Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC)

Two men meet in a lone tent adjacent to the remnants of a once powerful palace, one a ruler of an Al gone Empire, the other a foreigner. The transaction is finished swiftly. The parchment has been set out. The names are signed, and the surrender agreement is made. Soon, one of the world's oldest and most populated civilizations will be submissive to a small island a tenth of its size. However, it was not the British Empire that claimed India. In fact, the land would not be passed to the state or the king at all. No, this conquest was carried out by a private army as part of the East India Company's business strategy. What visuals come to mind when you hear the phrases imperialism or colonization? Perhaps it is old British or French war propaganda, perhaps it is the separation of Africa in the Middle East, perhaps it is centuries ago when warriors from one empire immediately hung a banner claiming land and one said land by armed force.
Don't get me wrong, the Spanish and Portuguese acquired their enormous region in the Americas through brutal force plus the fact that 90% of the Indians died from plague. The thing was, this type of ruthless colonization only occurred in the Americas because, well, you know, and even then, despite being two giant continents, the new world itself wasn't actually that profitable. The only considerable long-term profit came from the West Indies' sugar plantations. Columbus set forth in the first place in pursuit of the East Indies. Even when two continents were conquered, they were insignificant in comparison to the true center of the world. Europe, as one of the most populous regions on the earth, craved spices and products such as nutmeg, cotton silk pepper, and particularly tea. Whoever could undertake that voyage to obtain access to the spice or even better control of the spice market would not only have considerable money. The most significant ability Portugal had already developed was a small trading empire by the 1600s, with forts dotting the Indian Ocean. They were unquestioned because they were the first Europeans there; the Pope cutting the world in half will do that sort of thing. However, Protestants are unconcerned about what the Pope has to say about the matter, and other nations have set their sights on tapping into the Indian Ocean.
A few Dutch and afterwards English merchants set their sights on the old world, founding their own businesses to buy ships and bankroll expeditions around the world. Small at first, but a risky voyage that could lead to bankruptcy if it fails to negotiate arrangements with rulers, then bring items back from the East Indies, and the Dutch, as they always do, figured out how to do this rapidly and efficiently. founding the Netherlands' official East India Company, or in Dutch It was commonly referred to as the VOC. To cut a long story short, the VOC was effectively a state-backed but not state-controlled corporation. the first major European power to strike gold in the Indian Ocean's mine Because it was backed by the state, it allowed freedoms that the Portuguese did not enjoy. To us in the twenty-first century, it seems bizarre that a corporation could pay their own military to police their activities and also declare war on anyone who disputed those interests. However, it remained a private enterprise free of government influence. Meanwhile, in England, the English aspired to copy the Dutch and founded the East India Company, which operated in the same fashion. However, they entered the market too late, quickly found themselves pushed out of India by the Dutch and forced to settle in the slightly less prosperous Indian subcontinent. Because neither business could simply capture land by force, their ports and factories on the coast were established through arrangements with local rulers.
Contracts considered as mutually beneficial to both state and corporate For all of these enterprises, the state made an initial investment, but they were largely held up by private persons investing in a piece of a company in order to gain profits when its voyages were successful. The origins of what we now call Western modern capitalism Mercantilism was economic warfare in which a state monopolizes a market in order to drive out rivals. It was common in the 16th and 18th centuries. The success of international politics was regulated by merchants and dealers, and for the VOC, this was enormously profitable. What was previously merely a trading endeavor had developed over a few centuries as the firm purchased additional property, entire islands, financed colonization projects, shipbuilding, and even became involved in slavery. What began as a basic commerce in pepper and East Indian products turned into not only a wealthy business but the most rich private institution in human history. At its peak, Standard Oil was worth a trillion dollars, as was Apple. The VOC sea, inflated to today's wealth, was worth $8 trillion and it generated a golden age and culture for the Dutch. While the VOC had its time in the sun, it couldn't compete with the British Navy and fell apart by the 19th century. While the VOC sea was gone, the Dutch did not leave the East Indies until after WWII.
The British and French were now the new world powers, not just in Europe, and this rivalry poured into their new main focus, India. In the 1500s, Europe's overall population was 70 million people. The Indian subcontinent had a population of 170 million people. India, like Europe, has always been a shifting canvas of various empires and kingdoms. Nonetheless, the Mughal Empire dominated most of India for approximately two centuries. The Mughals had conquered all of northern India by the 16th century, and they were essentially an Islamic governing class over a Hindu people. However, throughout the most part of its history, religious divisions were inconsequential. There were no anti-Muslim violence or Sharia law, and the time was one of cultural advancement and relative stability. If you're expecting the story to be about how the British ended their golden period, you're mistaken. By the time the Europeans had any effect on the Indian coast, the Mughals had their own political issues.
