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Does it distract from the article?
What virtue are they "signalling?" Do you know what the Dutch East India Company was or that it resulted in several colonies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Former_settlements_an...

It appears in the subheading because it's relevant to the article

> Knowing more about these timbers helps us understand the Dutch success in world trade

Is it taboo to even mention facts of history in such neutral terms? Is that not what the ships were used for? And if that's virtue signalling, then what precisely do you intend to signal here?
I learned that one type of wood was used for below the waterline (slower-growing timber from further north) and a different type above. I’ve done enough woodwork to think I have a feeling for the task of building an ocean-going vessel, and I hope that knowledge stays alive. I’m curious about how Polynesian voyagers made their boats, and I’m guessing those methods were more sustainable over millennia. Craft doesn’t exist on its own without culture; what is it about the dominant European approaches that has lead to what feels like a runaway explosion rather than the long, slow burn of human history?
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon-Tiki_expedition

> dominant European approaches that has lead to what feels like a runaway explosion rather than the long, slow burn of human history?

This is why mentioning colonialism is not irrelevant to the article, because it seems like the Polynesian development was not quite so rooted in thousands of years of invasion support or ship-to-ship combat, which encouraged escalation.