essay about the dutch east india company

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Dutch East India Company (DEIC)/VOC

March 20, 1602 marked the beginning of the inexorable end for many a state in the then known world. On that day, four hundred years ago, a group of Dutch merchants and independent trading companies, impatient with the monopoly that the Portuguese had established over the spice trade with East Asia at the end of the fifteenth century and keeping the British imperial merchants in check, founded the Vereenigde Landsche Ge-Oktroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie , better known to the Anglophone world as the Dutch East India Company or simply the VOC. The executive directorate of the VOC was called the Heeren Sewentien or the "Lords Seventeen". The Company had a federal character, comprising six chambers.

The VOC was granted a government charter, which effectively guaranteed it the right to the spice trade monopoly in East Asia. However, this government charter secured the VOC more than a trade monopoly: it gave the VOC the power to colonise whichever territory it desired and enslaving the indigenous people according to market requirements and VOC political imperatives. This meant that the VOC did not merely get involved in trade wars with European and Asian powers from its headquarters in Batavia, but waged full-scale warfare on indigenous people in those countries that would not cooperate with its demands for tea and spices such as cloves, nutmeg and pepper, or who resisted the cash-crop economy that the VOC was forcing onto them. A prime example is the island of Banda in the Indonesian Archipelago. The VOC simply killed off the Bandanese, appropriated the island, and cultivated nutmeg as a monoculture, using slave labour from neighbouring countries.

The VOC monopoly of the spice trade meant that it determined the prices of the commodities, their production and availability and determined which other powers could participate in the trade, setting out clearly the conditions under which this would be possible. In addition the VOC developed the world's first stock market in Amsterdam with durable assets and controlled investment schemes. It should be noted that the spice trade route was also used to transport precious metals such as gold and silver for European destinations. As a result a number of trading stations were built across East Asia. In terms of trade and commerce Holland reached the height of its power in this period, and sympathetic historians look back at this period as its golden age.

However the extent of suffering wreaked by the VOC in this period is incalculable. Many an East Asian country, such as Indonesia, that had been colonised by the Dutch because of the VOC project, still have to deal with the legacy of colonisation and slavery four hundred years later.

Present-day South Africa is no different in this regard. In 1649 a recommendation, called a Remonstrantie , was made to the Directors of the VOC to establish a refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope for ships passing it en route to the lands of tea and spices. In this memorandum the quality of the land at the foot of Table mountain and the shores of Table Bay were praised for their fertility. Visions of fresh fruit and vegetables were conjured up. The "friendliness" of the indigenous pastoralists, who would supply fresh meat was likewise extolled. Hence in 1652 the VOC sent a group of Dutchmen under the command of one Jan van Riebeeck to set up a refreshment station and to provide facilities for crew who had fallen ill to diseases such as scurvy on the long journeys between Holland and East Asia.

Within weeks of his arrival at the Cape, Van Riebeeck requested slaves to work at setting up the refreshment, as the Cape was not to be a colony, with the right to enslaving the indigenous population. Good relations with the indigenous people, the Khoikhoi and the San, were to be maintained. Although Van Riebeeck did not receive slaves immediately, and although the Cape was not to be more than a refreshment station, the economic demands and the greed for land soon reversed Van Riebeeck's mandate and instructions. Within four years of Van Riebeeck's arrival, the first war between the Khoikhoi and the Dutch broke out, as the Khoi clans tried to drive away the Dutch who had appropriated their land, forcing them into less fertile areas of the region. Soon the colonial project was well underway. With the systematic importation of slaves from mainly Dutch East Asia the Cape economy developed into a slave-based economy. This had profound repercussions at all levels of society, determining as it did social relations based on a slave/servant-master paradigm that translated within a short period of time into a racial hierarchical social order. Europeans/whites became the masters, while the indigenous population was either decimated or subjugated to the level of a slave/servant class.

Holland's power started declining towards the end of the eighteenth century, giving way to the burgeoning British imperialist power. This coincided, too, with Europe's discovery of its greater love for the fashionable beverage called coffee in comparison to the more mundane tea. This meant that Europe's commercial interests were being directed towards the Caribbean instead of Batavia.

The hegemony of the VOC is being celebrated and commemorated variously in The Netherlands as the golden age of Dutch commerce. Then again many are the critical voices, both in The Netherlands and in countries which fell prey to the activities of the VOC, that point to the oppression and destruction that resulted from the VOC project.

Four hundred years later, South Africa, like Indonesia, is still inextricably bound up with the European economy and is still struggling to come to terms with the violent legacy of the VOC.

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Article contents

The dutch east india company in south asia.

• Guido van Meersbergen Guido van Meersbergen Department of History, University of Warwick
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277727.013.64
• Published online: 19 April 2023

The Dutch East India Company (VOC, 1602–1799) developed into Europe’s largest commercial and colonial power in 17th-century Asia. Within its extensive intra-Asian trading network centered on Batavia (Jakarta), the Indian subcontinent and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) occupied a pivotal position. The VOC’s desire to tap into the exchange of Indian cloth for fine spices from the Maluku Islands first drove the Dutch to the Coromandel Coast, while Surat’s position as the preeminent maritime hub of the western Indian Ocean and Bengal’s status as a major exporter of silk and cottons attracted the Company to the Mughal Empire. Between 1638 and 1663, the VOC also displaced the Portuguese from their colonial holdings in Ceylon and the Malabar Coast, the world’s only source of high-quality cinnamon and an important producer of pepper, respectively. In Mughal India, the Dutch presence was limited to trading posts from which it conducted trade on conditions set by the imperial authorities, whereas along the Coromandel and Malabar Coasts the VOC possessed fortresses, and in Ceylon it acted as a territorial power exercising colonial rule over several hundred thousand Sinhalese and Tamil inhabitants. In all parts of South Asia, the Company’s position relied on and was maintained through diplomatic relations with local rulers. The various commercial, diplomatic, and colonial interactions gave rise to important forms of cultural exchange and knowledge production in the realms of art, religion, language, and botanical science, which testify to significant cross-cultural connections and mutual influences. The VOC maintained a dynamic trade in South Asia until the final quarter of the 18th century, when its Indian possessions were captured by the British first during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784) and again in 1795 to 1796 during the French Revolutionary Wars.