Following a period of weak leadership, the Mughals enacted more stricter Islamic restrictions upon their majority. Non-Muslim population caused resentment. By the 18th century, the Empire was in decline; its capital had been wrecked by the Persians, and it was facing invasions from the Afghans as well as a rebellion from the Hindus in the south. and the British and French firms watched intently. The British were permitted to have ports along the Indian coast, but their main operating base was in the Bay of Bengal. The competition with the French really heated up here, but it had to come to a head over Ohio. The seven-year war ended badly for the French, who lost their major power in Europe in North America. And for this narrative, the East India Company was more than willing to take up those French properties in India. With the Dutch weekend in France gone, the British were now Europe's lone exporter of Indian goods. So, what happens after you have a monopoly? It is simple to establish an empire. By the 1750s, the Mughal Empire had officially collapsed after a century of decline and conflict.
In its place, the Maratha, who controlled the same amount of land as the Mughals but were far more fragmented, The Bay of Bengal was fully held by the East India Business by the mid-century, giving it the right time for the corporation to secure its interests in India. It's 30 to 40 million people who are at the mercy of a few people in a building in London. Not only was the corporation making money from trade, but it was also taxing the citizens. and now that they had influence over the legislation, the corporation reassigned land to be used for more income crops rather than food ones. People were largely harvesting tea and cotton rather than food. . . . it just took one bad harvest season for things to quickly deteriorate. This was known as the 1770 Great Pen Golf Famine.
In a short period of time, ten million Bengalis, or roughly one-third of the population, died of starvation. This was worsened by the fact that corporate bosses would stockpile food in order to profit. not that the only thing the corporation as a whole cared about later was the tax break they acquired by force. Even so, this was a horrible look for the firm. Profits were still being lost, and tea exports were falling. The enormity of the famine's casualties was not lost on Parliament. Reforms were essential to at least reduce the firm's immense power, which was easier to achieve today given how much the company plundered from the nation. There were several of these reforms throughout the last 50 years or so, but the main premise was that if you have too much authority, the crown should have some say in what you do. Did the new government oversight changes work? While we like to pretend that lobbyists dominating our legislative authority is a new occurrence, it is not.
Even after regulations were imposed against the enterprise, the state continued to engage with private armies in India. By the 1780s, the business had assembled a personal army of tens of thousands of native Indians. And it wasn't difficult to locate local recruits, so the stage is set for the future century in India, which is split, with an autonomous corporate state owning a substantial piece of the coast. I'm interested in what will happen next. This was the biggest phase of territory gain in the company's history, running from the 1790s to the 1830s. Given its immense military force, capacity to acquire allies, and skilled fighting techniques By the 1830s, the majority of the subcontinent was either directly controlled by the East India Company or linked with it. and the wealth generated by this growth cannot be emphasized; after all, this was one of the richest regions in the world, and a surge of cash entered the Empire, along with much-needed export items. In today's money, the equivalent paid by some of these princes to the British was in the hundreds of millions. The invasion was so large that the term "loot" entered the English language. Nonetheless, with all of this new affluence, the business was compelled to take on the same job as the Mughals and Marathas before them in ruling India.
and they did govern a majority of the continent for 30 years, and from 1750 to 1850, the crown never claimed India for themselves. So, what has changed: rebellion For recruiting, the East India Company relied on local Indians. By the 1850s, there were numerous reasons why the local troops were dissatisfied: promotions were scarce, wages began to stagnate, promised land was not provided, and there were even issues with using paper cartridges greased with pig and cow fat for the new rifles, which were not welcomed by the soldiers because they were Hindu or Muslim. All you need to know is that the East India Company's own troops started fighting among others. Other armies numbered in the tens of thousands, and atrocities were committed throughout the subcontinent. By the conclusion of a year of fighting, hundreds of thousands of Indians, primarily civilians, had been slain, not to mention the accompanying economic and agricultural collapse, which led to sickness and malnutrition, and the fact that this revolt occurred at all was viewed as an embarrassment. Having gone too far in order to restore some order to the chaos, Queen Victoria abolished the East India Company, whose lands would be officially transferred to the British Empire, and the residents of the new British Raj would be granted citizenship, at least on paper. Future Indians now subject to the British crown would repeatedly dispute the fulfillment of this promise, but the period of this colossal megacorporation had passed. However, the influence and future it generated lasted far longer. Despite the fact that the phrase "the flag follows the commerce," I suppose there is a popular idea in the West that the European Empire spread by military strength, much like the Spanish Empire or possibly the Romans.
