Q: This task involves creating questions from a given passage that involve some kind of complex reasoning (including numerical reasoning).
The generated questions must require looking at more than one part of the passage to answer. Try to use a variety of reasoning types in your questions (some of the sample reasoning types are illustrated in the 'positive examples' field) and also have a variety of answer types (spans, numbers, dates). A span is a continuous phrase taken directly from the passage or question. In such questions, the answer spans are recommended to be five words. Questions with answer type "number", are expected to start with "How many". For instance, "How long did an event last?" can be phrased as "How many years did an event last?". To increase diversity, try to create more questions for which the answer will be multiple spans. Please create questions that require AT LEAST 2 arithmetic operations as illustrated in the 'positive examples' field. You are encouraged to try DIFFERENT COMBINATIONS of operations and not just limit to the combinations shown in those examples. The more challenging questions you create, the better it is.
Passage: In 1592, during the war with Spain, an English fleet had captured a large Portuguese galleon off the Azores, the Madre de Deus, loaded with 900 tons of merchandise from India and China, worth an estimated half a million pounds . This foretaste of the riches of the East galvanized interest in the region. That same year, Dutch merchants sent Cornelis de Houtman to Lisbon, to gather as much information as he could about the Spice Islands. In 1595, merchant and explorer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, having traveled widely in the Indian Ocean at the service of the Portuguese, published a travel report in Amsterdam, the "Reys-gheschrift vande navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten" . The published report included vast directions on how to navigate ships between Portugal and the East Indies and to Japan. Dutch and British interest fed on new information led to a movement of commercial expansion, and the foundation of the English East India Company, in 1600, and Dutch East India Company , in 1602, allowing the entry of chartered companies in the so-called East Indies. In 1602, the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie was founded, with the goal of sharing the costs of the exploration of the East Indies and ultimately re-establishing the spice trade, a vital source of income to the new Republic of the Seven United Provinces.
A:
How many companies were established in 1600 and beyond?