Description
The Dutch East India Company, or in modern spelling Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (United East India Company), abbreviated to VOC, was a private Dutch trading company with a monopoly on overseas trade between the Dutch Republic and the area east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Strait of Magellan. The VOC was founded in 1602 as the Generale Vereenichde Geoctroyeerde Compagnie (General United Chartered Company). At the time, it was the largest trading company in the world and the first public limited company with freely tradable shares. The VOC is often cited as the first company to have branches in multiple countries. The VOC established a trading network between the various trading posts in the Asian region. This intra-Asian trade generated substantial profits for many years. To this end, the VOC concluded treaties with Eastern potentates and rulers at will. The company minted its own coins, as there was virtually no demand for European products in Asia, aside from weapons, scientific instruments, and medical textbooks. The VOC had its own army and warships to maintain or expand its position and, if necessary, to enforce trade with the local population. In its early years, the company launched expensive military campaigns to drive the Portuguese from Asian trading posts and keep other competitors at bay. Around 1700, half of its employees were soldiers. Within the Asian trading posts and the territory it controlled, the company administered government and justice. Trade was conducted (sometimes briefly) with countries including Mocha, Persia, Gujarat, Malabar, Ceylon, the Coromandel Coast, Bengal, Ayutthaya, Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Formosa, China, Japan, Java, and the Moluccas, where for a long time the greatest profits were generated. The VOC encouraged voyages of discovery in the hope of faster connections, new trade contacts and products, linguistic research to introduce the Christian faith to the local population, and ethnobotanical research to reduce the number of casualties among its employees. At the height of its power, the VOC employed 25,000 workers in Asia. In the Netherlands, the VOC had approximately 3,000 staff, and many were indirectly economically dependent on it for their supply chain. From top to bottom, employees engaged in smuggling to supplement their meager salaries. The VOC suffered greatly during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-1784), when the English seized several trading posts and seized fully-loaded merchant ships. Losses are estimated at possibly sixty million guilders. During the Batavian Republic, the company, a symbol of the "ancien régime," was nationalized in March 1795. A year later, the debt amounted to 120 million guilders, which the state assumed. The charter was extended twice more to handle current affairs. The VOC officially ceased to exist on December 31, 1799.
