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Dutch treat? Source:Economynext PAST Colombo is a wetland in case you haven’t noticed. So is the Netherlands. When the Dutch made Colombo their colonial capital, it must have felt just a bit like home. They were at the height of their powers of course, when they took over here from those despised Papist Portuguese. They had just won a century-long war against Spain and Portugal for self-rule and freedom to follow their version of true religion. Their vast Calvinist fleets scoured the eastern Indian Ocean and came home laden with precious spices, to be bought by avid consumers at skyhigh mark-ups. Revenues poured into the coffers of their East India Company and cycled out to the prim burghers who owned Company shares. In a huge wave of globalization, that first great multinational enterprise exercised powers of war- and treaty-making, adjudication, imprisonment and coinage in lands where it held sway. So ...