Dutch East India Company

This article is about the trading company. For the record label, see Dutch East India Trading.
Dutch East India Company
Public company
Industry Trade
Fate Dissolved
Founded 20 March 1602 (1602-03-20)[1]
Defunct 31 December 1799 (1799-12-31)
Headquarters East India House, Amsterdam and Oost-Indisch Huis, Middelburg, Dutch Republic
The shipyard of the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam. 1726 engraving by Joseph Mulder.

The United East Indian Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie; VOC), referred to by the British as the Dutch East India Company,[2] was originally established as a chartered company in 1602, when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on Dutch spice trade. It is often considered to have been the first multinational corporation in the world [3] and it was the first company to issue stock.[4] It was a powerful company, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts,[5] negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.[6]

Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asia trade. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the English (later British) East India Company, the VOC's nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC. The VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 17th century.[7]

Having been set up in 1602, to profit from the Malukan spice trade, in 1619 the VOC established a capital in the port city of Jayakarta and changed the city name into Batavia (now Jakarta). Over the next two centuries the Company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory.[8] It remained an important trading concern and paid an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years.[9]

Weighed down by corruption in the late 18th century, the Company went bankrupt and was formally dissolved in 1800,[9] its possessions and the debt being taken over by the government of the Dutch Batavian Republic. The VOC's territories became the Dutch East Indies and were expanded over the course of the 19th century to include the whole of the Indonesian archipelago, and in the 20th century would form the Republic of Indonesia.

History

Background

Further information: Spice trade
A bond issued by the Dutch East India Company, dating from 7 November 1623, for the amount of 2,400 florins

During the 16th century, the spice trade was dominated by the Portuguese who used Lisbon as a staple port. Before the Dutch Revolt, Antwerp had played an important role as a distribution centre in northern Europe. However, after 1591 the Portuguese used an international syndicate of the German Fuggers and Welsers, and Spanish and Italian firms, that used Hamburg as its northern staple port to distribute their goods, thereby cutting Dutch merchants out of the trade.

At the same time, the Portuguese trade system was unable to increase supply to satisfy growing demand, in particular the demand for pepper. Demand for spices was relatively inelastic, and therefore each lag in the supply of pepper caused a sharp rise in pepper prices.

In addition, as the Portuguese crown had been united in a personal union with the Spanish crown in 1580, with which the Dutch Republic was at war, the Portuguese Empire became an appropriate target for Dutch military incursions. These three factors motivated Dutch merchants to enter the intercontinental spice trade themselves. Further, a number of Dutchmen like Jan Huyghen van Linschoten and Cornelis de Houtman obtained first hand knowledge of the "secret" Portuguese trade routes and practices, thereby providing opportunity.[10]

The stage was thus set for Houtman's 1595 four-ship exploratory expedition to Banten, the main pepper port of West Java, where they clashed with both the Portuguese and indigenous Indonesians. Houtman's expedition then sailed east along the north coast of Java, losing twelve crew to a Javanese attack at Sidayu and killing a local ruler in Madura. Half the crew were lost before the expedition made it back to the Netherlands the following year, but with enough spices to make a considerable profit.[11]

VOC headquarters in Amsterdam

In 1598, an increasing number of fleets were sent out by competing merchant groups from around the Netherlands. Some fleets were lost, but most were successful, with some voyages producing high profits. In March 1599, a fleet of eight ships under Jacob van Neck was the first Dutch fleet to reach the 'Spice Islands' of Maluku, the source of pepper, cutting out the Javanese middlemen. The ships returned to Europe in 1599 and 1600 and the expedition made a 400 percent profit.[11]

In 1600, the Dutch joined forces with the Muslim Hituese on Ambon Island in an anti-Portuguese alliance, in return for which the Dutch were given the sole right to purchase spices from Hitu.[12] Dutch control of Ambon was achieved when the Portuguese surrendered their fort in Ambon to the Dutch-Hituese alliance. In 1613, the Dutch expelled the Portuguese from their Solor fort, but a subsequent Portuguese attack led to a second change of hands; following this second reoccupation, the Dutch once again captured Solor, in 1636.[12]

East of Solor on the island of Timor, Dutch advances were halted by an autonomous and powerful group of Portuguese Eurasians called the Topasses. They remained in control of the Sandalwood trade and their resistance lasted throughout the 17th and 18th century, causing Portuguese Timor to remain under the Portuguese sphere of control.[13][14]

Formation (1602)

Reproduction of a map of the city Batavia circa 1627, collection Tropenmuseum

At the time, it was customary for a company to be set up only for the duration of a single voyage, and to be liquidated upon the return of the fleet. Investment in these expeditions was a very high-risk venture, not only because of the usual dangers of piracy, disease and shipwreck, but also because the interplay of inelastic demand and relatively elastic supply[15] of spices could make prices tumble at just the wrong moment, thereby ruining prospects of profitability. To manage such risk the forming of a cartel to control supply would seem logical. The English had been the first to adopt this approach, by bundling their resources into a monopoly enterprise, the English East India Company in 1600, thereby threatening their Dutch competitors with ruin.[16]

