I suspect decline is inevitable.
 
Maintaining the alliance with France could have helped. With no threat of invasion from France, they would be free to continue focusing on their navy and might not lose supremacy there to the English/British.
 
I think 1635 is cutting it a bit close, but okay.

In my opinion, the main problem is, indeed, size. You can have all the wealth in the world, but if everyone's working and living to the best of the means technology can provide, the smart money will always go foreign (as historically happened on a massive scale, to England - it didn't make the country decline, so much as lift other countries up; coupled to local political issues, though, it meant decline).

To stop that, I'd think you need a slightly more expansionist policy; Flandres/Brabant and some of the near-west of Germany (Emden, Lingen, Cleves) were at some points militarily controlled by the Republic, but never annexed. Add all these, and perhaps a bit more now that you're expanding anyway, and there's a basis for remaing important. The Rhineland and Bremen are really quite close.
The big issue, of course, is keeping the advantages of the Republic (that made a world power) while using it completely differently (to keep it one). Not least of which are the diplomatic implications...
 
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