• Dutch East India Company
• Indian Ocean
• colonialism
• cultural exchange

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The Dutch and English East India Companies: Diplomacy, Trade and Violence in Early Modern Asia

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resistance. Early modern Asia stood at the center of the global economy and was home to powerful states and sprawling commercial networks. The companies may have been global enterprises, but they operated in a globalized region in which they encountered a range of formidable competitors. This groundbreaking collection of essays explores the place of the Dutch and English East India Companies in Asia and the nature of their engagement with Asian rulers, officials, merchants, soldiers, and brokers. With contributions from some of the most innovative historians in the field, The Dutch and English East India Companies: Diplomacy, Trade and Violence in Early Modern Asia presents new ways to understand these organizations by focusing on their diplomatic, commercial, and military interactions with Asia.

Related Papers

Maikel Vrenken

The seventeenth century was the Golden Age of the Netherlands, or the Republic of the (Seven) United Provinces as it was then called. The Dutch were on the cutting edge of academia, art, science, engineering and defence and were well-known for their world-wide trading in the Levant, the Baltic, Africa, Asia (known as the East Indies), the Caribbean and the Americas (together known as the West Indies). One of the most remarkable of organisations created in the United Provinces was the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), the Dutch East India Company. It created a territorial legacy in Asia that would last until the middle of the twentieth century, a hundred and fifty years after its disappearance, and has become one of the symbols of Dutch entrepreneurial spirit and empire. This essay will analyse the creation, overseas evolution and the decline of the VOC as well as explain its territorial legacy to the Netherlands.

Peter Borschberg

"This book offers annotated translations of documents touching on Dutch admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge and his voyage to Asia between 1605 and 1608. These translations are aimed at a contemporary English-speaking Asian readership interested in the early modern history of European trade, warfare and expansion in Southeast Asia with a focus on Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Researchers specialising in early European colonialism, international law, international relations, security studies, and diplomatic history will also find that the documents translated in this volume offer new and unfamiliar perspectives. Materlieff’s business acumen, military and diplomataic prowess as well as his vision of empire all have implications for examining not only European expansion into Southeast Asia, but also into other regions at large, including especially south Asia, Africa and the Americas. Admiral Matelieff was a director of the Rotterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) formed in 1602. He was appointed fleet commander on one of the company’s first voyages to Asia. Matelieff’s mission was both commercial and military: he launched a major sea-borne attack on the Portuguese colony of Melaka, arranged for the signing of treaties with the rulers of Johor, Aceh and Ternate, and founded the first Dutch fort on the island of Ternate. His endeavours, however, to open the Chinese market for the Dutch company proved unsuccessful. Following his return to the Dutch Republic in September 1608, Matelieff penned a series of memorials and letters. In these he advanced recommendations for changing the way the company organized its fleets and conducted business. More importantly he offered his Dutch contemporaries a vision of empire in Asia. The materials contained in this volume offer important observations of a perceptive analyst who was also determined to grasp the political and economic structures of Asia, and also of inter-state relations in across this vast region. At a time of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, French and English engagement in Southeast Asia, Matelieff sought to critically assess and strategize on the ways in which Europeans were increasingly engaging with Asian polities and their rulers. This book will be released for sale in Australasia and Europe in June 2014 and available in the Americas after September 2014 """"

Diplomatica

Tristan Mostert

A. Polonia and C. Antunes (eds.), Mechanisms of Global Empire Building (Porto: CITCEM)

Erik Odegard

This chapter seeks to highlight an episode within the history of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) from a new perspective. The Dutch company, often called «the first multinational company in the world», is most often studied from the perspective of business history, history of trade or maritime history. However, Philip Stern, in his recent The Company State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India, introduces a new perspective to study the Early Modern commercial companies. Instead of seeing the various chartered companies as filling «state-like» functions, he argues we should see them as states in their own right 1. Stern argues that the English East India Company, acted as a state in Asia and viewed itself as such even as early as the seventeenth century. Rather than seeing the company as a commercial entity that also fulfills some «state-like» roles, the company was a state. This state, moreover, was not constituted solely by the charter granted in England, but also by the privileges received from sovereigns in Asia, as well as the rights it had acquired in specific locations due to purchase, lease, or conquest. This has a number of important consequences for the study of the company. In the first place, we should approach the company as an organization with a political life of its own, independent from that of the mother country. In the second place, this means that we may study the companies from a political perspective, rather than from a purely commercial one. This will also allow scholars to study ideological conflicts within company

European Journal of International Relations

Kevin Blachford

Dr Ali H Akhtar, PhD

leonard Blusse

Amrita Sen , Julia Schleck

Alternative Histories of the East India Company, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, 17.3 (Summer 2017). Editors' Introduction, Julia Schleck & Amrita Sen 1. Writing East India Company History after the Cultural Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Seventeenth-Century EIC and VOC, Guido van Meersbergen 2. Searching for the Indian in the English East India Company Archives: the case of Jadow the broker and early seventeenth-century Anglo-Mughal trade, Amrita Sen 3. The linguistic world of the early English East India Company: A study of the English factory in Japan, 1613–1623, Samuli Kaislaniemi 4. The Marital Problems of the East India Company, Julia Schleck 5. Response-- Seeing (and Not Seeing) like a Company-State: Hybridity, Heterotopia, Historiography, Philip J. Stern 6. Afterword-- The local and global East India Company, Jyotsna Singh 7. Review-- Hybridity and (un)Knowing the Early East India Company: Review of Hybrid Knowledge and the Early East India Company by Anna Winterbottom, Souvik Mukherjee

