Harderwyk is chiefly important as being the depot for recruits for the Dutch colonial army.
The older portions of the city are reminiscent of Dutch colonial days, and some fine specimens of the Dutch and later colonial architecture are still standing.
On the Continent the Basel Mission (1815) grew out of a society founded in 1780 to discuss the general condition of Christianity; " Father " Janicke, a Bohemian preacher in Berlin, founded a training school which supplied many men to the Church Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society; and Van der Kemp, who pioneered the London Missionary Society work in South Africa, organized in 1797 the Netherland Missionary Society, which turned its attention chiefly to Dutch Colonial possessions.
The foreign affairs of the republic were throughout these years ably conducted by de Witt, and the position of Dutch colonial expansion in the Eastern seas made secure and firm.
The sultan of Achin opposed by force of arms the efforts of the Dutch to make their occupation effective, and has succeeded in maintaining a vigorous resistance, the Dutch colonial troops suffering severely from the effects of the insalubrious climate.
