Dutch traders establish trade posts and plantations throughout the Americas during the seventeenth century; actual colonization, with Dutch settling in the new lands, is not as common as with settlements of other European nations.

Many of the Dutch settlements are lost or abandoned by the end of this century, but the Netherlands manages to retain possession of Suriname until it gains independence in 1975, as well as the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, which remain within the Kingdom of the Netherlands today.