Journal of Early Modern History

This article examines the transition of the Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) from a policy of self-defense into its full espousal of large-scale privateering and plundering. I argue that this shift was driven by both economic and political factors, and can be traced to the very formation of the Company as a unified trading venture. The taking of prizes became a cornerstone not only of the economic fortunes of the company, but the establishment of the Dutch colonial empire in Asia. Of particular interest is not only the instructions emanating from the company directors and the Dutch government in the metropolis, but especially the implementation and adaptation of these directives on the ground. It is this local context that adds a crucial dimension to interpretations of the eager espousal of maritime violence by the VOC and its agents in Asian waters.

Law and History Review

Alicia Schrikker , Byapti Sur

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10 The Dutch East India Company

• Published: February 2020
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This chapter provides the microstudy for the Dutch East India Company (VOC). VOC constituted an incomplete transition from ruler-owned enterprise to business corporation. Its closer connection with state objectives and state elites places it somewhere on the continuum that leads from the Portuguese ruler-owned enterprise to the English East India Company (EIC). The chapter explains how the VOC did not represent, at its inception, a full shift from personal to impersonal collaboration. But as it continued to evolve, and as investment through the secondary stock market became the norm, the VOC gradually became more impersonal. It explains that in the first decade of the VOC, the republic and the corporation insiders worked hand in hand to attract and capture outside investors.

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HISTORY T1 W6 Gr. 10: The Dutch East India Company.

This term will now focus on European expansion and conquests during the 15th to 18th centuries. This week will focus on The Dutch East India Company.

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Dutch East India Company’s Transformation Research Paper

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Introduction

Dutch East India Company was a Dutch corporation that dealt with exploration, trade, and colonization during the period of the 17 th and 18 th centuries. It was initially created as a chartered business in 1602 during the period when the Dutch people had dominated and monopolized the spice trade around the globe. The company is regarded to have been the first multinational firm due to its successful establishment of centers of operation in different states across the world.

The company was viewed as very powerful in the aspect that it was able to wage wars, negotiate treaties, prosecute convicted criminals, and/or establish stable colonies. However, the company collapsed at the beginning of the 19 th century mainly due to issues of bankruptcy while the Dutch Batavian Republic government, as it was then called, acquired its assets. After its acquisition, territories belonging to the Dutch East India were expanded during the nineteenth century to form the Republic of Indonesia. Therefore, as the paper confirms, the Dutch East India Company grew into a large colonial power in its time, even though it was built upon being a chartered company under the support of the Dutch government.

History Dutch East India Company became a Colonial Power from a Chartered Company

Creation of the chartered company.

During the sixteenth century, the growth of the spice trade was skyrocketing with its growth spreading across Europe. Yet, the Portuguese people were the dominant drivers of the trade. However, during the final part of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese began to face unprecedented trouble in their supply chain that failed to meet the demand for spices in Spain. The backdrop, together with the alliance between the Portuguese and Spanish, aggravated the Dutch to penetrate the business of spices since the Dutch democracy was already fighting with Spain.

After sending numerous trading vessels to the Spice Islands, now Indonesia, in 1598, the Dutch government was involved in sponsoring the formation of the United West Indies Company in 1602. This move was mainly motivated by the need to stabilize the profits accrued by the government from the spice trade and desire to monopolize the entire trade through a monopoly charter that provided a foundation for the company to become the first and greatest multinational corporation in the world.

Growth from Chartered Company to a Colonial Power

The year that followed its formation, the company established its first permanent trading post in its Banten colony, West Java, Indonesia. This accomplishment was later followed by a series of new settlements set up mostly during the early period of the 17 th century with its main headquarters located in the Ambon colony, Indonesia. However, for six years, starting from 1611, the corporation encountered relentless opposition in the spice production mainly from the then English East India Corporation. This situation forced the two companies to form a partnership that lasted until 1623 when the East India Company moved its trading posts to other parts of Asia after the Amboyna massacre.

Also, during the same period, the Dutch East India Company was involved in further colonization of other islands in Indonesia such as the Malay Peninsula, Java, the Spice Islands, Borneo, Sumatra, and India. Due to its military and technological capabilities, the company was able to win sovereign rights of its colonized states. The company’s solid colonial rule in Indonesia and other colonial states was cemented by the establishments of Dutch nutmeg and clove plantations mainly grown for export across the Asian region. During the same period, the Dutch East India business, just like most European firms, relied on the available natural resources to purchase spices.

However, to acquire precious metals, the corporation was required to produce an excess in its dealing with the rest of European nations. This move would inspire the company’s Governor-General, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, to coin a plan for creating a trading network within the Asian region to use the proceeds to finance the spice trade in Europe. This situation motivated the expansion of its colonial power to most of the Asian states to attain the status of a solid monopoly in the spice trade.

By the mid-seventeenth century, the company had replaced almost all of the local Asian trading settlements with its fortified settlements. Cape Town was also found during this part of the century. It was selected as an essential stage for the long voyage spanning from Europe to Asia. In the later period of the century, the company had dominated and monopolized the spice trade. By the mid-eighteenth century, the company had employed over 25,000 people. It was operational in 10 Asian states that it had colonized.