When it came to the East Indies, however, this was not the case at all; the whims of corporations controlled where the empire would roam. The British Empire quickly expanded to become the largest empire ever seen, thanks in part to its lucrative cotton exports from the Indian subcontinent. Although cotton tea was the first important industrial commodity, it was not the only one. Prior to its dissolution, the corporation imported opium grown in Bengal to destabilize China in order to get better trade agreements, effectively turning them into a 19th century drug cartel, resulting in the opium wars, the purchase of Hong Kong, and the beginning of China's century of humiliation. because, for a time, new markets were what defined the empire. and I say at the time because what we used to call colonialism or imperialism has always changed, as has what drives nations and people to dominate others. As the nineteenth century came to a finish, lessons from the Indian rebellion were learned, and the new country that was acquired was under government control, which inspired our common thinking about imperialism today, such as the Scramble for Africa. But, in reality, this was only a tiny diversion from what expansion has always meant. Africa was the only continent where private corporations did not invest in colonies. Yes, it possessed resources, but the purpose for splinting Africa was essentially to fill a map.
Even then, European powers only occupied African colonies for 40 to 60 years. In comparison to the days of the East India Company 4 VOC People's lives are better by regulated capitalism and market-based economies. But when that goes unchecked, a firm ceases to be a company and becomes a state within a state, beholden to no one except the bottom line.The first joint-stock firm in history was The United East India Company. In order to benefit from the Malukan spice trade, it was established in 1602. On 4,785 ships between 1602 and 1796, the VOC dispatched nearly a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade. In 1665, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was established. A huge capital "V" with an O on the left and a C on the right formed the company's monogram.
The VOC logo has been in use since the late 20th century by an Australian winemaker. The Portuguese crown and the Spanish crown, with whom the Dutch Republic was at war, entered into a personal union in 1580. From that point forward, Dutch military intrusions became legitimate targets for the Portuguese Empire. Dutch traders began to participate in the transcontinental spice trade as a result of these intrusions. The first Dutch fleet to reach the Maluku "Spice Islands" was a fleet of eight ships led by Jacob van Neck in 1598.
On Ambon Island, the Dutch formed an anti-Portuguese alliance in 1600 with the Muslim Hituese. A single "United East Indies Company" was founded in 1602 with support from the Dutch government. The company's charter gave it the authority to erect forts, keep soldiers, and sign agreements with Asian emperors. Off the coast of Singapore, it captured the Santa Catarina, a 1500-ton Portuguese commercial carrack. Although the Straits of Malacca were strategically important, after the Portuguese takeover they turned treacherous.
In Java, at Sukadana, Makassar, Jayakarta, and Jepara; and in Sumatra, at Aceh, Pariaman, and Jambi; the English erected commercial posts. After taking Jayakarta by force in 1619, Jan Pieterszoon Coen Coen made Batavia the VOC's administrative center. He anticipated that the VOC may rise to prominence as an economic and political force in Asia. Coen wanted to establish a sizable Dutch colony in the East Indies. The VOC had a key role in bringing European concepts and technology to Asia.
The Portuguese lost control of the port of Galle, Ceylon, to the VOC in 1640, ending their monopoly over the trade in cinnamon. The Dutch took control of the coastal areas when the Portuguese were driven out by 1659. With a number of regional lords in the Painan region who were insurrecting against the Aceh Sultanate, the VOC signed the "Painan Treaty" with them in 1663. After 1672, the English East India Company (EIC) began trading in pepper. A price conflict with the EIC resulted from the VOC's policy of minor oversupply.
The latter was almost insolvent by 1683; its share price fell from 600 to 250. The Battle of Colachel in 1741 is regarded as the first instance of an organized Asian power defeating European military strategy and technology. The Travancore-Dutch War defeat marked the end of Dutch dominance in India. The business had already expanded into other Asian goods like sugar, cotton, tea, coffee, and textiles. Although ship tonnage increased by 125%, revenues only increased by 78%.
This is a reflection of the VOC's operations in emerging markets for commodities with flexible demand. The VOC's fortunes began to deteriorate after 1730. There are five significant issues that contribute differently to its demise. a decline in intra-Asian trade as a result of political and economic changes in Asia. The inefficiency of moving everything first to this hub.
