Decline of the Dutch in India

The Dutch got drawn into the trade of the Malay Archipelago. Further, in the third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-74),

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The Dutch rivalry with the English, during the seventeenth century, was more bitter than that of the Portuguese. The policy of the Dutch in the East was influenced by two motives: one was to take revenge on Catholic Spain, the foe of their independence, and her ally Portugal, and the other was to colonise and establish settlements in the East Indies with a view to monopolising commerce in that region. They gained their first object by the gradual decline of Portuguese influence. The realisation of their second object brought them into bitter competition with the English.

—R.C. Majumdar, H.C. Raychaudhuri and K. Datta

in An Advanced History of India

communications between Surat and the new English settlement of Bombay got cut due to which three homebound English ships were captured in the Bay of Bengal by the Dutch forces. The retaliation by the English resulted in the defeat of the Dutch, in the battle of Hooghly (November 1759), which dealt a crushing blow to Dutch ambitions in India.

The Dutch were not much interested in empire building in India; their concerns were trade. In any case, their main commercial interest lay in the Spice Islands of Indonesia from where they earned a huge profit through business.