Initially, vessels made long trips to and from Asian territories. However, the company later established a trading network that was composed of two layers. The regional network was mainly serviced by smaller vessels that used a variety of ports located throughout the region, including in Persia, Malacca, Siam, Bengal, Formosa, and Malabar. Such vast expansion and growth made the company the richest in the globe, thus providing it with enough resources to set up stabilized colonies around the globe.

Reestablishment

The colonial rule by the Dutch West India Company was not without challenges. In 1606, the Spanish and Portuguese exerted offensive military attacks against the company’s troops in its colonial trading posts. These attacks led to the loss of many Dutch vessels and the disablement of most of its naval troops. The attacks also led to the negotiation talks between the Dutch East India Company and Spain. The strategy resulted in the signing of a treaty referred to as the Twelve Years’ Truce. The pact provided the Dutch Company with the freedom of implementing its plans of establishing new trading and colonial posts across the Asian regions provided they (posts) were unoccupied by the Portuguese and the Spanish (Sluiter, 1942).

Factors that led to the Transformation of the Company from a Chartered Business to a Colonial Power

Government support.

The Dutch Government was the majority stakeholder. Thus, it was the main sponsor for the establishment of the Dutch East India Company back in 1602. The government also provided bonds and soft loans to the company to run its operations on a global scale as a way of facilitating its growth, both as an economic and colonial power (Harris, 2009). Another financial benefit derived from close government relations was a limited liability.

Before, the growth of state-backed corporations, most businesses imposed unlimited liability on investors. This case implied that the investors would face imprisonment or bankruptcy once the company failed to pay its debt. Therefore, unlimited liability provided by the Dutch government allowed the company to thrive through attracting more investors who pumped in their cash to facilitate the growth of the company to a colonial power (Thomson, 2001).

The company was heavily involved with British politicians who also enjoyed proceeds from the business. Moreover, the company was able to obtain the support of the court and the treasury by providing gifts and bribery. Abroad, the company managed to get the support of external leadership through the provision of bribery or military forces. Therefore, the successful rise of the company to become a colonial power was greatly enabled by its ability to recognize the significance of embracing leaders in its areas of interest through providing them with financial gifts. This mechanism was successful because most governments during this period lacked enough resources to sustain their states.

For instance, by obtaining support from the Indian rulers, the company was able to negotiate a memorandum that acknowledged it as the supreme authority while the Indian rulers were under its leadership (Nierstrasz, 2012).

Administrative Adaptability

The Dutch East India Company as the first multinational corporation possessed a great capability and ingenuity in terms of administrative adaptability. This strength allowed the company to grow into a powerful colonial power for nearly two centuries since its inception in the 1600s to its collapse in 1789. Its administrative adaptability was enhanced by its military, technological, and trading capabilities that allowed it to exercise dominance, both as an international corporation and a colonial power. The company’s administration was able to set up trading posts across the Asian region. Such posts acted as colonies in these areas. Moreover, the company’s administrators established settlement firms of nutmeg and clove in colonies such as Indonesia to facilitate its trading activities (Gerstell, 2010).

The company was also structured such that its administrative bridges were both spatial and temporary arrangements. Its temporal administrative structure consisted mainly of power segments that had been formed by the United Dutch Nations back in the 1570s. Moreover, in these temporal structures, governance of the larger United Dutch Nations framework was strongly linked to political positions, hence allowing easy administrative adaption.

Regarding the special administrative organization, the Dutch regions were connected to the imperial nodes located in the East. This link helped to compliment the temporal administrative bond. The complimentary affiliation between temporary and spatial administrative bonds aided in fostering a highly adaptable core administrative network, thus enabling the company to set up stable colonies that survived for decades (Gerstell, 2010).

Establishment of Strong Political and Economic Partnerships

The Dutch East India Company was able to successfully establish strong partnerships in the regions where it had an interest in trade and/or control. However, the company’s main and most important partnership that spearheaded its growth from a chartered corporation to a colonial power was that between it and the powerful Dutch government. The Dutch government allowed the private company to conduct its merchant activities in a manner that was similar to an independent state.

Such freedom facilitated the company to form a global monopoly in the spice trade while at the same time establishing stable colonial states through a globalization strategy. In fact, according to some historians, the autonomy enjoyed by the Dutch East India Company enabled it to grow to a point of having more political and economic power compared to the Dutch government (Gelderblom & Jonker, 2004).

Besides short-term partnerships as seen during the pursuit of the Asian trade, the Dutch East India Company also established long-term partnerships with other large companies such as English companies. Through such partnerships, the company was able to secure capital for ten years for use in facilitating the setting up of colonies in the Asian region. As the trade in West Africa grew, the company was able to negotiate large partnerships that enabled it to run more vessels.

By 1565, the company controlled a fleet of 700 vessels, most of which were owned by partnering companies. In return, the company sold shares to these companies, a common practice in Holland’s economic sector. Such vessels facilitated the diversified movement of the Dutch East India Company to vast regions, thus enabling it to establish stable colonies and/or expand its trade (Gelderblom & Jonker, 2004).

Powerful Military and Technological Advantage

After its grant of the monopoly charter, the Dutch East India Company was reported to have been used by the Dutch government as support during the war with Iberia. By using its military muscle, the company was able to win sovereign rights on islands such as Sumatra, Java, the Spice Islands, Borneo, Malay Peninsula, and India. The Dutch East India Company also possessed superior vessels that ranged from seven hundred to one thousand.

It was equipped for both war and trading activities. According to Sluiter (1942), the company represented a form of naval power in the East that could easily face off and defeat the forces of Manila, the Spanish, and Portuguese combined. As a result, the military officials were forced to pave way for the Dutch intruders into their colonial states. Therefore, military and technological command accorded the Dutch East India Company the ability to negotiate for power through treaties such as the Twelve Years’ Truce that entitled the company to pursue a policy aimed at establishing colonies in areas that were unoccupied by either the Portuguese or the Spanish.

