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How did Spain and Portugal’s East Indies trade monopoly affect Dutch merchants?

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Oil portrait of Hugo de Groot, also known as Hugo Grotius, by the workshop of Michiel Janszoon van Mierevelt, showing him with a ruffled white collar and dark clothing. — Hugo Grotius Portrait of Hugo de Groot (Hugo Grotius), oil on panel by the workshop of Michiel Janszoon van Mierevelt, 1631; in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The Spanish and Portuguese monopoly on trade with the East Indies directly hindered Dutch merchants by attempting to exclude them from lucrative colonial commerce in East Asia. This exclusion deprived the Dutch of what they considered their natural trading rights.12

In response to these restrictions, Dutch merchants began organizing individual companies to trade directly with the region. These efforts eventually led to the formation of the Dutch East India Company in 1602, which was designed to reduce costs and increase security for these complex, perilous voyages.1

The legal and political tension surrounding this monopoly also prompted the Dutch East India Company to commission Hugo Grotius to defend the seizure of a Portuguese vessel. Grotius argued that the Spanish-Portuguese claim to a trade monopoly was illegitimate, asserting that the ocean should be free for all nations to access. This argument, famously articulated in his work Mare Liberum (The Freedom of the Seas), became a foundational principle of international law and supported the Dutch position during negotiations with Spain.2