The high mortality and illness rates among the VOC's workers accelerated the business's downfall. The board turned to anticipatory loans for short-term finance, backed by projected earnings from fleets traveling home. With one exception, distributed dividends exceeded earnings every decade. The inventory of goods and ships that made up the VOC's capital in the Republic in 1780 came to a whopping 28 million guilders. Net of existing debt, total capital was 62 million Guilders.
The VOC fleet was cut in half as a result of British naval assaults in Europe and Asia, and precious cargo was taken from Dutch control. The VOC was in financial ruin following the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. The provincial States of Holland and Zeeland made fruitless attempts to reorganize it before the new Batavian Republic decided to nationalize it. The VOC charter was repeatedly extended, but on December 31, 1799, it was allowed to expire. Six Dutch port cities came together to form the Dutch East India Company (VOC).
The participanten, who may be viewed as non-managing members, and the bewindhebbers were the two different categories of stockholders in the VOC. Enkhuizen contributed the most to the share capital of the VOC, and representatives from these chambers met as the Heeren XVII. Ten times more capital was invested in VOC than in its British competitor. The firm set up shop in Java's Batavia region during the Dutch-Portuguese War. In the Maluku Islands, it was forced to retain a monopoly on nutmeg and mace.
The first instance of shareholder activism is a petition Isaac Le Maire made in 1609 against the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Investors in VOC complained in 1622 that the company's records of accounts had been "smeared with bacon" in order to be "devoured by dogs." The VOC had a considerable direct and indirect impact on Delft's economy during the Dutch Golden Age. One of the first known industrialized zones in the world was the Zaan shipbuilding sector. The term "VOC mentality," first used by Jan Pieter Balkenende in 2006, refers to the pioneering mindset of the Dutch during their Golden Age. Since its establishment in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands gave it a 21-year monopoly over Dutch enterprises in Asia, VOC has been around for almost 200 years. Over 2.5 million tons of Asian trade commodities were the result of the nearly one million Europeans that VOC sent to work aboard 4,785 ships in the Asia trade. Lieve Verschuier captured King Charles II of England's entrance at Rotterdam on May 24, 1660. During the VOC era, in the late 1600s and early 1700s, Indonesia started cultivating coffee. As part of the Dutch Gift, Charles II received HMY Mary and HMY Bezan. Due to their extensive commercial networks, successful trading endeavors, and personal trips, the Dutch eventually came to dominate the map-making and map-printing industries. Hendrick Hamel, a bookkeeper for the VOC, was the first known European or Westerner to visit and document Joseon-era Korea. 's of Johan Nieuhof. an embassy of the United Provinces' East-India Company. The discovery made in 1697 by VOC navigator Willem de Vlamingh refuted the 2,000-year-old belief that "all swans are white." The VOC operated a trading presence in Japan starting in 1609, using indigenous paper for internal administration. On Japanese paper, imprints of Rembrandt's prints from the Dutch Golden Age were frequently created. The warm, yellowish color of the Japanese paper types, which were genuinely imported from Japan, drew him in. Rembrandt's self-portrait of an eastern emperor with a Javanese blade weapon called a kris or keris from the VOC era. One of the earliest known Western printmakers to use Japanese paper extensively was Vermeer. In several Dutch Golden Age paintings, 17th-century Chinese export porcelain goods are frequently portrayed. A massive multi-volume global atlas from the Dutch/Netherlandish Golden Age of cartography is called Blaeu's Atlas Maior. The VOC paid Henry Hudson to circumnavigate Scandinavia and Russia in search of a north-east route to Asia. His first and second landings were in Newfoundland and Cape Cod, respectively. An émigré from Antwerp first publicized Hudson's voyage to New Netherland in 1611. The Admiralty of Amsterdam dispatched two covert voyages in 1611–1612 in an effort to locate a route to China. Between 1606 and 1756, VOC is credited with putting the majority of Australia's coast on the map of the world. Off the coast of Western Australia, at Cape Inscription, Dirk Hartog set foot in 1616. The Leeuwin mapped a portion of the adjacent coastline in 1622, making it the earliest ship known to have been in the area. On 1642, Abel Tasman set sail from Mauritius and made landfall in Tasmania. The dodo was a flightless bird that was native to Mauritius and its activities there played a significant role in its extinction. Only 340,000 of the million mariners and craftsmen who left Holland between 1602 and 1795 returned. The VOC charter let it to carry out ruthless conquests and function as a quasi-sovereign state. The Bandan society was almost completely destroyed as a result of the Dutch's punitive expeditions. Only 1,000 people were left in the islands after around 14,000 were slaughtered, sold into slavery, or fled. The VOC considered using males from the native Khoikhoi population as slave laborers, but decided against it since it would be expensive and risky. Several unsuccessful attempts to acquire slaves from Mauritius and the Dutch East Indies were conducted between 1652 and 1657. In the Cape, there were no slaves in 1652, but there were roughly 1,000 by the year 1700. The number of slaves rose sharply during the 18th century, reaching 16,839 by 1795. All slaves imported into the Cape once the slave trade began came from Madagascar, Mozambique, and East Africa. The Cape community began bringing in slaves from Madagascar, Malaya, and Ceylon in the 1660s to labor on its plantations. When it became apparent that Dutch farmers intended to intrude on the territories of pastoralists, conflict erupted between them and the Khoikhoi. A female Asian elephant named Hansken was transported to Amsterdam in 1637 on a VOC ship from Dutch Ceylon. Christobel Mattingley's 2012 work of young adult fiction, Abel Tasman's Heroic Voyages, is told from the viewpoint of Tasman's little daughter, Claesgen.