The Dutch East India Company experienced immense growth since its inception due to support by the Dutch government that provided sponsorship and a charter to the business, thus enabling it to rise to become an economic and colonial power. The establishment of the company was both politically and economically motivated. Regarding politics, the creation of the company was motivated by the unification between Spain and Portugal.

During this time, Spain was a political enemy of the Dutch. Hence, the partnership between Portugal and Spain was not well received by the Dutch government since it was seen as a move against the Dutch. Economically, the Dutch saw the collapse of Portuguese dominance in the spice trade as an opportunity to penetrate the market. After the award of a monopoly charter, the company expanded to the Asian market. To facilitate this growth, the company established a series of colonial settlements in the Asian region. Among its colonies were India, Java, Spice Islands, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula where it had won full sovereign rights.

However, its main headquarters remained in Ambon, its first colony. Several factors facilitated the company’s growth from a chartered corporation to colonial power. The factors included support by governments, administrative adaptability, and the establishment of strong economic and political partnerships with government and large companies, and the possession of powerful military and technological advantage that enabled the company to conquer states and uncooperative rulers. It established stable colonies that lasted for almost two decades.

Reference List

Gelderblom, O., & Jonker, J. (2004). Completing a financial revolution: The finance of the Dutch East India trade and the rise of the Amsterdam capital market, 1595–1612. The journal of economic history, 64 (03), 641-672.

Gerstell, D. (2010). Administrative adaptability: The Dutch East India Company and its rise to power. Web.

Harris, R. (2009). Law, finance and the first corporations. Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish.

Nierstrasz, C. (2012). In the Shadow of the Company: The Dutch East India Company and its’ servants in the period of it’s decline 1740-1796 (TANAP monographs on the history of Asian-European interaction). Leiden: Brill.

Sluiter, E. (1942). Dutch Maritime Power and the Colonial Status Quo, 1585-1641. Pacific Historical Review, 11 (1), 29-41.

Thomson, J. (2001). Mercenaries, pirates, and sovereigns . Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Essay on East India Company

Essay on East India Company !

After inflicting a naval defeat on the Spanish Armeda in 1588 the British acquired naval supremacy. This encouraged certain merchant adventurers of London to form a company for trade in the East.

Accordingly they formed the East India Company and received a charter from Queen Elizabeth I of England on 31 December 1600. During the initial years of its existence the Company undertook ‘separate voyages’ and distributed the profits from each voyage among the subscribers.

The first effort for regular trade with India was made in 1608 when the company wanted to establish a factory at Surat. The British Captain Hawkins tried to obtain permission from the Mughal emperor Jahangir to establish a factory at Surat, but the efforts were foiled due to the hostility of the Portuguese.

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However, in 1612 two of the English vessels reached Surat and inflicted a defeat on the Portuguese fleet. In 1613 the English succeeded in securing permission from Jahangir to establish their first factory at Surat.

In 1615 the British succeeded through the good offices of Thomas Roe in securing from the Mughal emperor certain privileges including the right to erect factories in certain parts of the empire. By virtue of this concession the English established factories at Surat, Agra, Ahmedabad and Broach within the next four years. These factories were placed under the supervision of the President and the Council of Surat factory.

In 1668 Charles transferred Bombay (which he had received as a part of dowry of his queen) to the English East India Company on an annual rent of £10. In course of time Bombay became a flourishing commercial city and superseded in importance even Surat.

On the east coast also the English set up a number of factories. In fact they had established their first factory on the East coast at Masulipatam in 1611. They established another factory at Armagoan, few miles from the Dutch settlement of Pulicat in 1628.

In 1639 the English secured the site of the present city of Madras from the Raja of Chandragiri and built the fortified factory called Fort St. George. This ultimately became the headquarters of the company’s settlements on the Coromandel coast.

Soon after the English extended their trade activities to the north-eastern part of India. In 1633 they opened a factory at Hariharpur, followed by the one at Balasore. In 1651 they opened a factory at Hooghly followed by factories at Patna and Kasimbazar. In 1690 the Company secured the city of Calcutta from the Nawab of Bengal against the payment of Rs.1,200 per year.

During the initial years the Company followed the policy of peaceful trade, advocated by Sir Thomas Roe. It avoided all attempts for gaining territorial possessions, because it felt that it could prove ruinous to the English interests in India.

However, towards the close of the eighteenth century a change took place in the policy of the English. Taking an advantage of the downward trend in the law and order situation in the country, they began entertaining political ambitions and gradually adopted the policy of territorial acquisition.

In view of the increasing disorder in the country the Company was obliged to make necessary arrangements for its own defence. In view of the changed circumstances Gerald Aungier, President of the factory of Bombay, informed the Court of Directors that “the times now require you to manage your, general commerce with the sword in your hands.”

Accordingly in 1687, Sir Josiah Child, the President of the Board of Directors of the Company approved of a change in Company’s policy. The Britishers in India were advised “to establish such a politic of civil and military power and create and secure such a large revenue to secure both… as may be the foundation of a large well grounded sure English dominion in India for all times to come.”

As a result of this change in the policy of the Company, its activities began to acquire political nature and its trade interests also continued to expand. In 1715 the English secured from the Mughal emperor Farrukhsiya a Farman, granting the company the privilege of trading in Bengal free of all duties on an annual payment of Rs.3,000.

The Company was also permitted to rent additional territory around Calcutta, and to retain its privilege of trading in the province of Hyderabad free of duty. The Company was exempted from all customs and other duties at Surat in return for the payment of an annual sum of Rs.10,000.

