The Dutch East India Company: The Richest Company In The World
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Visitors to Amsterdam will be familiar with it’s tall, narrow buildings and labyrinth of canals which run past the winding streets with typical Dutch names such as Lindenstraat, Keizersgracht and Damstraat. But away from the well-trodden tourist paths of the city centre, in the eastern district, are some streets with not-so typical Dutch sounding names like Balistraat, Sumatrastraat, and Borneostraat. These are situated within what is known locally as the Indian neighbourhood and are named in reference to what was once the Dutch controlled East Indies.
Constituting much of the modern state of Indonesia, these islands came to be ruled by the Netherlands over 7000 miles away, when the Dutch East India Company established itself in the region some 400 years ago and quickly grew to become the richest company the world had ever seen.
Possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins and establish colonies, it is often considered to be the world’s first multinational corporation and one which set the precedent for how modern business and international trade are conducted to this day. But what inspired these Dutch merchants to undertake the lengthy and perilous journey to the far side of the world? This is the history of the Dutch East India Company.
The United East India was a chartered company established on 20 March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock company in the world, granting it a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be bought by any resident of the United Provinces and then subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets (one of which became the Amsterdam Stock Exchange). It is sometimes considered to have been the first multinational corporation. It was a powerful company, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.
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.
Having been set up in 1602 to profit from the Malukan spice trade, the VOC established a capital in the port city of Jayakarta in 1609 and changed its name to 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. It remained an important trading concern and paid an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years. Much of the labour that built its colonies was from people it had enslaved.
Weighed down by smuggling, corruption and growing administrative costs in the late 18th century, the company went bankrupt and was formally dissolved in 1799. Its possessions and debt were taken over by the government of the Dutch Batavian Republic. The former territories owned by the VOC went on to become the Dutch East Indies and were expanded over the course of the 19th century to include the entirety of the Indonesian archipelago. In the 20th century, these islands would form the Republic of Indonesia.
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