Dutch East India Company

For other uses, see East India Company (disambiguation).

United East India Company[a]
Native name
  • Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie
  • Generale Vereenichde Geoctrooieerde Compagnie (original name)
  • Vereenigde Nederlandsche Geoctroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie (formal name)
Company typePublic
De facto Partially State-owned enterprise
IndustryProto-conglomerate
Predecessor
Voorcompagnieën/Pre-companies (1594–1602)[b]
Founded20 March 1602; 422 years ago (1602-03-20),[2] by a government-directed consolidation of the voorcompagnieën/pre-companies
FounderJohan van Oldenbarnevelt and the States-General
Defunct31 December 1799 (1799-12-31)
FateDissolved and nationalised as Dutch East Indies
Headquarters
Area served
Key people
ProductsSpices, silk, porcelain, metals, livestock, tea, grain, rice, soybeans, sugarcane, wine, coffee, slaves
The "United East India Company", or "United East Indies Company" (also known by the abbreviation "VOC" in Dutch) was the brainchild of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the leading statesman of the Dutch Republic.
Amsterdam VOC headquarters

The United East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie [vərˈeːnɪɣdə ʔoːstˈɪndisə kɔmpɑˈɲi]; abbreviated as VOC [veː(j)oːˈseː]), commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world.[3][4] Established on 20 March 1602[5] by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies, it was granted a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia.[6] Shares in the company could be purchased by any citizen of the United Provinces (Dutch Republic) and subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets (one of which became the Amsterdam Stock Exchange).[7] The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts,[8] negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.[9] Also, because it traded across multiple colonies and countries from both the East and the West, the VOC is sometimes considered to have been the world's first multinational corporation.[10][11]

Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asian trade. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent nearly 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 and slaves. 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 and slave trading activities through most of the 17th century.[12]

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 1619 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.[13] It remained an important trading concern and paid annual dividends that averaged to about 18% of the capital for almost 200 years.[14] Much of the labor that built its colonies was from people it had enslaved.[citation needed]

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.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

  1. ^ Steensgaard, Niels (1974). The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-77139-3.
  2. ^ "The Dutch East India Company (VOC)". Canon van Nederland. Archived from the original on 1 December 2010. Retrieved 19 March 2011.
  3. ^ "Exchange History NL – 400 years: the story". Exchange History NL. Archived from the original on 6 October 2022. Retrieved 6 October 2022.
  4. ^ Fergusson, Niall. The Ascent of Money – A Financial History of the World (2009 ed.). London: Penguin Books. pp. 128–132.
  5. ^ "VOC Knowledge Center – VOC Beginnings". VOC-Kenniscentrum (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 1 October 2022. Retrieved 6 October 2022.
  6. ^ Fergusson, Niall. The Ascent of Money (2009 ed.). London: Penguin Books. p. 129. [a monopoly on] all Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan
  7. ^ Fergusson, Niall. The Ascent of Money – A Financial History of the World (2009 ed.). London: Penguin Books. pp. 129–133.
  8. ^ "Slave Ship Mutiny: Program Transcript". Secrets of the Dead. PBS. 11 November 2010. Archived from the original on 15 April 2014. Retrieved 12 November 2010.
  9. ^ Ames, Glenn J. (2008). The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European Discovery, 1500–1700. pp. 102–103.
  10. ^ Koloniaal Verleden Archived 7 February 2015 at the Wayback Machine VOC at the National Library of the Netherlands (in Dutch)
  11. ^ Updated 10.19.2016, Ben Phelan | Posted 01 07 2013 |. "Antiques Roadshow | PBS". Antiques Roadshow | PBS. Retrieved 27 January 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  12. ^ Van Boven, M. W. (2006). "Memory of the World – Archives of the Dutch East India Company: Nomination Form – VOC Archives Appendix 2". Archived from the original on 20 October 2016.
  13. ^ Vickers, Adrian (2005). A History of Modern Indonesia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-511-13492-0.
  14. ^ Taylor, Bryan. "The Rise And Fall Of The Largest Corporation In History". Business Insider. Retrieved 30 April 2024.