The Company was permitted to mint its own coins, which were to have currency in the Mughal empire as well. This Farman is often described as the Magna Carta of the Company. Within few years of the issue of the Farman of 1716-17 the English fortified the city of Bombay as a measure of defence against the attacks of the Marathas and the Portuguese.

The company increased the number of its armed ships and entered into an alliance with the Peshwa to defeat the Angrias, who had dominated the Western coast from Bombay to Goa. The Company captured Suvamdurg, a stronghold of the Angrias in 1755 and their capital Gheria in 1757.

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• Growth of East India’s Company Trade | Indian History
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• Administration of the East India Company and Crown during the British Rule in India
• How did the Europeans Discover the Sea-Route to India?

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The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630-1720

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Copyright year: 1985
• Edition: Course Book
• Audience: Professional and scholarly;College/higher education;
• Main content: 306
• Keywords: Gross profit ; Dutch East India Company ; Subahdar ; Procurement ; Gujarat ; Hooghly River ; Coromandel Coast ; Commodity ; Koban (coin) ; Supply (economics) ; Quantity ; Opium ; Aurangzeb ; Payment ; Precious metal ; Nawab ; Muslin ; Stuiver ; Pieter van den Broecke ; Dutch guilder ; Spice trade ; Trading post ; Invoice ; Mughal Empire ; Ostend Company ; Monopsony ; Johan van Oldenbarnevelt ; Trade Through ; Tael ; Tariff ; Cost price ; Areca nut ; Trading strategy ; Indian subcontinent ; Export ; Balance of trade ; Seigniorage ; Sebald de Weert ; Provision (accounting) ; District Gazetteer ; Economics ; Shah Shuja (Mughal prince) ; East Indies ; Smuggling ; Purchasing power ; Chintz ; Maund ; Auction ; 17th century ; Colonialism ; Market price ; Bad debt ; West Indies ; Malabar Coast ; Shah Jahan ; Moneylender ; Trade sale ; Superiority (short story) ; Currency ; Monetary policy ; C. R. Boxer ; Leiden University ; Sakoku ; Government bond ; Job Charnock ; Japanese currency ; Salary ; Amboyna massacre ; Monetary system ; India Office Records ; Verpoorten ; Dordrecht ; Mercantilism ; Murshid Quli Khan ; Profit (economics) ; Receipt ; West Bengal ; Output (economics) ; Farrukhsiyar ; Shaista Khan ; Bihar ; Public auction ; Malwa ; Economic history ; Middle East ; World economy ; Ancient India ; Ad valorem tax ; Medium of exchange ; Pargana ; Sugarcane ; Papaver somniferum ; Silver as an investment ; Palembang ; Cash advance ; Faujdar ; Raw material ; Shipping list ; Gingham ; Import Duty
• Published: July 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781400857760

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The Dutch East India Company

The  DEIC at the Cape of Good Hope

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Archives of the dutch east india company.

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Documentary heritage submitted by Netherlands and recommended for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register in 2003.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie), founded in 1602 and liquidated in 1795, was the largest and most impressive of the early modern European trading companies operating in Asia. About twenty-five million pages of VOC records have survived in repositories in Jakarta, Colombo, Chennai, Cape Town, and The Hague. The VOC archives make up the most complete and extensive source on early modern world history anywhere with data relevant to the history of hundreds of Asia’s and Africa’s former local political and trade regions.   

The Dutch East India Company called the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) was a colonial agency set up by the Dutch government in 1602. It soon became one of the first successful multinational corporations in the world. It did so by securing a monopoly over the much-coveted Indian Ocean Spice trade. The novel agency was a stock company, two types of shareholders the non-managing partners (participanten) and the managing partners (bewindhebbers) invested in the company, dividing the large risks of over-sea operations and distributing its mammoth profits.

By the 16th century, the Portuguese had an upper hand in the spice trade in Europe. However, they faced difficulties in supplying spices as the demand grew. This led to an increase in the price of the spices, an opportunity which the Dutch saw ripe to enter the spice trade. The Dutch then decided to start their own fleet in order to overthrow the Portuguese. The Dutch fleet grew over time and led to the formation of the Dutch East India Company. The company flourished and build forts across South-East Asia. In 1603, it established its first headquarter in Banten, Batavia (today is known as Indonesia). Eventually, the Dutch were trading throughout Asia including Sri Lankan coast as well. For the next fifty years, the company traded aggressively creating an Intra-Asian trade system to purchase and sell commodities at low rates. They continued to expand and established their posts in Persia, Siam, Bengal and Formosa (Taiwan). 

The Dutch faced continuous clashes from the English East India Company from 1611 to 1617. Post 1670s the Dutch East India Company began to decline as they lost their control over the silk trade to China and Japan. The British defeated the Dutch and by 1799 the Dutch East India Company was dissolved. 

The inclusion of the VoC records in the memory of the world highlights its value as to how it stands as one of the first successful MNCs. It only traded in spices, tea , silk , coffee but also produced a large number of documents. The records not only cover its trading posts and colonies but also the social and political aspects of the establishments. The Dutch East India Company from a historian’s point of view is one of the most researched enterprises. The company had a complex business model, for example, the Dutch East India Company was too organised for the time and opened new areas to trade. The VOC existed for almost two hundred years during which it enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly and became the richest company with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, and 50000 employees.   

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Dutch east india company essay.

In  the  mid-to-late   16th  century,  European  enterprises began to reassert  a time-honored interest  in the potential  rewards offered by long-distance  trade. Among them was the United East India Company, or Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie. The VOC, as it is often referred to, developed over the next two centuries into an organization so large and powerful that it is considered  to be the world’s first-ever multinational corporation.

