I was thinking of the British Empire. Their naval technology was superior enough to overpower the distance term.
I was under the impression the Dutch didn't really wage interstate war in the same sense, but rather that a bunch of paramilitary private organisations happened to fly Dutch flags. I have to admit I know very little about the Spanish case, but again I thought they mainly fought proxy wars with other European colonial powers, i.e. both were equally disadvantaged by distance.
Well Spain had most of south America, some of the carribean and the Philippines. The Dutch had the Spice Islands, half a world away. Portugal had Brazil, Azores, a bit of India and a base in China.
France had most of continental Europe, with distances that were much greater comparitively, considering they only had horses and sail boats. They also had big interests in the Indian ocean, Madagascar for instance, and the Caribbean.
Wiping out the natives isn’t the same thing as waging a war. Even from the beginning the European empires had very tenuous control over their New World colonies* and once they had to actually fight wars against well equipped European colonists to defend their control, it was a disaster for them (Bolivar, American Revolution, French and Indian war, etc).
The closest counterexample is probably the partitioning of China but that’s got its own mitigating factors
* they couldn’t even enforce the most basic sovereignty like when Spain introduced the New Laws and the encomenderos were like “lol no”
I was under the impression the Dutch didn't really wage interstate war in the same sense, but rather that a bunch of paramilitary private organisations happened to fly Dutch flags. I have to admit I know very little about the Spanish case, but again I thought they mainly fought proxy wars with other European colonial powers, i.e. both were equally disadvantaged by distance.