In 1635 they occupied Formosa; in 1641 they took Malacca, a blow from which the Portuguese never recovered; in 1652 they founded a colony at the Cape of Good Hope, as a half-way station to the East; in 1658 they captured Jaffna, the last stronghold of the Portuguese in Ceylon; by 1664 they had wrested from the Portuguese all their earlier settlements on the pepper-bearing coast of Malabar.
At the present time the Dutch flag flies nowhere on the mainland of India, though the quaint houses and regular canals at Chinsura, Negapatam, Jaffna, and many petty ports on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts remind the traveller of familiar scenes in the Netherlands.
During the Dutch occupation (1644-1796) they were found as far north as Jaffna, but are now confined to the southeastern district, about the wooded Bintenna, Badulla and Nilgala hills, and thence to the coast near Batticaloa.