The VOC was established as a charter company in 1602 by the Dutch parliament,  the States-General  of the Netherlands,  from a collection  of smaller companies. At the time, European economy and society, especially in England and Holland, were undergoing rapid  change  through  the  growth  of the  merchant middle class that preferred  trade rather  than land as the method of income. Within that was another  economic transformation: Bills of exchange emerged as a favored currency  for business transactions,  which, combined  with the opening  of banks in large cities and the first waves of colonialism, led businessmen to new concepts of investing their capital.

The Dutch  had been one of the leaders in creating a structure  of modern  colonialism that  involved merchant businessmen joining with their home states on the formation of monopolistic, imperialistic companies. One manner of effectively accomplishing such an outcome, they discovered, was to raise capital for ongoing  ventures  by pooling  individual  assets  into a single company. In return,  the individual investor would receive transferable shares of stock in the company. Then, at the point in time at which the venture turned  a profit, the company  would divide and disburse  the  profit  based on the  proportion of shares held by the investor. It was the VOC that became the first-ever company to begin—and benefit from—this practice of limited liability.

From  the  outset,  the  VOC turned  a profit  from its ventures and did so largely by buying low, selling high, and trading favorably in all manner of commodities across the Asian continent.  The capacity to do so systematically began with the company directors, the  Seventeen  Gentlemen,  dispatching  a few VOC fleets each year to the hub outpost  in Batavia (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia). These voyages had a tendency to last anywhere from seven to nine months in each direction, as the fleet sailed to Batavia and back via the Cape of Good Hope. When the fleet reached Batavia and unloaded its cargo of tradable goods and precious metals, servants, and instructions to the colonial High Indies Government, agents of the colonial government  would in turn  oversee the distribution  of cargo throughout the  commercial  hierarchy and local geography.

From there, VOC merchants  transported the imported goods, metals, and people to regions including India, Persia, Japan, and, later, China. The effectiveness of the  land-based  operation—and  the monopoly itself—was settled as much in various collection posts along the trading routes as in maintaining coercive or  inequitable  relationships  with  local populations. Through whatever means, the commodities, once  acquired,  would  be delivered  to  Batavia for shipment  to the Netherlands  on a returning  fleet. Upon arrival, the cargo would be brought  to a VOC warehouse  until  the company  saw fit to release the goods to the European market through  auction. The resultant profit was then used to provide dividends to shareholders  and fees to directors, and to fund existing and future company operations.

As an additional  part of their  business, the VOC financed voyages such as those on which Henry Hudson was sent in the early 1600s to explore and discover a more efficient route to India via Greenland. In any case, the sheer magnitude  and force of the overall operation—geographically, economically, organizationally,  politically, and  militarily—was at once the  basic element  in the  company’s early ability to reduce its risk and also precisely what led to a considerable amount of uncertainty  at even the minutest step in their business processes. As time went on, for instance, the Seventeen Gentlemen experienced difficulty in obtaining accurate information about goings-on in Batavia while also mismanaging the balance of better incentives and harsher sanctions to their many agents. But these relatively internal hindrances began to emerge in larger numbers around the same time as fiercely increasing external competition, most notably from the British East India Company that had gained its footing by the mid-to-late  17th century.

By the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the next one, the centralized authority within the VOC began to seriously break down. Some conveniently-situated VOC agents  found  power  in their positions,  for  these  agents  were  situated  in  manners that  would have allowed them  to direct  VOC resources through any channels they perceived to be beneficial. That is, the agents eventually recognized that they were effectively positioned  to act as principals, which meant  they could selectively become direct competitors of VOC principals should they so choose. Many acted on the opportunity in the interest of greater personal gain and, though  the formal hierarchy  remained  in place, the authority  of VOC principals withered away until the company was dissolved on December 31, 1795.

Bibliography:    

• Adams, “Principals and  Agents, Colonialists and Company Men: The Decay of Colonial Control in the  Dutch  East Indies,” American  Sociological Review (1996);
• H. Arnoux, The Dutch in America: A Historical Argument (private printing, 1890);
• B. Ekelund and R. D. Tollison, “Mercantilist Origins of the Corporation,” Bell Journal of Economics (1980);
• S. Gaastra, “Competition or Collaboration?: Relations Between the Dutch East India Company  and  Indian  Merchants  Around  1680,” in Merchants, Companies and Trade, S. Chaudhury and M. Morineau, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 1999);
• Gelderbloom and J. Jonker, “Completing a Financial Revolution: The Finance of the Dutch East India Trade and the Rise of the Amsterdam Capital Market, 1595–1612,” The Journal of Economic History (2004);
• William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert  Rouwenhorst,  The Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations That Created Modern Capital Markets (Oxford University Press, 2005);
• Robert Parthesius, Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters. The Development of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Shipping Network in Asia 1595–1660 (Amsterdam University Press, 2008);
• Prakesh, “The Portuguese and the Dutch in Asian Maritime Trade: A Comparative Analysis,” in Merchants, Companies and Trade, S. Chaudhury and M. Morineau, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

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By Nina Siegal

Reporting from Amsterdam

In the language of the Lenape Indigenous people, the word for European explorers who crossed the Atlantic in the 17th century to settle on their lands was “shuwankook,” or “salty people.”

The term first applied to the Dutch, said Brent Stonefish, a Native American spiritual leader, because they emerged from the sea to first trade with, then exploit and kill, his Lenape ancestors.

“The Dutch were basically those who ran us out of our homeland, and they were very violent toward our people,” he said in an interview. “As far as I was concerned, they were the savages.”