In 1602 the Dutch government followed suit, sponsoring the creation of a single "United East Indies Company" that was also granted monopoly over the Asian trade. The charter of the new company empowered it to build forts, maintain armies, and conclude treaties with Asian rulers. It provided for a venture that would continue for 21 years, with a financial accounting only at the end of each decade.[16]

Dutch Batavia in 1681, built in what is now North Jakarta

In 1603, the first permanent Dutch trading post in Indonesia was established in Banten, West Java and in 1611, another was established at Jayakarta (later "Batavia" and then "Jakarta").[17] In 1610, the VOC established the post of Governor General to more firmly control their affairs in Asia. To advise and control the risk of despotic Governors General, a Council of the Indies (Raad van Indië) was created. The Governor General effectively became the main administrator of the VOC's activities in Asia, although the Heeren XVII, a body of 17 shareholders representing different chambers, continued to officially have overall control.[12]

VOC headquarters were located in Ambon during the tenures of the first three Governors General (1610–1619), but it was not a satisfactory location. Although it was at the centre of the spice production areas, it was far from the Asian trade routes and other VOC areas of activity ranging from Africa to India to Japan.[18][19] A location in the west of the archipelago was thus sought; the Straits of Malacca were strategic, but had become dangerous following the Portuguese conquest and the first permanent VOC settlement in Banten was controlled by a powerful local ruler and subject to stiff competition from Chinese and English traders.[12]

The Isle of Amboina

In 1604, a second English East India Company voyage commanded by Sir Henry Middleton reached the islands of Ternate, Tidore, Ambon and Banda; in Banda, they encountered severe VOC hostility, which saw the beginning of Anglo-Dutch competition for access to spices.[17] From 1611 to 1617, the English established trading posts at Sukadana (southwest Kalimantan), Makassar, Jayakarta and Jepara in Java, and Aceh, Pariaman and Jambi in Sumatra which threatened Dutch ambitions for a monopoly on East Indies trade.[17]

Diplomatic agreements in Europe in 1620 ushered in a period of co-operation between the Dutch and the English over the spice trade.[17] This ended with a notorious, but disputed incident, known as the 'Amboyna massacre', where ten Englishmen were arrested, tried and beheaded for conspiracy against the Dutch government.[20] Although this caused outrage in Europe and a diplomatic crisis, the English quietly withdrew from most of their Indonesian activities (except trading in Bantam) and focused on other Asian interests.

Growth

Graves of Dutch dignitaries in the ruined St. Paul's Church, Malacca in the former Dutch Malacca

In 1619, Jan Pieterszoon Coen was appointed Governor-General of the VOC. He saw the possibility of the VOC becoming an Asian power, both political and economic. On 30 May 1619, Coen, backed by a force of nineteen ships, stormed Jayakarta driving out the Banten forces; and from the ashes established Batavia as the VOC headquarters. In the 1620s almost the entire native population of the Banda Islands was driven away, starved to death, or killed in an attempt to replace them with Dutch plantations.[21] These plantations were used to grow cloves and nutmeg for export. Coen hoped to settle large numbers of Dutch colonists in the East Indies, but implementation of this policy never materialised, mainly because very few Dutch were willing to emigrate to Asia.[22]

Another of Coen's ventures was more successful. A major problem in the European trade with Asia at the time was that the Europeans could offer few goods that Asian consumers wanted, except silver and gold. European traders therefore had to pay for spices with the precious metals, and this was in short supply in Europe, except for Spain and Portugal. The Dutch and English had to obtain it by creating a trade surplus with other European countries. Coen discovered the obvious solution for the problem: to start an intra-Asiatic trade system, whose profits could be used to finance the spice trade with Europe. In the long run this obviated the need for exports of precious metals from Europe, though at first it required the formation of a large trading-capital fund in the Indies. The VOC reinvested a large share of its profits to this end in the period up to 1630.[23]

The VOC traded throughout Asia. Ships coming into Batavia from the Netherlands carried supplies for VOC settlements in Asia. Silver and copper from Japan were used to trade with India and China for silk, cotton, porcelain, and textiles. These products were either traded within Asia for the coveted spices or brought back to Europe. The VOC was also instrumental in introducing European ideas and technology to Asia. The Company supported Christian missionaries and traded modern technology with China and Japan. A more peaceful VOC trade post on Dejima, an artificial island off the coast of Nagasaki, was for more than two hundred years the only place where Europeans were permitted to trade with Japan.[24] When the VOC tried to military force Ming dynasty China to open up to Dutch trade, the Chinese defeated the Dutch in a war over the Penghu islands from 1623-1624 and forced the VOC to abandon Penghu for Taiwan. The Chinese defeated the VOC again at the Battle of Liaoluo Bay in 1633.

The Vietnamese Nguyen Lords defeated the VOC in a 1643 battle during the Trịnh–Nguyễn War, blowing up a Dutch ship. The Cambodians defeated the VOC in a war from 1643-44 on the Mekong River.

