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The Formation of the Modern East Asian Economy
While in the Americas highly competitive armies and navies of the English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French were gaining control of vast territories, control of the major maritime routes in East Asia is said to have passed into the hands of the Dutch.

The Dutch first settled in Asia when they established a fort at Bantam on Java in 1596. They rapidly proceeded to capture Portuguese ships sailing to Japan, block the routes of Spanish ships, and restrict Chinese boats headed for the Spanish colony of Manila and the Portuguese colony of Macao. They also captured the former Portuguese bases at Colombo, Jaffna, Nagapattinam, Tuticorin, Cochin, Kollam, Cannonore, and Melaka in south and southeast Asia. And in East Asia, they acquired sole Western access to the Japanese trade. Although they had arrived in Japan in 1600, some 50 years after the Portuguese and 18 years after the Spanish, they had played every possible trick against their European rivals to gain the confidence of the Tokugawa government and thereby win a trade known to have profit levels of usually 70% and times over 100%. With annual net profits from this trade amounting to at least 400,000 and as much as 1 million guilden, the Dutch trade with Japan earned them twice as much profit as from any other trade they conducted in Asia, such as with Formosa, or in the Middle East, such as with Persia. Thus by the mid-seventeenth century, Dutch ships had created a global trading network from Amsterdam to New York to Nagasaki to Batavia and to all the former Portuguese-held ports in south and southeast Asia, with more profits coming from the privileged position of the Dutch East India Company in Japan than from anywhere else.

To observe the contemporaneous Japanese retreat into a policy of so-called "National Seclusion," one need merely compare Japanese maritime activities before and after the commencement of this policy. From ca. 1600 to 1635, the newly established Tokugawa government developed its own policy of sending ships abroad. Known as the Vermillion Seal Ships, these Japanese boats were officially approved by their new government to sail throughout East Asia in search of markets. During the 30 years this system was in operation, more than 350 ships set sail from Nagasaki under its auspices, sometimes as many as 30 in a single year, to numerous ports throughout Southeast Asia. They reduced the Portuguese share of Japanese imports of Chinese silk yarn from a virtual monopoly to about 30% in 1600, and their import from southeast Asian of silk yarn, silk cloth, cotton cloth, deerskins, sharkskins, sword hilts, sappanwood, lead, and sugar in some years accounted for 50 to 70% of all Japanese imports. Every year, they set sail with their holds collectively carrying as many as 30,000 to 40,000 kilograms of Japanese silver, far more than the amount on the Dutch, Portuguese, or Chinese ships.

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