So, when the Dutch Consulate in New York approached Stonefish to ask if he’d help commemorate the anniversary of the 1624 establishment of the first Dutch settler colony, New Amsterdam, he was taken aback.

“They wanted us to celebrate 400 years of New Amsterdam, and we’re like, ‘No, that’s not going to happen,’” he said. “At the same time, I thought it was an educational opportunity,” he added. “We had a lot of hard discussions.”

The Dutch Consulate, which was creating an events program around the anniversary called Future 400 , then connected Stonefish with the Museum of the City of New York and the Amsterdam Museum, an historical museum in the Netherlands.

The result is the exhibition, “ Manahahtáanung or New Amsterdam? The Indigenous Story Behind New York ,” running at the Amsterdam Museum through Nov. 10 and moving to the Museum of the City of New York in 2025 as “Unceded: 400 Years of Lenape Survivance.”

Imara Limon, a curator from the Amsterdam Museum, said that the project was a true creative collaboration between the museums and the Lenape, including the organization that Stonefish co-directs, the Eenda-Lunaapeewahkiing Collective. It felt particularly important, Limon said, to present the show in the Netherlands, where few people are aware of the Dutch colony’s impact on Indigenous peoples.

“It wasn’t part of history classes in school,” she said. “And we realized that our institutional memory on this topic is also very limited, so we needed their stories.”

Each museum searched its holdings for material about the Lenape, but found only a few official records. In the Amsterdam City Archives, curators discovered a record of an enslaved Lenape man who was brought to the Netherlands in the 17th century, which is on display in the show. To supplement the documents, the Lenape contributed artworks and traditional ceremonial artifacts.

Objects are just one part of the show, however: The exhibition is dominated by video interviews with Lenape people, which run from about seven minutes to 50 minutes each.

“Usually in a museum exhibit, videos are three to five minutes long,” Limon said, “but here we made them longer, because we felt we wanted to have them really present, physically present, in the space.”

Cory Ridgeway, a member of a Lenape group that collaborated on the show, said she welcomed this approach.

“Traditionally museums want very object-based programming, and they will come to us and say, ‘Give us some stuff and we’ll talk about it,’” she said. “A lot of museums don’t really credit oral history as history, and that’s our main form of history.”

Stonefish said his primary goal was to show that the Lenape still exist, and that they still have a voice.

“The one thing we wanted to convey was that we weren’t a relic under glass,” he said. “We still live and breathe, and strive to live good lives.”

Some 20,000 living Lenape people are descendants of an estimated population of one million that originally lived in the region of present-day New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

In 1609, the Dutch East India Company, one of the world’s largest merchant firms, dispatched the English explorer Henry Hudson to find a trading route to China. But Hudson veered off course and arrived in the Bay of Manhattan.

He quickly claimed the whole area between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers for the Netherlands. There, Dutch merchants engaged the Lenape in trade for beaver pelts and other furs.

Later, the Dutch West India Company, founded in 1621, established its first settlement on Governors Island in 1624, and made its colony of New Amsterdam on the tip of Manahahtáanung, what is now Manhattan. Two years later, a company executive, Peter Schagen, said he had purchased Manhattan from the Lenape for 60 guilders, or approximately $24.

The Lenape dispute that claim.

“We say that that’s a myth,” Stonefish said. “We didn’t have a concept of ownership; we had a concept of sharing the land, and having a relationship with all of the land, the animals and the plants. Our idea of civilization was accepting all of creation, and taking no more than what we needed.”

In the exhibition, this myth-busting is represented by a wampum belt, specially created for the show. Stonefish said a ceremonial belt would have been given to the Dutch as part of any property-sharing agreement, but there was no mention of one in the Dutch account. “Our leadership would not have entered into any type of agreement without something like this,” he said.

For about two decades, trade continued between the Dutch and the Indigenous people, but in 1643, the New Netherlands governor Willem Kieft ordered the massacre of the Lenape and other tribes living in the colony.

A two-year war ensued, during which at least 1,000 Lenape were killed. Kieft was ordered to return to the Netherlands to answer for his actions, but died in a shipwreck.

The West India Company appointed Peter Stuyvesant as Kieft’s successor, and he managed New Netherland until the English conquered the territory in 1664, and renamed it New York. The Dutch colony lasted just 50 years.

Ridgeway, the member of the Lenape group, said that, for her, making connection with the “salty people” was an opportunity to initiate discussions with the Dutch government about healing the past’s wounds.

“I would love to see an apology, and I would like to see reparations,” she said. “It would be used for our language, which is nearly extinct, so that it can be spoken again, and for our elders. The majority of our people are living below the poverty level today.”

Her husband, Chief Urie Ridgeway, said the story of his people had been largely erased from American history books, but it has been transmitted through storytelling by generations of survivors. “We know our histories, but now we are starting to share them.”

He added that the current exhibition gives the Lenape a chance to tell a story that has long been ignored. “It’s about time,” he said.

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the organization that Brent Stonefish co-leads. It is the Eenda-Lunaapeewahkiing Collective, not the Delaware Nation Collective.

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Art and Museums in New York City

A guide to the shows, exhibitions and artists shaping the city’s cultural landscape..

At the Museum of Modern Art, the documentary photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier honors those who turn their energies to a social good .

Jenny Holzer signboards predated by a decade the news “crawl.” At the Guggenheim she is still bending the curve: Just read the art, is the message .

The artist-turned-film director Steve McQueen finds new depths in “Bass,”  an immersive environment of light and sound  in Dia Beacon keyed to Black history and “where we can go from here.”

A powerful and overdue exhibition at El Museo del Barrio links Amalia Mesa-Bains’s genre-defying installations  for the first time.

Looking for more art in the city? Here are the gallery shows not to miss in June .