In 1640, the VOC obtained the port of Galle, Ceylon, from the Portuguese and broke the latter's monopoly of the cinnamon trade. In 1658, Gerard Pietersz. Hulft laid siege to Colombo, which was captured with the help of King Rajasinghe II of Kandy. By 1659, the Portuguese had been expelled from the coastal regions, which were then occupied by the VOC, securing for it the monopoly over cinnamon. To prevent the Portuguese or the English from ever recapturing Sri Lanka, the VOC went on to conquer the entire Malabar Coast from the Portuguese, almost entirely driving them from the west coast of India. When news of a peace agreement between Portugal and the Netherlands reached Asia in 1663, Goa was the only remaining Portuguese city on the west coast.[25]

VOC Monogram formerly above the entrance to the Castle of Good Hope

In 1652, Jan van Riebeeck established an outpost at the Cape of Good Hope (the southwestern tip of Africa, currently in Cape Town, South Africa) to re-supply VOC ships on their journey to East Asia. This post later became a full-fledged colony, the Cape Colony, when more Dutch and other Europeans started to settle there.

Dutch factory of Hugly-Chinsurah in Bengal

VOC trading posts were also established in Persia, Bengal, Malacca, Siam, Canton, Formosa (now Taiwan), as well as the Malabar and Coromandel coasts in India. In 1662, however, Koxinga expelled the Dutch from Taiwan[26] (see History of Taiwan).

In 1663, the VOC signed "Painan Treaty" with several local lords in the Painan area that were revolting against the Aceh Sultanate. The treaty resulted in VOC to build a trading post in the area and eventually monopolise the trade there, especially in gold trade.[27]

By 1669, the VOC was the richest private company the world had ever seen, with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50,000 employees, a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and a dividend payment of 40% on the original investment.[28]

Many of the VOC employees inter-mixed with the indigenous peoples and expanded the population of Indos in pre-colonial history [29][30]

Reorientation

Trade area of the VOC around 1700
VOC ships in Chittagong, Bengal

Around 1670, two events caused the growth of VOC trade to stall. In the first place, the highly profitable trade with Japan started to decline. The loss of the outpost on Formosa to Koxinga in the 1662 Siege of Fort Zeelandia and related internal turmoil in China (where the Ming dynasty was being replaced with the Qing dynasty) brought an end to the silk trade after 1666. Though the VOC substituted Bengali for Chinese silk other forces affected the supply of Japanese silver and gold. The shogunate enacted a number of measures to limit the export of these precious metals, in the process limiting VOC opportunities for trade, and severely worsening the terms of trade. Therefore, Japan ceased to function as the lynchpin of the intra-Asiatic trade of the VOC by 1685.[31]

Even more importantly, the Third Anglo-Dutch War temporarily interrupted VOC trade with Europe. This caused a spike in the price of pepper, which enticed the English East India Company (EIC) to aggressively enter this market in the years after 1672. Previously, one of the tenets of the VOC pricing policy was to slightly over-supply the pepper market, so as to depress prices below the level where interlopers were encouraged to enter the market (instead of striving for short-term profit maximisation). The wisdom of such a policy was illustrated when a fierce price war with the EIC ensued, as that company flooded the market with new supplies from India. In this struggle for market share, the VOC (which had much larger financial resources) could wait out the EIC. Indeed, by 1683, the latter came close to bankruptcy; its share price plummeted from 600 to 250; and its president Josiah Child was temporarily forced from office.[32]

However, the writing was on the wall. Other companies, like the French East India Company and the Danish East India Company also started to make inroads on the Dutch system. The VOC therefore closed the heretofore flourishing open pepper emporium of Bantam by a treaty of 1684 with the Sultan. Also, on the Coromandel Coast, it moved its chief stronghold from Pulicat to Negapatnam, so as to secure a monopoly on the pepper trade at the detriment of the French and the Danes.[33] However, the importance of these traditional commodities in the Asian-European trade was diminishing rapidly at the time. The military outlays that the VOC needed to make to enhance its monopoly were not justified by the increased profits of this declining trade.[34]

Nevertheless, this lesson was slow to sink in and at first the VOC made the strategic decision to improve its military position on the Malabar Coast (hoping thereby to curtail English influence in the area, and end the drain on its resources from the cost of the Malabar garrisons) by using force to compel the Zamorin of Calicut to submit to Dutch domination. In 1710, the Zamorin was made to sign a treaty with the VOC undertaking to trade exclusively with the VOC and expel other European traders. For a brief time, this appeared to improve the Company's prospects. However, in 1715, with EIC encouragement, the Zamorin renounced the treaty. Though a Dutch army managed to suppress this insurrection temporarily, the Zamorin continued to trade with the English and the French, which led to an appreciable upsurge in English and French traffic. The VOC decided in 1721 that it was no longer worth the trouble to try to dominate the Malabar pepper and spice trade. A strategic decision was taken to scale down the Dutch military presence and in effect yield the area to EIC influence.[35]

City hall of Batavia in 1682

The 1741 Battle of Colachel by Nair warriors of Travancore under Raja Marthanda Varma defeated the Dutch. The Dutch commander Captain Eustachius De Lannoy was captured. Marthanda Varma agreed to spare the Dutch captain's life on condition that he joined his army and trained his soldiers on modern lines. This defeat in the Travancore-Dutch War is considered the earliest example of an organised Asian power overcoming European military technology and tactics; and it signalled the decline of Dutch power in India.[36]

Natives of Arakan sell slaves to the Dutch East India Company, c. 1663

The attempt to continue as before as a low volume-high profit business enterprise with its core business in the spice trade had therefore failed. The Company had however already (reluctantly) followed the example of its European competitors in diversifying into other Asian commodities, like tea, coffee, cotton, textiles, and sugar. These commodities provided a lower profit margin and therefore required a larger sales volume to generate the same amount of revenue. This structural change in the commodity composition of the VOC's trade started in the early 1680s, after the temporary collapse of the EIC around 1683 offered an excellent opportunity to enter these markets. The actual cause for the change lies, however, in two structural features of this new era.

