Dutch East Indies

The Dutch East Indies was a country that used to exist in Southeast Asia. It was made up of lots of different islands and coastal areas, and a lot of different cultures, languages and religions all lived there together. The Dutch East Indies was a colony of the Netherlands, which is a country in Europe. The Dutch people owned and ran this country, so Europeans ran the Dutch East Indies. This period lasted from 1600s to the 1940s, when Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies and took over. After the war, the Dutch East Indies became an independent country, known as Indonesia.