This is because they weren’t explorer ships. They were trading ships first and foremost, owned by a large public for-profit corporation. It’s more like Maersk t

This is because they weren’t explorer ships. They were trading ships first and foremost, owned by a large public for-profit corporation. It’s more like Maersk than like a navy. Exploration, or conquest, was not a goal. If it happened, it was just a means to an end. Thing is, trade is the most profitable when you get monopoly contracts with suppliers, especially when those suppliers are the only (known) suppliers of $THING. How do you get a monopoly contract? You make the supplier an offer they can’t refuse. All that fighting and fort building was only to enforce monopoly contracts, not empire building. Basically, to make sure the Portuguese didn't get their hands on those spices, so the price could stay high. Sometimes suppliers broke those deals and the Dutch took out the guns, and that’s what the soldiers came along for. Eg in the Travancore battles linked in another comment. They lost that one, but often they did not: For example, one day the people of the Banda islands, then the only source of nutmeg in the world, broke the monopoly deal they had made with the Dutch and sold nutmeg to the British too. The Dutch went in fully loaded, killed everybody (the entire archipelago population), and replaced them with Dutch settlers to farm the nutmeg. Problem solved, monopoly restored! No hard feelings, it’s just business. So yes! I concur! There’s just so much to learn from the Dutch East India Company! Who cares about all the genocide, we even have a VC fund[0] named after them, that’s how proud we are. [0] https://voccp.com/ https://voccp.com/