In the first place, there was a revolutionary change in the tastes affecting European demand for Asian textiles, and coffee and tea, around the turn of the 18th century. Secondly, a new era of an abundant supply of capital at low interest rates suddenly opened around this time. The second factor enabled the Company to easily finance its expansion in the new areas of commerce.[37] Between the 1680s and 1720s, the VOC was therefore able to equip and man an appreciable expansion of its fleet, and acquire a large amount of precious metals to finance the purchase of large amounts of Asian commodities, for shipment to Europe. The overall effect was to approximately double the size of the company.[38]

The tonnage of the returning ships rose by 125 percent in this period. However, the Company's revenues from the sale of goods landed in Europe rose by only 78 percent. This reflects the basic change in the VOC's circumstances that had occurred: it now operated in new markets for goods with an elastic demand, in which it had to compete on an equal footing with other suppliers. This made for low profit margins.[39] Unfortunately, the business information systems of the time made this difficult to discern for the managers of the company, which may partly explain the mistakes they made from hindsight. This lack of information might have been counteracted (as in earlier times in the VOC's history) by the business acumen of the directors. Unfortunately by this time these were almost exclusively recruited from the political regent class, which had long since lost its close relationship with merchant circles.[40]

Low profit margins in themselves do not explain the deterioration of revenues. To a large extent the costs of the operation of the VOC had a "fixed" character (military establishments; maintenance of the fleet and such). Profit levels might therefore have been maintained if the increase in the scale of trading operations that in fact took place, had resulted in economies of scale. However, though larger ships transported the growing volume of goods, labour productivity did not go up sufficiently to realise these. In general the Company's overhead rose in step with the growth in trade volume; declining gross margins translated directly into a decline in profitability of the invested capital. The era of expansion was one of "profitless growth".[41]

Concretely: "[t]he long-term average annual profit in the VOC's 1630–70 'Golden Age' was 2.1 million guilders, of which just under half was distributed as dividends and the remainder reinvested. The long-term average annual profit in the 'Expansion Age' (1680–1730) was 2.0 million guilders, of which three-quarters was distributed as dividend and one-quarter reinvested. In the earlier period, profits averaged 18 percent of total revenues; in the latter period, 10 percent. The annual return of invested capital in the earlier period stood at approximately 6 percent; in the latter period, 3.4 percent."[41]

Nevertheless, in the eyes of investors the VOC did not do too badly. The share price hovered consistently around the 400 mark from the mid-1680s (excepting a hiccup around the Glorious Revolution in 1688), and they reached an all-time high of around 642 in the 1720s. VOC shares then yielded a return of 3.5 percent, only slightly less than the yield on Dutch government bonds.[42]

Decline

However, from there on the fortunes of the VOC started to decline. Five major problems, not all of equal weight, can be used to explain its decline in the next fifty years to 1780.[43]

Despite of all this, the VOC in 1780 remained an enormous operation. Its capital in the Republic, consisting of ships and goods in inventory, totalled 28 million guilders; its capital in Asia, consisting of the liquid trading fund and goods en route to Europe, totalled 46 million guilders. Total capital, net of outstanding debt, stood at 62 million guilders. The prospects of the company at this time therefore need not have been hopeless, had one of the many plans to reform it been taken successfully in hand. However, then the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War intervened. British attacks in Europe and Asia reduced the VOC fleet by half; removed valuable cargo from its control; and devastated its remaining power in Asia. The direct losses of the VOC can be calculated at 43 million guilders. Loans to keep the company operating reduced its net assets to zero.[45]

From 1720 on, the market for sugar from Indonesia declined as the competition from cheap sugar from Brazil increased. European markets became saturated. Dozens of Chinese sugar traders went bankrupt which led to massive unemployment, which in turn led to gangs of unemployed coolies. The Dutch government in Batavia did not adequately respond to these problems. In 1740, rumours of deportation of the gangs from the Batavia area led to widespread rioting. The Dutch military searched houses of Chinese in Batavia for weapons. When a house accidentally burnt down, military and impoverished citizens started slaughtering and pillaging the Chinese community.[46] This massacre of the Chinese was deemed sufficiently serious for the board of the VOC to start an official investigation into the Government of the Dutch East Indies for the first time in its history.

After the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, the VOC was a financial wreck, and after vain attempts by the provincial States of Holland and Zeeland to reorganise it, was nationalised on 1 March 1796[47] by the new Batavian Republic. Its charter was renewed several times, but allowed to expire on 31 December 1799.[47] Most of the possessions of the former VOC were subsequently occupied by Great Britain during the Napoleonic wars, but after the new United Kingdom of the Netherlands was created by the Congress of Vienna, some of these were restored to this successor state of the old Dutch Republic by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.

