Page "History of the Netherlands" Paragraph 6

During this struggle, commerce continued and the United Provinces prospered.

Amsterdam became the most important trading centre in northern Europe.

In the Dutch Golden Age, which had its zenith in 1667, there was a remarkable flowering of trade, industry ( especially shipbuilding ), the arts ( especially painting ) and the sciences.

The Dutch Republic, particularly Holland and Zeeland, became a veritable Dutch empire, a maritime power with a commercial, imperial and colonial reach that extended to Asia, Africa and the Americas – but not without slavery and colonial oppression.