An Alternate History of the Netherlands explores the past four hundred years of a world where it was the Dutch, and not the English, who maintained dominance of the world's oceans. After gaining its independence following the conclusion of the Forty Years' War, the Dutch struck out across the world, colonizing far and wide from Brazil to Southern Africa to India. For most of its history, the United Provinces maintained a love-hate relationship with the British Isles, battling them in wars in one generation while becoming allies in another. The centuries have seen the United Provinces transformed from a confederation of mercantile states to the nucleus of the Dutch Commonwealth of Nations, the economic superpower of the world.