Dutch colonisation of the Guianas control of the three colonies (Demerara, Berbice, and Essequibo) west of the Courantyne River. These three colonies became British Guiana. After 1815, there were five Guianas, referred to by their dominant languages: Spanish Guayana (Venezuela), British Guiana, Dutch Guiana, French Guiana, and Portuguese Guiana (Brazil). The colony that remained was part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands until 1975, when it became independent as the Republic of Suriname. Dutch Guiana covered the majority of the Guiana Shield, with its borders ranging from the Orinoco Delta in the northwest, the eastern banks of the Caroní River in the southwest, to the
Dutch Suratte Dutch Suratte Suratte or Soeratte was a famous trading city on the north coast of what is now India, in the modern state of Gujarat, lying on the river Tapti. The city, now known as Surat, became a directorate of the Dutch East India Company in 1616. The British had established a factory in the Suratte in 1609 or 1612, after delivering a blow to the Portuguese. It is part of what is today known as Dutch India. Pieter van den Broecke established a Dutch trading post in Suratte in 1616, after previous efforts had failed in the years before.