European discovery of Australia

In terms of world history of geography and exploration, the VOC can be credited with putting most of Australia's coast (then Hollandia Nova and other names) on the world map, between 1606 and 1756.[48] An Australian vintner has used the VOC logo since the late 20th century, having re-registered the company's name for the purpose.[49]

Organization

The VOC had two types of shareholders: the participanten, who could be seen as non-managing members, and the 76 bewindhebbers (later reduced to 60) who acted as managing directors. This was the usual set-up for Dutch joint-stock companies at the time. The innovation in the case of the VOC was, that the liability of not just the participanten, but also of the bewindhebbers was limited to the paid-in capital (usually, bewindhebbers had unlimited liability). The VOC therefore was a limited liability company. Also, the capital would be permanent during the lifetime of the company. As a consequence, investors that wished to liquidate their interest in the interim could only do this by selling their share to others on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.[50] Confusion of confusions, a 1688 dialogue by the Sephardi Jew Joseph de la Vega analysed the workings of this one-stock exchange.

The VOC consisted of six Chambers (Kamers) in port cities: Amsterdam, Delft, Rotterdam, Enkhuizen, Middelburg and Hoorn. Delegates of these chambers convened as the Heeren XVII (the Lords Seventeen). They were selected from the bewindhebber-class of shareholders.[51]

Of the Heeren XVII, eight delegates were from the Chamber of Amsterdam (one short of a majority on its own), four from the Chamber of Zeeland, and one from each of the smaller Chambers, while the seventeenth seat was alternatively from the Chamber of Middelburg-Zeeland or rotated among the five small Chambers. Amsterdam had thereby the decisive voice. The Zeelanders in particular had misgivings about this arrangement at the beginning. The fear was not unfounded, because in practice it meant Amsterdam stipulated what happened.

Both sides of a duit, a coin minted in 1735 by the VOC.

The six chambers raised the start-up capital of the Dutch East India Company:

Chamber Capital (Guilders)
Amsterdam 3,679,915
Middelburg 1,300,405
Enkhuizen 540,000
Delft 469,400
Hoorn 266,868
Rotterdam 173,000
Total: 6,424,588

The raising of capital in Rotterdam did not go so smoothly. A considerable part originated from inhabitants of Dordrecht. Although it did not raise as much capital as Amsterdam or Middelburg-Zeeland, Enkhuizen had the largest input in the share capital of the VOC. Under the first 358 shareholders, there were many small entrepreneurs, who dared to take the risk. The minimum investment in the VOC was 3,000 guilders, which priced the Company's stock within the means of many merchants.[52]

Various VOC soldier uniforms, circa 1783.

Among the early shareholders of the VOC, immigrants played an important role. Under the 1,143 tenderers were 39 Germans and no fewer than 301 from the Southern Netherlands (roughly present Belgium and Luxembourg, then under Habsburg rule), of whom Isaac le Maire was the largest subscriber with ƒ85,000. VOC's total capitalisation was ten times that of its British rival.

The logo of the Amsterdam Chamber of the VOC.

The logo of the VOC consisted of a large capital 'V' with an O on the left and a C on the right leg. It appeared on various corporate items, such as cannons and the coin illustrated above. The first letter of the hometown of the chamber conducting the operation was placed on top (see figure for example of the Amsterdam chamber logo). The flag of the company was orange, white, blue (see Dutch flag) with the company logo embroidered on it.

The Heeren XVII (Lords Seventeen) met alternately 6 years in Amsterdam and 2 years in Middelburg-Zeeland. They defined the VOC's general policy and divided the tasks among the Chambers. The Chambers carried out all the necessary work, built their own ships and warehouses and traded the merchandise. The Heeren XVII sent the ships' masters off with extensive instructions on the route to be navigated, prevailing winds, currents, shoals and landmarks. The VOC also produced its own charts.

In the context of the Dutch-Portuguese War the company established its headquarters in Batavia, Java (now Jakarta, Indonesia). Other colonial outposts were also established in the East Indies, such as on the Maluku Islands, which include the Banda Islands, where the VOC forcibly maintained a monopoly over nutmeg and mace. Methods used to maintain the monopoly involved extortion and the violent suppression of the native population, including mass murder.[53] In addition, VOC representatives sometimes used the tactic of burning spice trees to force indigenous populations to grow other crops, thus artificially cutting the supply of spices like nutmeg and cloves.[54]

VOC outposts

Organization and leadership structures were varied as necessary in the various VOC outposts:

Opperhoofd is a Dutch word (pl. Opperhoofden) which literally means 'supreme chief'. In this VOC context, the word is a gubernatorial title, comparable to the English Chief factor, for the chief executive officer of a Dutch factory in the sense of trading post, as led by a factor, i.e. agent.

See more at VOC Opperhoofden in Japan

Council of Justice in Batavia

The Council of Justice in Batavia was the appellate court for all the other VOC Company posts in the VOC empire.