== Corporatocracity ==
An economic, political, and judicial system that is dominated by corporations or corporate interests is referred to as a corporatocracy. All of those criteria are met by the British EIC, which is neither directly owned nor nationalized by the British government. What precisely did the EIC and its domain consist of? Was it a nation? A British upper class-owned enterprise provided mariners firmans—or permission—to rape, plunder, rob, kill, and demand money in the name of the Church, the Queen or the King.
Similar to how resource and oil businesses now collaborate directly with mercenary firms, but they do it in the name of a much more potent ideology than monarchy or patriotism. The Company may operate more like a company in some areas and more like a government in others, which may be beneficial to understand. For instance, it primarily operated as a merchant enterprise in China, where it engaged in considerable trading (including in opium infamously later on). The majority of lucrative operations for the Company took place in China, where it also maintained the appearance of a regular firm. In India, the Company initially operated in this manner but later started levying taxes on citizens, keeping a sizable standing army, and carrying out many other typical state administration tasks.
According to Hajeebu, the British Parliament passed a number of laws between 1767 and 1784 that gradually reduced the authority, privileges, and rights of shareholders in favor of Crown ministers. When one can distinguish between private, profit-seeking interests and governmental interests, that is when one may say the Company grew more aligned with the latter. Prior to our independence in 1947, there was no such thing as an independent, unified India. The Mughal Empire, which controlled a sizable portion of Northern India, was the closest thing South Asia had to a nation before the British arrived. However, the peninsular region was still mostly made up of small, warring princely states.
The British, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and other immigrants came as traders and businesspeople. But as their economic dominance expanded, they started exploiting existing structures (like the oppressive feudal zamindari system for farmers) to seek political power as well. They became important players locally as a result, and princely state leaders saw them as vital friends. The colonists then took advantage of this trust to wage a succession of violent wars against the forces of the princely states, losing relatively few of their own soldiers while taking control of vast kingdoms. In the end, the EIC was able to drive the French out of the Carnatic Wars and take control of the entire nation.
They seized control of entire countries and disregarded adopted heirs to the throne. They maintained the feudal order and reduced the remaining princely state monarchs to become puppets who would do their bidding and pay their taxes. Even the Mughals, who had governed for two centuries, were ousted by them. This virtually made them in charge of the subcontinent's politics, economy, and judiciary. They weren't forced to cede full authority to the Crown and end operations in India until a widespread uprising in 1857, when they were given the pretext that a private corporation lacked the resources to rule a country and had to be transformed into an official British colony.
The Mughal Emperor handed one of the East India Company's officials the province of Bengal despite the fact that it was founded as a commercial firm with a royal charter. From that moment on, the Company essentially dominated the province while ostensibly remaining loyal to the Emperor. Even though the Company was not owned by the crown, the practice of buying shares to bribe lawmakers created a significant conflict of interest between the interests of the British government and the company's revenues.
The Dutch East India Company, often known as VOC and the first significant international firm, was the first business to be listed on a stock exchange. The VOC was founded as a merger of many competing trading organizations, with a 21-year monopoly on the spice trade. However, the VOC swiftly expanded into a country in its own right. It was also distinctive in that its stockholders were solely liable for the amount they had deposited in the company. When it destroyed the Indonesian city of Jayakarta, rebuilt it as Batavia, and started utilizing it as its operational hub in 1619, it displayed its statesmanlike prowess. It swiftly spread over the area and acquired quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison individuals, issue its own money, and broker regional treaties. Only the company's board of directors and stockholders were held accountable. In 1799, the Dutch government eventually dissolved it and took control of its assets.
== See Also ==
* East India Company