Use of slaves

By the time the settlement was established at the Cape in 1652, the VOC already had a long experience of practising slavery in the East Indies. Jan van Riebeeck concluded within two months of the establishment of the Cape settlement that slave labor would be needed for the hardest and dirtiest work. Initially, the Dutch East India Trading Company considered enslaving men from the indigenous Khoikhoi population, but the idea was rejected on the grounds that such a policy would be both costly and dangerous. Most Khoikhoi had chosen not to labor for the Dutch because of low wages and harsh conditions. In the beginning, the settlers traded with the Khoikhoi but the harsh working conditions and low wages imposed by the Dutch led to a series of wars. The European population remained under 200 during the settlement's first five years, and war against neighbors numbering more than 20,000 would have been foolhardy. Moreover, the Dutch feared that Khoikhoi people, if enslaved, could always escape into the local community, whereas foreigners would find it much more difficult to elude their "masters."[55]

Between 1652 and 1657, a number of unsuccessful attempts were made to obtain men from the Dutch East Indies and from Mauritius. In 1658, however, the VOC landed two shiploads of slaves at the Cape, one containing more than 200 people brought from Dahomey (later Benin), the second with almost 200 people, most of them children, captured from a Portuguese slaver off the coast of Angola. Except for a few individuals, these were to be the only slaves ever brought to the Cape from West Africa.[55]

From 1658 to the end of the Company’s rule, many more slaves were brought regularly to the Cape in various ways, chiefly by Company-sponsored slaving voyages and slaves brought to the Cape by its return fleets. From these sources and by natural growth, the slave population increased from zero in 1652 to about 1,000 by 1700. During the 18th century, the slave population increased dramatically to 16,839 by 1795.[56]

After the slave trade was initiated, all of the slaves imported into the Cape until the British stopped the trade in 1807 were from East Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, and South and Southeast Asia. Large numbers were brought from India, Ceylon, and the Indonesian archipelago. Prisoners from other countries in the VOC's empire were also enslaved. The slave population, which exceeded that of the European settlers until the first quarter of the nineteenth century, was overwhelmingly male and was thus dependent on constant imports of new slaves to maintain and to augment its size.[55]

By the 1660s the Cape settlement was importing slaves from India, Malaya (Malaysia), and Madagascar to work on the farms.[57]

Conflict between Dutch farmers and Khoikhoi broke out once it became clear to the latter that the Dutch were there to stay and that they intended to encroach on the lands of the pastoralists. In 1659 Doman, a Khoikhoi who had worked as a translator for the Dutch and had even traveled to Java, led an armed attempt to expel the Dutch from the Cape peninsula. The attempt was a failure, although warfare dragged on until an inconclusive peace was established a year later. During the following decade, pressure on the Khoikhoi grew as more of the Dutch became free burghers, expanded their landholdings, and sought pastureland for their growing herds. War broke out again in 1673 and continued until 1677, when Khoikhoi resistance was destroyed by a combination of superior European weapons and Dutch manipulation of divisions among the local people. Thereafter, Khoikhoi society in the western Cape disintegrated. Some people found jobs as shepherds on European farms; others rejected foreign rule and moved away from the Cape. The final blow for most came in 1713 when a Dutch ship brought smallpox to the Cape. Hitherto unknown locally, the disease ravaged the remaining Khoikhoi, killing 90 percent of the population.[58]

Throughout the eighteenth century, the settlement continued to expand through internal growth of the European population and the continued importation of slaves. The approximately 3,000 Europeans and slaves at the Cape in 1700 had increased by the end of the century to nearly 20,000 Europeans, and approximately 25,000 slaves.[58]

Notable VOC ships

Replicas have been constructed of several VOC ships, marked with an (R)
Replica of the VOC vessel "Batavia" 1620–1629
VOC Amsterdam replicates the three-masted, full-rigged VOC vessel which was launched in 1748 and sunk in 1749.
A modern reconstruction of the 18th century VOC Amsterdam is permanently anchored in the harbour at the Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum (the National Maritime Museum) in Amsterdam.
A scale model of a warship used by Dutch East India Company.

See also

Dutch and other European settlements in India.

Other trade companies of the age of the sail

Governors General of the Dutch East India Company

References

  1. ↑ "The Dutch East India Company (VOC)". Canon van Nederland. Retrieved 19 March 2011.
  2. ↑ THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY, European Heritage Project, "The Dutch name was Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, what literally means the United East Indian Company."
  3. ↑ http://www.kb.nl/themas/geschiedenis-en-cultuur/koloniaal-verleden/voc-1602-1799 VOC at the National Library of the Netherlands (in Dutch)
  4. ↑ Mondo Visione web site: Chambers, Clem. "Who needs stock exchanges?" Exchanges Handbook. – retrieved 21 August 2011.
  5. ↑ "Slave Ship Mutiny: Program Transcript". Secrets of the Dead. PBS. 11 November 2010. Retrieved 12 November 2010.
  6. ↑ Ames, Glenn J. (2008). The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European Discovery, 1500–1700. pp. 102–103.
  7. ↑ Van Boven, M. W. "Towards A New Age of Partnership (TANAP): An Ambitious World Heritage Project (UNESCO Memory of the World – reg.form, 2002)". VOC Archives Appendix 2, p.14.
  8. ↑ Vickers (2005), p. 10
  9. 1 2 Ricklefs, M.C. (1991). A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1300, 2nd Edition. London: MacMillan. p. 110. ISBN 0-333-57689-6.
  10. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 383
  11. 1 2 Ricklefs, M.C. (1991). A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1300, 2nd Edition. London: MacMillan. p. 27. ISBN 0-333-57689-6.
  12. 1 2 3 4 Ricklefs, M.C. (1991). A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1300, 2nd Edition. London: MacMillan. pp. 25–28. ISBN 0-333-57689-6.
  13. ↑ (Portuguese) Matos, Artur Teodoro de (1974), Timor Portugues, 1515–1769, Lisboa: Instituto Histórico Infante Dom Henrique.
  14. ↑ (Dutch) Roever, Arend de (2002), De jacht op sandelhout: De VOC en de tweedeling van Timor in de zeventiende eeuw, Zutphen: Walburg Pers.
  15. ↑ In the medium term, as new suppliers could enter the market. In the short term the supply was, of course, also inelastic.
  16. 1 2 De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 384–385
  17. 1 2 3 4 Ricklefs, M.C. (1991). A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1300, 2nd Edition. London: MacMillan. p. 29. ISBN 0-333-57689-6.
  18. ↑ Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720 (Princeton University Press, 1985)
  19. ↑ William De Lange, Pars Japonica: the first Dutch expedition to reach the shores of Japan, (2006)
  20. ↑ Miller, George (ed.) (1996). To The Spice Islands and Beyond: Travels in Eastern Indonesia. New York: Oxford University Press. xvi. ISBN 967-65-3099-9.
  21. ↑ Ricklefs, M.C. (1991). A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1300, 2nd Edition. London: MacMillan. p. 30. ISBN 0-333-57689-6.
  22. ↑ The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600–1800, p.218
  23. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 386
  24. ↑ Ames, Glenn J. (2008). The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European Discovery, 1500–1700. p. 115.
  25. ↑ "Calling the shots: political interaction".
  26. ↑ Andrade, Tonio (2005). How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch, Spanish and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century. Columbia University Press.
  27. ↑ http://majalah.tempointeraktif.com/id/arsip/1982/07/31/BK/mbm.19820731.BK47129.id.html
  28. ↑ The share price had appreciated significantly, so in that respect the dividend was less impressive
  29. ↑ De Witt, D. "The Easternization of the West: The Role of Melaka, the Malay-Indonesian archipelago and the Dutch (VOC). (International seminar by the Melaka State Government, the Malaysian Institute of Historical and Patriotism Studies (IKSEP), the Institute of Occidental Studies (IKON) at the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and the Netherlands Embassy in Malaysia. Malacca, Malaysia, 27 July 2006". Children of the VOC at.
  30. ↑ Blusse, Leonard. Strange company: Chinese settlers, Mestizo women, and the Dutch in VOC Batavia. (Dordrecht-Holland; Riverton, U.S.A., Foris Publications, 1986. xiii, 302p.) number: 959.82 B659.
  31. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 434–435
  32. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 430–433
  33. ↑ During the Nine Years' War, the French and Dutch companies came to blows on the Indian Subcontinent. The French sent naval expeditions from metropolitan France, which the VOC easily countered. On the other hand, the VOC conquered the important fortress of Pondichéry after a siege of only 16 days by an expedition of 3,000 men and 19 ships under Laurens Pit from Negapatnam in September 1693. The Dutch then made the defenses of the fortress impregnable, which they came to regret when the Dutch government returned it to the French by the Treaty of Ryswick in exchange for tariff concessions in Europe by the French. Chauhuri and Israel, p 424
  34. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 433–434
  35. ↑ Chaudhuri and Israel, pp. 428–429
  36. ↑ However, the VOC had been defeated many times before. On the Indian Subcontinent, the EIC had suffered a resounding defeat from the Mughal forces in its 1689 Mughal War; Chaudhury and Israel, pp. 435–436
  37. ↑ It was also helpful that the price war with the EIC in the early decade had caused the accumulation of enormous inventories of pepper and spices, which enabled the VOC to cut down on shipments later on, thereby freeing up capital to increase shipments of other goods; De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 436
  38. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 436–437
  39. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 437–440
  40. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 441–442
  41. 1 2 De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 447
  42. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 448
  43. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 449–455
  44. ↑ A particularly egregious example was that of the "Amfioen Society". This was a business of higher VOC-employees that received a monopoly of the opium trade on Java, at a time when the VOC had to pay monopoly prices to the EIC to buy the opium in Bengal; Burger, passim
  45. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 454–455
  46. ↑ Kumar, Ann (1997). Java and Modern Europe: Ambiguous Encounters. p. 32.
  47. 1 2 TANAP, The end of the VOC
  48. ↑ "The AOTM Landings List 1606 – 1814". history and heritage division of the Australasian Hydrographic Society. Australia on the Map. 6 February 2008. Archived from the original on 2 April 2013. Retrieved 2 April 2013. After leaving Banda on 18 November 1605, at about the end of March 1606 VOC Captain Willem Janszoon,* Supercargo Jan Lodewijkszoon van Rosingeyn and their crew onboard the Duyfken, charted about 300 km of the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. First documented visit of Europeans to the shores of Australia.
  49. ↑ Tim Treadgold (13 March 2006). "Cross-Breeding". Forbes. Archived from the original on 2 April 2013. Retrieved 2 April 2013. Michael Wright replicates the Dutch East India Company at his winery in Western Australia.
  50. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, p. 385
  51. ↑ De Vries and Van der Woude, pp. 384–385
  52. ↑ Ames, Glenn J. (2008). The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European Discovery, 1500–1700. p. 103.
  53. ↑ Hanna, Willard A. (1991). Indonesian Banda: Colonialism and its Aftermath in the Nutmeg Islands. Bandanaira: Yayasan Warisan dan Budaya Banda Naira.
  54. ↑ Ames, Glenn J. (2008). The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European Discovery, 1500–1700. p. 111.
  55. 1 2 3 Byrnes, Rita (1996). South Africa: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress. pp. Establishing a Slave Economy.
  56. ↑ 5.2 Numbers, Origins, and Trades in Which Slaves were Engaged.
  57. ↑ Appiah, Anthony; Henry Louis Gates (2004). Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Oxford University Press. p. 732.
  58. 1 2 Byrnes, Rita (1996). South Africa: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress. pp. Emergence of a Settler Society.
  59. ↑ Worden, N. van Heyningen, E. and Bickford-Smith, S.: Cape Town: The making of a City Cape Town: David Philip Publishers. ISBN 978-0-86486-435-2
  60. ↑ "De VOCsite : gegevens VOC-schip Haarlem (1636)".

Further reading

  • Ames, Glenn J. The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European Discovery, 1500–1700. Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008.
  • Blusse, Leonard. An Insane Administration and Insanitary Town: The Dutch East India Company and Batavia (1619–1799) (Springer Netherlands, 1985)
  • Borschberg, Peter, Journal, Memorials and Letters of Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge. Security, Diplomacy and Commerce in 17th-Century Southeast Asia (Singapore: NUS Press, 2015) https://www.academia.edu/4302783
  • Boxer, Charles Ralph. Jan Compagnie in War and Peace, 1602-1799: A Short History of the Dutch East-India Company (Heinemann Asia, 1979)
  • Boxer, Charles R. Jan Compagnie in Japan, 1600–1850: An Essay on the Cultural Artistic and Scientific Influence Exercised by the Hollanders in Japan from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries. Den Haag, 1950.
  • Boxer, Charles R. The Dutch Seaborne Empire: 1600–1800 (London, 1965.)
  • Braam Houckgeest, Andre Everard Van (1798), An authentic account of the embassy of the Dutch East-India Company, to the court of the emperor of China, in the years 1794 and 1795, London: R. Phillips, OCLC 002094734  v.2
  • Bruijn, J.R., Femme Gaastra, and I. Schöffer, eds., Dutch-Asiatic shipping in the 17th and 18th centuries. Rijks geschiedkundige publicatiën. Grote serie, vol. 165-167. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1979, 1987).
  • Burger, M. "The Forgotten Gold? The Importance of the Dutch opium trade in the Seventeenth Century", in Eidos. University College Utrecht Academic Magazine. (2003), Issue 2/2003 Utrecht University
  • Chaudhuri, K.N., and Israel, J.I. "The English and Dutch East India Companies and the Glorious Revolution of 1688-9", in Jonathan I. Israel, ed. The Anglo-Dutch moment. Essays on the Glorious Revolution and its world impact (Cambridge U.P. 1991), ISBN 0-521-39075-3, pp. 407–438
  • De Lange, William. Pars Japonica: the first Dutch expedition to reach the shores of Japan, (Floating World Editions 2006) . ISBN 1-891640-23-2
  • Furber, Holden, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient 1600–1800. Minneapolis, 1976
  • Gelderblom, Oscar, and Joost Jonker. "Completing a financial revolution: The finance of the Dutch East India trade and the rise of the Amsterdam capital market, 1595–1612." Journal of Economic History 64.03 (2004): 641-672. online
  • Glamann, Kristof., Dutch-Asiatic Trade 1620–1740. (The Hague, 1958)
  • Irwin, Douglas A. (January 1991). "Mercantilism as Strategic Trade Policy: The Anglo-Dutch Rivalry for the East India Trade". Journal of Political Economy 99 (6): 1296–1314. doi:10.1086/261801 – via JSTOR. 
  • Israel, Jonathan I., Dutch Primacy in World Trade 1585–1740. (Oxford, 1989)
  • Prakash, Om. The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal1630-1720 (Princeton University Press, 1985)
  • Steengaard, Niels. The Dutch East India Company as an Institutional Innovation (1982)
  • Taylor, Jean Gelman. The Social World of Batavia: Europeans and Eurasians in Colonial Indonesia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2nd ed. 2009)
  • Theal, George McCall. History of South Africa Under the Administration of the Dutch East India Company 1652 to 1795 Vol. 2. (1897) online.
  • Vries, Jan de, and A. van der Woude. The First Modern Economy. Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815, (Cambridge University Press, 1997), ISBN 978-0-521-57825-7
  • Wills, John Elliot. Pepper, Guns, and Parleys: The Dutch East India Company and China, 1662-1681 (Harvard University Press, 1974)

Dutch sources

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dutch East India Company.
Dutch Wikisource has original text related to this article:
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, April 22, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.